This just goes to show that the total cost of ownership for Linux/Unix/NT/2k has very little to do with the license for the OS at all. Hardware, admin, the software running on the box and so on more than make up the the trivial price differences between most server operating systems. Just because a Linux CD might be free doesn't mean running it on an enterprise box is going to save you a single penny.
True. Very true. But add to that another possibility, the parents. Kids of 8 - 10 most likely have parents around their mid to late 30s, who grew up in the 70s. This was the time when staying in and playing with lego/early video games/etc was going to get you bullied at school for being a nerd. And they pass that on to there kids. Your kids will hopefully be luckier, being 22 you grew up with the golden age of home computer games such as the Amiga and ST. Please pass that on..
Simple fact, if VA Linux goes under they'll be taking SourceForge, Slashdot, and a bunch of others down with them. Its not like they're closing the source completly after having had people work on it openly, it another product (presumeably the GPL stuff (which remains GPL) with closed source extensions). So I say let them sell, coz the profits from such go toward keeping the pretty cool free stuff around.
Re:What known source in space gives off laser beam
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 3
Laser. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Lasers ain't natural. If you find lasers, you find life.
Well, note that I said 'single game'. The Quake engine is getting pretty old, but thats not really the game per se. As I said previously, to develop a game for 10 years would be nuts, but to develop a system to be used for the basis of perhaps 30 games 10 years is pretty sound.
As for the 3 games you mention, Medal of Honor is a port of a Playstation game. And Playstations haven't been around for even 5 years yet, so that could hardly be 10 years work.
I'd agree in prinicle. To write Notes, or an OS, or a DBMS, certainly, 10 years is probably a fair amount of time to get something of reasonable quality. But..
Not all software has even close to thelifespan of the big applications this guy is talking about. Most user applications, games, web technologies, they are all projects that get used for a few years and then get replaced. To develop a single game for 10 years would be madness. The amount of time a project has is usually linearly related to the lifespan of the outcome. If you're writing soemthing thats going to be used in 20 years time, then its probably not an afternoons work.
I see Napster in exactly the same light as I see warez sites. People try to get something that they'd otherwise have to pay for without parting with the cash. I don't use Napster now, and have never used it in the past. I do however buy CDs.
I'm sure 'e-gold' is a great idea, best of luck and all that (have you been reading Neal Stephenson books alot?), but in the end a 'tipping culture' is not whats needed. Its just a little responsibility for your own actions thats needed.
Ok, time to burn some karma. I have plenty anyway.
The huge dropoff Napster has seen since the last ruling and subsequent removal of most copyright material shows us one simple fact. Most of the people using it were idiotic theiving scum who have the morals and self-worth of a sewer rat. They were there simply to steal something they wanted and couldn't be bothered to pay for. They didn't care at all about the effect they had on the music industry, simply that they could steal with little chance of having to answer for their crime.
At its peak the/. opinion was 'Hey, leave it alone RIAA and Metallica! Its us expressing our right to information! Information and MP3s WANT to be free!'. Now the courts have made a decision that Napster should stop what it was doing (facilitating copyright theft through gross negligance and failure to provide a safeguard to ip owners), and/. steps up with 'Who cares! Old news! Napster is dead!'.
Perhaps those who stated so loudly their opinions about Napster would like to actually have a little courage in future, and stand by what they said previously.
Don't be so damn fickle next time.
Television - John Logie Baird (Scottish)
Computers - Babbage, Turing (tho' Pascal, Aiken, Eckert & Mauchly et al all could be considered 'inventors of the computer')
Facsimilie, or Fax - Alexander Bain (Scottish)
Holography - Dennis Gabon (English)
Penicilin - Alexander Fleming (English)
Railways - George Stephenson (English)
Jet Engines - Frank Whittle (English)
Hovercraft - Christopher Cockerell (english)
Tanks - E.D. Swinton (English)
And we are leaders in.. err.. none of the above. Us Brits are ideas people, but we're a bit crap at actually carrying things through to the end.
The fact the camera techology has been developed and deployed is a fairly good indicator of our need. Necessity is still the mother of invention. And while there is a small criminal element aiming to reduce my quality of life I will always be willing to do what I can to help catch the nasty b******ds. My face going through some pattern matching software is a small price to pay if it catches a someone who I might be the next victim of.
I hereby give up my right to privacy. I don't want to be a 'private' citizen anymore. I want the police to follow my face about the town. I want cameras on every corner, and clipper chips in everything.
A little harsh, perhaps. Extreme? Certainly. Safer to go out on to the streets and have fun with my friends in a stressfree and easy atompshere without having to worry about being mugged/murdered/beaten up/terrorised? Definately.
Yes, you have a right to be a private person. yes, you have a right to do what you want. But as soon as you decide to live in a society that needs these sorts of measures in order to keep track of the criminals you should realise that this is not a bad thing. If you have nothing to hide then hide nothing. If it weren't for a criminal minority then this sort of thing would never arise. Target those who this is aimed at, not the people who are actually trying to work at making the streets a little safer.
These 'Innovation Patents' are just a rubber stamp yes, BUT, having been awarded one the holder can legally claim to own the 'patent' on such device. Ergo stupidity. A 'Patent Approved' label becomes meaningless.
Just because you disagree with the inflection of the editor does not immediately invalidate the story as/. news.
I worked for an employer with this exact attitude. No training because you'll just leave. So I pointed out to him that he has the exact same opportunity to recruit as the the company down the road, and not offering any sort of career development is a big turn off, and also that there is actually a chance I might not leave after training. But he didn'y budge. So I left to go somewhere that does offer training. As Homer might say, Doh!
Ok, so 'practically everything' was the wrong phrase. I'll try 'everything it was designed to operate with' instead. That being desktop PCs, and low to mid range servers.
Round 1: Installation
Very much distro dependant, but whatever the case not as point and click simple as Win2k/OSX.
Round 2: Interface
Window manager dependant this time, some love it, others loathe it. Not as consistant as Win2k or OSX.
Round 3: Software Compatibility
Pretty good for server tools and programming, but not so hot for the desktop user. Win2k wins for gaming by a very long way, and just pips OSX in the Office stakes.
Round 4: Hardware Compatibility
Good, but could be better. Win2k is the winner once again with support for practically everything.
Round 5: Internet Support
Fantastic for server tools, wins easily on pretty much everything. Win2k is slightly if you're in a MS environment.
IMHO Linux is playing catchup, and will be for a while in the desktop arena. *nix on the server, Windows on the desktop... a winning combination.
Thomson has sold 10 million DirecTV satellite receivers equipped with smart cards during the past seven years
Theres a big difference between 'smartcards to view satellitte TV' and 'smartcards to view everything'. I certainly don't much like the idea of having to (presumably) pay of a smartcard in order to do what I do already. So I'd avoid a smartcard device as long as I could. That might mean turning to this 'Napster for video' they're trying to avoid.
One of the reasons Napster was/is so popular is coz they give users the opportunity to download music that costs alot. If you push up the cost you drive more people to look for ways to 'get it for free' (read: steal). Make people pay mroe to watch TV by having to use a smartcard, you make people even more keen on the idea of 'Napster for video'.
Microsoft can do wrong. Linux can do wrong. Microsoft get things right. Linux gets things right. But its not a black and white, MS bad, Linux good world. There are arguements for and against both. An article such as this simply panders to the slashdot majority, it shows little research, and less thought. A shame considering the potential of such a piece.
GIMP simply has no GIF support by default. Theres a plugin for gif support, this is only available from servers located in countries where Unisys don't hold an active patent on the LZW algorithm. So they can't stop the file being served. And people download it.
Napster give away something you should be paying for. MS and AOL are both default homepages for installed browsers. Its hardly suprising they'd get a lot of users surfing time.
That said, I'm suprised Yahoo! is so popular. And that Google isn't.
Bandwidth is just one of those things you can never have enough of. My expectations of bandwidth use are minimal, being a telnet junkie (see.sig), but other things take more. Web surfing, gaming, ASPs (as in applications, not MS), all drain the bandwidth hideously. I certainly wouldn't look forward to viewing Flash 27 movies over a 56k connection.
Slashdot Mirror
This just goes to show that the total cost of ownership for Linux/Unix/NT/2k has very little to do with the license for the OS at all. Hardware, admin, the software running on the box and so on more than make up the the trivial price differences between most server operating systems. Just because a Linux CD might be free doesn't mean running it on an enterprise box is going to save you a single penny.
True. Very true. But add to that another possibility, the parents. Kids of 8 - 10 most likely have parents around their mid to late 30s, who grew up in the 70s. This was the time when staying in and playing with lego/early video games/etc was going to get you bullied at school for being a nerd. And they pass that on to there kids. Your kids will hopefully be luckier, being 22 you grew up with the golden age of home computer games such as the Amiga and ST. Please pass that on..
Simple fact, if VA Linux goes under they'll be taking SourceForge, Slashdot, and a bunch of others down with them. Its not like they're closing the source completly after having had people work on it openly, it another product (presumeably the GPL stuff (which remains GPL) with closed source extensions). So I say let them sell, coz the profits from such go toward keeping the pretty cool free stuff around.
Laser. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Lasers ain't natural. If you find lasers, you find life.
Well, note that I said 'single game'. The Quake engine is getting pretty old, but thats not really the game per se. As I said previously, to develop a game for 10 years would be nuts, but to develop a system to be used for the basis of perhaps 30 games 10 years is pretty sound.
As for the 3 games you mention, Medal of Honor is a port of a Playstation game. And Playstations haven't been around for even 5 years yet, so that could hardly be 10 years work.
I'd agree in prinicle. To write Notes, or an OS, or a DBMS, certainly, 10 years is probably a fair amount of time to get something of reasonable quality. But..
Not all software has even close to thelifespan of the big applications this guy is talking about. Most user applications, games, web technologies, they are all projects that get used for a few years and then get replaced. To develop a single game for 10 years would be madness. The amount of time a project has is usually linearly related to the lifespan of the outcome. If you're writing soemthing thats going to be used in 20 years time, then its probably not an afternoons work.
His name is encrypted using a special cipher known as 'Russian'. We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you.
Heh. Yeah. Well, I actually thought for once I might be trolled down.. just covering my ass.
I see Napster in exactly the same light as I see warez sites. People try to get something that they'd otherwise have to pay for without parting with the cash. I don't use Napster now, and have never used it in the past. I do however buy CDs.
I'm sure 'e-gold' is a great idea, best of luck and all that (have you been reading Neal Stephenson books alot?), but in the end a 'tipping culture' is not whats needed. Its just a little responsibility for your own actions thats needed.
o2k
Ok, time to burn some karma. I have plenty anyway. The huge dropoff Napster has seen since the last ruling and subsequent removal of most copyright material shows us one simple fact. Most of the people using it were idiotic theiving scum who have the morals and self-worth of a sewer rat. They were there simply to steal something they wanted and couldn't be bothered to pay for. They didn't care at all about the effect they had on the music industry, simply that they could steal with little chance of having to answer for their crime. At its peak the /. opinion was 'Hey, leave it alone RIAA and Metallica! Its us expressing our right to information! Information and MP3s WANT to be free!'. Now the courts have made a decision that Napster should stop what it was doing (facilitating copyright theft through gross negligance and failure to provide a safeguard to ip owners), and /. steps up with 'Who cares! Old news! Napster is dead!'.
Perhaps those who stated so loudly their opinions about Napster would like to actually have a little courage in future, and stand by what they said previously.
Don't be so damn fickle next time.
Television - John Logie Baird (Scottish)
Computers - Babbage, Turing (tho' Pascal, Aiken, Eckert & Mauchly et al all could be considered 'inventors of the computer')
Facsimilie, or Fax - Alexander Bain (Scottish)
Holography - Dennis Gabon (English)
Penicilin - Alexander Fleming (English)
Railways - George Stephenson (English)
Jet Engines - Frank Whittle (English)
Hovercraft - Christopher Cockerell (english)
Tanks - E.D. Swinton (English)
And we are leaders in.. err.. none of the above. Us Brits are ideas people, but we're a bit crap at actually carrying things through to the end.
A much better way to effectively stop Acme from making use of this would be .. don't speed.
The fact the camera techology has been developed and deployed is a fairly good indicator of our need. Necessity is still the mother of invention. And while there is a small criminal element aiming to reduce my quality of life I will always be willing to do what I can to help catch the nasty b******ds. My face going through some pattern matching software is a small price to pay if it catches a someone who I might be the next victim of.
I hereby give up my right to privacy. I don't want to be a 'private' citizen anymore. I want the police to follow my face about the town. I want cameras on every corner, and clipper chips in everything.
A little harsh, perhaps. Extreme? Certainly. Safer to go out on to the streets and have fun with my friends in a stressfree and easy atompshere without having to worry about being mugged/murdered/beaten up/terrorised? Definately.
Yes, you have a right to be a private person. yes, you have a right to do what you want. But as soon as you decide to live in a society that needs these sorts of measures in order to keep track of the criminals you should realise that this is not a bad thing. If you have nothing to hide then hide nothing. If it weren't for a criminal minority then this sort of thing would never arise. Target those who this is aimed at, not the people who are actually trying to work at making the streets a little safer.
These 'Innovation Patents' are just a rubber stamp yes, BUT, having been awarded one the holder can legally claim to own the 'patent' on such device. Ergo stupidity. A 'Patent Approved' label becomes meaningless.
/. news.
Just because you disagree with the inflection of the editor does not immediately invalidate the story as
Try being constructive next time.
I worked for an employer with this exact attitude. No training because you'll just leave. So I pointed out to him that he has the exact same opportunity to recruit as the the company down the road, and not offering any sort of career development is a big turn off, and also that there is actually a chance I might not leave after training. But he didn'y budge. So I left to go somewhere that does offer training. As Homer might say, Doh!
And as a plus, instead of training we can just 'borrow' code from Perlmonks anyway.. :)
Cert #1769911 - Fritz Post.
Perhaps I'll stick to my day job.
Ok, so 'practically everything' was the wrong phrase. I'll try 'everything it was designed to operate with' instead. That being desktop PCs, and low to mid range servers.
Round 1: Installation
Very much distro dependant, but whatever the case not as point and click simple as Win2k/OSX.
Round 2: Interface
Window manager dependant this time, some love it, others loathe it. Not as consistant as Win2k or OSX.
Round 3: Software Compatibility
Pretty good for server tools and programming, but not so hot for the desktop user. Win2k wins for gaming by a very long way, and just pips OSX in the Office stakes.
Round 4: Hardware Compatibility
Good, but could be better. Win2k is the winner once again with support for practically everything.
Round 5: Internet Support
Fantastic for server tools, wins easily on pretty much everything. Win2k is slightly if you're in a MS environment.
IMHO Linux is playing catchup, and will be for a while in the desktop arena. *nix on the server, Windows on the desktop... a winning combination.
Thomson has sold 10 million DirecTV satellite receivers equipped with smart cards during the past seven years
Theres a big difference between 'smartcards to view satellitte TV' and 'smartcards to view everything'. I certainly don't much like the idea of having to (presumably) pay of a smartcard in order to do what I do already. So I'd avoid a smartcard device as long as I could. That might mean turning to this 'Napster for video' they're trying to avoid.
One of the reasons Napster was/is so popular is coz they give users the opportunity to download music that costs alot. If you push up the cost you drive more people to look for ways to 'get it for free' (read: steal). Make people pay mroe to watch TV by having to use a smartcard, you make people even more keen on the idea of 'Napster for video'.
Microsoft can do wrong. Linux can do wrong. Microsoft get things right. Linux gets things right. But its not a black and white, MS bad, Linux good world. There are arguements for and against both. An article such as this simply panders to the slashdot majority, it shows little research, and less thought. A shame considering the potential of such a piece.
GIMP simply has no GIF support by default. Theres a plugin for gif support, this is only available from servers located in countries where Unisys don't hold an active patent on the LZW algorithm. So they can't stop the file being served. And people download it.
The tinkers..
Napster give away something you should be paying for. MS and AOL are both default homepages for installed browsers. Its hardly suprising they'd get a lot of users surfing time.
That said, I'm suprised Yahoo! is so popular. And that Google isn't.
Bandwidth is just one of those things you can never have enough of. My expectations of bandwidth use are minimal, being a telnet junkie (see .sig), but other things take more. Web surfing, gaming, ASPs (as in applications, not MS), all drain the bandwidth hideously. I certainly wouldn't look forward to viewing Flash 27 movies over a 56k connection.