I think to some people since IBM was one of the first mega-corporations to embrace Linux, this announcement about cutting support for Linux on the laptops comes as a suprise. However, where is it that IBM has made all of its Linux progress? They've made their progress in the enterprise on big ass IBM servers running Linux. However, the desktop/laptop space is very different from enterprise servers. The margins appear to be much thinner on those machines and so I'm sure that business unit is trying to cut costs. I doubt they have seen enough traction from Linux on the desktop to justify the cost of support and development. I also think that IBM knows that there will be some unofficial ThinkPad Linux support that is provided by its users.
Re:bah. ignore the users.
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Version Fatigue
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Ignore the users and you'll have software without users.
Obviously, you can't just let the users submit a list of things they want and then build that software, however good software should always take its users into account. I mean, you are building the software for users. I am no professional UI designer, but I can tell you that a good UI designer will take a look at how a tool is currently being used and try to find ways to make that tool more effient. I hate to go down the analogy road, but what if the auto industry ignored their users? You might have cars that people couldn't fit into.
In the end, users are king b/c they either pay for your software or they help make it better (as in the OSS world).
I think a better explanation for why Unix users learn more of the intricate features of their OS has more to do with the types of users on Unix vs the types of users on Windows. Unix has always been much bigger with techies and academics who are generally power users and have a stronger need to use the real power of the OS. Most of your everyday non-technical users will be more than likely using some form of Windows or possibly Mac OS.
If this device is a quality piece of hardware, maybe it will help push down the price of Apple's stuff. Of course, I'm not sure that Apple has ever given a crap what other people are charging for similar products (or at least as similar as you can be to Apple).
I hate to be that guy with the government conspiracy ideas, but I wonder if the US government has these kind of techniques in their arsenals for tracking people on WiFi networks. Although I guess it depends on whether the network uses encryption (I don't even know if there is 128 bit encryption for WiFi). This "new" terrorist fighting government scares me sometimes...
I think that above all else, the online sellers encourage a more dynamic supply and demand market for all of these used goods. Whether prices are better or worse at a local store vs amazon/ebay/half.com is certainly debateable and I'm sure you could find solid examples of each having a better price than the other. Ultimately, though, prices will generally be more uniform and market driven in the online world. Certainly, there is still a need to shop around, but it no longer requires getting in the car and driving around. I'm also sure there are still plenty of deals to be found from uninformed garage salers, but their are plenty of antique and book hawks out there scouting that scene too.
The bummer is, it takes away some of the "real-world" sentiment and raises the prices significantly. I remember when I went to a garage sale and bought about 30 forgotten realms books for about 50 cents per book. Now days, I'd probably pay 5-10 times that on ebay (plus shipping), plus I wouldn't be able to see the condition of the book, and I'd have to hope the person I'm buying from isn't a crook
In general, sites like Amazon, eBay, and half.com should be driving used book prices down. These vendors can now save the money of the phyiscal store and employees and do all of their work online. Yes, in the case that you are talking about, you might find some great deal on books at a garage sale from someone that doesn't know their value, but it is not like most used book dealers don't know the value of their books. Also, if some item becomes a hot commodity the prices will rise quickly, but this is all the law of supply and demand and these online markets/auctions all put more sellers in touch with more buyers.
FYI, Microsoft also ships a micro-web server with the Pocket PC OS. I'd like to compare how long it would take the MS web server to get/.ed vs the Linux/Apache combination on the Pocket PC.
It is strange how the Internet was considered to be the place where the great idea and the little guy could beat the old, hulking, mega-corportation, but now the tide has certainly turned. Losing total control of the ICANN is certainly not the end of the world, but more a symptom of what is happening on the whole.
In terms of getting MS-type developers to write Open Source code, you will have target your audiences selectively. I am in consulting and I focus on custom developed software. The kind of big corporate clients I work for, would never let any part of their custom business apps be published as open source. These companies are looking for any advantage over compentitors and so they will not give any part of their code away. For software that is fairly common among competitors, these guys generally will buy some kind of package. So, I think you're going to have to find another group of MS developers besides the ones working at big corporations.
I like most people agree that it would be a long road to get MS into the Open Source Arena. MS's Shared Source initiative may be as far as they go. However, I'm not ever sure that something like MS switching to Apache would be good. If MS switched to Apache, I imagine that you would have something like 80-90% of the world's websites on Apache...I think there is some value to heterogeneity in the software world. If everyone was on Apache and some devastating hole was found, you would have 90% of the world's web servers compromised (yes, yes, I know it is less likely to happen than with IIS). I personally believe that good solid standards are the best thing in the software world. Interoperation is more important than a universal code base.
Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."
I have to disagree with this point. We need our C/S students to write basic sorting routines so that they can truly understand the concepts. I don't know about any of you, but watching some professor write the code for a sort algorithm on the board was not equivalent to me understanding it. With any education you need to have a firm grasp of the basics before moving on and if that means really figuring out how to write sort routines then that is what our students need. It would be like watching a couple lectures on basic chemistry and thinking that you could go straight into biochemistry.
Divine has been nothing but hype in the last couple years in Chicago. There has always been this desire in Chicago for this city to be a bigger technology city. Divine started as sort of an incubator company and there were high hopes for it when it IPO'd as a possible highlight of Chicago technology. However, they never went too far. Then they started on this acquisition binge that has included a number of software startups and buying the remnants of another Chicago bust, MarchFirst (formerly Whitman-Hart). Divine has been mismanager for quite a while and they are frequently hung out to dry in some of the local technology trash reports in Chicago (see The May Report and ePrairie.com.) Anyway, Divine is a terrible company and I think many people in Chicago will be less than suprised to hear about the latest antics.
All of the articles talking about Blackley's departure as being a sign of XBox's fall are mostly just hype. Blackley did this interview with Gamespot and said that his departure had to do with the coming of E3 and the formation of his own game company.
The thing is that many of these scenarios it is not the legal challenge that wins it, but rather the PR challenge. United Airlines had a pricing mistake where it was selling tickets to places like Paris for $0 plus taxes. (see this story - point number 5) At first United refused to honor the fares, but as the bad PR built, they decided to honor the fares anyway. I wouldn't be suprised if these Best Buy customers are just hoping to make enough bad press that BBY will honor the prices after all.
You gotta imagine that the broadband ISPs aren't that psyched about this. In an economy where $40-$50 a month for an internet connection is pushing it, how about adding more taxes to the pile.
Never mind the fact that the police are watching the car and they have a kill switch.
However, the article says When the car called police, a map of Arlington flashed on a computer screen in the Emergency Communications Center, pinpointing the vehicle's location. Because the car was linked to a global positioning device, dispatchers tracked its movements on the computer screen and knew where to send two police cars.
So, in fact, it is just a car sitting on the street with any human watching it...just being tracked in case it moves.
No, I really can't disagree with that. Stealing a car is stealing a car and it should be a crime regardless. None the less, it sounds as if this particular police dept is not leaving the car unlocked w/keys (especially since it says they caught the guy w/o tools). However, I would still take issue if they police department was in fact leaving the car unlocked w/keys since I think it would pose a public safety risk to kids that might get in trouble if they had easy access to a car w/keys.
This will never happen. Once the press really gets ahold of this idea, it will be over. You gotta figure that news like this is going to really drive a lot of malicious attacks on the passport service. On the flip side though, expect Scott McNealy to have something dumb to say about this in the near future.
I'm sorry, but that's obvious. The American government would or an organization appointed to do so by the US government
It was more of a rhetorical question. It would have been better phrased as "Who could appropriately control the porn definition?" You'll never really be able to find someone to control it because it is a free speech issue and everyone will have a different definition.
An even bigger issue here is how you would define exactly what is porn. Who would control the porn definition? It might not be hard to say that pictures of anal sex with barnyard animals is porn, but there are also grey areas. For example, someone with a strict interpretation of porn might say that artistic nudity is porn or that women (or men for that matter) in bikinis or bathing suits might be porn. And even if they start with a loose definition of porn to start, who is to say that it won't become more restrictive in the future.
The only way to do this right is to create a prn domain and make it optional. Sort of a way for a porn site to advertise themselves as porn by choice.
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I think to some people since IBM was one of the first mega-corporations to embrace Linux, this announcement about cutting support for Linux on the laptops comes as a suprise. However, where is it that IBM has made all of its Linux progress? They've made their progress in the enterprise on big ass IBM servers running Linux. However, the desktop/laptop space is very different from enterprise servers. The margins appear to be much thinner on those machines and so I'm sure that business unit is trying to cut costs. I doubt they have seen enough traction from Linux on the desktop to justify the cost of support and development. I also think that IBM knows that there will be some unofficial ThinkPad Linux support that is provided by its users.
Ignore the users and you'll have software without users.
Obviously, you can't just let the users submit a list of things they want and then build that software, however good software should always take its users into account. I mean, you are building the software for users. I am no professional UI designer, but I can tell you that a good UI designer will take a look at how a tool is currently being used and try to find ways to make that tool more effient. I hate to go down the analogy road, but what if the auto industry ignored their users? You might have cars that people couldn't fit into.
In the end, users are king b/c they either pay for your software or they help make it better (as in the OSS world).
I think a better explanation for why Unix users learn more of the intricate features of their OS has more to do with the types of users on Unix vs the types of users on Windows. Unix has always been much bigger with techies and academics who are generally power users and have a stronger need to use the real power of the OS. Most of your everyday non-technical users will be more than likely using some form of Windows or possibly Mac OS.
If this device is a quality piece of hardware, maybe it will help push down the price of Apple's stuff. Of course, I'm not sure that Apple has ever given a crap what other people are charging for similar products (or at least as similar as you can be to Apple).
I hate to be that guy with the government conspiracy ideas, but I wonder if the US government has these kind of techniques in their arsenals for tracking people on WiFi networks. Although I guess it depends on whether the network uses encryption (I don't even know if there is 128 bit encryption for WiFi). This "new" terrorist fighting government scares me sometimes...
I think that above all else, the online sellers encourage a more dynamic supply and demand market for all of these used goods. Whether prices are better or worse at a local store vs amazon/ebay/half.com is certainly debateable and I'm sure you could find solid examples of each having a better price than the other. Ultimately, though, prices will generally be more uniform and market driven in the online world. Certainly, there is still a need to shop around, but it no longer requires getting in the car and driving around. I'm also sure there are still plenty of deals to be found from uninformed garage salers, but their are plenty of antique and book hawks out there scouting that scene too.
In general, sites like Amazon, eBay, and half.com should be driving used book prices down. These vendors can now save the money of the phyiscal store and employees and do all of their work online. Yes, in the case that you are talking about, you might find some great deal on books at a garage sale from someone that doesn't know their value, but it is not like most used book dealers don't know the value of their books. Also, if some item becomes a hot commodity the prices will rise quickly, but this is all the law of supply and demand and these online markets/auctions all put more sellers in touch with more buyers.
FYI, Microsoft also ships a micro-web server with the Pocket PC OS. I'd like to compare how long it would take the MS web server to get /.ed vs the Linux/Apache combination on the Pocket PC.
It is strange how the Internet was considered to be the place where the great idea and the little guy could beat the old, hulking, mega-corportation, but now the tide has certainly turned. Losing total control of the ICANN is certainly not the end of the world, but more a symptom of what is happening on the whole.
In terms of getting MS-type developers to write Open Source code, you will have target your audiences selectively. I am in consulting and I focus on custom developed software. The kind of big corporate clients I work for, would never let any part of their custom business apps be published as open source. These companies are looking for any advantage over compentitors and so they will not give any part of their code away. For software that is fairly common among competitors, these guys generally will buy some kind of package. So, I think you're going to have to find another group of MS developers besides the ones working at big corporations.
I like most people agree that it would be a long road to get MS into the Open Source Arena. MS's Shared Source initiative may be as far as they go. However, I'm not ever sure that something like MS switching to Apache would be good. If MS switched to Apache, I imagine that you would have something like 80-90% of the world's websites on Apache...I think there is some value to heterogeneity in the software world. If everyone was on Apache and some devastating hole was found, you would have 90% of the world's web servers compromised (yes, yes, I know it is less likely to happen than with IIS). I personally believe that good solid standards are the best thing in the software world. Interoperation is more important than a universal code base.
I have to disagree with this point. We need our C/S students to write basic sorting routines so that they can truly understand the concepts. I don't know about any of you, but watching some professor write the code for a sort algorithm on the board was not equivalent to me understanding it. With any education you need to have a firm grasp of the basics before moving on and if that means really figuring out how to write sort routines then that is what our students need. It would be like watching a couple lectures on basic chemistry and thinking that you could go straight into biochemistry.
I don't think that the $300 fee equates to any kind of "gated community for professionals". I mean, its not like pr0n sites can't afford that.
Divine has been nothing but hype in the last couple years in Chicago. There has always been this desire in Chicago for this city to be a bigger technology city. Divine started as sort of an incubator company and there were high hopes for it when it IPO'd as a possible highlight of Chicago technology. However, they never went too far. Then they started on this acquisition binge that has included a number of software startups and buying the remnants of another Chicago bust, MarchFirst (formerly Whitman-Hart). Divine has been mismanager for quite a while and they are frequently hung out to dry in some of the local technology trash reports in Chicago (see The May Report and ePrairie.com.)
Anyway, Divine is a terrible company and I think many people in Chicago will be less than suprised to hear about the latest antics.
All of the articles talking about Blackley's departure as being a sign of XBox's fall are mostly just hype. Blackley did this interview with Gamespot and said that his departure had to do with the coming of E3 and the formation of his own game company.
The thing is that many of these scenarios it is not the legal challenge that wins it, but rather the PR challenge. United Airlines had a pricing mistake where it was selling tickets to places like Paris for $0 plus taxes. (see this story - point number 5) At first United refused to honor the fares, but as the bad PR built, they decided to honor the fares anyway. I wouldn't be suprised if these Best Buy customers are just hoping to make enough bad press that BBY will honor the prices after all.
You gotta imagine that the broadband ISPs aren't that psyched about this. In an economy where $40-$50 a month for an internet connection is pushing it, how about adding more taxes to the pile.
Does anyone have an article that does confirm that Sony is really making a profit on their console? I can't seem to find one.
However, the article says
When the car called police, a map of Arlington flashed on a computer screen in the Emergency Communications Center, pinpointing the vehicle's location. Because the car was linked to a global positioning device, dispatchers tracked its movements on the computer screen and knew where to send two police cars.
So, in fact, it is just a car sitting on the street with any human watching it...just being tracked in case it moves.
No, I really can't disagree with that. Stealing a car is stealing a car and it should be a crime regardless. None the less, it sounds as if this particular police dept is not leaving the car unlocked w/keys (especially since it says they caught the guy w/o tools). However, I would still take issue if they police department was in fact leaving the car unlocked w/keys since I think it would pose a public safety risk to kids that might get in trouble if they had easy access to a car w/keys.
I feel like if the car was left unlocked or with keys in it that it would be a little closer to entrapment.
This will never happen. Once the press really gets ahold of this idea, it will be over. You gotta figure that news like this is going to really drive a lot of malicious attacks on the passport service. On the flip side though, expect Scott McNealy to have something dumb to say about this in the near future.
It was more of a rhetorical question. It would have been better phrased as "Who could appropriately control the porn definition?" You'll never really be able to find someone to control it because it is a free speech issue and everyone will have a different definition.
An even bigger issue here is how you would define exactly what is porn. Who would control the porn definition? It might not be hard to say that pictures of anal sex with barnyard animals is porn, but there are also grey areas. For example, someone with a strict interpretation of porn might say that artistic nudity is porn or that women (or men for that matter) in bikinis or bathing suits might be porn. And even if they start with a loose definition of porn to start, who is to say that it won't become more restrictive in the future.
The only way to do this right is to create a prn domain and make it optional. Sort of a way for a porn site to advertise themselves as porn by choice.