That was one of the most painful articles I've read in a while. It's hard to take a review seriously when there's a typo or missing word in almost every single paragraph. It was almost like I was reading slashdot...
Is it really necessary to start yet another foundation for a single project (along with all of the overhead involved in maintaining that foundation)? Isn't there an existing foundation that the code could be released to and reap the benefits of one fundraising arm, one set of lawyers, one (well, however many) web server, etc. Fedora foundation might be the best fit for the code, but would likely make Sun cringe. But why not the Mozilla Foundation? I'm sure there are other out there that I'm not thinking of.
I'm not a hard-core gamer. Nor is my brother or girlfiend. We all own PS2's. We've never paid more than $30 for a game, and that's for something we're really convinced is going to be worthwhile. Most of the time we wait for it to hit $20. Still, we probably spend as much or more money on games than on movies or CD's.
I know of at least 4 more people off the top of my head who own PS1's or PS2's who only have a handful of games because they're just too expensive. Are all my friends and coworkers cheapskates, or could it be that the industry has been so blinded by the "hardcore" gamers that they've alienated the much larger market of casual gamers due to difficulty levels and prices that are beyond the reach of the casual gamer?
Do you have any idea the cost involved in setting up the system you have described in equipment, admin time, programmer time, etc...?
About one server and about three days of programming, plus some regular maintenance. We do this very thing at this university... A machine gets connected to the network, it's scanned for vulnerabilities and viruses. If it's infected, it'm moved to a VLAN where no matter what URL they try, they get a page telling them to fix their machine. Once the machine is fixed, it's automatically allowed back on the network.
It's not that complex, and it saves us both hassle and bandwidth.
I'e often wondered why mozilla.org doesn't start their own CA. Sell certs for a reasonable price like $50, and people would probably happily pay that price to know that they are also support browser development. Plus, mozilla.org can be sure that their CA will be included in at least one browser...:-)
Actually, what you're referring to as a mainboard is a passive backplane. It's incredibly unlikely to fail, and even if one of the traces did go bad, there are two data paths for everything as another poster said.
Yes, the one bit that isn't redundant in these is the motherboard in each blade, but that only affects a single blade. Every other component in these systems is redundant and hot-swappable.
So, when the virus attacked SCO, all the reporters gleefully reported that it was probably an attack from "the Linux Community." What are the odds that those reporters will automatically jump to the conclusion that the RIAA wrote this virus, and then publish that opinion.
My guess, is that these writers won't be quite so eager to jump to conclusions this time. But it might be worthwhile for those of us who were annoyed by those writers to point that fact out to them.
Which strangely enough makes TiVo.com a reseller, not a manufacturer in this case. And the quality of the units does vary a good bit between manufacturers.
TiVo themselves have already posted their kernel modifications on the web site. They're Good Guys, usually. They have no obligation to let the rest of their code be tossed around the internet.
I suspect their concern is that someone will figure out how to hack their way into their servers or steal DirecTV service or eventually manage to run the whole image on "stock" hardware.
Much better for them to nip this copyright violation now than to try to stop it in a year or two when they'll annoy even more people. It may be harder for people to fix "hacked" TiVo's, but you take your own chances when you break that warranty seal...
The people who posted images containing tivo graphical user interface, the code to access their proprietary network, etc... all of which runs in userland and is definitely not GPL'ed.
TiVo does not actually sell receivers. They license the software and hardware designs. Your issue was more likely with Philips, Sony, Hughes, or some other hardware manufacturer.
TiVo themselves actually have a very good reputation for customer service (if you bought a standalone TiVo and purchased service directly rather than through DirecTV, of course).
Based on how much time they spend touting the security features of their proprietary disc format, this might be a clue that the eventual PS3 will also include DRM and heavy copy-protection as key design factor.
It probably *shouldn't* matter for a gaming system, but somehow it always seems to...
I suppose I'm just anti-Mac trolling, but reading their slides, I can't help but get the impression that this university's RFP was intentionally slanted toward apple. Some things that seem interesting to me:
- It's clear from other posters that Apple did some shuffling to get inventory that wasn't available to the general public to this school. Not surprising, but indicates Apple was making considerable accomodations.
- I simply don't understand how full-size "commodity" Mac's could be cheaper than something like an IBM BladeCenter (especially in infrastructure (Switch, Rack, Space) costs). There's a lot of talk in the slides about the "required configuration" and the chassis... it sounds as though they placed some kind of hardware requirement on the proposal that could only be met by Apple. It just doesn't *sound* right, you know?
- One of the slides implies that they chose OSX over Linux because there isn't enough support for Linux. But this is a supercomputer! They're not running Photoshop on this thing. right? Aren't most supercomputer apps written fairly specifically for the machine they're running on? I really am asking the question here... is there something I don't understand about high-end cluster computing? I again simply don't understand how, at the super-cluster level, one could say Linux is poorly supported.
Of course, the university is well within their rights to buy from whoever they want. Their claims just seem questionable to me, at least from the brief slides.
Of course the option to this is to convince people to get off their lazy butts and vote in an election...
If it's so hard to get the liberty-minded people organized well enough to vote in any significant size in an election (which it clearly is given how much politicians get away with), what are the odds that they are really all going to get morivated enough to move to a different state?
The mirrors get the release about a week early and keep it under wraps... so for RedHat there is no longer any reason to wait to announce a release because of mirror issues.
We developed programs such as GCC, GNU Emacs, GAS, GLIBC, BASH, etc., because we needed them for the GNU operating system. ...
We developed Ghostscript, GNUCash, GNU Chess and GNOME for the GNU system too.
Uh, yeah, so it made sense to develop a postscript interpreter and a financial management package before delivering a working kernel? Of course, we all know the real story of how all this happened, but by warping the truth like this, he doesn't give himself much credibility.
What you outline above is what I have in mind. The PS/PCL support is the problem. I can't find a printer anywhere that seems to support any kind of printing "standard" except "we give you windows drivers."
Guess I should have said that we're doing 1000+ cards per year, and we need to be able to add magstripes to the cards. So, lamination won't really work.:-(
Thanks for the suggestion, though.
This is exactly the problem...
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 1
It has been my experience that those who complain about RPM's rarely haave any idea what can be down with them, if done properly. For example, Pete's problem can usually be solved by grabbing the SRPM and doing RPM --rebuild xxx.src.rpm.
Sure, not a lot of people know how to make really good SPEC files, and therefore really flexible packages, but that's not a limitation of the technology. Just of the developers.
I can't see rebuilding the towers as possibly being economically viable.
From what I understand, skyscrapers in general have become less and less desirable. If I recall correctly , the report I read a while back said it is a rare case that it makes sense for a building over 10 stories to be built nowadays.
But even if we say, "America needs to rebuild the towers as a show of strength" and if the insurance companies and government throw a whole ton of money at the project to rebuild, I still can't imagine it being a wise investment. After repeated terrorist attacks, what company would want to move in? Who would want to work in a building that people routinely try to level? It just doesn't seem to me that rebuilding will work, as much as it annoys me that we've lost these buildings to the terrorists.
This kind of research would cost hundreds of thousands. I rather use that money on advertising.
Sounds like you're well on the way to dominating the world.
Who decides what goes in and how?
on
Ask Robert Young
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· Score: 5
I'd like some insight on how the decision is made to include something in Red Hat Linux, how quickly to roll in new releases of software, etc.
For example, I've seen pre-releases of KDE get included and updated in rawhide (and I believe in actual Red Hat releases) rather often, but even the individual GNOME components are almost never updated until well after a full stable release is announced. There are other examples, but that's the main one that comes to mind.
There also still seems to be a lot of 0.x version software in Red Hat to this day. So, I'm just curious how you make these technical decisions are made.
My question is why everyone assumes that the instant OSX rolls off the shipping lines, that it's going to be perfectly bug free and a drop-in replacement for both Linux and MacOS?
Having gone through months of turmoil due to a rushed deployment of OS9, our university for one, won't even consider OSX until summer of 2002. I would guess that a lot of businesses will also freeze at OS9 until it is clear that OSX is a reliable operating system. That gives Linux coders a lot of time to catch up on any functionality that OSX brings to the table.
Don't forget that come March, the release version of OSX will be a brand new OS, with no real track record. Linux has proven itself in years of enterprise level work, and also runs on cheaper hardware. That's going to be a hard case for CIO's and the like to ignore.
Slashdot Mirror
That was one of the most painful articles I've read in a while. It's hard to take a review seriously when there's a typo or missing word in almost every single paragraph. It was almost like I was reading slashdot...
Is it really necessary to start yet another foundation for a single project (along with all of the overhead involved in maintaining that foundation)? Isn't there an existing foundation that the code could be released to and reap the benefits of one fundraising arm, one set of lawyers, one (well, however many) web server, etc. Fedora foundation might be the best fit for the code, but would likely make Sun cringe. But why not the Mozilla Foundation? I'm sure there are other out there that I'm not thinking of.
I know of at least 4 more people off the top of my head who own PS1's or PS2's who only have a handful of games because they're just too expensive. Are all my friends and coworkers cheapskates, or could it be that the industry has been so blinded by the "hardcore" gamers that they've alienated the much larger market of casual gamers due to difficulty levels and prices that are beyond the reach of the casual gamer?
Do you have any idea the cost involved in setting up the system you have described in equipment, admin time, programmer time, etc...?
About one server and about three days of programming, plus some regular maintenance. We do this very thing at this university... A machine gets connected to the network, it's scanned for vulnerabilities and viruses. If it's infected, it'm moved to a VLAN where no matter what URL they try, they get a page telling them to fix their machine. Once the machine is fixed, it's automatically allowed back on the network.
It's not that complex, and it saves us both hassle and bandwidth.
I'e often wondered why mozilla.org doesn't start their own CA. Sell certs for a reasonable price like $50, and people would probably happily pay that price to know that they are also support browser development. Plus, mozilla.org can be sure that their CA will be included in at least one browser... :-)
I'm pretty sure this is more or less what http://c4.codeweavers.com allows you to do.
Maybe that's why people think this is a new idea and why people are predicting the demise of Sun...
Actually, what you're referring to as a mainboard is a passive backplane. It's incredibly unlikely to fail, and even if one of the traces did go bad, there are two data paths for everything as another poster said.
Yes, the one bit that isn't redundant in these is the motherboard in each blade, but that only affects a single blade. Every other component in these systems is redundant and hot-swappable.
So, when the virus attacked SCO, all the reporters gleefully reported that it was probably an attack from "the Linux Community." What are the odds that those reporters will automatically jump to the conclusion that the RIAA wrote this virus, and then publish that opinion.
My guess, is that these writers won't be quite so eager to jump to conclusions this time. But it might be worthwhile for those of us who were annoyed by those writers to point that fact out to them.
Which strangely enough makes TiVo.com a reseller, not a manufacturer in this case. And the quality of the units does vary a good bit between manufacturers.
TiVo themselves have already posted their kernel modifications on the web site. They're Good Guys, usually. They have no obligation to let the rest of their code be tossed around the internet.
I suspect their concern is that someone will figure out how to hack their way into their servers or steal DirecTV service or eventually manage to run the whole image on "stock" hardware.
Much better for them to nip this copyright violation now than to try to stop it in a year or two when they'll annoy even more people. It may be harder for people to fix "hacked" TiVo's, but you take your own chances when you break that warranty seal...
The people who posted images containing tivo graphical user interface, the code to access their proprietary network, etc... all of which runs in userland and is definitely not GPL'ed.
TiVo does not actually sell receivers. They license the software and hardware designs. Your issue was more likely with Philips, Sony, Hughes, or some other hardware manufacturer.
TiVo themselves actually have a very good reputation for customer service (if you bought a standalone TiVo and purchased service directly rather than through DirecTV, of course).
Based on how much time they spend touting the security features of their proprietary disc format, this might be a clue that the eventual PS3 will also include DRM and heavy copy-protection as key design factor.
It probably *shouldn't* matter for a gaming system, but somehow it always seems to...
DC
I suppose I'm just anti-Mac trolling, but reading their slides, I can't help but get the impression that this university's RFP was intentionally slanted toward apple. Some things that seem interesting to me:
- It's clear from other posters that Apple did some shuffling to get inventory that wasn't available to the general public to this school. Not surprising, but indicates Apple was making considerable accomodations.
- I simply don't understand how full-size "commodity" Mac's could be cheaper than something like an IBM BladeCenter (especially in infrastructure (Switch, Rack, Space) costs). There's a lot of talk in the slides about the "required configuration" and the chassis... it sounds as though they placed some kind of hardware requirement on the proposal that could only be met by Apple. It just doesn't *sound* right, you know?
- One of the slides implies that they chose OSX over Linux because there isn't enough support for Linux. But this is a supercomputer! They're not running Photoshop on this thing. right? Aren't most supercomputer apps written fairly specifically for the machine they're running on? I really am asking the question here... is there something I don't understand about high-end cluster computing? I again simply don't understand how, at the super-cluster level, one could say Linux is poorly supported.
Of course, the university is well within their rights to buy from whoever they want. Their claims just seem questionable to me, at least from the brief slides.
Of course the option to this is to convince people to get off their lazy butts and vote in an election...
If it's so hard to get the liberty-minded people organized well enough to vote in any significant size in an election (which it clearly is given how much politicians get away with), what are the odds that they are really all going to get morivated enough to move to a different state?
The mirrors get the release about a week early and keep it under wraps... so for RedHat there is no longer any reason to wait to announce a release because of mirror issues.
We developed programs such as GCC, GNU Emacs, GAS, GLIBC, BASH, etc., because we needed them for the GNU operating system.
...
We developed Ghostscript, GNUCash, GNU Chess and GNOME for the GNU system too.
Uh, yeah, so it made sense to develop a postscript interpreter and a financial management package before delivering a working kernel? Of course, we all know the real story of how all this happened, but by warping the truth like this, he doesn't give himself much credibility.
What you outline above is what I have in mind. The PS/PCL support is the problem. I can't find a printer anywhere that seems to support any kind of printing "standard" except "we give you windows drivers."
Guess I should have said that we're doing 1000+ cards per year, and we need to be able to add magstripes to the cards. So, lamination won't really work. :-(
Thanks for the suggestion, though.
It has been my experience that those who complain about RPM's rarely haave any idea what can be down with them, if done properly. For example, Pete's problem can usually be solved by grabbing the SRPM and doing RPM --rebuild xxx.src.rpm.
Sure, not a lot of people know how to make really good SPEC files, and therefore really flexible packages, but that's not a limitation of the technology. Just of the developers.
I can't see rebuilding the towers as possibly being economically viable.
From what I understand, skyscrapers in general have become less and less desirable. If I recall correctly , the report I read a while back said it is a rare case that it makes sense for a building over 10 stories to be built nowadays.
But even if we say, "America needs to rebuild the towers as a show of strength" and if the insurance companies and government throw a whole ton of money at the project to rebuild, I still can't imagine it being a wise investment. After repeated terrorist attacks, what company would want to move in? Who would want to work in a building that people routinely try to level? It just doesn't seem to me that rebuilding will work, as much as it annoys me that we've lost these buildings to the terrorists.
Sounds like you're well on the way to dominating the world.
I'd like some insight on how the decision is made to include something in Red Hat Linux, how quickly to roll in new releases of software, etc.
For example, I've seen pre-releases of KDE get included and updated in rawhide (and I believe in actual Red Hat releases) rather often, but even the individual GNOME components are almost never updated until well after a full stable release is announced. There are other examples, but that's the main one that comes to mind.
There also still seems to be a lot of 0.x version software in Red Hat to this day. So, I'm just curious how you make these technical decisions are made.
My question is why everyone assumes that the instant OSX rolls off the shipping lines, that it's going to be perfectly bug free and a drop-in replacement for both Linux and MacOS?
Having gone through months of turmoil due to a rushed deployment of OS9, our university for one, won't even consider OSX until summer of 2002. I would guess that a lot of businesses will also freeze at OS9 until it is clear that OSX is a reliable operating system. That gives Linux coders a lot of time to catch up on any functionality that OSX brings to the table.
Don't forget that come March, the release version of OSX will be a brand new OS, with no real track record. Linux has proven itself in years of enterprise level work, and also runs on cheaper hardware. That's going to be a hard case for CIO's and the like to ignore.