I enjoyed LinuxWorld in particular, and will miss it. But this isn't particularly surprising, given the state of affairs at IDG.
The InfoWorld weekly just isn't what it used to be; Bob Metcalf's departure left a void (and I never thought I'd think that, let alone say it). They're getting more reader comments in response to smacks at religion than they are at insightful pieces on the industry.
IDG Books...er, Hungry Minds, is publishing Cliff's Notes and the computer equivalent...books for people who don't wanna know nothin'. Their logo change (to a flying pig, I kid you not) is beyond explanation.
Sure, Tim O'Reilly is a windbag, but at least his company has carved out a niche and mostly has the respect of its readers.
What's left of Bill Ziff's company is still churning out the typical combination of advertiser suck-up, bombast, and pertinent information.
MaximumLinux is gone, but its current incarnation is, in my opinion, better than ever.
The bottom line is that old-school publishing rules don't work well in the Internet space. I don't want to read advertising online. I worked for one of these publishers for years in the 90's, and I know how often people griped about the number of pages of advertising vs. editorial. Nothing has changed there, except that now the recipients are paying for the ad space in connection time.
Like the Linux kernel, Linux media sources that get their energy and input from people who are interested will continue to thrive. Those that follow a business plan co-opted from last decade's print media are doomed.
I guess I came to bury LinuxWorld.com, not to praise it. But I did like it while it lived.
Gosh, it's not enough that Apple tells me my page layout machine out-supercomputes supercomputers (hope the SETI people appreciate my largess, because I sure don't need supercomputing power). Now my gaming system needs to have more CPU power than my laptop.
Of course, there are some downsides:
My wife won't be able to play games that I bought her. (See earlier story.)
When my ISP goes down, so will my stereo, home theatre, game system, home automation system, and digital wall art.
With the Juno-style licensing I expect will accompany this bad boy, I figure I'll have to ask really, really nicely to get some playing time in:
Me:Inserts DOA5 game
PS3:Your request to see jiggling has been denied. I'm busy defeating Kasparov again.
Then there's this problem:
Me:Up, up, down, down...
PS3:I'm sorry, I can't do that, Doctor.
Integration of the Ch.1 Appliance
on
Linux TV
·
· Score: 2
The concept is very cool. Execution looks fine, too, to me.
But hey now, I'm going to spend $8.95 per month for what exactly? Do I really need to access the TV station's web site in PIP while I watch the program? I do not.
This is the way of things, and I guess I understand. If you got the bare-bones Ch.1 service at $8.95 per month, you'd have to use the TV for more than 8 years to have the service cost overtake the hardware cost. Lucky if the hardware lasts that long (let alone Ch.1).
Still, given that they're using a free operating system I can obtain elsewhere, and a Web connection I can maintain (and must pay for) elsewhere, I'm not that excited to have an online TV guide for nine bucks a month. At least with OnStar in the car, I'm getting service I can't duplicate on my own.
Of course, I may not be the target audience. I don't own a television. I watch movies on the monitor that came with my first IBM PC: An Amdek with RCA in (only)...
The FSF has no power except its voice. If you don't like what FSF is saying, you can ignore them. If you don't want to play ball with them, you don't have to write code for tools that do.
But don't misreprent what they're saying. They prefer the GPL, no question. Beyond that....
It's not a simple file replacement methodology, it's closer to a structured delta-based updating technology.
Next thing you know, folks will be goose-stepping into my computer room demanding my "patent-infringing" differential backups.
The courts will decide that I can make the backups, which don't actually infringe on the patent. However, I'll have to mail the tapes to the patent-holder, as restoring them would make use of a "structured delta-based updating technology."
Since most posts seem to be debating whether you've got the right idea rather than answering your question (I must've missed the memo, but that seems to be the de facto way of responding to Ask Slashdot queries):
Other Software/Hardware ProvidersDepending on the targets of the training, some of these might be useful...and if commercial vendors are willing to provide software/training for their tools that run on "free software" or "open source" operating systems, consider them!
"You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means" (The Princess Bride, 1987)
"Every sperm is sacred...every sperm is great; if the sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate" (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, 1983)
"I love the smell of napalm...in the morning" (Apocalypse Now, 1979)
"I need your clothes, your boots, and...your motorcycle" (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991)
"The sword! You promised me the sword! I need...the sword to be king" (Excalibur, 1981)
[actually, the dialogue goes like this:]
Uther: The sword! You promised me the sword!
Merlin: And you shall have it; but to heal, not to hack. Tomorrow, a truce; we meet at the river.
Uther: Talk! Talk is for lovers, Merlin. I need the sword to be king!
"Nobody calls me Lebowski. You got the wrong guy. I'm...the Dude, man" (The Big Lebowski, 1998)
"I believe that the novels of Susan Sontag are...self-indulgent, overrated crap" (Bull Durham, 1988)
[Again, this is slightly abridged; the whole speech goes like this:]
Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.
"Husbands should be like Kleenex...soft, strong, and disposable" (Clue, 1985)
"Mr. President, me must not allow a mine...shaft gap" (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964)
"It's K-k-k-ken, c-c-c-oming to...k-k-kill me!" (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988)
"Never give up! Never...surrender" (Galaxy Quest, 1999)
"Basically it's hotter than a snake's...ass in a wagon rut" (Good Morning, Vietnam, 1987)
"Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You're a plague. And we...are the cure" (The Matrix, 1999)
I run the IS side for a small software company. We've been buying some of our PC's, and all of our engineering laptops from Dell for a while now.
We made the mistake of ordering a desktop system with Linux pre-installed by Dell a while back...nice thought, but the RedHat was down-rev from what we used elsewhere, and it included some Dell-monkeyed drivers for the video card.
So now we order the most bang for the buck (used to be that places like Dell had the fastest Intel chips available before other systems shops we use, such as swt.com), install the OS tweaked the way we want it via an NFS image, and bang, we've got more CPU cycles for our hungry software.
This is how the Win-based shops I've run have worked as well: Dunno whether the users like the 45 desktop icons each hardware manufacturer feels compelled to add, but as IS fascists, we never did. So we'd build one system the way it should be, and then cookie-cutter it out using disk cloning, scripting, or SMS (assuming we had the resources to make SMS work).
So don't ask me how many business users will end up with the Dell-configured desktop in actual use...if you're counting my place, it's none. Well, I might try it for a while.
Come to think of it, nearly every user in this office prefers fvwm2. Ugly, but good.
$17 billion in sales doesn't make gaming into its own culture. Widespread recognition doesn't make it important culture. And no amount of articles in this series will make it so.
How many lines can you complete?
"You keep using that word..."
"Every sperm is sacred..."
"I love the smell of napalm..."
"I need your clothes, your boots, and..."
"The sword! You promised me the sword! I need..."
"Nobody calls me Lebowski. You got the wrong guy. I'm..."
"I believe that the novels of Susan Sontag are..."
"Husbands should be like Klenex -..."
"Mr. President, me must not allow a mine..."
"It's K-k-k-ken, c-c-c-oming to..."
"Never give up! Never..."
"Basically it's hotter than a snake's..."
"Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You're a plague. And we..."
We may share common knowledge on some of these, but that doesn't make those we share the defining points of our culture.
I should mention that I am pleased to see a series from this source that is a rehash of someone else's book, though.
Got the offer from the American Automobile Association right here.
I guess you stash it in your trunk and send it to get more gas when you ignore the idiot light too long with the needle on E.
Monterey doesn't exactly count as Silicon Valley. As a lifetime resident (well, I migrated all the way to Berkeley for school) of the valley, I've found that there are fewer and fewer folks from around here.
That means there's less and less pressure from tradition, history, and family here. Lots of folks like that, and have made their own cultural enclaves here. One example: the park where I used to play baseball and basketball is now filled on the weekend with people playing cricket. I still don't understand it, but it's cool to watch.
Another example is mentioned in the article: There's not much entrenched opposition to the gay lifestyle; in general, I'd say there's more pressure to be okay with it than to fight it.
The climate here is great, but the air and water are both warmer as you move down the left coast.
There's lots of diversions here, but relatively few incredibly strong cultural/entertainment draws. Short attention spans (outside work) and fickle tastes are de rigeur.
The valley isn't a land of techno-religion, it's a land of techno-culture, agnostic towards everything else. There are plenty of non-technical folks here still, but between the crazy housing prices, increasingly ridiculous commutes, and the lack of another powerful appeal factor, tech is the surest common denominator.
But I refuse to consider Dave & Buster's a church; it's a community center. Uh, oh...gotta recharge my card.
18.5 million people are using down-revs of their flagship software, including many on DOS versions...and they're going to solve that problem by adding better VB support to the product?
Good grief, man! Has their new head man used the DOS versions of the product versus the latest release? The DOS versions are responsive, elegant, and run on the piddlingest hardware you can keep running.
The Windows and Linux versions are slow, and I haven't found either version particularly stable. The users they're trying to target have the PC equivalent of vi, and a DVD's worth of extra features isn't going to address the reasons these people still use the old versions: compatibility, stability, speed, cost, and familiarity.
If its the data that is needed, why not simply make a hard disk image?
Because there's a tacit assumption that you shouldn't have that computer. That you were misusing it. Think of your hardware as a cap gun you pointed at your little sister...sure, you didn't do her any harm, and didn't even pull the trigger...but for crying out loud, you scared her!
You scare the heck out of people...Microsoft can't keep these evil crackers out of their pants, and you expect John Law to be sympathetic to the plight of a college kid poking around in something that's none of his business? It's not illegal, of course, but it's just not right.
Why not take your house? Because you+house isn't a problem, while you+computer might be. And might be is good enough, because this computer crime thing is pretty darn scary. If you were a drug dealer, you'd have your boat and house and cars confiscated, because dealer+affluence is also scary.
When software vendors, who have a ton more political clout than individuals, are pushing ridiculous laws and licenses, why would we imagine that the wheels of justice are running on a reasonable track? And as others have pointed out, if there's no technological savvy in a particular jurisdiction (e.g., Judge Ed isn't interested in computers or understanding their uses), there's not going to be any sympathy to actions that are legal and reasonable, but unfamiliar and technical.
Seems the most expedient course for a company now that a couple of rivals are getting down into the suit thing; in the meantime, NEC doesn't have to tie up resources. If Rambus wins the suits, NEC's tushies are covered, and if Rambus loses, it's toast anyway by the New Rule Of Business, which requires either R&D or lawyers.
(if !(tech) & !(legal); then Corp.dead).
I really liked this one, though:
"NEC was quick to recognize the potential of Rambus as a technology partner, and we've achieved significant successes as a result of our close partnership"
Universal Translator:
"NEC flinched when we showed them the lawsuit we drew up featuring their name."
Good. A little competitive pressure on RH might help motivate some improvements that others are including in their derivative distros.
All the same, I wish my company's products were doing as "poorly" in our market as Red Hat's are in theirs.
Although people still peddle the "Linux factions will kill the market" story, I want people to exploit the fact that there's more than one way to do things, and retain the understanding that as users, many of us have competing needs and desires.
It's a shame...Corel blew it by distributing their first release pre-broken (wrong kernel headers, etc.), and by focusing on bluster rather than code, but it has come closest to being my Linux distro Holy Grail: one I can give my dad on CD and not have to come over and help him install/configure.
BTW, did you notice the amusing "please don't flame us" disclaimer: "(This does not imply that SuSE or TurboLinux are inferior - merely that they were not rated in the mentioned report.)"
Slashdot Mirror
I enjoyed LinuxWorld in particular, and will miss it. But this isn't particularly surprising, given the state of affairs at IDG.
The InfoWorld weekly just isn't what it used to be; Bob Metcalf's departure left a void (and I never thought I'd think that, let alone say it). They're getting more reader comments in response to smacks at religion than they are at insightful pieces on the industry.
IDG Books...er, Hungry Minds, is publishing Cliff's Notes and the computer equivalent...books for people who don't wanna know nothin'. Their logo change (to a flying pig, I kid you not) is beyond explanation.
Sure, Tim O'Reilly is a windbag, but at least his company has carved out a niche and mostly has the respect of its readers.
What's left of Bill Ziff's company is still churning out the typical combination of advertiser suck-up, bombast, and pertinent information.
MaximumLinux is gone, but its current incarnation is, in my opinion, better than ever.
The bottom line is that old-school publishing rules don't work well in the Internet space. I don't want to read advertising online. I worked for one of these publishers for years in the 90's, and I know how often people griped about the number of pages of advertising vs. editorial. Nothing has changed there, except that now the recipients are paying for the ad space in connection time.
Like the Linux kernel, Linux media sources that get their energy and input from people who are interested will continue to thrive. Those that follow a business plan co-opted from last decade's print media are doomed.
I guess I came to bury LinuxWorld.com, not to praise it. But I did like it while it lived.
Gosh, it's not enough that Apple tells me my page layout machine out-supercomputes supercomputers (hope the SETI people appreciate my largess, because I sure don't need supercomputing power). Now my gaming system needs to have more CPU power than my laptop.
Of course, there are some downsides:
Me:Inserts DOA5 game
PS3:Your request to see jiggling has been denied. I'm busy defeating Kasparov again.
Me:Up, up, down, down...
PS3:I'm sorry, I can't do that, Doctor.
The concept is very cool. Execution looks fine, too, to me.
But hey now, I'm going to spend $8.95 per month for what exactly? Do I really need to access the TV station's web site in PIP while I watch the program? I do not.
This is the way of things, and I guess I understand. If you got the bare-bones Ch.1 service at $8.95 per month, you'd have to use the TV for more than 8 years to have the service cost overtake the hardware cost. Lucky if the hardware lasts that long (let alone Ch.1).
Still, given that they're using a free operating system I can obtain elsewhere, and a Web connection I can maintain (and must pay for) elsewhere, I'm not that excited to have an online TV guide for nine bucks a month. At least with OnStar in the car, I'm getting service I can't duplicate on my own.
Of course, I may not be the target audience. I don't own a television. I watch movies on the monitor that came with my first IBM PC: An Amdek with RCA in (only)...
Now, that would have been an interesting question for the interview.
Looking forward to seeing those stats.
"If the game industry went away, it's not like people would keel over and die on the street."
Well, Jon Katz might... Now how will I write Part 86 of the "Up, Up..." series?
Oh, wait...same thing I was going to do anyway...reprint Part 1.
Alan Cox is doing that voodoo he do do: LWN report on 2.4.2ac1. Also, the ftp link.
More on 2.4.2 from the LWN is here.
The Free Software Foundation will only accept one license -- the one that gives them control, the GPL.
A license need not be GPL to be GPL compatible.
The FSF has no power except its voice. If you don't like what FSF is saying, you can ignore them. If you don't want to play ball with them, you don't have to write code for tools that do.
But don't misreprent what they're saying. They prefer the GPL, no question. Beyond that....
I've been cutting-and-pasting the contents of my "SPAM" mail folder into the "decode" page, but haven't gotten anything intelligible yet, except this:
Don't hurt Jon Katz.
I'm not really sure what that means. Will report back if I find further information.
It's not a simple file replacement methodology, it's closer to a structured delta-based updating technology.
Next thing you know, folks will be goose-stepping into my computer room demanding my "patent-infringing" differential backups.
The courts will decide that I can make the backups, which don't actually infringe on the patent. However, I'll have to mail the tapes to the patent-holder, as restoring them would make use of a "structured delta-based updating technology."
For better or worse, the AI-enhanced candidate was sent home to a state he didn't carry.
Some Additional Linux Distribution Suggestions
- Caldera Systems
- Turbo Linux
- SuSE
- Mandrake
Other Software/Hardware Providers Depending on the targets of the training, some of these might be useful...and if commercial vendors are willing to provide software/training for their tools that run on "free software" or "open source" operating systems, consider them!- Sun/Open Office
- Applix/Applixware Office
- Oracle
- HP
- Compaq
- Dell
- GNU
Book Publishers Many examples, but e.g.For a more fanciful take on the importance of longitude, check out Umberto Eco's somewhat meandering but very engaging Island of the Day Before.
Like most Eco novels, it's a little on the huge side, which can be mitigated somewhat by getting the book on tape, delightfully read by Tim Curry.
As per the request, here are the answers.
[actually, the dialogue goes like this:]
[Again, this is slightly abridged; the whole speech goes like this:]
I run the IS side for a small software company. We've been buying some of our PC's, and all of our engineering laptops from Dell for a while now.
We made the mistake of ordering a desktop system with Linux pre-installed by Dell a while back...nice thought, but the RedHat was down-rev from what we used elsewhere, and it included some Dell-monkeyed drivers for the video card.
So now we order the most bang for the buck (used to be that places like Dell had the fastest Intel chips available before other systems shops we use, such as swt.com), install the OS tweaked the way we want it via an NFS image, and bang, we've got more CPU cycles for our hungry software.
This is how the Win-based shops I've run have worked as well: Dunno whether the users like the 45 desktop icons each hardware manufacturer feels compelled to add, but as IS fascists, we never did. So we'd build one system the way it should be, and then cookie-cutter it out using disk cloning, scripting, or SMS (assuming we had the resources to make SMS work).
So don't ask me how many business users will end up with the Dell-configured desktop in actual use...if you're counting my place, it's none. Well, I might try it for a while.
Come to think of it, nearly every user in this office prefers fvwm2. Ugly, but good.
$17 billion in sales doesn't make gaming into its own culture. Widespread recognition doesn't make it important culture. And no amount of articles in this series will make it so.
How many lines can you complete?
We may share common knowledge on some of these, but that doesn't make those we share the defining points of our culture.
I should mention that I am pleased to see a series from this source that is a rehash of someone else's book, though.
Ever waited for a AAA towtruck to bring you some gas? I'll take my chances with the robot.
Got the offer from the American Automobile Association right here. I guess you stash it in your trunk and send it to get more gas when you ignore the idiot light too long with the needle on E.
Monterey doesn't exactly count as Silicon Valley. As a lifetime resident (well, I migrated all the way to Berkeley for school) of the valley, I've found that there are fewer and fewer folks from around here.
That means there's less and less pressure from tradition, history, and family here. Lots of folks like that, and have made their own cultural enclaves here. One example: the park where I used to play baseball and basketball is now filled on the weekend with people playing cricket. I still don't understand it, but it's cool to watch.
Another example is mentioned in the article: There's not much entrenched opposition to the gay lifestyle; in general, I'd say there's more pressure to be okay with it than to fight it.
The climate here is great, but the air and water are both warmer as you move down the left coast.
There's lots of diversions here, but relatively few incredibly strong cultural/entertainment draws. Short attention spans (outside work) and fickle tastes are de rigeur.
The valley isn't a land of techno-religion, it's a land of techno-culture, agnostic towards everything else. There are plenty of non-technical folks here still, but between the crazy housing prices, increasingly ridiculous commutes, and the lack of another powerful appeal factor, tech is the surest common denominator.
But I refuse to consider Dave & Buster's a church; it's a community center. Uh, oh...gotta recharge my card.
18.5 million people are using down-revs of their flagship software, including many on DOS versions...and they're going to solve that problem by adding better VB support to the product?
Good grief, man! Has their new head man used the DOS versions of the product versus the latest release? The DOS versions are responsive, elegant, and run on the piddlingest hardware you can keep running.
The Windows and Linux versions are slow, and I haven't found either version particularly stable. The users they're trying to target have the PC equivalent of vi, and a DVD's worth of extra features isn't going to address the reasons these people still use the old versions: compatibility, stability, speed, cost, and familiarity.
And shame on you for your bad grammer God of all that is Taco.
I believe quamper was referring to Kelsey Grammer, a part-time troubled soul, and longtime confidante of CmdrTaco.
Thus, "your bad grammer." Just a capitalization problem.
You're right about the comma, though.
For more background information, see links:
Scientific American
Another description
Oh-So-Useful Slashdot Article
Uh, Keyboardist
Because there's a tacit assumption that you shouldn't have that computer. That you were misusing it. Think of your hardware as a cap gun you pointed at your little sister...sure, you didn't do her any harm, and didn't even pull the trigger...but for crying out loud, you scared her!
You scare the heck out of people...Microsoft can't keep these evil crackers out of their pants, and you expect John Law to be sympathetic to the plight of a college kid poking around in something that's none of his business? It's not illegal, of course, but it's just not right.
Why not take your house? Because you+house isn't a problem, while you+computer might be. And might be is good enough, because this computer crime thing is pretty darn scary. If you were a drug dealer, you'd have your boat and house and cars confiscated, because dealer+affluence is also scary.
When software vendors, who have a ton more political clout than individuals, are pushing ridiculous laws and licenses, why would we imagine that the wheels of justice are running on a reasonable track? And as others have pointed out, if there's no technological savvy in a particular jurisdiction (e.g., Judge Ed isn't interested in computers or understanding their uses), there's not going to be any sympathy to actions that are legal and reasonable, but unfamiliar and technical.
Nothing to see here, people. Please return quietly to your cubicles and continue your bean-counting activities.
Seems the most expedient course for a company now that a couple of rivals are getting down into the suit thing; in the meantime, NEC doesn't have to tie up resources. If Rambus wins the suits, NEC's tushies are covered, and if Rambus loses, it's toast anyway by the New Rule Of Business, which requires either R&D or lawyers.
(if !(tech) & !(legal); then Corp.dead).
I really liked this one, though:
Universal Translator:
"NEC flinched when we showed them the lawsuit we drew up featuring their name."
All the same, I wish my company's products were doing as "poorly" in our market as Red Hat's are in theirs.
Although people still peddle the "Linux factions will kill the market" story, I want people to exploit the fact that there's more than one way to do things, and retain the understanding that as users, many of us have competing needs and desires.
It's a shame...Corel blew it by distributing their first release pre-broken (wrong kernel headers, etc.), and by focusing on bluster rather than code, but it has come closest to being my Linux distro Holy Grail: one I can give my dad on CD and not have to come over and help him install/configure.
BTW, did you notice the amusing "please don't flame us" disclaimer:
"(This does not imply that SuSE or TurboLinux are inferior - merely that they were not rated in the mentioned report.)"