Apple is just reaping the benifits of our philosophy. If we disagree with them, that is our right. If apple wishes to be code-mongers that is their right as well.
That's true. But it's important to point out that Apple is, in fact, releasing tons of code, despite the ignorant writer's implication that they're not even releasing bug fixes. An operating system, for example, gcc and toolchain improvements, filesystem improvements.
I suspect the problem here is that the writer's life isn't obviously improved by better BSD support in gcc. It would be improved by Sorenson support for Linux and if he doesn't get that for free, Apple obviously must be evil.
This article is kind of an inverse Dennis Powell rant. Yeah, if you believe the FSF is the only true path of "Open Source", Apple is out of line. But they're not finding some loophole in the BSD license -- they're using it the way you're supposed to. BSD Unix is created and released under an understanding of "free" that encourages it to be turned into commercial products.
The bottom line is that Apple has released a Free, Open Source operating system and will be adding to it long after Eazel, Ximian, VA and the rest of the cuddly open-source media darlings have imploded. I doubt if this Leibovitch knows or cares to know anything about how much OS, compiler and toolchain code Apple has given away. Or if that Apple was supporting MkLinux development and putting Linux partioning options in their disk utility long before Dell and Compaq started even making noises about supporting Linux. All he wants is that the should give him their fonts, the Sorenson codecs and their industrial design, too.
By the way, does anyone know why since I upgraded to 10.0.2, my keyboard (USB or ADB) doesn't work in Classic? The mouse is fine and both work in native apps.
Well, I agree and I don't. On the one hand, of course their money didn't go all to pay developers. On top of your points, they also had a huge, very professional PR campaign that must have cost them plenty. Plus, I'd be curious to know whether their deals with Dell, Sun, etc. involved any, err, inducements.
On the other hand, they did hire a *lot* of developers. From the numbers thrown around in the different articles, it sounds like pre-layoffs they had over 30 paid developers, maybe more. And their services development can't really require the ongoing services of 10 developers, can it? Online disk space?
Like I said, Konqueror has 1 paid dev.
To rephrase, a company that only makes a file browser should not have blown through $13 million before releasing 1.0.
What's worse is that I've only read hearsay from other posters about why the system is so heinously broken.
Isn't it ridiculous? I have to read Geekizoid to keep up to date on what's going on at Slashdot. Like there was a need for more proof that security by obscurity doesn't work.
It mystifies me how a site so dedicated to "open" and "community" is so close-mouthed about its own functioning. If it weren't for Michael mud-wrestling with trolls at -1, there'd be no news at all.
First, the Slashdot editors still don't think there are too many points in the system? I saw the main page, clicked onto this story hoping I could get first post and found a post already at +5.
Second, yeah, this is raw flamebait. But the RMS apologists always justify him by saying, "Sure, he's a vindictive nut. But we need people like that!" This is kind of a counterweight.
Third, the "..the monkey chased the Eazel" stuff did make me laugh.
Fourth (I only planned first and second when I started this), it really is remarkable how Eazel managed to blow through $13 million on a file browser. All of KDE 1 and 2, even including Qt, didn't cost that much or require that many paid developers. By comparison, Konqueror has one paid developer, David Faure. (Who admittedly is really, really good.) Yes, there are some TrollTech people working on khtml, but since Nautilus uses Gecko, they don't count for this comparison.
Fifth,the reasoning by which the FSF gets dragged into this is pretty shaky. There's no real reason to think they're getting involved with Eazel. On the other hand, Powell is right that the Gnome leaders have committed to having companies drive their project and they'll have to live with the results.
I'll throw in a sixth and preemptively point out to the people who always invoke the Kompany here that the role of the Kompany in KDE is completely unlike what Eazel and Ximian do in Gnome. The Kompany is not involved at all in core KDE development or planning and does not attempt to rebrand the desktop.
4 people - A, B, C and D see each other on the first, second and third days. They all leave that evening.
No, because D, for instance, could think that it's only A, B and C who are marked. It's not until the fourth day when they see the other three haven't left that all four realize they also must be marked.
2. Why are we assuming that the people in the village are competent logicians?
That's a given. People in these riddle villages are always excellent logicians.
My answer was 1, which seemed the only reasonable answer.
Here's my analysis: 1 person - A goes around town, sees no one marked. He leaves town at the end of the day. (Or on the second day -it's ambiguous.) 2 people - On the first day, A and B see each other. On the second day, they see the other is still around. They both leave, at the end of the second day or on the third day. I think this is supposed to be the answer. 3 people - A, B and C see each other on the first and second days. They all leave at the end of the third day or on the fourth day. This might also be the answer.
The problem isn't that the Net is dangerous, just that's it's so damned interesting compared to work or school.
I don't know if interesting is the key. I mean, right now I have work to do and instead I'm reading Jon Katz, waiting for a LinuxToday article to load so I can read idiots' responses to Dennis Powell flamebait and waiting for SpamCop to let me click. Is any of that really more interesting than work?
To the degree that Net activity is interesting, it's not such a wake. What galls me is when I realize I've just blown 2 hours clicking through a flamewar on list, updating KDE from CVS or talking on IRC with teenagers. Is that really more interesting or fun than if I had read a book, gone for a run or watched SportCenter?
I think what makes the Net "addictive" is the easy and quick feedback you get. It's just too easy to do one more little thing.
...our dirty little secret is that this is a compulsive culture.
As a rule, statements like this have an effect on me opposite than what was intended. It suggests to me that the speaker has little or no familiarity with other cultures and imagines the flaws of members of his own culture to be unique rather than universal. American liberals have a particular fondness for such formulations -- it's a (far more common) variation on the stereotypical jingoistic, parochial American.
Actually, the whole thread is pretty funny if you have the time to read it. I'd forgotten how much of a blowhard the guy is -- you'd think he'd have sufficient shame to tone down his pomposity and boasting in a forum like that, but, no.
No one sat down and did real market research before this all began. My suspicion is that a bunch of Linux fan-boys, bouyed by a ridiculous capital market, said "let's start a company!" And the rest is farce.
I'd say that's an excellent description of Eazel and Ximian. LinuxCare, on the other hand, had some really smart money behind it and a business plan that's reasonable (or at least not outright laughable). It had lousy leadership though, and bad timing.
Bottom line for a lot of these companies -- if Linux had managed the 10% market share and non-geek user base its boosters were predicting, LinuxCare could have done well providing support for Compaq or Dell or something. No market, no money.
Even if he needs a flexible schedule to get things like school taken care of, you need his expertise. Who knows PPCs and UNIX better than this guy?
No disrespect to Jason Haas, who is a nice guy and who has contributed enormously to Linux on the PowerPC, but this is a classic case of free software celebrity worship, similar to the notion that Jamie Zawinski singlehandedly wrote Navigator or that every icon and pixmap in a Gnome distribution is the work of tigert.
I agree that Jason Haas would be a great hire for Aple because of his strong connections in the Mac and Linux worlds. But he's hardly a leading PowerPC Linux hacker, by any stretch.
It's pretty obvious where we stand on free speech, privacy, copyright, etc. issues, but unfortunately we have a duty to shareholders, and the "donate service to all sorts of cool free projects, bring a bunch of controversy, earn the hatred of the established media industry, etc." is just not good business practice for HavenCo, regardless of what the Sealand Government wants to do.
Clearly the HavenCo people have more sense than do the Neuromancer-obsessed geeks who genuinely believe Sealand could function as an independent sovereign entity. The British have a soft spot for eccentrics and kooks and they'll let the "Royal Family" have their fun as long as they're not doing any harm. But if you seriously think they could function as a high-profile base for copyright infringement, you need to read more newspapers and fewer Gibson novels.
That's great, IBM. But first, can you guys get around to cleaning off those damn penguins you spray painted on my sidewalk?
Those things are on good and they're not coming off. The Cambridge city government is planning to sandblast them off and IBM is refusing to pick up the bill. (They're sticking to their "It's chalk, it'll come off." nonsense.)
...but more importantly it hasn't shown any signs of a decent-sized PAYING customer base. id took a gamble on Linux, and it wasn't worth the effort.
That's pretty much what it comes down to, isn't it? The remarkable thing is how well Linux advocates were able to convince companies and journalists that this base existed, in the absence of any facts, purely on the basis of shouting and anecdotes about their alleged grandmothers.
The free ride is over. VC's aren't going to be handing out any more money to free software projects with hare-brained business plans and the commercial companies aren't going to do Linux ports out of fear of Not Getting It. MacOS gets new software for its ~5% share of users because those users are willing to pay, and to wait a few months. Linux users had better either learn to do the same or hope that KOffice and Tux Racer can fill the gap.
Here, by the way, is an example where some silly issues got in the way of a well-meaning project, objections were raised in a courteous way and the situation was resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Fortunately it was all cleared up before the story made it to Slashdot.
I know it's customary here to fly into a frenzy over any perceived legal obstacle, without making any attempt to contact the people involved to see if there's a simple resolution.
But on the off chance that the 1000th time is going to be different, let me ask this -- has anyone considered just asking Netscape if they'll make the DTD public? The O'Reilly writer doesn't seem to have bothered.
As far as MyNetscape itself is concerned, good riddance as far as I care. They came up with the clever stratagem of blocking Mac IE users. (The notice that there are some unresolved problems with that browser has been there for over a year.) Good move, guys -- piss away all of your market share and then block IE users from the one thing you have left. I switched to Yahoo, with no regrets.
How the did the above post get modded up to +4 interesting?
Notice that there seems to be a huge number of mod points floating around? (I just got another 5 before I finished with the last batch.) Notice that just about everything is flying up to +5 and then back down?
Due to an as-yet-unexplained error in slashdot's database, over the past few days fewer moderator points than usual have been given out. We've fixed it, but will probably have to restart the webservers for changes to take effect - probably a lot of people will suddenly receive moderator points in the next hour or two.
Questions:
How did they fix an "as-yet-unexplained error"?
Has it not occurred to the editors that when you saturate the system with points, you defeat the purpose of moderation? And that you're giving normal users 5 points and megatrolls 50 or 60?
For all of Slashdot's talk about "open"and "community", don't the operations of the site seem to be completely shrouded in NSA-worthy secrecy?
I'll be gracious and not use one of my other accounts to mod this up.;-)
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about enterprise-scale IT. If I'm saying something ridiculous, let me know!
That said, I'm surprised by the positive slant on this story. 8000 boxes that have to be separately administered? This is cost-effective (and environmentally sound) compared to a small number of heavy-hitter Solaris, AIX or Tru64 systems? I have to say I was a lot more impressed by hearing what cdrom.com does with a single FreeBSD system than by how many Linux boxes Google has had to cobble together.
I've got to wonder - if this were a story about 8000 W2K servers powering Hotmail, would it get the same spin?
Yes, I understand the cool factor. Yes, it would be great to have a Beowulf cluster of these?
But is there any practical value for this? It seems to me that when you're buying a keyboard and external hard drive to run Linux on a system displaying on your TV, you would be better off using the PC you already have. (I'm skeptical that there is a large base of PlayStation Linux customers who don't already have a PC.)
I'm not knocking this - I'm trying to understand if there's anything behind statements like conservative fractions in the company are hindering the Public Release of the port, fearing revelation of their trade secrets and not seeing the advantage for SCEI releasing the software.
What is it with you *BSD haters out there? I mean, jesus. I keep seeing this same rant, posted almost verbatim, anytime there is an article about one of the BSD's.
And, most horrifically of all, someday we will see Mac OS 11-- which undoubtedly everyone on IRC will start calling "X 11". Assuming apple doesn't come out and name it "Mac OS X 11".
Bad news. Officially, MacOS X is "MacOS X 10.0". Future versions will be numbered "MacOS X x.y" and so on.
The idea is to distinguish it from MacOS Classic which isn't going away for a while. Too bad - I was hoping for a MacOS XI.II some day.
...also, and there is where I wonder if the boycott is going to gain any traction, where you publish is as important as if you publish. It's easy to make threats (how many boycotts are Taco and Hemos supposedly participating in?) but for scientists to refuse to publish in an ultra-high-profile journal like Nature or Cell and go to PNAS or the other "acceptable" journals is going to have a huge impact on their careers.
I think the market is eventually going to settle this. People read journals that they can afford and easily access*, and they forget the others exist. But that will take a few years, until you get a new generation of researchers who refuse to leave their computers to read a paper.
* To the IP-obsessed mind of a Slashdot editor, this is about "rights." No, I've never heard anyone complaining about that. The objection here is about providing free access to readers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true. But it's important to point out that Apple is, in fact, releasing tons of code, despite the ignorant writer's implication that they're not even releasing bug fixes. An operating system, for example, gcc and toolchain improvements, filesystem improvements.
I suspect the problem here is that the writer's life isn't obviously improved by better BSD support in gcc. It would be improved by Sorenson support for Linux and if he doesn't get that for free, Apple obviously must be evil.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
The bottom line is that Apple has released a Free, Open Source operating system and will be adding to it long after Eazel, Ximian, VA and the rest of the cuddly open-source media darlings have imploded. I doubt if this Leibovitch knows or cares to know anything about how much OS, compiler and toolchain code Apple has given away. Or if that Apple was supporting MkLinux development and putting Linux partioning options in their disk utility long before Dell and Compaq started even making noises about supporting Linux. All he wants is that the should give him their fonts, the Sorenson codecs and their industrial design, too.
By the way, does anyone know why since I upgraded to 10.0.2, my keyboard (USB or ADB) doesn't work in Classic? The mouse is fine and both work in native apps.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
On the other hand, they did hire a *lot* of developers. From the numbers thrown around in the different articles, it sounds like pre-layoffs they had over 30 paid developers, maybe more. And their services development can't really require the ongoing services of 10 developers, can it? Online disk space?
Like I said, Konqueror has 1 paid dev.
To rephrase, a company that only makes a file browser should not have blown through $13 million before releasing 1.0.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Isn't it ridiculous? I have to read Geekizoid to keep up to date on what's going on at Slashdot. Like there was a need for more proof that security by obscurity doesn't work.
It mystifies me how a site so dedicated to "open" and "community" is so close-mouthed about its own functioning. If it weren't for Michael mud-wrestling with trolls at -1, there'd be no news at all.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Second, yeah, this is raw flamebait. But the RMS apologists always justify him by saying, "Sure, he's a vindictive nut. But we need people like that!" This is kind of a counterweight.
Third, the "..the monkey chased the Eazel" stuff did make me laugh.
Fourth (I only planned first and second when I started this), it really is remarkable how Eazel managed to blow through $13 million on a file browser. All of KDE 1 and 2, even including Qt, didn't cost that much or require that many paid developers. By comparison, Konqueror has one paid developer, David Faure. (Who admittedly is really, really good.) Yes, there are some TrollTech people working on khtml, but since Nautilus uses Gecko, they don't count for this comparison.
Fifth,the reasoning by which the FSF gets dragged into this is pretty shaky. There's no real reason to think they're getting involved with Eazel. On the other hand, Powell is right that the Gnome leaders have committed to having companies drive their project and they'll have to live with the results.
I'll throw in a sixth and preemptively point out to the people who always invoke the Kompany here that the role of the Kompany in KDE is completely unlike what Eazel and Ximian do in Gnome. The Kompany is not involved at all in core KDE development or planning and does not attempt to rebrand the desktop.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
No, because D, for instance, could think that it's only A, B and C who are marked. It's not until the fourth day when they see the other three haven't left that all four realize they also must be marked .
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
That's a given. People in these riddle villages are always excellent logicians.
My answer was 1, which seemed the only reasonable answer.
Here's my analysis:
1 person - A goes around town, sees no one marked. He leaves town at the end of the day. (Or on the second day -it's ambiguous.)
2 people - On the first day, A and B see each other. On the second day, they see the other is still around. They both leave, at the end of the second day or on the third day. I think this is supposed to be the answer.
3 people - A, B and C see each other on the first and second days. They all leave at the end of the third day or on the fourth day. This might also be the answer.
OK, I damn well want karma for this one!! ;-)
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I don't know if interesting is the key. I mean, right now I have work to do and instead I'm reading Jon Katz, waiting for a LinuxToday article to load so I can read idiots' responses to Dennis Powell flamebait and waiting for SpamCop to let me click. Is any of that really more interesting than work?
To the degree that Net activity is interesting, it's not such a wake. What galls me is when I realize I've just blown 2 hours clicking through a flamewar on list, updating KDE from CVS or talking on IRC with teenagers. Is that really more interesting or fun than if I had read a book, gone for a run or watched SportCenter?
I think what makes the Net "addictive" is the easy and quick feedback you get. It's just too easy to do one more little thing.
As a rule, statements like this have an effect on me opposite than what was intended. It suggests to me that the speaker has little or no familiarity with other cultures and imagines the flaws of members of his own culture to be unique rather than universal. American liberals have a particular fondness for such formulations -- it's a (far more common) variation on the stereotypical jingoistic, parochial American.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
No, he's moved on to running his mouth on the LKML, and getting a smackdown from Alan Cox.
Actually, the whole thread is pretty funny if you have the time to read it. I'd forgotten how much of a blowhard the guy is -- you'd think he'd have sufficient shame to tone down his pomposity and boasting in a forum like that, but, no.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I'd say that's an excellent description of Eazel and Ximian. LinuxCare, on the other hand, had some really smart money behind it and a business plan that's reasonable (or at least not outright laughable). It had lousy leadership though, and bad timing.
Bottom line for a lot of these companies -- if Linux had managed the 10% market share and non-geek user base its boosters were predicting, LinuxCare could have done well providing support for Compaq or Dell or something. No market, no money.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
No disrespect to Jason Haas, who is a nice guy and who has contributed enormously to Linux on the PowerPC, but this is a classic case of free software celebrity worship, similar to the notion that Jamie Zawinski singlehandedly wrote Navigator or that every icon and pixmap in a Gnome distribution is the work of tigert.
I agree that Jason Haas would be a great hire for Aple because of his strong connections in the Mac and Linux worlds. But he's hardly a leading PowerPC Linux hacker, by any stretch.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Clearly the HavenCo people have more sense than do the Neuromancer-obsessed geeks who genuinely believe Sealand could function as an independent sovereign entity. The British have a soft spot for eccentrics and kooks and they'll let the "Royal Family" have their fun as long as they're not doing any harm. But if you seriously think they could function as a high-profile base for copyright infringement, you need to read more newspapers and fewer Gibson novels.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Those things are on good and they're not coming off. The Cambridge city government is planning to sandblast them off and IBM is refusing to pick up the bill. (They're sticking to their "It's chalk, it'll come off." nonsense.)
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
That's pretty much what it comes down to, isn't it? The remarkable thing is how well Linux advocates were able to convince companies and journalists that this base existed, in the absence of any facts, purely on the basis of shouting and anecdotes about their alleged grandmothers.
The free ride is over. VC's aren't going to be handing out any more money to free software projects with hare-brained business plans and the commercial companies aren't going to do Linux ports out of fear of Not Getting It. MacOS gets new software for its ~5% share of users because those users are willing to pay, and to wait a few months. Linux users had better either learn to do the same or hope that KOffice and Tux Racer can fill the gap.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I don't know about that but it *did* come from his account. And distribution of mod points *has* gone berserk.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
But on the off chance that the 1000th time is going to be different, let me ask this -- has anyone considered just asking Netscape if they'll make the DTD public? The O'Reilly writer doesn't seem to have bothered.
As far as MyNetscape itself is concerned, good riddance as far as I care. They came up with the clever stratagem of blocking Mac IE users. (The notice that there are some unresolved problems with that browser has been there for over a year.) Good move, guys -- piss away all of your market share and then block IE users from the one thing you have left. I switched to Yahoo, with no regrets.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Notice that there seems to be a huge number of mod points floating around? (I just got another 5 before I finished with the last batch.) Notice that just about everything is flying up to +5 and then back down?
Apparently Michael wasn't kidding:
Due to an as-yet-unexplained error in slashdot's database, over the past few days fewer moderator points than usual have been given out. We've fixed it, but will probably have to restart the webservers for changes to take effect - probably a lot of people will suddenly receive moderator points in the next hour or two.
Questions:
I'll be gracious and not use one of my other accounts to mod this up. ;-)
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
That said, I'm surprised by the positive slant on this story. 8000 boxes that have to be separately administered? This is cost-effective (and environmentally sound) compared to a small number of heavy-hitter Solaris, AIX or Tru64 systems? I have to say I was a lot more impressed by hearing what cdrom.com does with a single FreeBSD system than by how many Linux boxes Google has had to cobble together.
I've got to wonder - if this were a story about 8000 W2K servers powering Hotmail, would it get the same spin?
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
These are fraternal twins, not identical.
And these are clones. (Genetically identical individuals produced asexually from a common precursor.)
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
But is there any practical value for this? It seems to me that when you're buying a keyboard and external hard drive to run Linux on a system displaying on your TV, you would be better off using the PC you already have. (I'm skeptical that there is a large base of PlayStation Linux customers who don't already have a PC.)
I'm not knocking this - I'm trying to understand if there's anything behind statements like conservative fractions in the company are hindering the Public Release of the port, fearing revelation of their trade secrets and not seeing the advantage for SCEI releasing the software.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Didn't you know? Office now has a template for it.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Bad news. Officially, MacOS X is "MacOS X 10.0". Future versions will be numbered "MacOS X x.y" and so on.
The idea is to distinguish it from MacOS Classic which isn't going away for a while. Too bad - I was hoping for a MacOS XI.II some day.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I think the market is eventually going to settle this. People read journals that they can afford and easily access*, and they forget the others exist. But that will take a few years, until you get a new generation of researchers who refuse to leave their computers to read a paper.
* To the IP-obsessed mind of a Slashdot editor, this is about "rights." No, I've never heard anyone complaining about that. The objection here is about providing free access to readers.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.