The 2000 processor version (10 teraflop peak) going to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is about the size of a living room (12'x28'). Compare that with PSC's current HP machine (~3000 processors, 6 teraflop peak) which is the size of a basketball court.
If this is the case, then why aren't more commercial OSX applications appearing on the free UNIXen with GNUStep libraries?
Unfortunately, GNUStep is still a bit immature despite being around for many years. The reason there aren't commercial apps isn't because OpenStep isn't great/easy-to-use. It's more likely because the free OpenStep-like environment isn't stable/mature. QT and GTK are stable and mature but you don't see a plethora of non-niche commercial apps for those either.
If it is so easy to port, then why don't I see Photoshop for Red Hat Linux? This is a big market.
Photoshop, I believe, is still mostly Carbon, not Cocoa. And, Photoshop on Linux is not a big market. If it were, there would be a QT or GTK Photoshop.
Anything serious use of Objective-C appears to be confined to the Mac platform.
OpenStep has been popular in niche areas like banking and scientific apps. Swarm is developed mainly in cross-platform Obj-C. GNU gcc is still relatively behind in Obj-C support but I think Apple is helping to change that.
For Google, there is no Linux market. They are a consumer of Linux. They use it in all those massive clusters. As for their desktop apps, there is not enough of a desktop Linux market on which to capitalize. Sad, but true. There not making anything for the Mac either but, personally, I don't see anything all that compelliing about their apps (and Tiger will have some of that funtionality, I think).
Agreed, but the agencies are beholden to the government (Congress or the White House). We can make them accountable through elections and making representative know we don't like the agency's policy.
The agency has to have some autonomy to do their job but if they keep F'ing it up the FCC has, they need to be slapped. McCain and the others seem to be doing that. Here's hoping...
They're not elected or representative of the people. Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work?
Insightful? Uhh.... you can say that about the IRS, USGS, NASA, FBI. etc. "Who are these NASA people deciding I can't ride on that moon rocket, anyway? They're not elected."
The NSF just invested in a different Cray. However, your dream of drugs prices going down because of drug design on publically funded computers is a bit out there. The drug companies already take advantage of publically funded research to increase their profits. Besides, I think most of the biomed work on NSF supercomputers is much more basic than actually designing of the drug -- think protein folding and membrane channels. Yeah, it's important for drug design but far from actual production of a drug.
So, it's already being done and, no, it won't reduce drug prices.
* Faked moon landing * Alien space ship captured at Area 51 * Black helicopters dusting mind control agents * Satellites beaming pornography directly into the heads of Christian children
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.:P
No, a spectrometer measures reflected (or scattered, trasmitted, emitted) electromagnetic radiation (EM). Methane and water have different spectral signatures. They reflect EM -- or light -- differently. Probably, they're measuring the absorption patterns in the atmosphere.
A friend of mine grew up in somehwat rural area of PA. I think they had well water but, anyway, they didn't have fluoride in their water. As he approached 30 he started having some serious dental problems -- he's had several root canals. The first thing his dentist asked him when he went in with some problems was, "Did you have fluoride in your water growing up?"
We did have fluoride in our water where I grew up. And, when I was in kindergarten, they made us do daily or weekly (I forget) fluoride treatments. I hated it and resented my parents for it -- they had to sign a permission form in order for me to do it. After seeing my friends problems, I'm so glad I was forced to endure those treatments.
We must applaud that Apple is using open standards for their own good? What's in it for us?
Interopability. Future-proofing. Apple's contributions to the standard. Are you saying companies shouldn't be applauded for using standards? I'll applaud every time a company chooses an open standard over a proprietary model.
More like the other way around - their contributions (while very welcome) are few and far between.
As far as I can tell, they've given back every time they've taken. That's more than I can say for myself.
iCal (open file format)
But not open itself.
Safari (built on Open Source code)
But itself totally proprietary, except for WebCore, which is currently primarily usable for cocoa (e.g. proprietary) developers.
So the apps are closed? OK, they're not totally 'Free.' Granted. But the ical format is open. You can write a better iCal and not have to do a damn thing to get the data in. Webcore can be used by open-source developers as well as proprietary developers. It's based on khtml (from KDE). They've given back. WebCore is Open (LGPL).
iTunes protocol and code is proprietary.
iTunes protocol? Do you mean DAAP? Yes the app is closed but the tools are there to re-implement as you see fit. Even the iTunes Library is accessible as XML.
OS X uses and relies on proprietary drivers (Broadcom, are you listening?).
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
Well, you left out some context. I said, "I don't doubt this is true to some extent." And I offered cases where it is, in fact, not true that there must be a financial incentive. Saying something is true "on the face of it" does not make it true unless you just expect me and everyone else to blindly accept it.
My point was that defenders of current "IP law" contend that nothing new or significantly new would be invented without the protections currently in place. I've seen no evidence to support that conhjecture -- not that I've looked much. Which is why I asked if anyone had evidence or even anecdotes.
There are plenty of examples of people working creatively without financial motivators. I've seen no good argument for treating intellectual works as property beyond a very limited time frame.
I'm all for short-term patents and copyright. But they are incentives. It is not the natural state of intellectual works to be owned and controlled in perpetuity. Intellectual works are not property in any real sense. It's a legal fiction that we was intended to encourage innovation but which has been abused and over-extended to the point that it now threatens innovation.
I believe it is worth asking whether or not the financial incentives we currently offer are necessary or appropriate before people begin to accept "on the face of it" that Intel owns an idea about lithography and nobody can ever use that techniqure without their permission.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What a lot of people who take this kind of position often don't realize is the fact that treating IP as property, and protecting peoples' rights to those properties, is what provides the motivation for many of people to be so creative and to pour themselves into their work.
I agree with Mark Lemley that, given the level of IP creation today, total sharing of it would definitely benefit mankind. However, if you remove the financial benefits of its creation, there will (IMHO) be a drastic drop in the creation of what we now consider to be IP.
I don't doubt this is true to some extent but whenever I hear this argument for IP I never hear any evidence supporting it. Are there studies? Anecdotes even?
I'm all for limited -- very limited -- protections but what we have now is just a ridiculous money grab. As evidence for the contrary position I'll offer Linux and the (unconfirmed) solution to the Riemann hypothesis. Both of which weren't done for money but the authors will directly or indirectly profit from the work (if they want to).
I don't think Real has any interesting tech that would tempt MS or Apple. The best they have are some big customers that MS and Apple would want to move to WM and QT, respectively. Buying customers and forcing them to change sounds like a headache. I imagine it'd be better to just let Real fail and compete for those customers when they're forced to switch to something new.
I think Real has realized all along that to succeed with proprietary media technology, they have to own that space. That's why they had the obnoxious installs, spyware, etc. They were trying to lock-in users, literally and conceptually, to Real as the software to use.
Now, they're losing that battle in a big way. It's been very easy for people to move to Windows Media and Quictime/iTunes despite Real's efforts. Nobody thinks of Real when they think of online media anymore. Any mind-share they had in the early days is waning.
Helix and Harmony are their last gasp efforts to make it big. They're donning the robes openness and feigning grass-roots appeal. But it's a charade. What they realy want is what they wanted all along -- to dominate online media.
I can hear the OS X people already, but OS X, too, is thrown together. It's done extremely well, but you have different competing layers in the OS that make it much less coherent. It's Unix with a very pretty face.
I'll bite. What are the 'competing layers' and how do they make it less coherent?
I don't think Linux is a natural choice for breakthrough concepts in user interfaces. It is in lots of other areas and maybe in more basic research in UI but it's not user driven as much as OS X and Windows.
Both KDE and Gnome are good at constantly progressing, trying new things. And they're good at listening to users. But, I think they don't have the pressure/motivation and resources right now to come up with something truly novel.
I would guess that this partly because they're under some pressure to provide the functionality in OS X or Windows. They're playing catch-up almost constantly. Also, their flexibility seems to slow them down. There were big changes in Gnome 2.0 but they seemed more like a change in direction than movement forward. My impression of KDE is that they put most effort in the backend of the system where you're not likely to notice it. And both projects work hard to try to make everyone happy.
My impression of Apple is that Apple (Jobs) likes to think big picture and then throw lot of effort behind a handful of projects. The media hub picture spawned the iApps and iPod. The interface picture birthed Expose, Spotlight and that widget thing. MS seems to try to do (or at least promise) everything then implement it poorly, then keep plugging away at it until they get it right or give up. But they do get it right sometimes and they do try make things a 'better experience' for the user. I personally think they miss the mark more times than not because they burden their innovations with user-hostile elements like DRM.
OSS needs visionaries but to implement a vision you need everyone to get behind it. I think that's harder in OSS because visionaries seem a bit dictatorial. It's not impossible, I'm sure, but going from a mainly academic research project to something people can use is hard and probably needs a steady guiding hand.
I see what you're saying but I think if Real says "thing song will work on your iPod" and the user tries and gets an error putting it on their iPod, some percentage of users will call Apple and say "Real said this should work, why doesn't it work." But what percentage of users, I can't pretend to guess.
They don't have any free support system.
Actually, for the iPod, you get 90 days free phone support and with AppleCare for the iPod you get 2 years.
Ah, my bad. I didn't quite grok what Harmony was about. Should have looked for information from sources other than real.com which wasn't very helpful.
Still, I think Apple screws themselves if they do give in to Real. Real is making a play to become the defacto standard in digital music ('We support both DRM formats!') Which is bad for Apple. If Apple is sufficiently threatened by the 'you're not playing fair' line, I'd bet they'd sooner back an industry standard DRM than give into Real.
Personally, I won't touch any DRM and will just sick back and enjoy the spectacle.
Slashdot Mirror
According to Wikipedia, China Mobile is the biggest in number of subscribers.
The 2000 processor version (10 teraflop peak) going to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is about the size of a living room (12'x28'). Compare that with PSC's current HP machine (~3000 processors, 6 teraflop peak) which is the size of a basketball court.
Please, add support for motorcycles with the ironic mufflers.
They are. It's called GNUStep. They could use more help, though.
Unfortunately, GNUStep is still a bit immature despite being around for many years. The reason there aren't commercial apps isn't because OpenStep isn't great/easy-to-use. It's more likely because the free OpenStep-like environment isn't stable/mature. QT and GTK are stable and mature but you don't see a plethora of non-niche commercial apps for those either.
If it is so easy to port, then why don't I see Photoshop for Red Hat Linux? This is a big market.Photoshop, I believe, is still mostly Carbon, not Cocoa. And, Photoshop on Linux is not a big market. If it were, there would be a QT or GTK Photoshop.
Anything serious use of Objective-C appears to be confined to the Mac platform.OpenStep has been popular in niche areas like banking and scientific apps. Swarm is developed mainly in cross-platform Obj-C. GNU gcc is still relatively behind in Obj-C support but I think Apple is helping to change that.
For Google, there is no Linux market. They are a consumer of Linux. They use it in all those massive clusters. As for their desktop apps, there is not enough of a desktop Linux market on which to capitalize. Sad, but true. There not making anything for the Mac either but, personally, I don't see anything all that compelliing about their apps (and Tiger will have some of that funtionality, I think).
Agreed, but the agencies are beholden to the government (Congress or the White House). We can make them accountable through elections and making representative know we don't like the agency's policy.
The agency has to have some autonomy to do their job but if they keep F'ing it up the FCC has, they need to be slapped. McCain and the others seem to be doing that. Here's hoping...
Insightful? Uhh.... you can say that about the IRS, USGS, NASA, FBI. etc. "Who are these NASA people deciding I can't ride on that moon rocket, anyway? They're not elected."
The NSF just invested in a different Cray. However, your dream of drugs prices going down because of drug design on publically funded computers is a bit out there. The drug companies already take advantage of publically funded research to increase their profits. Besides, I think most of the biomed work on NSF supercomputers is much more basic than actually designing of the drug -- think protein folding and membrane channels. Yeah, it's important for drug design but far from actual production of a drug.
So, it's already being done and, no, it won't reduce drug prices.
You forgot:
:P
* Faked moon landing
* Alien space ship captured at Area 51
* Black helicopters dusting mind control agents
* Satellites beaming pornography directly into the heads of Christian children
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Sounds a lot like Bangkok.
My new favorite oxymoron is 'car camping.' Don't forget your rake, charcoal and gazebo.
If you and Michael Badnarik
had a baby, what would it look like?No, a spectrometer measures reflected (or scattered, trasmitted, emitted) electromagnetic radiation (EM). Methane and water have different spectral signatures. They reflect EM -- or light -- differently. Probably, they're measuring the absorption patterns in the atmosphere.
A friend of mine grew up in somehwat rural area of PA. I think they had well water but, anyway, they didn't have fluoride in their water. As he approached 30 he started having some serious dental problems -- he's had several root canals. The first thing his dentist asked him when he went in with some problems was, "Did you have fluoride in your water growing up?"
We did have fluoride in our water where I grew up. And, when I was in kindergarten, they made us do daily or weekly (I forget) fluoride treatments. I hated it and resented my parents for it -- they had to sign a permission form in order for me to do it. After seeing my friends problems, I'm so glad I was forced to endure those treatments.
Interopability. Future-proofing. Apple's contributions to the standard. Are you saying companies shouldn't be applauded for using standards? I'll applaud every time a company chooses an open standard over a proprietary model.
As far as I can tell, they've given back every time they've taken. That's more than I can say for myself.
So the apps are closed? OK, they're not totally 'Free.' Granted. But the ical format is open. You can write a better iCal and not have to do a damn thing to get the data in. Webcore can be used by open-source developers as well as proprietary developers. It's based on khtml (from KDE). They've given back. WebCore is Open (LGPL).
iTunes protocol? Do you mean DAAP? Yes the app is closed but the tools are there to re-implement as you see fit. Even the iTunes Library is accessible as XML.
So go ahead write your own drivers.
Did you miss what this post was about?
Well, you left out some context. I said, "I don't doubt this is true to some extent." And I offered cases where it is, in fact, not true that there must be a financial incentive. Saying something is true "on the face of it" does not make it true unless you just expect me and everyone else to blindly accept it.
My point was that defenders of current "IP law" contend that nothing new or significantly new would be invented without the protections currently in place. I've seen no evidence to support that conhjecture -- not that I've looked much. Which is why I asked if anyone had evidence or even anecdotes.
There are plenty of examples of people working creatively without financial motivators. I've seen no good argument for treating intellectual works as property beyond a very limited time frame.
I'm all for short-term patents and copyright. But they are incentives. It is not the natural state of intellectual works to be owned and controlled in perpetuity. Intellectual works are not property in any real sense. It's a legal fiction that we was intended to encourage innovation but which has been abused and over-extended to the point that it now threatens innovation.
I believe it is worth asking whether or not the financial incentives we currently offer are necessary or appropriate before people begin to accept "on the face of it" that Intel owns an idea about lithography and nobody can ever use that techniqure without their permission.
I don't doubt this is true to some extent but whenever I hear this argument for IP I never hear any evidence supporting it. Are there studies? Anecdotes even?
I'm all for limited -- very limited -- protections but what we have now is just a ridiculous money grab. As evidence for the contrary position I'll offer Linux and the (unconfirmed) solution to the Riemann hypothesis. Both of which weren't done for money but the authors will directly or indirectly profit from the work (if they want to).
On the other hand, they could let Space Imaging sell the data and track who buys it.
IKONOS can take a picture of the same area only once every 3 days. What is anyone going to learn about strategy from that?
Asking sincerely.
IKONOS, for anyone who doesn't know, has a max resolution of 1 meter for panchromatic images and 4 meters for blue, green, red and Near IR.
I don't think Real has any interesting tech that would tempt MS or Apple. The best they have are some big customers that MS and Apple would want to move to WM and QT, respectively. Buying customers and forcing them to change sounds like a headache. I imagine it'd be better to just let Real fail and compete for those customers when they're forced to switch to something new.
I think Real has realized all along that to succeed with proprietary media technology, they have to own that space. That's why they had the obnoxious installs, spyware, etc. They were trying to lock-in users, literally and conceptually, to Real as the software to use.
Now, they're losing that battle in a big way. It's been very easy for people to move to Windows Media and Quictime/iTunes despite Real's efforts. Nobody thinks of Real when they think of online media anymore. Any mind-share they had in the early days is waning.
Helix and Harmony are their last gasp efforts to make it big. They're donning the robes openness and feigning grass-roots appeal. But it's a charade. What they realy want is what they wanted all along -- to dominate online media.
I doubt they have chance.
I'll bite. What are the 'competing layers' and how do they make it less coherent?
I don't think Linux is a natural choice for breakthrough concepts in user interfaces. It is in lots of other areas and maybe in more basic research in UI but it's not user driven as much as OS X and Windows.
Both KDE and Gnome are good at constantly progressing, trying new things. And they're good at listening to users. But, I think they don't have the pressure/motivation and resources right now to come up with something truly novel.
I would guess that this partly because they're under some pressure to provide the functionality in OS X or Windows. They're playing catch-up almost constantly. Also, their flexibility seems to slow them down. There were big changes in Gnome 2.0 but they seemed more like a change in direction than movement forward. My impression of KDE is that they put most effort in the backend of the system where you're not likely to notice it. And both projects work hard to try to make everyone happy.
My impression of Apple is that Apple (Jobs) likes to think big picture and then throw lot of effort behind a handful of projects. The media hub picture spawned the iApps and iPod. The interface picture birthed Expose, Spotlight and that widget thing. MS seems to try to do (or at least promise) everything then implement it poorly, then keep plugging away at it until they get it right or give up. But they do get it right sometimes and they do try make things a 'better experience' for the user. I personally think they miss the mark more times than not because they burden their innovations with user-hostile elements like DRM.
OSS needs visionaries but to implement a vision you need everyone to get behind it. I think that's harder in OSS because visionaries seem a bit dictatorial. It's not impossible, I'm sure, but going from a mainly academic research project to something people can use is hard and probably needs a steady guiding hand.
I see what you're saying but I think if Real says "thing song will work on your iPod" and the user tries and gets an error putting it on their iPod, some percentage of users will call Apple and say "Real said this should work, why doesn't it work." But what percentage of users, I can't pretend to guess.
Actually, for the iPod, you get 90 days free phone support and with AppleCare for the iPod you get 2 years.
Ah, my bad. I didn't quite grok what Harmony was about. Should have looked for information from sources other than real.com which wasn't very helpful.
Still, I think Apple screws themselves if they do give in to Real. Real is making a play to become the defacto standard in digital music ('We support both DRM formats!') Which is bad for Apple. If Apple is sufficiently threatened by the 'you're not playing fair' line, I'd bet they'd sooner back an industry standard DRM than give into Real.
Personally, I won't touch any DRM and will just sick back and enjoy the spectacle.