The only reason they aren't still doing it, is a bigger, meaner and more evil company came along.
Yeah, and when that company was little IBM said "sure Bill, you can keep the rights to the OS you're making for our new 'personal computer' thing - after all there's no money in software anyway."
It's kind of sadly ironic that now IBM (and a lot of megacorps) are supporting Linux over Microsoft, in an attempt to become other than bit players in the computer industry...
Of course, if IBM wants to tell themselves they're the original Open company and that gets them excited about producing good Open Source Software and solutions; that's fine with me...
Actually, being directed at newbies I would argue that the book's name gets across what it needs to. After all, Open Source operating systems has been portrayed as an Linux "fad," so many people mightn't know about *BSD. Also, most people tend to think of FreeBSD as being more of a server platform, I know of many people who use it to power their servers but of few who use it to run their desktop system.
Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.
But mental games are already a big part of the olympics. I mean, all we Americans are extremely proud that our crack team from Utah took the Gold Medal in bribery and graft for the next winter olympics. Not only that, just look how intense and exciting the "Sponsorship" and "Exclusive Rights" competitions are...
Some worry that in their push to get the funding approved, biologists have over-promised the potential of stem cells.
Well yeah, researchers always overstate the importance of their research in order to get funding. It's one of the sad necessities of academia. (and it's also how researchers got hundreds of thousands to make catfish dumb. This was just an extreme case where the jockeying got into the mainstream press...
I think that, to a certain extent, we'll be talking about this for quite a while. Like Cringely said, the problem is with people who don't realize that they're running IIS. I'm sure there are quite a few very small companies out there who have something like an NT box attached on their network to provide a NAS. They installed NT a while ago and put IIS on just in case they wanted to put up a web-site later, left it turned on, and forgot about it. As long as their NT box keeps serving up their files, and internal e-mail the people with these servers don't realize they have a problem.
It's the downside of the increasing accessability of servers. On the up side, pretty much anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge can put up a server for the small business LAN. So they benefit from the network without having to pay a sys-admin. On the downside, they don't have a sys-admin to keep their system worm-free.
I don't think we'll see the total end of this problem until MS sends out a snail-mail CD to everyone with an NT license that says in big bold letters Put this CD in all your servers and let it patch them!
So, I guess what Cringely is telling us is that, once a month the interent is going to start flying off the handle without reason, and be incapable of being worked with... so, in otherwords, the 'Net has reached puberty and is going to have be "pms-ing" at the end of every month. (Until everyone gives up on IIS that is.) I guess this is what they mean when they talk about worms being "biological" in their spread!
Actually I don't know that this is necessarily the case after all the electron gun in conventional CRT's hits only certian spots on the screen and those aren't one-per-pixel. The holes are likely so numerous and close together that it would take several "holes" to make up any one pixel. Of course, I'm talking out of my ass since this "article" was so thin on details that you could roll it up and push it through one of said holes.
Another advantage of LCDs though is their (potential) ability to use a digital, rather than analog, interface to the graphics card.
I believe that I heard about this technology in
SciAm a few years ago. I'm really looking forward to smaller CRT's. LCD displays have come along way, but I personally still wouldn't buy one, and I generally recommend against them to people buying computers. To my mind, it's still hard to beat my ViewSonic PF790 flat CRT for size and clarity - I just wish the damn thing didn't weigh 60 lbs, and didn't take up most of my desk!
Get a complete HDTV set up NOW...
on
The Joys of HDTV
·
· Score: 1
...for the low, LOW price of only $10,000.
God, I wish I had so much money that I could afford to drop $10k on getting a new toy. (Though I can tell you it certainly wouldn't be a new TV.) And, having spent that much money just to be able to have a clearer picture of Jay Leno's chin, I would probably be too embarrassed to tell the world about it. Not that I've done that...really...
Of course, it just goes to show the problem with buying high tech stuff from large chains. The sales people seldom really know what they're talking about - especially with new technologies - but they're always going to try to make the sale. You just have to recognize that it's more of a caveat emptor situation, when you buy new tech at chain stores...
I'd have to agree with this. Though 5-10 years does seem logically necessary to develop mature software. It takes quite a while, not only in development, but in use for software to become, not only what the developers intended it to be, but what the users want it to be.
Of course, with the increasing use of modular software design, and distributed open source development I think the cycle can be shorter. Programs can benefit from the past development in mature libraries (like libc, etc.), and Open software certainly benefits from its users' being able to make the changes they want.
Actually, if you were to study the process of making all the composite materials and solar cells that solar cars are made of, I'm pretty sure that you'll discover that solar cars do more damage to the environment than old diesel trucks.
Seriously, though (as I'm sure has already been posted) the whole point of these races (or rayces asd the case was for Sunrayce) is to test the bounds of effiency. All the cars have a limited area of solar cells, so they all get rougly the same amount of energy (1 kW if I recall correctly). The challenge is to build a car light enough (composites), and efficient enough (motors from companies like New Generation Motors) to maximize the distance that you get from your limited energy supply.
Thought I'd contribute a couple of links to the discussion: LinuxDiscusssions.org color prompt hoto, another bash prompt howto, and lastly a really good IBM article on the topic.
Well I use two prompts, depending on whether my terminal supports color. Some terminal programs like Humingbirds switch to an illegible font when you try to escape to colors.
$NAME is my name as it's set in/etc/passwd. The two statements specify a two-line prompt. On the topline is my name (blue and underlined) followed by the time (in another color). On the second line is the command number I'm about to execute followed by the name of the server, and my current directory....Only took me three on-and-off years to come up with, back when I started playing around in Linux and FreeBSD way back in High School.;-)
Yep, eventually quantum computing devices will reach radio shack...and fail three days after buying them, just like every other Radio Shack (TM) brand product I've ever bought...
Me, I'm waiting for the day when I plug the quantum computer in my coffee cup in...of course that only works until I need a caffene fix: "Oh, Hell I drank my computer science project again!"
That's true people do like and buy quite a few of Microsoft's products. (Especially when MS acquires other companies' products: eg visio.) The issue though is people's freedom to use other companies' products, which is what Kodak appears to have run into here.
Yes, people do use Windows because it is a simple user friendly operating system, but also because virtually everyone else uses Windows. People need their computers to work well with the ones that are out there and, right now for the average user, it's easier to do that with Windows. So in reality the option to "put-up" and not buy Microsoft's products isn't there. I want to run Linux and KOffice at home and exchange documents with others, but I'm screwed because most other people use Microsoft Word, and the Word format is a closed standard. So in that way I'm forced to use Microsoft's products.
Of course, that's really just a company becoming the "victem" (as it were) of its own success and wide adoption.
That, however is not the issue in the Kodak case and the existing anti-trust case. The issue is that Microsoft is using it's "virtual monopoly" in the Operating System market to effect other unrelated markets. That is, through Windows, Microsoft steers its users into patronizing certain products. In the browser and online service case, Microsoft steered users towards using its "Internet Explorer" and MSN. Here Microsoft is steering users to patronize its own photo suite (which has nothing to do with the OS), and Microsoft is steering users to patronize certain photo printing companies which have paid Microsoft to list them, thus creating an artificial and barrier to entry for companies which wish to enter the online photo printing market.
This is analogous to if Pizza Hut paid your local Bell to give them preference. So your Bell, made it easy and natural for you to call Pizza Hut, just ask the operator for a Pizza and your call is simply forwarded to your local Pizza Hut. Meanwhile Papa John's Pizza is left in the lurch, and finds it more difficult to compete with Pizza Hut which gets more business through its deal with Ma Bell. Of course, Papa John's can still sell you Pizza's just as Kodak can still print your pictures, but Papa John's and Kodak have to work extra hard to convince you to switch to ordering from them in the more difficult way that Ma Bell (Microsoft) provides.
My only question is when will the government realize that closed standards for communications and file formats create a natural monopoly for companies and require all standards to be open so that barriers to entry are removed and the consumer can choose the real best product (or just code it himself).
Maybe if you'd talked to The Biomed Inc. instead of just A Biomed Inc. you would have been able to confirm that the surgery actually took place!
...I'm sorry. I appologize for that horrible joke. Feel free to mod this down to -2... That is a cool achievement though; it brings us one more step closer to useful implanted information devices.
OK well that cube looks stylish and would look really cool on my desk. Now the only question is: what sort of excuse I could have to put it there?
192MHz and 16MB is awfully low-end to use it as a regular computer, but rather conversely 192MHz is awfully fast and big to use as a small embedded system... I can think of uses for a computer that small, and a small embedded system but for the life of me I can't think of anything that I could do with an embedded system like that.
Oh well, I guess I won't be having one of those on my desk any time soon...
The only trouble with Google doing an IPO is that it's unclear how the market feels about.com stocks. After all the NASDAQ is still falling, and given the adverse publicity given to all the.com ipo's that folded; Google might have trouble attracting investors no matter how good their business plan is or how financially successful they are.
Of course, I agree that it would be interesting to find out what Google wants investment capital for...
Seirously, the debate between open and closed source software and the varring degrees for of "closedness" of different licenses (from commercial, to BSD, to GPL) is a valid one but all Microsoft is doing is muddying the waters with stupid analogies and oversimplifications.
So far we've heard Microsoft describe Linux and the GPL as a cancer, Pac Man, and numerous other things. But while these comparisons may have some sort of PR or "scare" value, they only serve to mislead the public.
I can see why the I company as zealous about its licenses as Microsoft would dislike the GPL and argue against it, but when they start filling their arguemnts with information that is just incorrect, then it starts to become unethical. Microsoft can tell the world that Linus Torvalds controls all of Linux and that he's not accountable to its users or developers; but the open source community has a hard time getting into the main stream media to point out the (sometimes glaring) errors in Microsoft's arguments...and that's the problem.
Hey no problem, but this actually did happen. I suppose that on further thought, the quote the MS fellow mentioned probably wasn't Balmer's from the past few weeks. It was a previous one about the GPL and how it forces all code depending on a GPLed peice to be under the GPL, and how horrible that was. I wasn't paying attention to much news at the time since I was busy with classes.
I suppose that it's most likely that the reason I didn't get the intership was because I didn't prepare for the interview at all. But hey, I'm an EE so software isn't my thing anyway, and a free trip is a free trip. Even so one thing I've learned in interviews is that part of what an interviewer is evaluating is how well you'll fit into their corporate culture. That's the point of those little warm up questions, like "what do you do in your spare time," (or for geeks) "what do you run on your computer," etc. I suppose that I just wasn't as enthusiastic about their company and their products as they like.
Of course I like to think that I didn't get hired because I "fought the good fight for OSS at the heart of M$." It certainly makes for a better story than "they didn't hire me because I didn't read up on the questions I knew they'd ask me."
Does Microsoft have any plans to release binary versions of some of their more popular office applications for Linux or other open operating systems?
After all, apparently Microsoft makes the lion's share of its profits from applications rather than windows. I'm sure there's a decent-sided market for Office for Linux. I use Linux, and I'd certainly like to be able to use Word and Excell nativly - if nothing else then because their formats are the "defacto" standard these days.
Currently Corel's WordPerfect is the (more or less) standard office product for the Linux world, and I sort of wonder if Microsoft would be willing to challange that dominance, and perhaps gain a (little) bit of good will from a community that it has otherwise sorely alienated (to say the least).
OK I can see why you mighn't like the GPL, since it doesn't do corporations any good, but why don't you try releasing software, or using software under the BSD license, much as Apple did with Mac OS X? Perhaps that would allow programmers to have a deeper understanding of the workings of your software.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and when that company was little IBM said "sure Bill, you can keep the rights to the OS you're making for our new 'personal computer' thing - after all there's no money in software anyway."
It's kind of sadly ironic that now IBM (and a lot of megacorps) are supporting Linux over Microsoft, in an attempt to become other than bit players in the computer industry...
Of course, if IBM wants to tell themselves they're the original Open company and that gets them excited about producing good Open Source Software and solutions; that's fine with me...
Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.
But mental games are already a big part of the olympics. I mean, all we Americans are extremely proud that our crack team from Utah took the Gold Medal in bribery and graft for the next winter olympics. Not only that, just look how intense and exciting the "Sponsorship" and "Exclusive Rights" competitions are...
Some worry that in their push to get the funding approved, biologists have over-promised the potential of stem cells.
Well yeah, researchers always overstate the importance of their research in order to get funding. It's one of the sad necessities of academia. (and it's also how researchers got hundreds of thousands to make catfish dumb. This was just an extreme case where the jockeying got into the mainstream press...
Darn, I just tried out Tux Racer 0.61 (from Mandrake's RPMs) last night and it was actually pretty fun for a beta of a game.
Now I wouldn't be so dissappointed in Sunspire Studios they were releasing for Linux. Loki's great but Linux still needs more game developers.
Well now I suppose it's up to Open Racer to show the good of OSS and better Tux Racer...
You know, I just happened to think, how screwed with this be if the worm also targeted MS so that people wouldn't be able to get at the patches...
Meanwhile I'll stick with OpenBSD...
It's the downside of the increasing accessability of servers. On the up side, pretty much anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge can put up a server for the small business LAN. So they benefit from the network without having to pay a sys-admin. On the downside, they don't have a sys-admin to keep their system worm-free.
I don't think we'll see the total end of this problem until MS sends out a snail-mail CD to everyone with an NT license that says in big bold letters Put this CD in all your servers and let it patch them!
So, I guess what Cringely is telling us is that, once a month the interent is going to start flying off the handle without reason, and be incapable of being worked with... so, in otherwords, the 'Net has reached puberty and is going to have be "pms-ing" at the end of every month. (Until everyone gives up on IIS that is.) I guess this is what they mean when they talk about worms being "biological" in their spread!
Another advantage of LCDs though is their (potential) ability to use a digital, rather than analog, interface to the graphics card.
I believe that I heard about this technology in SciAm a few years ago. I'm really looking forward to smaller CRT's. LCD displays have come along way, but I personally still wouldn't buy one, and I generally recommend against them to people buying computers. To my mind, it's still hard to beat my ViewSonic PF790 flat CRT for size and clarity - I just wish the damn thing didn't weigh 60 lbs, and didn't take up most of my desk!
God, I wish I had so much money that I could afford to drop $10k on getting a new toy. (Though I can tell you it certainly wouldn't be a new TV.) And, having spent that much money just to be able to have a clearer picture of Jay Leno's chin, I would probably be too embarrassed to tell the world about it. Not that I've done that...really...
Of course, it just goes to show the problem with buying high tech stuff from large chains. The sales people seldom really know what they're talking about - especially with new technologies - but they're always going to try to make the sale. You just have to recognize that it's more of a caveat emptor situation, when you buy new tech at chain stores...
Actually I believe that he's really refering to what software revision codes actually mean.
I'd have to agree with this. Though 5-10 years does seem logically necessary to develop mature software. It takes quite a while, not only in development, but in use for software to become, not only what the developers intended it to be, but what the users want it to be.
Of course, with the increasing use of modular software design, and distributed open source development I think the cycle can be shorter. Programs can benefit from the past development in mature libraries (like libc, etc.), and Open software certainly benefits from its users' being able to make the changes they want.
Actually, if you were to study the process of making all the composite materials and solar cells that solar cars are made of, I'm pretty sure that you'll discover that solar cars do more damage to the environment than old diesel trucks.
Seriously, though (as I'm sure has already been posted) the whole point of these races (or rayces asd the case was for Sunrayce) is to test the bounds of effiency. All the cars have a limited area of solar cells, so they all get rougly the same amount of energy (1 kW if I recall correctly). The challenge is to build a car light enough (composites), and efficient enough (motors from companies like New Generation Motors) to maximize the distance that you get from your limited energy supply.
In case you're wondering I used to be on UPenn's solar racing team Go Penn!!
Thought I'd contribute a couple of links to the discussion: LinuxDiscusssions.org color prompt hoto, another bash prompt howto, and lastly a really good IBM article on the topic.
Enjoy,
- Lechty
Well I use two prompts, depending on whether my terminal supports color. Some terminal programs like Humingbirds switch to an illegible font when you try to escape to colors.
Without color:
With color:
$NAME is my name as it's set in /etc/passwd. The two statements specify a two-line prompt. On the topline is my name (blue and underlined) followed by the time (in another color). On the second line is the command number I'm about to execute followed by the name of the server, and my current directory. ...Only took me three on-and-off years to come up with, back when I started playing around in Linux and FreeBSD way back in High School. ;-)
Yep, eventually quantum computing devices will reach radio shack...and fail three days after buying them, just like every other Radio Shack (TM) brand product I've ever bought...
Me, I'm waiting for the day when I plug the quantum computer in my coffee cup in...of course that only works until I need a caffene fix: "Oh, Hell I drank my computer science project again!"
That's true people do like and buy quite a few of Microsoft's products. (Especially when MS acquires other companies' products: eg visio.) The issue though is people's freedom to use other companies' products, which is what Kodak appears to have run into here.
Yes, people do use Windows because it is a simple user friendly operating system, but also because virtually everyone else uses Windows. People need their computers to work well with the ones that are out there and, right now for the average user, it's easier to do that with Windows. So in reality the option to "put-up" and not buy Microsoft's products isn't there. I want to run Linux and KOffice at home and exchange documents with others, but I'm screwed because most other people use Microsoft Word, and the Word format is a closed standard. So in that way I'm forced to use Microsoft's products.
Of course, that's really just a company becoming the "victem" (as it were) of its own success and wide adoption.
That, however is not the issue in the Kodak case and the existing anti-trust case. The issue is that Microsoft is using it's "virtual monopoly" in the Operating System market to effect other unrelated markets. That is, through Windows, Microsoft steers its users into patronizing certain products. In the browser and online service case, Microsoft steered users towards using its "Internet Explorer" and MSN. Here Microsoft is steering users to patronize its own photo suite (which has nothing to do with the OS), and Microsoft is steering users to patronize certain photo printing companies which have paid Microsoft to list them, thus creating an artificial and barrier to entry for companies which wish to enter the online photo printing market.
This is analogous to if Pizza Hut paid your local Bell to give them preference. So your Bell, made it easy and natural for you to call Pizza Hut, just ask the operator for a Pizza and your call is simply forwarded to your local Pizza Hut. Meanwhile Papa John's Pizza is left in the lurch, and finds it more difficult to compete with Pizza Hut which gets more business through its deal with Ma Bell. Of course, Papa John's can still sell you Pizza's just as Kodak can still print your pictures, but Papa John's and Kodak have to work extra hard to convince you to switch to ordering from them in the more difficult way that Ma Bell (Microsoft) provides.
My only question is when will the government realize that closed standards for communications and file formats create a natural monopoly for companies and require all standards to be open so that barriers to entry are removed and the consumer can choose the real best product (or just code it himself).
Maybe if you'd talked to The Biomed Inc. instead of just A Biomed Inc. you would have been able to confirm that the surgery actually took place!
...I'm sorry. I appologize for that horrible joke. Feel free to mod this down to -2... That is a cool achievement though; it brings us one more step closer to useful implanted information devices.
OK well that cube looks stylish and would look really cool on my desk. Now the only question is: what sort of excuse I could have to put it there?
192MHz and 16MB is awfully low-end to use it as a regular computer, but rather conversely 192MHz is awfully fast and big to use as a small embedded system... I can think of uses for a computer that small, and a small embedded system but for the life of me I can't think of anything that I could do with an embedded system like that.
Oh well, I guess I won't be having one of those on my desk any time soon...
Oh God! I hope that this doesn't mean that we'll someday have "Amtrak" for the internet! ;-)
The only trouble with Google doing an IPO is that it's unclear how the market feels about .com stocks. After all the NASDAQ is still falling, and given the adverse publicity given to all the .com ipo's that folded; Google might have trouble attracting investors no matter how good their business plan is or how financially successful they are.
Of course, I agree that it would be interesting to find out what Google wants investment capital for...
Seirously, the debate between open and closed source software and the varring degrees for of "closedness" of different licenses (from commercial, to BSD, to GPL) is a valid one but all Microsoft is doing is muddying the waters with stupid analogies and oversimplifications.
So far we've heard Microsoft describe Linux and the GPL as a cancer, Pac Man, and numerous other things. But while these comparisons may have some sort of PR or "scare" value, they only serve to mislead the public.
I can see why the I company as zealous about its licenses as Microsoft would dislike the GPL and argue against it, but when they start filling their arguemnts with information that is just incorrect, then it starts to become unethical. Microsoft can tell the world that Linus Torvalds controls all of Linux and that he's not accountable to its users or developers; but the open source community has a hard time getting into the main stream media to point out the (sometimes glaring) errors in Microsoft's arguments...and that's the problem.
...end paranoid rant ;-)
Hey no problem, but this actually did happen. I suppose that on further thought, the quote the MS fellow mentioned probably wasn't Balmer's from the past few weeks. It was a previous one about the GPL and how it forces all code depending on a GPLed peice to be under the GPL, and how horrible that was. I wasn't paying attention to much news at the time since I was busy with classes.
I suppose that it's most likely that the reason I didn't get the intership was because I didn't prepare for the interview at all. But hey, I'm an EE so software isn't my thing anyway, and a free trip is a free trip. Even so one thing I've learned in interviews is that part of what an interviewer is evaluating is how well you'll fit into their corporate culture. That's the point of those little warm up questions, like "what do you do in your spare time," (or for geeks) "what do you run on your computer," etc. I suppose that I just wasn't as enthusiastic about their company and their products as they like.
Of course I like to think that I didn't get hired because I "fought the good fight for OSS at the heart of M$." It certainly makes for a better story than "they didn't hire me because I didn't read up on the questions I knew they'd ask me."
So that's my story and I'm stickin to it...
Does Microsoft have any plans to release binary versions of some of their more popular office applications for Linux or other open operating systems?
After all, apparently Microsoft makes the lion's share of its profits from applications rather than windows. I'm sure there's a decent-sided market for Office for Linux. I use Linux, and I'd certainly like to be able to use Word and Excell nativly - if nothing else then because their formats are the "defacto" standard these days.
Currently Corel's WordPerfect is the (more or less) standard office product for the Linux world, and I sort of wonder if Microsoft would be willing to challange that dominance, and perhaps gain a (little) bit of good will from a community that it has otherwise sorely alienated (to say the least).
OK I can see why you mighn't like the GPL, since it doesn't do corporations any good, but why don't you try releasing software, or using software under the BSD license, much as Apple did with Mac OS X? Perhaps that would allow programmers to have a deeper understanding of the workings of your software.