Someone observed that it's the nature of every army/navy to prepare to win the last big war they fought. It does seem true...the French Maginot Line of the 1930's would have presented the 1914 German Army with quite a challenge, and the USS Ronald Reagan would surely have kicked Fleet Admiral Yamamoto's butt in 1942 or so. It won't really do much to thwart Bin Laden types in this age of asymmetric warfare, but what the hey...it's only money;)
I was an MCSE for NT 3.51 at Charles Schwab in the mid-nineties. NT 4 was noticeably buggier and crashprone than NT 3.5*. So anyone involved with the NT servers was constantly fighting fires. I remember being struck by how calm the Unix admins were, and how they got to do more interesting work...platform uptime was a non-issue for them. So, with a little help from a sympathetic Unix sysadmin (thanks Art!) I was able to talk the boss into letting me switch to the Unix admin group. NT4......may it soon pass to the ash heap of history.
I'll agree that the U.S. isn't too bad, all things considered. But having lived several years in Germany...yeah, if I could, I'd switch. Especially when I think of my 3 year old daughter, and what sort of future she will have here in the U.S., versus what a future Europe will be like (both good and bad parts). One big plus with the German system is that their politicians just don't get away with the enormous shenanigans you see here in the U.S. Yes, there are "scandals" there, but they seem petty by our standards. Why don't I put my money where my mouth is, you say? I checked, and it turns out the U.S. Internal Revenue Service takes almost all your money, if you go through proper channels to relocate permanently overseas. If that changes, that would be great, and I'd probably make the move.
I hate SCO as much as anyone. But let's be disciplined in our thinking: what SCO is doing is a sort of "business terrorism", and much as we don't like to admit it, terrorism is pretty effective. Again, think about it cooly and objectively. If IBM were to buy SCO, this would get this intellectual property issue done once and for all, and Linux's growth could continue unabated. The only downside would be having some smug, rich former SCO executives congratulating themselves after the buyout. Revolting, but let's get over it. Think of the long term, and IBM, do what has to be done to get this issue over and forgotten.
A quality product? AT home my wife has a new HP pavilion with XP on it. It requires a reboot every day, otherwise, it just starts flaking out. I'm personally surprised how bad XP is. For the first time, the spouse unit is wondering if I can show here how to run things on my Linux box, so she won't lose her work as much. *That's* how bad Windows XP is!
You may be a lot closer than you realize to being able to help the elite coders of the GNU world. Send a few bucks, you can get started here. Donating a little money to the Free Software Foundation is like handing fresh ammunition and rations to the experienced soldiers already pushing back the enemy, while you sharpen your own skills for the day you can take your place on the frontline. This will help until the day when all universities and research centers GPL code they produce; at that point there will be more money for GNU software than anyone will know what to do with (reflect for a moment on how much tuition costs...academia is awash in cash, not even counting federal grants, etc.)
Interesting..maybe U.S. chipmakers will bleed bad
on
Analyzing Palladium
·
· Score: 1
I'm a U.S. citizen, but I've often thought that many U.S. industries that seem dominant now may be eclipsed if overseas producers get just one lucky break. I can totally see this happening with chipmakers. Palladium might be just the onerous restriction required for Asian-headquartered chip companies to surpass Intel and AMD. Believe me, I take no joy in that. I wish our business "leaders" didn't have this habit of setting the U.S. up for a fall...but that's life.
As a Californian who's worked with IT folks in New York City, I can verify the patience issue. Some of the NYC folks were quite bright, but their lack of patience with computers and with themselves really handicapped them. Some of this stuff is just hard, and one has to take time to learn it well.
GNU and other OSS software has the cost of development already covered many times over; it's part of the high tuition many of you pay (which goes into systems research, etc.). And all those defense dollars that led to the Internet. When people and businesses pay for software, they're probably paying twice..once for when it was originally developed in academia, and again for no particular reason to get it from a commercial vendor. This is a waste of scarce resources (operating cash for a business) which has a real "opportunity cost" as economists call it. The consequence is a less efficient and less robust economy...and ultimately lower tax revenues for the central government.
Innovation will increasingly be non-U.S.
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 1
SSSCA (or anything similar) will probably accelerate a move of technological innovation to places other than the U.S. Who knows, we might see American computer science researchers enjoying long sabbaticals in Thailand or India, where they'll be able to work relatively unfettered. All in all, I'd see the SSSCA giving short-term benefits to big U.S. companies, but undermining the long-term health and competitiveness of U.S. industry. Oh well. We can still grow corn and stuff.
The judge in this case has invited comments to be faxed to him on the proposed settlement. So, tone it down, keep it short and civil, and fax the judge at this number (faxes received by tomorrow qualify as "public comments" on the case and may have some bearing on all this):
Hon. Judge J. Frederick Motz
H.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
Fax #: (410) 962-7574
I read a long time ago that MSR was trying to hire as many Computer Science faculty as would take the offer (usually much better salary than colleges could pay). The goal was two-fold: try to garner some prestige by having notable names within MS, and secondly work as an "intellectual roach motel", where research talent could be prevented from creating breakthroughs outside of Microsoft's control. This latter seems to have worked well, when one considers how many bodies are working for MSR and how little has come out of it. Just having researchers on the payroll, and therefore unable to contribute to IBM, etc. is probably worth it to Microsoft. A cushy, high-paying, do-nothing job at MSR is probably what they had in mind when they tried to hire Alan Cox a couple years ago.
I did some quick checking about corporate stock options and tax benefits, our system is flawed in that corp's get to count stock appreciation for their employees as if it were a cash expenditure...so they get off the hook for taxes rather shamelessly. When you consider that we individuals really do have to pay our taxes, about 1/4 to 1/3 of our income, and the Microsofts do *not* pay 1/4 to 1/3 of their income (in fact, they get rebates, funded by individual income taxes no less)...I tend to think that makes my original point even stronger. There's a pattern of abuse, and Mundie's "ecosystem" is a rather one-sided affair. Basically, individual taxpayers fund research in academia, and companies like Microsoft will reap the benefits, by reselling code as proprietary software. Ordinary citizens are thus twice robbed. A good backgrounder I found is at:
I just read Mr. Mundie's message; although I understand where he's coming from, I'm not sure the ecosystem he describes
can really pan out. For instance, it's important under his model that those who take from the "commons" give enough back,
but in 1999, for example, Microsoft paid $0 in federal income taxes--large companies in the U.S. do a very good job of
creating ingenious tax strategies, those are the breaks. But it does seem that there's a disturbing trend with our
society "socializing the risk, privatizing the profit," as Doonesbury put it. Now, I'm a software developer, not an
economist, but it seems to me that with Microsoft (and others) paying little or no taxes, hiring as many talented
academics as will take the offer for working within Microsoft Research et. al., then patenting as much as they can to
wall off new branches of technology...well, sheesh, how long can the commons sustain this sort of aggressive
over-grazing?
Turning to the GPL, I really like its emphasis on making software part of humanity's knowledge base, so that advances are
never lost, and even poor societies have access. This guaranteed openness points the way toward a computing ecosystem
like the medical sciences, where scientists not just in the U.S. but around the world share their findings and build on
each others' work. *Implementing* humanity's open knowledge store of medicine is an enormous field that pays many
millions of people, often quite well (my wife is a physician, so I have special insight there). The key word is
*implementing*. I think we'll see this open ecosystem for computing come to pass, thanks to the GPL and the advantages of
making software development a worldwide, not company proprietary, endeavor. This new world will probably be a little
weird for Microsoft at first, but I am confident that everyone will find their niche, and we'll all wonder why it took us
so long.
At work, among the 20 odd developers there's a creeping migration from IE to Mozilla. Mozilla is just plain nice to look at, starting with.9.1 it was ready for daily use, after a day with.9.2 I'd say it really is the best browser out there, except for speed, where Opera rules. On a Windows 2000 box at work,.9.2 beats IE for rendering time. On a Redhat 7.1 box at work, Mozilla.9.2 isn't as fast as Opera, but seems to handle some sites better, and definitely handles fonts, Javascript, etc. better than Konqueror. I *love* KDE, but right now I'd say Konqueror should strive to pick up some of the rendering polish that Mozilla has attained.
...too little, too late, and they don't really get it. MS today seems a lot like the USSR of the 1980s, trying to adapt to forces they cannot fully understand, let alone control. So the only thing they can do is pump up the public relations, try to polish things, proclaim "look we're all new!" and so forth. They're smart, dedicated, and absolutely ready to do whatever it takes...but this whole sea change thing is just baffling to them. Well, Gorby did pretty well for himself after the fall, if Bill plays his cards right he can be a sought after speaker on the lecture circuit too!
I taught a retired woman how to use the mouse by putting my hand over hers on the mouse, and moving it around, and clicking on things. After about 30 seconds, she had it down. So try that, as weird as it sounds (it's like the way they teach people how to swing a golf club).
The obvious other thing is make Google their home page, if it's their computer. Google is just awesome, as we all know. If they're being ornery, though, tell 'em to use Microsoft-based "AskJeeeves" with its oh-so-wonderful results, and that's punishment enough;)
Open Source will be massively funded--already is!
on
Mundie Responds
·
· Score: 1
Bear in mind that OSS and GNU projects are perfect for academia and research centers. In the U.S. alone, an astonishing amount of cash is poured into research universities and so on...it's called tuition. Just ask any parents of college students if they're paying a little or a lot. Anyway, all this money will see to it that in a world where there was only GPL software, in academia alone there will be more than enough paid engineers and scientists innovating new stuff. The pace of innovation will increase due to the worldwide nature of the effort, and the coders will live well to boot.
I'm more sysadmin than web developer, but the 30 or so developers at work have pretty much unanimously shunned ASP. As one woman explained, once you get past a couple of variables on a page, ASP gets very cluttered, and she (for one) felt it was harder than Perl when trying to understand someone else's code.
But to be fair to ASP, it was out quite early in the game, so picking on ASP is like picking on Windows 95. At the time, it was quite good.
As far as what the developers *do* rave about...the top 2 guys at work are stoked about Python. Not so much from a performance standpoint as a technical elegance standpoint. So far we're not using Python in production, but it's probably just a matter of time.
So, if you're the German government in this case, do you A) re-invent a proprietary wheel, perhaps working with Siemens for many years, or B) inject some rocket fuel (serious cash) into Germany's already-thriving Open Source efforts? I recall a while back someone tallied up the national origin of hardcore contributors to OSS/GPL projects, and the Germans were in first place or very close. I suspect we'll see some very polished stuff as a result of this, for instance, the KDE desktop, already in the passing lane to the left of Windows 2000, will probably accelerate away from Win2K at a pretty fast pace over the next 18-24 months. It will be good for all of us. By the way, I'm an honorably discharged U.S.military veteran (US Army, 1983-1987), and I wish the officers and men of the Bundeswehr every success in this effort!
I'm always saying to friends and colleages: a big moral advantage of GNU software is that it caters nicely to all societies and economic strata. Those who have money but no time can purchase the services of experts to get GNU software to do what they want quickly. Those who have time but no money (3rd world) can use the source (and no license obstacles) to figure things out and invest the effort to make it work. Also, with GNU software to some extent the rich world is gifting technology to the poor world, which is the right thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
This was surely not easy for many in IBM to accept.
Someone observed that it's the nature of every army/navy to prepare to win the last big war they fought. It does seem true...the French Maginot Line of the 1930's would have presented the 1914 German Army with quite a challenge, and the USS Ronald Reagan would surely have kicked Fleet Admiral Yamamoto's butt in 1942 or so. It won't really do much to thwart Bin Laden types in this age of asymmetric warfare, but what the hey...it's only money;)
I was an MCSE for NT 3.51 at Charles Schwab in the mid-nineties. NT 4 was noticeably buggier and crashprone than NT 3.5*. So anyone involved with the NT servers was constantly fighting fires. I remember being struck by how calm the Unix admins were, and how they got to do more interesting work...platform uptime was a non-issue for them. So, with a little help from a sympathetic Unix sysadmin (thanks Art!) I was able to talk the boss into letting me switch to the Unix admin group. NT4......may it soon pass to the ash heap of history.
I'll agree that the U.S. isn't too bad, all things considered. But having lived several years in Germany...yeah, if I could, I'd switch. Especially when I think of my 3 year old daughter, and what sort of future she will have here in the U.S., versus what a future Europe will be like (both good and bad parts). One big plus with the German system is that their politicians just don't get away with the enormous shenanigans you see here in the U.S. Yes, there are "scandals" there, but they seem petty by our standards. Why don't I put my money where my mouth is, you say? I checked, and it turns out the U.S. Internal Revenue Service takes almost all your money, if you go through proper channels to relocate permanently overseas. If that changes, that would be great, and I'd probably make the move.
I hate SCO as much as anyone. But let's be disciplined in our thinking: what SCO is doing is a sort of "business terrorism", and much as we don't like to admit it, terrorism is pretty effective. Again, think about it cooly and objectively. If IBM were to buy SCO, this would get this intellectual property issue done once and for all, and Linux's growth could continue unabated. The only downside would be having some smug, rich former SCO executives congratulating themselves after the buyout. Revolting, but let's get over it. Think of the long term, and IBM, do what has to be done to get this issue over and forgotten.
...makes it very nice.
A quality product? AT home my wife has a new HP pavilion with XP on it. It requires a reboot every day, otherwise, it just starts flaking out. I'm personally surprised how bad XP is. For the first time, the spouse unit is wondering if I can show here how to run things on my Linux box, so she won't lose her work as much. *That's* how bad Windows XP is!
..and Scott has it. Too bad George W. does not.
well done ;)
You may be a lot closer than you realize to being able to help the elite coders of the GNU world. Send a few bucks, you can get started here.
Donating a little money to the Free Software Foundation is like handing fresh ammunition and rations to the experienced soldiers already pushing back the enemy, while you sharpen your own skills for the day you can take your place on the frontline. This will help until the day when all universities and research centers GPL code they produce; at that point there will be more money for GNU software than anyone will know what to do with (reflect for a moment on how much tuition costs...academia is awash in cash, not even counting federal grants, etc.)
I'm a U.S. citizen, but I've often thought that many U.S. industries that seem dominant now may be eclipsed if overseas producers get just one lucky break. I can totally see this happening with chipmakers. Palladium might be just the onerous restriction required for Asian-headquartered chip companies to surpass Intel and AMD. Believe me, I take no joy in that. I wish our business "leaders" didn't have this habit of setting the U.S. up for a fall...but that's life.
As a Californian who's worked with IT folks in New York City, I can verify the patience issue. Some of the NYC folks were quite bright, but their lack of patience with computers and with themselves really handicapped them. Some of this stuff is just hard, and one has to take time to learn it well.
GNU and other OSS software has the cost of development already covered many times over; it's part of the high tuition many of you pay (which goes into systems research, etc.). And all those defense dollars that led to the Internet. When people and businesses pay for software, they're probably paying twice..once for when it was originally developed in academia, and again for no particular reason to get it from a commercial vendor. This is a waste of scarce resources (operating cash for a business) which has a real "opportunity cost" as economists call it. The consequence is a less efficient and less robust economy...and ultimately lower tax revenues for the central government.
SSSCA (or anything similar) will probably accelerate a move of technological innovation to places other than the U.S. Who knows, we might see American computer science researchers enjoying long sabbaticals in Thailand or India, where they'll be able to work relatively unfettered. All in all, I'd see the SSSCA giving short-term benefits to big U.S. companies, but undermining the long-term health and competitiveness of U.S. industry. Oh well. We can still grow corn and stuff.
The judge in this case has invited comments to be faxed to him on the proposed settlement. So, tone it down, keep it short and civil, and fax the judge at this number (faxes received by tomorrow qualify as "public comments" on the case and may have some bearing on all this):
Hon. Judge J. Frederick Motz
H.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
Fax #: (410) 962-7574
I read a long time ago that MSR was trying to hire as many Computer Science faculty as would take the offer (usually much better salary than colleges could pay). The goal was two-fold: try to garner some prestige by having notable names within MS, and secondly work as an "intellectual roach motel", where research talent could be prevented from creating breakthroughs outside of Microsoft's control. This latter seems to have worked well, when one considers how many bodies are working for MSR and how little has come out of it. Just having researchers on the payroll, and therefore unable to contribute to IBM, etc. is probably worth it to Microsoft. A cushy, high-paying, do-nothing job at MSR is probably what they had in mind when they tried to hire Alan Cox a couple years ago.
http://www.tcp.com/~ether/articles/no-taxes.html
I just read Mr. Mundie's message; although I understand where he's coming from, I'm not sure the ecosystem he describes
can really pan out. For instance, it's important under his model that those who take from the "commons" give enough back,
but in 1999, for example, Microsoft paid $0 in federal income taxes--large companies in the U.S. do a very good job of
creating ingenious tax strategies, those are the breaks. But it does seem that there's a disturbing trend with our
society "socializing the risk, privatizing the profit," as Doonesbury put it. Now, I'm a software developer, not an
economist, but it seems to me that with Microsoft (and others) paying little or no taxes, hiring as many talented
academics as will take the offer for working within Microsoft Research et. al., then patenting as much as they can to
wall off new branches of technology...well, sheesh, how long can the commons sustain this sort of aggressive
over-grazing?
Turning to the GPL, I really like its emphasis on making software part of humanity's knowledge base, so that advances are
never lost, and even poor societies have access. This guaranteed openness points the way toward a computing ecosystem
like the medical sciences, where scientists not just in the U.S. but around the world share their findings and build on
each others' work. *Implementing* humanity's open knowledge store of medicine is an enormous field that pays many
millions of people, often quite well (my wife is a physician, so I have special insight there). The key word is
*implementing*. I think we'll see this open ecosystem for computing come to pass, thanks to the GPL and the advantages of
making software development a worldwide, not company proprietary, endeavor. This new world will probably be a little
weird for Microsoft at first, but I am confident that everyone will find their niche, and we'll all wonder why it took us
so long.
At work, among the 20 odd developers there's a creeping migration from IE to Mozilla. Mozilla is just plain nice to look at, starting with .9.1 it was ready for daily use, after a day with .9.2 I'd say it really is the best browser out there, except for speed, where Opera rules. On a Windows 2000 box at work, .9.2 beats IE for rendering time. On a Redhat 7.1 box at work, Mozilla .9.2 isn't as fast as Opera, but seems to handle some sites better, and definitely handles fonts, Javascript, etc. better than Konqueror. I *love* KDE, but right now I'd say Konqueror should strive to pick up some of the rendering polish that Mozilla has attained.
...too little, too late, and they don't really get it. MS today seems a lot like the USSR of the 1980s, trying to adapt to forces they cannot fully understand, let alone control. So the only thing they can do is pump up the public relations, try to polish things, proclaim "look we're all new!" and so forth. They're smart, dedicated, and absolutely ready to do whatever it takes...but this whole sea change thing is just baffling to them.
Well, Gorby did pretty well for himself after the fall, if Bill plays his cards right he can be a sought after speaker on the lecture circuit too!
I taught a retired woman how to use the mouse by putting my hand over hers on the mouse, and moving it around, and clicking on things. After about 30 seconds, she had it down. So try that, as weird as it sounds (it's like the way they teach people how to swing a golf club). The obvious other thing is make Google their home page, if it's their computer. Google is just awesome, as we all know. If they're being ornery, though, tell 'em to use Microsoft-based "AskJeeeves" with its oh-so-wonderful results, and that's punishment enough ;)
Bear in mind that OSS and GNU projects are perfect for academia and research centers. In the U.S. alone, an astonishing amount of cash is poured into research universities and so on...it's called tuition. Just ask any parents of college students if they're paying a little or a lot. Anyway, all this money will see to it that in a world where there was only GPL software, in academia alone there will be more than enough paid engineers and scientists innovating new stuff. The pace of innovation will increase due to the worldwide nature of the effort, and the coders will live well to boot.
I'm more sysadmin than web developer, but the 30 or so developers at work have pretty much unanimously shunned ASP. As one woman explained, once you get past a couple of variables on a page, ASP gets very cluttered, and she (for one) felt it was harder than Perl when trying to understand someone else's code. But to be fair to ASP, it was out quite early in the game, so picking on ASP is like picking on Windows 95. At the time, it was quite good. As far as what the developers *do* rave about...the top 2 guys at work are stoked about Python. Not so much from a performance standpoint as a technical elegance standpoint. So far we're not using Python in production, but it's probably just a matter of time.
So, if you're the German government in this case, do you A) re-invent a proprietary wheel, perhaps working with Siemens for many years, or B) inject some rocket fuel (serious cash) into Germany's already-thriving Open Source efforts? I recall a while back someone tallied up the national origin of hardcore contributors to OSS/GPL projects, and the Germans were in first place or very close. I suspect we'll see some very polished stuff as a result of this, for instance, the KDE desktop, already in the passing lane to the left of Windows 2000, will probably accelerate away from Win2K at a pretty fast pace over the next 18-24 months. It will be good for all of us. By the way, I'm an honorably discharged U.S.military veteran (US Army, 1983-1987), and I wish the officers and men of the Bundeswehr every success in this effort!
I'm always saying to friends and colleages: a big moral advantage of GNU software is that it caters nicely to all societies and economic strata. Those who have money but no time can purchase the services of experts to get GNU software to do what they want quickly. Those who have time but no money (3rd world) can use the source (and no license obstacles) to figure things out and invest the effort to make it work. Also, with GNU software to some extent the rich world is gifting technology to the poor world, which is the right thing to do.