No, this will kill FreeCraft, as bnetd was choked to death under the same situation.
Bnetd was a promising Battle.net clone server with additional capabilities that Battle.net did not provide. In the last moment of bnetd development, bnetd developers were implementing their *own* protocol which will enable multiple bnetd servers to communicate to each other. As a former Bnetd Free server administrator, I was anticipating for this feature but it just had to die out.
What Blizzard did with Bnetd project was simple. They just *threatened* to sue the main developers. Actually, they did not sue anybody. But the threat was enough for the developers to give up their projects because they were not legal experts, nor did they have enough money to hire lawyers.
Did they do anything wrong? Absolutely not. Blizzard would have lost the case if both parties had gone to the court.
In fact, Blizzard could have participated in the Bnetd project and run their second-tier Battle.net servers with bnetd. That's the good thing with opern source. However, Blizzard just killed the project, thrasing all the efforts and achievements with it.
I am afraid the same thing will happen to the FreeCraft project. I haven't played it, but I am sure FreeCraft has something different or even enhanced from the original WarCraft. Does Blizzard have the right to kill these features too? I don't think so. If Blizzard wants its copyright respected, it must honor other's.
Korea is a small country, but the serious problem is that Korea is not blessed with natural resources; the soil is completely barren compared to that of America. Even China and Japan is more blessed in terms of agricultural resources. The only resource they can utilize is the 45 million people packed in the territory half size of Michigan.
That's why they have to focus on the IT industry. It's a matter of survival. Moreover, it does not require any material resources that must be imported from overseas in order to create additional values, unlike the commodities produced from factories. Actually, Korea's achievement in broadband connection is disappointing considering the fact that they still lag behind in other related industry such as software. The funny fact is that there are so many skillful programmers in South Korea but that there is actually no killer application in world-wide scale. It's like a superman with great strength but without any intelligence at all. It's a magical wonder that Korea somehow managed to build an Internet with Korean audience with such a meager support for the software developers. In Korea, bank tellers get more salary than software developers. Even CEOs of major Korean companies often refer to their develpers as "technicians", revealing their ignorance in business administration and strengthening their *authority* over developers.
For this reason, Korea's success in this broadband connection has a great deal of potential problems that must be solved in near future. America and other countries may have a lot to learn from the Korean case, but I don't think the lesson will be a great value to them. In order to name the Korean situation as a "success", it should be after Korea became_at least_ a major participant in the world-scale IT industry. So far, the closest one is only Samsung electronics with its quality Samsung memories. No Intel-like cpu manufacturer, no Microsoft-Sun-Ibm-like software companies, no Sony-Apple-like creative corporations, even no Redhat-like major Linux corporations in South Korea. I think their future is grim, in contrast to the seemingly great achievment as of now. The achivement must have been greater by now.
I agree. But why do we need to deal with this issues in the form of license requirements? It's just enough to propose the idea. The actual contributors should be taking care of the details. Additionlly, splash screens don't have enough space to hold all of the contributors. Some names might have *higher* priorities, but who will decide the rankings? Will every developer be happy with the splash screen *policy*? The random display can be a workaround here, but I don't think it's a general solution that will promote the credits of the authors. Actually, we can check the CREDITS file and the Help-About dialog box when we are wondering about the names of the contributors.
However, it is still a good idea to let users know who are actually contributing to the open source software project. But it will be a complicated problem when this credit information display is enforced as a license requirement. Let the project contributors decide what will be displayed in their splash screen; but don't make it a license requirement.
I don't know why GP32 still does not make it into the US market. This gaming console is great in many respects; the CPU power, more memories, and especially, more open development architecture to attract third-party game developers.
There are two problems the Korean console maker is facing. One is the brand power of Nintendo. I am afraid GP32 will need a huge amount of money to _at least_ display their consoles and games right next to Nintendo's at Bestbuy or Circuit City. The second one is small number of killer games for GP32. There do exist several killer games for GP32. However, they are ports of PC games which were quite popular among Korean users. No wonder American users never heard of them.
Anyway, I would like to see GP32 displayed right next to Nintendo's Gameboy at retail stores. GP32 offers much better features than Nintendo's with lower price. Just adding several classic games into its inventory will surely make GP32 take off as a robust gaming platform. The Korean market for gaming is not suitable for GP32. The availability of Internet cafes in every block of the towns and the popular use of Internet is good for MUDs rather than console games. Personally I don't want to see a great gaming platform with the potential of exceeding Nintendo's Gameboy wither away at the small Korean gaming market without giving benefit to other gaming users all over the world.
Mandrake's problem has been that it does not show clear difference from Redhat. Mandrake has more packages, more enjoyable toy stuffs, and some delicate French flavor. But these are not attractive enough for users to adopt Mandrake rather than to use Redhat. It may be somewhat late but I hope Mandrake can establish itself as a *desktop* Linux distribution, differntiating it from Redhat. That's the way they can overcome their current financial unstability.
However, nobody's still sure of any kinds of business model on Linux desktop distribution. Would Dell adopt Linux desktop sometime in near future? HP? Gateway? Wal-Mart?:)
I'm a South Korean. That's another reason why I have to take somewhat provocative view on this movie. Because of the colonial experience, Koreans usually hate Japanese; they are still reluctant of just saying sorry for their past history unlike Germans. Thus, I am in no position to agree with Miyazaki Hayao urging Japanese to wake up their traditional values. However, his message is so intense to make even a South Korean knod his head. To some extent, we share the same modern history as East Asians who were at the crossroads on how to accept the Western culture and capitalism.
Yes, you're right that Japanese created a harmonious culture of their own where Japanese traditional culture and the western culture mixes up together. It's awesome. It's also true that capitalism forces Western people to lose their souls exactly the same way as Japanese do in this movie. However, the problem is that Japanese do not *know* that they have created a harmonious culture across the Japanese and the Western. They don't have any identities as shown in this movie. It's very strange. Why don't they know that?
That's because they were *forced* to adopt Western culture after WWII. Suddenly, American culture became the values that should be pursued by Japanese.
I would like to emphasize the contrast in this movie that differentiates Yubaba and the rest of the people. Why Miyazaki painted Yubaba as a Western figure? He could have put a Japanese traditional monster in Yubaba's position. Why Yubaba lives on the top floor of the building? The blue color of Yubaba's dress shows a contrast distinct from all other red-colored background throughout the movie. I don't think this implies a harmony between Western and Japanese culture. Miyazaki tries to show a distorted social structure in the movie, with a Western CEO and the japanese laborers.
Anyway, I do not want to say that this structure must be broken apart. Nor is Miyazaki's intention. In this movie, Chihiro successfully sympathize with Western culture with Yubaba's sister and this is the director's message. However, the only *ignorant* people in this movie who have not ever thought about the problem are Yubaba and Chihiro's parents. Miyazaki wants to achieve another harmony . However, it requires the understanding from both parties. Chihiro wanted to shake her hands with her enemies. One delicate point of this movie is that the other party who accepted her hands was the twin Yubaba, not the real Yubaba. However, Chihiro is a *modern* Japanese girl who originally weared a T-shirt with her pants at the start of the movie.
Overall, Miyazaki tries to express one important message in this movie. Please, wake up, people. Japanese like Chihiro's parents will be the first (and I am so glad that you noticed that too.) and the western people like Yubaba will be the second. It's simple. You just need to think that there might be some problems even though you western people think you are trying to do a good thing. (I can understand the western pride with modern civilization, but this is one reason of creation of monsters such as imperialism, killing of American native indians, and the WW I & II, eventually.) The simple thought will reveal you what you have to do in the future. Like Chihiro, east Asian people have a clear faith in Western people that we can live in a harmony. However, I am afraid they cannot achive the harmony if Western people do not realize the Yubaba's twin sister sleeping in their minds and traditions. So, please, wake up, you great descendants of the original Yubaba!
It's too bad that I cannot find any *serious* comments about Spirited Away even here at Slashdot. It's not a simple animation film for children. Nor is it a fun movie for mature adults either.
The main point of the movie is how Western civilization *devastated* the Japanese people, especially in the form of capitalism. One funny (and tragic) reality addressed by the director is that Japanese are totally ignorant of the fact that they have lost their Japanese identity adopting capitalism and that the western people enslaved (I hate to use this word) Japanese people under the hierarchical structure of capitalism.
Notice that this film is overpainted with Japanese cultural artifacts everywhere. However, only Yubaba shows characteristics typical in the Western people. A big nose, flurry dress, and her big room with carpet and bonfire, to name a few. Her room is located on the very *top* of the building, dominating all other Japanese workers.
Haku symbolizes Japanese people who strived to learn the power from the Western civilization. He wanted to learn the *magic* from Yubaba, but what he actually experienced was that he had to lose his own name in order to do that. How Yubaba enslaved Haku? Haku himself had to *sign a contract* which forced him to *lose* his name.
So, what happened? The japanese lost their souls. The poor people who lost their identities do not have any virtues in their life other than to get more gold to be rich. The remaining value created from their priceless labor is *stored* as a form of gems in Yubaba's safe.
Why does Yubaba have a twin sister? It symbolizes director's view that the Western culture became a mutant from its origin. The _good_ western culture is the other twin Yubaba. Notice that Yubaba's sister also lives in a totally western environment. A small cottage, hand-cooked cake, tea, and so on. She, the original tradition of the western culture, is a person with bright rationaility.
Then what must Japanese do in order to destroy this terrible structure created by the evil Yubaba? Do they have to organize a revolution? Do they have to kill Yubaba?
Miyazaki Hayao's message is superior to that. Chihiro succeeds in finding and sympathizing with the common values appreciated both by Japanese people and Yubaba's sister. She symbolizes the young, future Japanese generations. From the sympathy and understanding of the *rational* Yubaba's twin sister, she proceeds on to the next stage of mutual understandings. She wakes up Haku, and he realizes his Japanese identity. After Chihiro came back to Yubaba, Yubaba is no longer her boss. She calls her name as "Oba-tsang", not as "Yubaba-sama", which can be translated into "grandmother" and "my boss Yubaba". She peacefully disarms Yubaba with her Japanese identity.
Overall, "Spirited Away" should be a movie that many Western people will get angry with (or be ashamed with); however, the great point of this movie is that it shows a way to solve this conflict peacefully, especially with the language of *rationality*, a concept which Western people are so accustomed to. It suggests a way that leads to the mutual understandings and the world peace. Here lies the greateness of this movie.
So, please, take this animation seriously. Although Yubaba's sister totally became friends with Chihiro, Yubaba refused to understand Chihiro to the end of the movie. The reason Yubaba released Chihiro and her parents is only because her contract with Yubaba became void. She is still ignorant of the terrible mistakes she inflicted on the Japanese people. I do not like to see Western people watching this movie continue to repeat this foolish mistake of Yubaba's in real world. Just by trying to remember Yubaba's twin sister, you will be able to sympathize _at least_ with the japanese people.
One interesting thing about OS X is that Microsoft is an important figure in the world of OS X; without Microsoft, OS X won't be able to run Internet Explorer and Office X. Although OS X is a great software with its Aqua interface and BSD level stability, I don't think anybody will be willing to use it without decent web browser and word processor.
Therefore, one handy strategy for MS when Apple *bravely* tries to break the alliances is to stop support for IE and Office for OS X. Thus, it may follow that there will be no Aqua desktop ported to x86 hardware nor any attempts to provide substitues for IE and MS Office.
In this respect, Sun's decision to not support StarOffice for OS X can be a good strategy; you don't need to convert Microsoft into an enemy by explicitely supporting StarOffice for OS X. Rather, supporting OpenOffice would be a better choice, building the potential for Open Office as a competitive substitute for MS Office. Moreover, Apple is in the worse situation than Sun when competing against Microsoft. For Apple, supporting StarOffice will mean the massive attack from Microsoft. Apple won't like to see it realized in a near future.:)
One sure advantage of Gnome over KDE is that Gnome is more like, sort of, Mac OSX. The major developers of Eazel, now busted out of the market unfortunately, are mostly from Apple computer. They tried to implement more innovative features that even Apple was hesitating to do. One good thing about Gnome is that it targets both the new users and the experienced users as well; one ideal for Gnome project is the desktop design that both novices and experts can enjoy.
Becaus of this background, Gnome is often appealing to the users with interests in Macintosh desktops than Windows desktop. It is true that both Linux desktops, KDE and Gnome, are really magnificent. No kidding at all. However, KDE's approach is more like Windows alternative rather than designing a desktop with totally different concepts that had never been tried. In my opinion, Gnome can be a alternative to Mac OSX if Gnome can keep its current pace for a few more years.:)
If you prefer the word 'liberal' (or radical, to be frankly) I think Gnome is the Linux desktop choice for you. It is still unstable compared to the rock-solid KDE and its amazing consistency. However, it's more fun to watch the progress of Gnome than KDE. Gnome has some distict attractiveness that other desktops are lacking in.
Yes, I admit that I haven't used SCSI drives for the recent two years.
But the reason I preferred SCSI drives for some of the server systems was that SCSI drives were more reliable when multiple users were accessing the drive at once; the system with SCSI drives did not slow down so much as one with the IDE drives. For some reason, it seemed that SCSI controllers relieved some work from the CPU.
Whie the speed of the IDE drives didn't match SCSI ones that time, IDE was my choice when I built my personal system or small-sized server. IDE was simply much cheaper. However, when there is a possibility that multiple users use the server at the same time, I always chose for SCSI, because of its reliability.
Is it changed nowadays? Is IDE now faster and more *reliable* than SCSI? I heard from some of my friends that they always go for IDE when they build a computation server; they are ph.d. students from engineering schoool. I think they are right in the sense that multiple access to the drive is seldom an issue with scientific computing applications. But if they build one computational server for the entire lab people, I would definitely recommend SCSI to them, based on my previous experience. Now with the increased performance of IDE drives, do I need to switch to IDE drives for these cases? What are your opinions?
AMD cpu and mobos are fine. I recommend the combination of the low-end Duron processors and the any of Via or SIS chipset motherboard.
However, I am wondering about the reason why your colleagues find the limitation of 400MHz speed. Often users mistakenly think their CPU is slow when their disk drive is swapping for more memories. One easy workaround is simply addming more memories. I suspect 400Mhz machines used to be shipped with 128Mb of memories. Upgrading those memories to 256Mb or 386Mb will be one of the most effective performance-per-unit-cost upgrade solution.
Also, think about reinstalling Win2k. Win2k is much more stable and faster than Win ME or 98, but formatting and reinstalling the entire partition often cleans up the trashes built up in the system registry, leading to overall performance enhancements. A user might have a lot of autostarting programs installed hidden.
Investing on the displays and the human interface devices (keyboards and mice) can be another solution. If there are a lot of users complaining about their monitor performance, then try to *sacrifice* performance upgrade to the monitor upgrade. A decent 15" TFT flatpanel monotor can cost $400 and people often get less fatigue when they work with TFT flatpanel than CRT monitors. For me, I'd rather have a flat panel monitor than to have processor & memory upgrade. A combination of memory upgrade and the flat panel monitor purchase can be very appealing under certain circumstatnces if the workers have to look at the monitors for a long time every day. You don't need to squeeze your budget with a lot of possible component combinations in this case.:)
Good luck,
The limitations of OSX
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Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
Do not forget that OSX is available only for Apple's hardware.
It is true that OSX is a great product. I was amazed at OSX while using some Mac at my laboratory; Great interface, beatiful screen including the font aliasing, easy-to-setup i18n, and finally, it's Unix.
However, I need to buy an Apple's hardware to run OSX. Nowadays, Macs are not so expensive compared to PC. If I build one myself, I am sure that I can save at least $200. But I'd rather buy Apple than a Dell, Compaq, or HP.
It's okay if I just switch it. But think about where the Linux operating system comes to be important. It's PC market. Here in x86 world, Microsoft is the monopolist that exploits its market power. Linux is the closest alternative that can compete with Microsoft. Moreover, the way open source works, a totally new invention of the collaboration of people working voluntarily to build a great software product, is very important. Linux showed a new potential and it is certain that open source works. However, in order for this innovative open source to be truly successful, it has to go though the competition, refining itself again and again.
In my opinion, Apple's decision not to port OSX to intel hardware is good for Linux. Linux still needs to develop itself as a great desktop operating system. If OSX, or at least its Aqua interface, were ported to Linux, Linux would have to adopt it.
There is still a lot of potential for KDE and Gnome. It's okay to pay attention to OSX and it's okay to switch to Mac. However, we still need to focus on Linux desktops because they are the only potential rescues that can replace Windows.
I have been running a bnetd Starcraft server for more than two years. That's a really bad news for me. --- without bnetd, I cannot continue to run my server.
IMO, the trouble Blizzard is afraid of facing is that it can lose the market for the Warcraft3. Blizzard is going to use the same Battle.net service for the new Warcraft3. Recently, especially right after the release of the WC3 beta, there has been an active development at the bnetd project. I was thrilled at the possibility that my bnetd server can be turned into a WC3 server sooner or later.
But there was a raid from the Blizzard today. They might be afraid of having a *competitor* in the Battle.net service market. If bnetd development is so successful as to be competitive with the original Battle.net service, then they might be thinking about shutting down the clone server development. It is true that bnetd, if left untouched by the Blizzard, has high possiblity of running flawlessly right after the official release of WC3.
But the trouble here is that people need to buy Blizzard's game to connect to the free bnetd servers. In fact, they are the revenue source for the Blizzard! I cannot see here why Blizzard is trying to shut down the bnetd project. But it is true that some company can compete with Blizzard with the clone Battle.net service and improved service quality than Blizzard.
Some interesting aspect from Blizzard is that Blizzard seems to be not caring about fsgs, another Battle.net clone. The difference is that fsgs is closed-source product, even if it can be downloaded for free.
Anyway, Blizzard should let the bnetd project go on. The development of the bnetd clone server itself does nothing to do with the profit of Blizzard. In fact, the free bnetd servers can increase the user pool of the Blizzard games. The freedom of developers should be respected.
It might sound strange, but I am talking about Microsoft Office on the Mac.
Would it have been possible for Mac to have a solid user base had it not been for Internet Explorer for Mac and MS Office for Mac? Think about a few years ago when Jobs came back to Apple: Apple's sales were dwidling, and MS is attacking Apple with the *lazy* support for its Office and Internet Explorer product.
In my opinion, the real power of MS is its Office product combined with Windows. The interesting thing is that Apple decided to jump on this monopoly, without harming Apple's hardware sales. Jobs agreed to Gates that Apple would drop Netscape broswer from its Macs and Gates agreed to support Mac platform in return. It might sound strange, but Apple is an important part of MS office monopoly: MS is earning market share and Apple is earning hardware sales. Who will stick with Mac if he must use old-fashioned Netscape and old versions of MS Office on his Mac?
Luckily or not for Linux people, Apple seems to have no intention to port its OSX to x86 hardware. It would have been a disaster for KDE or Gnome project if Aqua was ported to x86 without its source open to public. Everybody would be complaining that closed source Aqua is killing KDE and Gnome. But the reality is that a user must buy a Mac hardware to run OSX. Personally, I would love to buy a new laptor from apple but I would never buy a desktop from apple. it's simply too expensive. Linux user base is insulated from Mac OSX influence in some way with its large portion of x86 users.
In addition to that, MS won't allow Apple to be a solid competitor in the operating system market with OSX. OSX has the power to kill, or have a competition with, the almighty Windows. But MS already has a strategy to kill Apple in reply when Apple surfaces as its competitor: just drop supporting IE and Office for Mac. Apple has another reason not to port its OSX to the x86 platform. Not only it kills its hardware sales but also it will provoke a war with MS in the operating system market.
For this reason, Linux people are separated from either Windows or OSX market. Now there is no other way for Linux communities than to continue to work on KDE and Gnome project; running OSX on x86 hardware, even running Aqua on Linux, is a foolish dream that cannot be realized in the future.
However, this will turn out to be a good thing for Linux, including KDE and Gnome project. Now they have another good desktop software example, and they are secured from the attack from OSX. I am glad to wait and see what will be happening in Linux desktops in near future.
Yes, it is a wonderful operating system. I have never been so excited to think about buying Apple's hardware to run its chic operating system. Now Mac has actually become a BSD box, where I can open a simple xterm and use gcc to compile my favorite Un*x application. There are already numerous OSX applications available in open or closed source form. For a fervent Linux user like me, it means I can have more choices --- I can live as a terminal-and-bash-addict and normal-commercial-software-user simultaneously. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? I still have to run Windows 2000 to use some commercial application and I could not get rid of it. Yes, it's better to switch to Apple than remain in MS monopoly.
However, Apple's strategy has a major drawback; Apple's product *must* run only on Apple's hardware. Think about OSX. The only part with the source code open is the core operating system. No Cocoa available for x86, even in closed source form. Apple won't allow its superb desktop environment to be ported to other platform than Apple's. If you're trying to run OSX on your PC hardware, you're going to have only a small text terminal window. Maybe you're going to think about compiling XFree86 yourself and installing GNOME or KDE on top of it.
That is the dilemma of Apple. It must lock you into the Mac hardware platform, even though it is in desperate needs of larger user installed base. You always have to buy a new Macintosh to use Apple's OSX. You want to develop an application for OSX? You'll never see it running on Intel platform or whatever, because Apple won't port Cocoa to other platofrm than Apple's Mac.
In order to break this chain of dilemma, I think Apple must port its entire OSX product into Intel platform. Apple will lose money from its reduced hardware sales, but once OSX for x86 reaches a critical mass of user base, then it can ship OSX to the major PC providers like Dell or Compaq. Or it can port its desktop part to Linux. Linux users still need a decent desktop environment with killer applications. We will never be able to see MS office running on the OSX desktop environment for Linux, but we will able to see Photoshop running on Linux at least. With the release of OSX deskop for Linux, Apple will have the benefit of porting the OSX applications for Linux to its own Mac platform easily. One of the strong point of Linux users is that it has a large pool of best developers in the world.
If there were OSX for x86 or OSX desktop for Linux, I would definitely buy it and install it on my computer. It will mean that I can get rid of Windows installed in my box forever. But apple won't port its OSX to Intel platform in any case. That means I have to stick with Windows for a time until major software vendors release such things like photoshop for KDE. Apple is losing a best chance of conquering the Intel user base, surfacing themselves as a major competitor against Microsoft. But it rather chose to live with Microsoft and keep their realms separate. Perhaps that is why Microsoft continues to release IE for Mac and Office for Mac so seamlessly with Windows.
Actually, that's what happened in South Korea about several years ago.
KT telecomm, the state-run telecommunition company once decided to cell short-ranged wireless phones --- the product name was "City Phone." It's similar to 900Mhz wireless phone that can be easily found in any American home, but the idea was the public phone booths serves as a base station, collecting phone call requests from the City Phone handsets nearby. The rate was cheaper than PCS or Cellulars. But City Phone handsets could not receive phone calls; it just can make calls.
KT was the only service provider of City Phone service because it was the only one public phone service provider in South Korea. KT started City Phone service with installing antennas and wireless base station in the exsisting public phone booth. I remember the service quality was fairly good: No noise, good sound quality. The rate was 3 or 4 times of that of normal phones, but the rate for PCS or cellular service was more than twice as much as that of City Phone.
City Phone business was found to be a total failiure in the end. It was mainly due to KT's strategy. KT tried to compete with PCS and Cellular services, but City Phone service was actually no match for them in spite of its cheap rate because City Phone handsets were unable to receive calls. That was a major drawback for customers. But KT continued to advertize its service being equivalent to PCS or celluar, but the strategy didn't work. All the customers finally all switched to PCS or celluar services instead of cheap City Phone.
KT now declared that it gave up the service. Now in Korea, especially in the metropolitan city of Seoul, careful people can easily find a tall antenna and a box or wireless base station attached to every phone booth. But the problem is they are not working. South Koreans were unable to come up with the idea that City Phone actually had been able to change all the public phone booths to cheap handsets.
Since more than 50% of South Korean people are now subscribers of PCS or cellular service, the current size of wireless networks or wirless base stations networks which were built by private service providers exceed the size of public phone networks. There is no reason for South Koreans to try to "utilize" the old public phone booth. But what I found out in this KT failure case is that exsisting public phone booths can serve as another kind of information service. In my personal opinion, if KT had tried to market City Phone as an alternative to public phone card, it might have been successful. Maybe South Koreans would be buying cheap personalized handsets to use public phone. Maybe the handsets might be evolving into "disposable phone" now, which was discussed in slashdot recently.
There are many kinds of things to do with exsiting public phone network. Network is important; without network, the value of individual service must remain low. My cell phone is valuable because I can make phone calls to my friend who is another subscriber of the same service or I can receive a call from him. Although the clumsy business plan of KT in Korea had ended in total failure, I really wish other countries find some better ways to utilize the existing public phone network. With some careful planning, KT and City Phone could have been successful in Korea. But alas....
I admit that the idea of e-mail tax is absurd, but there are some points that can result from e-mail tax policy, if it is possible and properly administered to everyone.
I remember a branch of UN suggested e-mail tax for helping underdeveloped countries build their IT infrastructure. Collect tax from welthier countries, then invest it in poor countries. I don't remember the gross revenue for e-mail taxes, but surely the size amounts to a massive one. The point is that there exist steep technological and social chasm between welthy countries and poor ones, and the problem can be solved with a simple policy like e-mail tax, without laying too much burdens on taxpayers.
The overall cost is not so much as one might
expect: Simply put, the cost for building 1 km of paved road is many times higher than laying 1 km of fiber optic cable bunches. One cent per e-mail might be too much excessive for the task.
Another theoretical possibility of e-mail tax suggests is the prevention of spam mails. If we can adopt the policy that the tax price of sending e-mails goes up much higher than the number of e-mails, (1 cent for 1 mail, 100 cents for 10, 10000 cents for 100, for example) people will reconsider sending spam mails to tens of thousands of recipients. Or at least they will do it less frequently.
Thus e-mail tax can help poor countries build their IT infrastructures and prevent spammers from bombing your e-mail box with the spams.:)
But that's just an imagination and I don't think
it is possible to check the exact number of e-mail transactions techonologically.
Although the idea of e-mail tax itself is absurd, the effects e-mail tax might create is worth pondering on.
In my opinion, the reason why UN once suggested the e-mail tax policy is to emphasize the social barrier between welthier countries and poor ones, not to get the real tax revunue.
I'm a south korean. I am not a native speaker of english, so allow me some errors if any.
I'm a south korean and I am native speaker of Korean. I am not a skillful speaker of english so please allow me if there are some serious bugs in my posting.:)
There has been some tryout to build a programming language based on Korean. Yes. it would be easier if children can learn their first programming language in Korean. The most successful programming language based on Korean was 'Ssi-Aht.', the meaning of which is 'seed' in english. It was beautifully designed and some schools had tried on the 'Seed' language. The original designer built fairly good compilers, some libraries. It was about 7 or 8 years ago but it's now totally gone. What had happened?
First, programming language is to describe 'logical' procedures.(or concepts) As Koreans use the Mathematical variable names written in Alphabet and Greek letters, so does programming language. It does not matter much if anyone write 'for i = 1 to 10 do' as 'i = 1 booteo 10 kkaji banbok'. (note that banbok is the word for for in Korean but attached at the tail, and to was converted to two words.)
So even as children who doesn't know the English language do not feel it very difficult to understand the basic grammar of any programming language. I myself began to learn BASIC language when I was 11. Of course the child should learn how to read alphabets, but he doesn't need to learn the English language to do a real programming.
Furthermore, 'Seed' language does not have large audience. It's design was very good reflecting the main feature of Korean language, but it was optimized for Hangul (Korean alphabet) and Korean language. Korean population is at best 70M (including South and North). It is surely a minority compared to US and EU, the people of which use alphabet-derived letters and speak languages similar to English in grammatical sense. However hard the Koreans try, they cannot catch up the large resources of computer languages already written in English.
I don't know what would happen if China try to build their own computer language, but I don't think chinese letters are easier to type in than alphabet.:)
This is my personal thought, but CJK language is not very useful to describe logical concepts. They are all ambiguous in a sense. For example, the chinese word 'Tao' means virtually everything. The Tao of physics, The Tao of Perl guru, The Tao of learning, and so on. Tao cannot be described exactly. Only the wizards know it, like Yoda in StarWars knows it.:)
Personally I prefer math books written in English: Of course many good Korean math books are available but English Math is written more clearly and crisp than Korean Math books.
It's already enough to program in English. The cost for learning programming in English is learning how to read alphabets and how to type alphabet letters on keyboard.
The problem with various language with programming is not the programming language itself, but how to deal with different language in any application: Internationalization (I18N) is very important. English speakers tend not to care about multibyte character cultures. It is better than the past, but I always have to recompile many packages with the options for 2-byte characters. That is just a minor chore, but there are still many applications that should be modified and localized. I18N is very important: If a programmer adopts I18N feature, then everything will go fine.
Most western people tend to know too little about other cultures. Well, I admit that the need for learning other languages than English is very low for them. This is my opinion, but it can be a rewarding experience if one has knowledge on other cultures, especially the different language.
I am a user of Windowmaker. My Linux box is a p166MMX box with 64Mb memory with Matrox Millennium II vga board. It's too slow to run Gnome or Enlightenment, and although KDE is relatively faster than Gnome on my box but I disliked the monolithic theme of KDE. So I use plain-vanilla Windowmaker with Korean language patch included.
I always envy the fantastic desktop themes of a PII-350 box of my friends. He's running Gnome with Enlightenment. Well, from the desktop screenshot, I think that KDE 2.0 desktop is quite beautiful at least as various themes of E.
I'm a Korean, and surely I'm not chinese. but I think that I can write my personal opinion more objectively than any Chinese or Western people.
Think about it: 10 billion people are under one government in China. I don't object to the spirit of Human Rights, but it has initially evolved in Europe. It's recently that Asian people get accustomed to the concept of western Human Rights, since Americans began to emphasize it after the collapse of Soviet Union.
For eastern asia countries, all of which were under the large tradition and influence of Confucianism, Human right is a slightly different concept than Confucianic virtues. It's a little difficult for me to describe it exactly, and my english is not so good enough, but I can tell you one: Confucianism shows respects for well-organized hierachy of social status. And it defines clearly who should do what.
It's amazing that 10 billion people are under one government. For chinese unicifaction, a government with high prestige or political power is a must. And conficianian traditions help support the righteousness of the government.
Chinese political leaders killed so many people. Japanese killed 0.1M people in Nanjing during the 2nd World War. Chian Kai-sek killed almost the same number of people while he was in Kuomintang party, and the leader Mao killed more people. Even Deng Xiaoping spread blood of thousands on the Tianamen square.
But overall, Chinese government is not a murderer. The entire population is 10 billion. It's a shame that United States, a model democracy republic, has more prisoners per 100 people. and most of the prisoners are black or hispanic.
China is a different country with different tradition. There is no country with the 10 billion people in Western culture. Human rights can be applied on any occasions, but Chinese, including many of Korean and even japanese, have slightly different viewpoint on Human rights. Give them a chance to fully understand the *Western* concept. and wait for them while they're contemplating on it. Don't blame the Chinese government and especially innocent Chinese people.:) Luckily, the chinese government steadily lowers the barriers to foreign people. I think it's enough.
In the long term, I agree that free economic system is not compatible with dictatorship. Free economic system will eventually build free democracy. But it's up to chinese and they should find their own ways of life.
Thanks for reading. Sorry my english is a bit poor.:)
How about ATI boards? In my opinion, ATI boards yield crisp images and accurate colors as Matrox products do. What problem do Ati boards have compared to Matrox ones? Persoanlly I use an antique ATI mach64 board with 2Mb ram onboard and Matrox Millenium II with 8Mb ram onboard. I think both are very good products, but for crisp images I prefer ATI. (in 1024x768x16M color mode, 72Hz refresh rate case)
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No, this will kill FreeCraft, as bnetd was choked to death under the same situation.
Bnetd was a promising Battle.net clone server with additional capabilities that Battle.net did not provide. In the last moment of bnetd development, bnetd developers were implementing their *own* protocol which will enable multiple bnetd servers to communicate to each other. As a former Bnetd Free server administrator, I was anticipating for this feature but it just had to die out.
What Blizzard did with Bnetd project was simple. They just *threatened* to sue the main developers. Actually, they did not sue anybody. But the threat was enough for the developers to give up their projects because they were not legal experts, nor did they have enough money to hire lawyers.
Did they do anything wrong? Absolutely not. Blizzard would have lost the case if both parties had gone to the court.
In fact, Blizzard could have participated in the Bnetd project and run their second-tier Battle.net servers with bnetd. That's the good thing with opern source. However, Blizzard just killed the project, thrasing all the efforts and achievements with it.
I am afraid the same thing will happen to the FreeCraft project. I haven't played it, but I am sure FreeCraft has something different or even enhanced from the original WarCraft. Does Blizzard have the right to kill these features too? I don't think so. If Blizzard wants its copyright respected, it must honor other's.
Korea is a small country, but the serious problem is that Korea is not blessed with natural resources; the soil is completely barren compared to that of America. Even China and Japan is more blessed in terms of agricultural resources. The only resource they can utilize is the 45 million people packed in the territory half size of Michigan.
That's why they have to focus on the IT industry. It's a matter of survival. Moreover, it does not require any material resources that must be imported from overseas in order to create additional values, unlike the commodities produced from factories. Actually, Korea's achievement in broadband connection is disappointing considering the fact that they still lag behind in other related industry such as software. The funny fact is that there are so many skillful programmers in South Korea but that there is actually no killer application in world-wide scale. It's like a superman with great strength but without any intelligence at all. It's a magical wonder that Korea somehow managed to build an Internet with Korean audience with such a meager support for the software developers. In Korea, bank tellers get more salary than software developers. Even CEOs of major Korean companies often refer to their develpers as "technicians", revealing their ignorance in business administration and strengthening their *authority* over developers.
For this reason, Korea's success in this broadband connection has a great deal of potential problems that must be solved in near future. America and other countries may have a lot to learn from the Korean case, but I don't think the lesson will be a great value to them. In order to name the Korean situation as a "success", it should be after Korea became_at least_ a major participant in the world-scale IT industry. So far, the closest one is only Samsung electronics with its quality Samsung memories. No Intel-like cpu manufacturer, no Microsoft-Sun-Ibm-like software companies, no Sony-Apple-like creative corporations, even no Redhat-like major Linux corporations in South Korea. I think their future is grim, in contrast to the seemingly great achievment as of now. The achivement must have been greater by now.
I agree. But why do we need to deal with this issues in the form of license requirements? It's just enough to propose the idea. The actual contributors should be taking care of the details. Additionlly, splash screens don't have enough space to hold all of the contributors. Some names might have *higher* priorities, but who will decide the rankings? Will every developer be happy with the splash screen *policy*? The random display can be a workaround here, but I don't think it's a general solution that will promote the credits of the authors. Actually, we can check the CREDITS file and the Help-About dialog box when we are wondering about the names of the contributors.
However, it is still a good idea to let users know who are actually contributing to the open source software project. But it will be a complicated problem when this credit information display is enforced as a license requirement. Let the project contributors decide what will be displayed in their splash screen; but don't make it a license requirement.
I don't know why GP32 still does not make it into the US market. This gaming console is great in many respects; the CPU power, more memories, and especially, more open development architecture to attract third-party game developers.
There are two problems the Korean console maker is facing. One is the brand power of Nintendo. I am afraid GP32 will need a huge amount of money to _at least_ display their consoles and games right next to Nintendo's at Bestbuy or Circuit City. The second one is small number of killer games for GP32. There do exist several killer games for GP32. However, they are ports of PC games which were quite popular among Korean users. No wonder American users never heard of them.
Anyway, I would like to see GP32 displayed right next to Nintendo's Gameboy at retail stores. GP32 offers much better features than Nintendo's with lower price. Just adding several classic games into its inventory will surely make GP32 take off as a robust gaming platform. The Korean market for gaming is not suitable for GP32. The availability of Internet cafes in every block of the towns and the popular use of Internet is good for MUDs rather than console games. Personally I don't want to see a great gaming platform with the potential of exceeding Nintendo's Gameboy wither away at the small Korean gaming market without giving benefit to other gaming users all over the world.
Mandrake's problem has been that it does not show clear difference from Redhat. Mandrake has more packages, more enjoyable toy stuffs, and some delicate French flavor. But these are not attractive enough for users to adopt Mandrake rather than to use Redhat. It may be somewhat late but I hope Mandrake can establish itself as a *desktop* Linux distribution, differntiating it from Redhat. That's the way they can overcome their current financial unstability.
:)
However, nobody's still sure of any kinds of business model on Linux desktop distribution. Would Dell adopt Linux desktop sometime in near future? HP? Gateway? Wal-Mart?
I'm a South Korean. That's another reason why I have to take somewhat provocative view on this movie. Because of the colonial experience, Koreans usually hate Japanese; they are still reluctant of just saying sorry for their past history unlike Germans. Thus, I am in no position to agree with Miyazaki Hayao urging Japanese to wake up their traditional values. However, his message is so intense to make even a South Korean knod his head. To some extent, we share the same modern history as East Asians who were at the crossroads on how to accept the Western culture and capitalism.
Yes, you're right that Japanese created a harmonious culture of their own where Japanese traditional culture and the western culture mixes up together. It's awesome. It's also true that capitalism forces Western people to lose their souls exactly the same way as Japanese do in this movie. However, the problem is that Japanese do not *know* that they have created a harmonious culture across the Japanese and the Western. They don't have any identities as shown in this movie. It's very strange. Why don't they know that?
That's because they were *forced* to adopt Western culture after WWII. Suddenly, American culture became the values that should be pursued by Japanese.
I would like to emphasize the contrast in this movie that differentiates Yubaba and the rest of the people. Why Miyazaki painted Yubaba as a Western figure? He could have put a Japanese traditional monster in Yubaba's position. Why Yubaba lives on the top floor of the building? The blue color of Yubaba's dress shows a contrast distinct from all other red-colored background throughout the movie. I don't think this implies a harmony between Western and Japanese culture. Miyazaki tries to show a distorted social structure in the movie, with a Western CEO and the japanese laborers.
Anyway, I do not want to say that this structure must be broken apart. Nor is Miyazaki's intention. In this movie, Chihiro successfully sympathize with Western culture with Yubaba's sister and this is the director's message. However, the only *ignorant* people in this movie who have not ever thought about the problem are Yubaba and Chihiro's parents. Miyazaki wants to achieve another harmony . However, it requires the understanding from both parties. Chihiro wanted to shake her hands with her enemies. One delicate point of this movie is that the other party who accepted her hands was the twin Yubaba, not the real Yubaba. However, Chihiro is a *modern* Japanese girl who originally weared a T-shirt with her pants at the start of the movie.
Overall, Miyazaki tries to express one important message in this movie. Please, wake up, people. Japanese like Chihiro's parents will be the first (and I am so glad that you noticed that too.) and the western people like Yubaba will be the second. It's simple. You just need to think that there might be some problems even though you western people think you are trying to do a good thing. (I can understand the western pride with modern civilization, but this is one reason of creation of monsters such as imperialism, killing of American native indians, and the WW I & II, eventually.) The simple thought will reveal you what you have to do in the future. Like Chihiro, east Asian people have a clear faith in Western people that we can live in a harmony. However, I am afraid they cannot achive the harmony if Western people do not realize the Yubaba's twin sister sleeping in their minds and traditions. So, please, wake up, you great descendants of the original Yubaba!
It's too bad that I cannot find any *serious* comments about Spirited Away even here at Slashdot. It's not a simple animation film for children. Nor is it a fun movie for mature adults either.
The main point of the movie is how Western civilization *devastated* the Japanese people, especially in the form of capitalism. One funny (and tragic) reality addressed by the director is that Japanese are totally ignorant of the fact that they have lost their Japanese identity adopting capitalism and that the western people enslaved (I hate to use this word) Japanese people under the hierarchical structure of capitalism.
Notice that this film is overpainted with Japanese cultural artifacts everywhere. However, only Yubaba shows characteristics typical in the Western people. A big nose, flurry dress, and her big room with carpet and bonfire, to name a few. Her room is located on the very *top* of the building, dominating all other Japanese workers.
Haku symbolizes Japanese people who strived to learn the power from the Western civilization. He wanted to learn the *magic* from Yubaba, but what he actually experienced was that he had to lose his own name in order to do that. How Yubaba enslaved Haku? Haku himself had to *sign a contract* which forced him to *lose* his name.
So, what happened? The japanese lost their souls. The poor people who lost their identities do not have any virtues in their life other than to get more gold to be rich. The remaining value created from their priceless labor is *stored* as a form of gems in Yubaba's safe.
Why does Yubaba have a twin sister? It symbolizes director's view that the Western culture became a mutant from its origin. The _good_ western culture is the other twin Yubaba. Notice that Yubaba's sister also lives in a totally western environment. A small cottage, hand-cooked cake, tea, and so on. She, the original tradition of the western culture, is a person with bright rationaility.
Then what must Japanese do in order to destroy this terrible structure created by the evil Yubaba? Do they have to organize a revolution? Do they have to kill Yubaba?
Miyazaki Hayao's message is superior to that. Chihiro succeeds in finding and sympathizing with the common values appreciated both by Japanese people and Yubaba's sister. She symbolizes the young, future Japanese generations. From the sympathy and understanding of the *rational* Yubaba's twin sister, she proceeds on to the next stage of mutual understandings. She wakes up Haku, and he realizes his Japanese identity. After Chihiro came back to Yubaba, Yubaba is no longer her boss. She calls her name as "Oba-tsang", not as "Yubaba-sama", which can be translated into "grandmother" and "my boss Yubaba". She peacefully disarms Yubaba with her Japanese identity.
Overall, "Spirited Away" should be a movie that many Western people will get angry with (or be ashamed with); however, the great point of this movie is that it shows a way to solve this conflict peacefully, especially with the language of *rationality*, a concept which Western people are so accustomed to. It suggests a way that leads to the mutual understandings and the world peace. Here lies the greateness of this movie.
So, please, take this animation seriously. Although Yubaba's sister totally became friends with Chihiro, Yubaba refused to understand Chihiro to the end of the movie. The reason Yubaba released Chihiro and her parents is only because her contract with Yubaba became void. She is still ignorant of the terrible mistakes she inflicted on the Japanese people. I do not like to see Western people watching this movie continue to repeat this foolish mistake of Yubaba's in real world. Just by trying to remember Yubaba's twin sister, you will be able to sympathize _at least_ with the japanese people.
One interesting thing about OS X is that Microsoft is an important figure in the world of OS X; without Microsoft, OS X won't be able to run Internet Explorer and Office X. Although OS X is a great software with its Aqua interface and BSD level stability, I don't think anybody will be willing to use it without decent web browser and word processor.
:)
Therefore, one handy strategy for MS when Apple *bravely* tries to break the alliances is to stop support for IE and Office for OS X. Thus, it may follow that there will be no Aqua desktop ported to x86 hardware nor any attempts to provide substitues for IE and MS Office.
In this respect, Sun's decision to not support StarOffice for OS X can be a good strategy; you don't need to convert Microsoft into an enemy by explicitely supporting StarOffice for OS X. Rather, supporting OpenOffice would be a better choice, building the potential for Open Office as a competitive substitute for MS Office. Moreover, Apple is in the worse situation than Sun when competing against Microsoft. For Apple, supporting StarOffice will mean the massive attack from Microsoft. Apple won't like to see it realized in a near future.
One sure advantage of Gnome over KDE is that Gnome is more like, sort of, Mac OSX. The major developers of Eazel, now busted out of the market unfortunately, are mostly from Apple computer. They tried to implement more innovative features that even Apple was hesitating to do. One good thing about Gnome is that it targets both the new users and the experienced users as well; one ideal for Gnome project is the desktop design that both novices and experts can enjoy.
:)
Becaus of this background, Gnome is often appealing to the users with interests in Macintosh desktops than Windows desktop. It is true that both Linux desktops, KDE and Gnome, are really magnificent. No kidding at all. However, KDE's approach is more like Windows alternative rather than designing a desktop with totally different concepts that had never been tried. In my opinion, Gnome can be a alternative to Mac OSX if Gnome can keep its current pace for a few more years.
If you prefer the word 'liberal' (or radical, to be frankly) I think Gnome is the Linux desktop choice for you. It is still unstable compared to the rock-solid KDE and its amazing consistency. However, it's more fun to watch the progress of Gnome than KDE. Gnome has some distict attractiveness that other desktops are lacking in.
Yes, I admit that I haven't used SCSI drives for the recent two years.
But the reason I preferred SCSI drives for some of the server systems was that SCSI drives were more reliable when multiple users were accessing the drive at once; the system with SCSI drives did not slow down so much as one with the IDE drives. For some reason, it seemed that SCSI controllers relieved some work from the CPU.
Whie the speed of the IDE drives didn't match SCSI ones that time, IDE was my choice when I built my personal system or small-sized server. IDE was simply much cheaper. However, when there is a possibility that multiple users use the server at the same time, I always chose for SCSI, because of its reliability.
Is it changed nowadays? Is IDE now faster and more *reliable* than SCSI? I heard from some of my friends that they always go for IDE when they build a computation server; they are ph.d. students from engineering schoool. I think they are right in the sense that multiple access to the drive is seldom an issue with scientific computing applications. But if they build one computational server for the entire lab people, I would definitely recommend SCSI to them, based on my previous experience. Now with the increased performance of IDE drives, do I need to switch to IDE drives for these cases? What are your opinions?
AMD cpu and mobos are fine. I recommend the combination of the low-end Duron processors and the any of Via or SIS chipset motherboard.
:)
However, I am wondering about the reason why your colleagues find the limitation of 400MHz speed. Often users mistakenly think their CPU is slow when their disk drive is swapping for more memories. One easy workaround is simply addming more memories. I suspect 400Mhz machines used to be shipped with 128Mb of memories. Upgrading those memories to 256Mb or 386Mb will be one of the most effective performance-per-unit-cost upgrade solution.
Also, think about reinstalling Win2k. Win2k is much more stable and faster than Win ME or 98, but formatting and reinstalling the entire partition often cleans up the trashes built up in the system registry, leading to overall performance enhancements. A user might have a lot of autostarting programs installed hidden.
Investing on the displays and the human interface devices (keyboards and mice) can be another solution. If there are a lot of users complaining about their monitor performance, then try to *sacrifice* performance upgrade to the monitor upgrade. A decent 15" TFT flatpanel monotor can cost $400 and people often get less fatigue when they work with TFT flatpanel than CRT monitors. For me, I'd rather have a flat panel monitor than to have processor & memory upgrade. A combination of memory upgrade and the flat panel monitor purchase can be very appealing under certain circumstatnces if the workers have to look at the monitors for a long time every day. You don't need to squeeze your budget with a lot of possible component combinations in this case.
Good luck,
Do not forget that OSX is available only for Apple's hardware.
It is true that OSX is a great product. I was amazed at OSX while using some Mac at my laboratory; Great interface, beatiful screen including the font aliasing, easy-to-setup i18n, and finally, it's Unix.
However, I need to buy an Apple's hardware to run OSX. Nowadays, Macs are not so expensive compared to PC. If I build one myself, I am sure that I can save at least $200. But I'd rather buy Apple than a Dell, Compaq, or HP.
It's okay if I just switch it. But think about where the Linux operating system comes to be important. It's PC market. Here in x86 world, Microsoft is the monopolist that exploits its market power. Linux is the closest alternative that can compete with Microsoft. Moreover, the way open source works, a totally new invention of the collaboration of people working voluntarily to build a great software product, is very important. Linux showed a new potential and it is certain that open source works. However, in order for this innovative open source to be truly successful, it has to go though the competition, refining itself again and again.
In my opinion, Apple's decision not to port OSX to intel hardware is good for Linux. Linux still needs to develop itself as a great desktop operating system. If OSX, or at least its Aqua interface, were ported to Linux, Linux would have to adopt it.
There is still a lot of potential for KDE and Gnome. It's okay to pay attention to OSX and it's okay to switch to Mac. However, we still need to focus on Linux desktops because they are the only potential rescues that can replace Windows.
I have been running a bnetd Starcraft server for more than two years. That's a really bad news for me. --- without bnetd, I cannot continue to run my server.
IMO, the trouble Blizzard is afraid of facing is that it can lose the market for the Warcraft3. Blizzard is going to use the same Battle.net service for the new Warcraft3. Recently, especially right after the release of the WC3 beta, there has been an active development at the bnetd project. I was thrilled at the possibility that my bnetd server can be turned into a WC3 server sooner or later.
But there was a raid from the Blizzard today.
They might be afraid of having a *competitor* in the Battle.net service market. If bnetd development is so successful as to be competitive with the original Battle.net service, then they might be thinking about shutting down the clone server development. It is true that bnetd, if left untouched by the Blizzard, has high possiblity of running flawlessly right after the official release of WC3.
But the trouble here is that people need to buy Blizzard's game to connect to the free bnetd servers. In fact, they are the revenue source for the Blizzard! I cannot see here why Blizzard is trying to shut down the bnetd project. But it is true that some company can compete with Blizzard with the clone Battle.net service and improved service quality than Blizzard.
Some interesting aspect from Blizzard is that Blizzard seems to be not caring about fsgs, another Battle.net clone. The difference is that fsgs is closed-source product, even if it can be downloaded for free.
Anyway, Blizzard should let the bnetd project go on. The development of the bnetd clone server itself does nothing to do with the profit of Blizzard. In fact, the free bnetd servers can increase the user pool of the Blizzard games. The freedom of developers should be respected.
It might sound strange, but I am talking about Microsoft Office on the Mac.
Would it have been possible for Mac to have a solid user base had it not been for Internet Explorer for Mac and MS Office for Mac? Think about a few years ago when Jobs came back to Apple: Apple's sales were dwidling, and MS is attacking Apple with the *lazy* support for its Office and Internet Explorer product.
In my opinion, the real power of MS is its Office product combined with Windows. The interesting thing is that Apple decided to jump on this monopoly, without harming Apple's hardware sales. Jobs agreed to Gates that Apple would drop Netscape broswer from its Macs and Gates agreed to support Mac platform in return. It might sound strange, but Apple is an important part of MS office monopoly: MS is earning market share and Apple is earning hardware sales. Who will stick with Mac if he must use old-fashioned Netscape and old versions of MS Office on his Mac?
Luckily or not for Linux people, Apple seems to have no intention to port its OSX to x86 hardware. It would have been a disaster for KDE or Gnome project if Aqua was ported to x86 without its source open to public. Everybody would be complaining that closed source Aqua is killing KDE and Gnome. But the reality is that a user must buy a Mac hardware to run OSX. Personally, I would love to buy a new laptor from apple but I would never buy a desktop from apple. it's simply too expensive. Linux user base is insulated from Mac OSX influence in some way with its large portion of x86 users.
In addition to that, MS won't allow Apple to be a solid competitor in the operating system market with OSX. OSX has the power to kill, or have a competition with, the almighty Windows. But MS already has a strategy to kill Apple in reply when Apple surfaces as its competitor: just drop supporting IE and Office for Mac. Apple has another reason not to port its OSX to the x86 platform. Not only it kills its hardware sales but also it will provoke a war with MS in the operating system market.
For this reason, Linux people are separated from either Windows or OSX market. Now there is no other way for Linux communities than to continue to work on KDE and Gnome project; running OSX on x86 hardware, even running Aqua on Linux, is a foolish dream that cannot be realized in the future.
However, this will turn out to be a good thing for Linux, including KDE and Gnome project. Now they have another good desktop software example, and they are secured from the attack from OSX. I am glad to wait and see what will be happening in Linux desktops in near future.
Yes, it is a wonderful operating system. I have never been so excited to think about buying Apple's hardware to run its chic operating system. Now Mac has actually become a BSD box, where I can open a simple xterm and use gcc to compile my favorite Un*x application. There are already numerous OSX applications available in open or closed source form. For a fervent Linux user like me, it means I can have more choices --- I can live as a terminal-and-bash-addict and normal-commercial-software-user simultaneously. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? I still have to run Windows 2000 to use some commercial application and I could not get rid of it. Yes, it's better to switch to Apple than remain in MS monopoly.
However, Apple's strategy has a major drawback; Apple's product *must* run only on Apple's hardware. Think about OSX. The only part with the source code open is the core operating system. No Cocoa available for x86, even in closed source form. Apple won't allow its superb desktop environment to be ported to other platform than Apple's. If you're trying to run OSX on your PC hardware, you're going to have only a small text terminal window. Maybe you're going to think about compiling XFree86 yourself and installing GNOME or KDE on top of it.
That is the dilemma of Apple. It must lock you into the Mac hardware platform, even though it is in desperate needs of larger user installed base. You always have to buy a new Macintosh to use Apple's OSX. You want to develop an application for OSX? You'll never see it running on Intel platform or whatever, because Apple won't port Cocoa to other platofrm than Apple's Mac.
In order to break this chain of dilemma, I think Apple must port its entire OSX product into Intel platform. Apple will lose money from its reduced hardware sales, but once OSX for x86 reaches a critical mass of user base, then it can ship OSX to the major PC providers like Dell or Compaq. Or it can port its desktop part to Linux. Linux users still need a decent desktop environment with killer applications. We will never be able to see MS office running on the OSX desktop environment for Linux, but we will able to see Photoshop running on Linux at least. With the release of OSX deskop for Linux, Apple will have the benefit of porting the OSX applications for Linux to its own Mac platform easily. One of the strong point of Linux users is that it has a large pool of best developers in the world.
If there were OSX for x86 or OSX desktop for Linux, I would definitely buy it and install it on my computer. It will mean that I can get rid of Windows installed in my box forever. But apple won't port its OSX to Intel platform in any case. That means I have to stick with Windows for a time until major software vendors release such things like photoshop for KDE. Apple is losing a best chance of conquering the Intel user base, surfacing themselves as a major competitor against Microsoft. But it rather chose to live with Microsoft and keep their realms separate. Perhaps that is why Microsoft continues to release IE for Mac and Office for Mac so seamlessly with Windows.
Actually, that's what happened in South Korea about several years ago.
KT telecomm, the state-run telecommunition company once decided to cell short-ranged wireless phones --- the product name was "City Phone." It's similar to 900Mhz wireless phone that can be easily found in any American home, but the idea was the public phone booths serves as a base station, collecting phone call requests from the City Phone handsets nearby. The rate was cheaper than PCS or Cellulars. But City Phone handsets could not receive phone calls; it just can make calls.
KT was the only service provider of City Phone service because it was the only one public phone service provider in South Korea. KT started City Phone service with installing antennas and wireless base station in the exsisting public phone booth. I remember the service quality was fairly good: No noise, good sound quality. The rate was 3 or 4 times of that of normal phones, but the rate for PCS or cellular service was more than twice as much as that of City Phone.
City Phone business was found to be a total failiure in the end. It was mainly due to KT's strategy. KT tried to compete with PCS and Cellular services, but City Phone service was actually no match for them in spite of its cheap rate because City Phone handsets were unable to receive calls. That was a major drawback for customers. But KT continued to advertize its service being equivalent to PCS or celluar, but the strategy didn't work. All the customers finally all switched to PCS or celluar services instead of cheap City Phone.
KT now declared that it gave up the service. Now in Korea, especially in the metropolitan city of Seoul, careful people can easily find a tall antenna and a box or wireless base station attached to every phone booth. But the problem is they are not working. South Koreans were unable to come up with the idea that City Phone actually had been able to change all the public phone booths to cheap handsets.
Since more than 50% of South Korean people are now subscribers of PCS or cellular service, the current size of wireless networks or wirless base stations networks which were built by private service providers exceed the size of public phone networks. There is no reason for South Koreans to try to "utilize" the old public phone booth. But what I found out in this KT failure case is that exsisting public phone booths can serve as another kind of information service. In my personal opinion, if KT had tried to market City Phone as an alternative to public phone card, it might have been successful. Maybe South Koreans would be buying cheap personalized handsets to use public phone. Maybe the handsets might be evolving into "disposable phone" now, which was discussed in slashdot recently.
There are many kinds of things to do with exsiting public phone network. Network is important; without network, the value of individual service must remain low. My cell phone is valuable because I can make phone calls to my friend who is another subscriber of the same service or I can receive a call from him. Although the clumsy business plan of KT in Korea had ended in total failure, I really wish other countries find some better ways to utilize the existing public phone network. With some careful planning, KT and City Phone could have been successful in Korea. But alas....
I admit that the idea of e-mail tax is absurd, but there are some points that can result from e-mail tax policy, if it is possible and properly administered to everyone.
:)
I remember a branch of UN suggested e-mail tax for helping underdeveloped countries build their IT infrastructure. Collect tax from welthier countries, then invest it in poor countries. I don't remember the gross revenue for e-mail taxes, but surely the size amounts to a massive one. The point is that there exist steep technological and social chasm between welthy countries and poor ones, and the problem can be solved with a simple policy like e-mail tax, without laying too much burdens on taxpayers.
The overall cost is not so much as one might
expect: Simply put, the cost for building 1 km of paved road is many times higher than laying 1 km of fiber optic cable bunches. One cent per e-mail might be too much excessive for the task.
Another theoretical possibility of e-mail tax suggests is the prevention of spam mails. If we can adopt the policy that the tax price of sending e-mails goes up much higher than the number of e-mails, (1 cent for 1 mail, 100 cents for 10, 10000 cents for 100, for example) people will reconsider sending spam mails to tens of thousands of recipients. Or at least they will do it less frequently.
Thus e-mail tax can help poor countries build their IT infrastructures and prevent spammers from bombing your e-mail box with the spams.
But that's just an imagination and I don't think
it is possible to check the exact number of e-mail transactions techonologically.
Although the idea of e-mail tax itself is absurd, the effects e-mail tax might create is worth pondering on.
In my opinion, the reason why UN once suggested the e-mail tax policy is to emphasize the social barrier between welthier countries and poor ones, not to get the real tax revunue.
I'm a south korean. I am not a native speaker of english, so allow me some errors if any.
I'm a south korean and I am native speaker of Korean. I am not a skillful speaker of english so please allow me if there are some serious bugs in my posting. :)
:)
:)
There has been some tryout to build a programming language based on Korean. Yes. it would be easier if children can learn their first programming language in Korean. The most successful programming language based on Korean was 'Ssi-Aht.', the meaning of which is 'seed' in english. It was beautifully designed and some schools had tried on the 'Seed' language. The original designer built fairly good compilers, some libraries. It was about 7 or 8 years ago but it's now totally gone. What had happened?
First, programming language is to describe 'logical' procedures.(or concepts) As Koreans use the Mathematical variable names written in Alphabet and Greek letters, so does programming language. It does not matter much if anyone write 'for i = 1 to 10 do' as 'i = 1 booteo 10 kkaji banbok'. (note that banbok is the word for for in Korean but attached at the tail, and to was converted to two words.)
So even as children who doesn't know the English language do not feel it very difficult to understand the basic grammar of any programming language. I myself began to learn BASIC language when I was 11. Of course the child should learn how to read alphabets, but he doesn't need to learn the English language to do a real programming.
Furthermore, 'Seed' language does not have large audience. It's design was very good reflecting the main feature of Korean language, but it was optimized for Hangul (Korean alphabet) and Korean language. Korean population is at best 70M (including South and North). It is surely a minority compared to US and EU, the people of which use alphabet-derived letters and speak languages similar to English in grammatical sense. However hard the Koreans try, they cannot catch up the large resources of computer languages already written in English.
I don't know what would happen if China try to build their own computer language, but I don't think chinese letters are easier to type in than alphabet.
This is my personal thought, but CJK language is not very useful to describe logical concepts. They are all ambiguous in a sense. For example, the chinese word 'Tao' means virtually everything. The Tao of physics, The Tao of Perl guru, The Tao of learning, and so on. Tao cannot be described exactly. Only the wizards know it, like Yoda in StarWars knows it.
Personally I prefer math books written in English: Of course many good Korean math books are available but English Math is written more clearly and crisp than Korean Math books.
It's already enough to program in English. The cost for learning programming in English is learning how to read alphabets and how to type alphabet letters on keyboard.
The problem with various language with programming is not the programming language itself, but how to deal with different language in any application: Internationalization (I18N) is very important. English speakers tend not to care about multibyte character cultures. It is better than the past, but I always have to recompile many packages with the options for 2-byte characters. That is just a minor chore, but there are still many applications that should be modified and localized. I18N is very important: If a programmer adopts I18N feature, then everything will go fine.
Most western people tend to know too little about other cultures. Well, I admit that the need for learning other languages than English is very low for them. This is my opinion, but it can be a rewarding experience if one has knowledge on other cultures, especially the different language.
I am a user of Windowmaker. My Linux box is a p166MMX box with
64Mb memory with Matrox Millennium II vga board. It's too slow
to run Gnome or Enlightenment, and although KDE is relatively
faster than Gnome on my box but I disliked the monolithic theme
of KDE. So I use plain-vanilla Windowmaker with Korean language
patch included.
I always envy the fantastic desktop themes of a PII-350 box
of my friends. He's running Gnome with Enlightenment. Well,
from the desktop screenshot, I think that KDE 2.0 desktop is
quite beautiful at least as various themes of E.
Hope soon I get KDE 2.0.
I'm a Korean, and surely I'm not chinese. but I think that
:)
:)
I can write my personal opinion more objectively than any Chinese
or Western people.
Think about it: 10 billion people are under one government in China.
I don't object to the spirit of Human Rights, but it has initially
evolved in Europe. It's recently that Asian people get accustomed
to the concept of western Human Rights, since Americans began to
emphasize it after the collapse of Soviet Union.
For eastern asia countries, all of which were under the large
tradition and influence of Confucianism, Human right is a slightly
different concept than Confucianic virtues. It's a little difficult
for me to describe it exactly, and my english is not so good enough,
but I can tell you one: Confucianism shows respects for
well-organized hierachy of social status. And it defines clearly
who should do what.
It's amazing that 10 billion people are under one government. For
chinese unicifaction, a government with high prestige or political
power is a must. And conficianian traditions help support the
righteousness of the government.
Chinese political leaders killed so many people. Japanese killed
0.1M people in Nanjing during the 2nd World War. Chian Kai-sek
killed almost the same number of people while he was in
Kuomintang party, and the leader Mao killed more people. Even
Deng Xiaoping spread blood of thousands on the Tianamen square.
But overall, Chinese government is not a murderer. The entire
population is 10 billion. It's a shame that United States,
a model democracy republic, has more prisoners per 100 people.
and most of the prisoners are black or hispanic.
China is a different country with different tradition. There
is no country with the 10 billion people in Western culture.
Human rights can be applied on any occasions, but Chinese,
including many of Korean and even japanese, have slightly
different viewpoint on Human rights. Give them a chance
to fully understand the *Western* concept. and wait for them
while they're contemplating on it. Don't blame the Chinese
government and especially innocent Chinese people.
Luckily, the chinese government steadily lowers the barriers
to foreign people. I think it's enough.
In the long term, I agree that free economic system is not
compatible with dictatorship. Free economic system will
eventually build free democracy. But it's up to chinese
and they should find their own ways of life.
Thanks for reading. Sorry my english is a bit poor.
How about ATI boards? In my opinion, ATI boards yield crisp images and accurate colors as Matrox products do. What problem do Ati boards have compared to Matrox ones? Persoanlly I use an antique ATI mach64 board with 2Mb ram onboard and Matrox Millenium II with 8Mb ram onboard. I think both are very good products, but for crisp images I prefer ATI. (in 1024x768x16M color mode, 72Hz refresh rate case)
Thanks in advance.
It's confusing but the copyright notice in linuxhq.com
:)
has been just changed to GPL. See http://www.linuxhq.com/copying.html
What's happening?