That was the argument I got from our business teams. I'm sure there were a few lawyers among them because you're right. It definately is a lawyer argument...
You're right. I don't know of a software company gettig sued in that context either, but in the telecom industry, when a phone switch goes down, the FCC gets upset, imposes fines on the owner of the switch, then the owner of the switch gets upset and the switch vendor incurs financial penalties for the system's failure to operate. The switch vendor then seeks to place blame on the componant vendors.
It has been my experience that most enterprise enviroments seem to gravitate tward comercially supported distributions (ie: redhat, with a specific single company behind it), primarily because there is a liabiility issue with doing otherwise. "If something goes wrong, who are you going to sue?". This was the argument I got when I was told the company I work for would deploy only Redhat Linux (ie the distribution).
I wonder if HPs choice here will affect what is deployed into enterprise enviroments...?
I once had a vary forward thinking economics professor who, gave me the assignment of calculating valuations of certain options contracts. I turned in the work and (honestly) included the URLs to three options valuation calculators I had found on the web. He actually found this to be acceptable because in his view, the goal (in the non-academic arena anyway) is to get correct answer, not to prove that you can trudge through laborious equasions. - note that this was about 6 years ago.
"There are always stories of files being kept of old papers," Bloomfield said, "but I had never heard of it being made real."
Most fraternities I know of keep copies of old term papers and exams for use by future members. I have yet to hear of one though that maintains a file server with such documents in electronic form (not that such sources are lacking on the internet at large)
Added David T. Gies, a longtime Spanish professor: "It will send a wake-up call to those students who have forgotten what the community of trust is all about."
Maybe I missed something. I don't know how performing a pattern match on Term Papers in order to identify cheaters relates to the "community of trust"i>.
--CTH
--
Unions are not appropriate for IT (in general...)
on
IT Unions?
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· Score: 3
Unions are not yet appropriate for the IT industry. Eventally they will be though. As the industry grows, the work will not require less skilled personel, but the skills will become more readily available. As this happens over time a union may serve to benefit te workers for than it might today.
Every industry seems to go through this cycle. An industry like the computer industry gets a tremendous boost by, say, the introduction of the PC, and a half a decade goes by without there being an academic curiculum available to churn out reasonably qualified people, then as soon as that curiculum is in place, companies feel that they have a never ending supply of grist for the mill. The same is true for the rapid growth of the internet. With the advent of an easy interface to information (the web), growth is spurred, and qualified people are difficult to find. The academic community lags about half a decade behind, but as soon as a curiculim is developed - and I saw a TV ad for a trade school advertising "become a certified webmaster" yesterday, so the time may be nearer than I'm suggesting - companies feel there is a never ending supply of talent out there.
That would be the point at which a union might be useful (once this corporate belief that IT is a comodity job, becomes prevelent). After the work becomes commodity work, for which there are many (supposidly) qualified people. Today, however, the job market is still good enough as to allow the qualified IT employee to seek out good companies and negotiate good terms of employment (with regard to required overtime and such).
As an entity for collective bargaining, the need for IT unions has not yet materialized, although I'd expect that in the next 5 years or so the need will arise. For that reason it may be valiable for a few unions to begin gathering steam, although the vast majority (the referenced poll from the article not withstanding) of IT workers will not feel the need to join. As a collective bargaining entity they just aren't needed yet.
--CTH
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The Accomplishment of One Person
on
AtheOS Interview
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· Score: 3
When you sit back and think about it, it's quite an astonishing acomplishment for one person. The OS itself has some interesting design features, but just the factthat it got designed and created at all (by one person) is quite amazing
Words will become pasee as used in common language but this book and other like it present the history behind the work, the concepts that contributed to the modern definition and usage, as well as the technology that was the base requirement for the initial use of the word. It's always interesting to evaluate history with a fresh perspective.
There gets to be a point where laptops become too small to be usable. In the early days on laptops, when this issue came up because regardless of the physical dimentions of the laptop, the keyboards were shrinking, and the displays were routinely only 60% of the size of the laptop lid. At this point there was a lot of overhead for various system componants which have now been shrunk down to miniscule sizes.
Now, instead of getting small keyboards because of the mechanicas of keyboards, or small displays becauce of the technology of displays, the only barier is the overall physical dimensions of the devices. We're getting smaller and smaller user interface componants merely because of the overall physical dimentions of the box (I realize someone pointed out thet they could have gone with a 10" screen where they went with 8" here, but as a general rule, this is valid I think).
So, I ask, 'How Small is Too Small?"
There comes a point where the shrinking size of these devices will make them unusable. Alternative user interface technologies like Retinal Scanning Displays and Optical Response Pointing Devices will come of age not because the technology has matured, but because we simply can't efficiently use treditional laptops that are any smaller then they actually are.
You're right. My point has nothing to do with XML. It has to do with the general architectural goals of Instant Messaging systems. While web content is not intended to be real-time, and as duch, it is not a major incumberence to be told to go and get a client plugin of some kind to view content, it would be a major incumberence to the realtime nature of the system if dis-similar clients with dis-similar capabilities were used on the same IM service, for example, if I send a message to my buddy who uses a lesser IM client, and he is notified to updata a particular plugin in order to view currently incoming content, he is far less likely to take immediate action, then if my message to him imediately is displayed without issue. My point is, the minimum standards clients must adhere to would have to be far more stringent than the minimum requirements for something like a web browser.
I was really annoyed when AOL started sending me CDs rather than floppies because I can't use the CDs for anything but coasters, and now I have plenty of coasters.
Why can't they start sending me CD-RWs, at least I could use those. Especially now, since I'll actually have to pay for them. AOL-Time/Warner should consider it a PR expense. Most of the people who gripe about AOL would stop complaining if AOL was supplying them with CD-RWs.
And now in these harsh economic times when the price of CR-Rs is going through the roof... (I'll have to check my couch for lost change).
Daniel,
Man, if your management thinks the way you do on this issue, more power to ya, I just doubt the gaming industry as a whole has as progressive a view on this issue as you seem to.
I see a number of ossies with open standards for IM. I'm all for them, but the same issues that occur for the web will occur in the IM arena. That is:
Users' chat capabilities will be dictated by the client they use.
The common method for making Open Standards profitable, is to develop proprietary extentions and enhancements to that standard (which make it no longer standards complient, as it was intended)
IM is not like the web. you can not expect to vive away a client then make money on selling a server with enhancements. The real-time nature of IM serves to magnify the problem that the web has always encountered, relating to the capabilities of the browser with respect to the server, or the content being served. On the web, you'll occasionally see pages that indicate they require special featured of IE or NS6 or what have you. If I recieved an IM message, intended for my viewing in real-time, and instead of being able to view it, I was instructed to get a newer IM client with more capabilities, this would not only srve to agrivate me, it would also serve to completely destroy the valie of an Instant Messaging system, because the content was not delivered in realtime as is the goal of IM.
On the web, this is a minor annoyance, because vary little content is intended for realtime viewing (with the exception of some streaming audio/video content, etc.), but inthe IM arena this would be a serious problem.
So, here's my question. Where's the revenue stream? Is it in systems integration? It's certainly not in server sales alone. It might be in the provision of the service as a whole, but I don't see anyone getting away with charging a per-message fee at this point.
The only viable business model I can see is in integration, "We will integrate our IM system with your home automation system, or the hospital's heart monitors" or whatever. I can see possibly selling 'conduits' connecting existing email infastructures, paging systems, and monitoring solutions with a freely provided OSS IM solution, but that's kind of a streach.
Don't get me wrong. OSS IM solutions are great, but I'm not sure I see where the revenue streams are going to be coming from.
I agree, any specialized system is going to be cheaper to manufacture, and easier to operate. Between, on one end, Game consoles - with their ease of use, cost & performance benefits - and Linux, sits Windows. This is why you don't see game designers writing games for consoles, then Linux, then windows. Because their customer base follows the usage pattern Consoles, Windows, Linux - in that order. --
Open source is beginning to take on characteristics of the commercial software industry, which is good, because OSS and commercial ventures must not be mutually sxclusive ideas, in order for OSS to maintain it's momentum. There simply isn't a large enough market for SPARC Linux distributions.
People will rant against commercial software, and promote open source, but in fact the two are coming together in ways that no-one ever imagined. OSS promotes a sort of social order and behavioral dynamic which promotes growth and inovation, (ragardless of what Microsoft might say about it), but OSS also seems to actually benefit from market forces relating to the 'retirement' of un-popular or niche products. Don't get me wrong - Linux support for SPARC, is a great thing, for those of us who use it, but we are few and far between. As a percentage of the Linux user community, we will account for less and less as the comunity grows, and PC hardware continues be converted to commodity status, becoming cheaper and cheaper, while SUN hardware remains proprietary, and achieves market penetration only in high end applications.
Open Source is benefiting (as a whole) from commercial market forces which microsoft seems to believe only exist in the treditional software market.
That said, I'm sad to see support for SPARC dwindling, although this is the great thing about OSS, if you want it, it's there for your use, and if you want to establish a support community for it, you are free to do so.
Support of comonly used APIs will contribute to linux native ports of popular games, WineX and other emulation solutions are a step in the right direction.
Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of any development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaminga is a great contribution twards this goal. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.
As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.
This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others
The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change.
This is nothing new. Regardless of weather the memo is fake or legitimate, the article underscores the evolution of Microsoft's known corporate software policies.
Windows 3.1 was provided as an add-on PC productivity tool. Windows 95 was introduced as the primary PC productivity enviroment. Windowd 98 and ME were the frst steps in OS based network integration of the consumer PC.
Windows 3.1 cane with a few weak core apps and depended on 3rd parties for additional apps and services. With the advent on windows95, Bill realized that desktop realestate was a comodity to be sold and bartered with. Windows 98 and ME allowed for network integration which drematically increased the salable realestate using activeDesktop.
Windoes XP gives Microsoft the opportunity to sell internet based 'realestate' which is of course infinately more expansive. If, however a service is available locally, users are far less likely to make use of a remotely hosted or ASP based service (or the.NET services). While it was at one point in Microsoft's interest to sell off desktop realestate, they have now discovered that if they prevent the sale of that realestate, they can sell other realestate much larger, although slightly further away (ASP based services).
Again, this is nothing new. Microsoft realized that it is more profitable to sell extensive resources to users, than it is to sell pieces of a limited resource to vendors.
There are two types of movement which inspire 'retro' movements in their honor. First, movements posessing a certain stylistic characteristic, such as clothing - where styles come into fashion and go out of fashion every two decades or so. Second, there are those movements that come and go as part of a greater trend, such as we see here in technology.
It takes a true inovator to devise a method to leverage a pre-existing product set and customer base in a new way, by adding a relitively small piece of new technology, allowing users to utilize the existing products in an entirely new way.
I remember the old days when it was un-heard-of to put an email address on a business card. That was back when the most pretentious thing you could do was wear an ivy league college tie. Needing a more arogant thing to do, I guess now ivy league grads can put their ivy league email address on their business card.
Just wait. Some resourceful student at havard, MIT or Princeton will setup their own host 'alumni.mit.edu' or whatever similar hostname isn't already in use, and sell addresses to those of us who wish we had attended institution X.
Never mind the obvious, that it'd be illegal to sell university bandwidth, as a stdent there, you could pay your way through school selling addresses.
But in all seriousness, it's nise to see that there's yet another opportunity for pretentiousness and college snobbery made possible through the wonders if the internet
I've been reading on/. and other places, the many complaints people have about copanies like RedHat, Ximian, and Esel subverting OpenSource software, splintering code and other such things
I personally had my doubts about the validity of these complaints but it's good to see some positive work being done by Redhat in the area of OpenSource advocacy.
I'm a big fan of enlightened self-interest. I'd like to see more companies follow the spirit of the law (or in this case, the license) but I can't fault them for following it to the letter instead. As far as I can tell, Apple has done nothing wrong, or illegal. I'm a big fan of open-source. It ads tremendous amounts of value to computing platforms around the world and if companies keep their wits about them, they can benefit as much as the users from the resources made available through open-source. since the OSS initiative is really community driven, these companies need to become community-minded in order to avoid incurring the wrath of others within the community. This is simple neighborhood politics. - Keep your yard clean and tidy, do not take your neighbor's newspaper in the morning, do not piss in the neighborhood pool. This is basic stuff.
Companies work in the interests of their shareholders, from which they have taken money - why can't this principle work for the open source community from which they take resources; because there isn't an SEC type organization breathing down their neck?
Having said this, the referenced article was heady on rhetoric and light on fact. It's be vary interesting to see a more balanced article exploring this issue. as anyone put together, for example a list of the most OSS-friendly companies? (exclusing those that were built entirely on OSS, of course).
I agree. Escrow is suitable only for proprietary applications. You can't require a company to escrow a piece of software they themselves are licensing.
The solution instead is to provide a type of business operations insurance. This would be comprised of the type of contract provisions discussed in the referenced article, as well as perhaps a real teeditional insurance policy paid for as part of the ASP contract, which would pay in the event of loss of business related to discontinuation of operations by your ASP. I realize you'd be hard pressed to find an insurer who would be willing to write such a policy. Perhaps LLoyds of London...
The other possibility is, of course, to distribute and replicate your ASP usage, among several competitors, which has the obvious downside of reducing the marginal returns recieved by using an ASP to begin with. Based on that though, it seems that the entire ASP business model is flawed, or there are simply insurmountable obstacles to ASP market entry, in that, there would be a requirement for any ASP to be deemed viable; that it have cash reserves or some kind of endowment established for the purpose of providing a buffer in the event of discontinuation of operations. This endowment would be held in trust, available to be spent only in the event that the company chooses to discontinue operations (of course no one in their right mind would setup a company in this way). The ASP could then creadibly make the statement "We Garentee that our customers will recieve at least a one year notice in the event that we choose to diccontinue operations". The company would then, in effect, be self-insured. At the moment, one of the only companies I can think of that could agfford to do this is Microsoft, in their.NET initiatives.
I relize these are all relitively outlandish ideas, but I wantedto throw them out there. Maybe someone can put some meaningful business logic around them.
Sony, as well as many other vendors (including Handspring, which is composed of disgruntled Palm Computing hardware engineers)have in recent months, proven that Palm Computing's business model will in fact work.
IN a press release around the time of their spinn off prom 3Com, Palm said 'We want to become the Mocrosoft oh handheld devices'. Now that may have a vary different meaninf for this audience, than what they intended, however, they seem to be well on their way to achieving their goal of being THE OS vendor for handheld devices. There was some debate when they made this announcement as to weather they could viably continue to build and support the palm line of handheld hardware devices as well as license their OS to 3rd party vendors. So far, the popularity of their os is not in question. Weather they can derive enough revenue from licensing the OS alone, is.
The introduction of this new high quality Sony device, as well as the offerings from other hardware vendors are now driving an increased rate of adoption of the OS. Palm is well on it's way to a successful and profitable future.
Slashdot Mirror
That was the argument I got from our business teams. I'm sure there were a few lawyers among them because you're right. It definately is a lawyer argument...
You're right. I don't know of a software company gettig sued in that context either, but in the telecom industry, when a phone switch goes down, the FCC gets upset, imposes fines on the owner of the switch, then the owner of the switch gets upset and the switch vendor incurs financial penalties for the system's failure to operate. The switch vendor then seeks to place blame on the componant vendors.
--
It has been my experience that most enterprise enviroments seem to gravitate tward comercially supported distributions (ie: redhat, with a specific single company behind it), primarily because there is a liabiility issue with doing otherwise. "If something goes wrong, who are you going to sue?". This was the argument I got when I was told the company I work for would deploy only Redhat Linux (ie the distribution).
I wonder if HPs choice here will affect what is deployed into enterprise enviroments...?
--CTH
--
I once had a vary forward thinking economics professor who, gave me the assignment of calculating valuations of certain options contracts. I turned in the work and (honestly) included the URLs to three options valuation calculators I had found on the web. He actually found this to be acceptable because in his view, the goal (in the non-academic arena anyway) is to get correct answer, not to prove that you can trudge through laborious equasions. - note that this was about 6 years ago.
--
--CTH
--
Maybe I missed something. I don't know how performing a pattern match on Term Papers in order to identify cheaters relates to the "community of trust"i>
--CTH
--
Unions are not yet appropriate for the IT industry. Eventally they will be though. As the industry grows, the work will not require less skilled personel, but the skills will become more readily available. As this happens over time a union may serve to benefit te workers for than it might today.
Every industry seems to go through this cycle. An industry like the computer industry gets a tremendous boost by, say, the introduction of the PC, and a half a decade goes by without there being an academic curiculum available to churn out reasonably qualified people, then as soon as that curiculum is in place, companies feel that they have a never ending supply of grist for the mill. The same is true for the rapid growth of the internet. With the advent of an easy interface to information (the web), growth is spurred, and qualified people are difficult to find. The academic community lags about half a decade behind, but as soon as a curiculim is developed - and I saw a TV ad for a trade school advertising "become a certified webmaster" yesterday, so the time may be nearer than I'm suggesting - companies feel there is a never ending supply of talent out there.
That would be the point at which a union might be useful (once this corporate belief that IT is a comodity job, becomes prevelent). After the work becomes commodity work, for which there are many (supposidly) qualified people. Today, however, the job market is still good enough as to allow the qualified IT employee to seek out good companies and negotiate good terms of employment (with regard to required overtime and such).
As an entity for collective bargaining, the need for IT unions has not yet materialized, although I'd expect that in the next 5 years or so the need will arise. For that reason it may be valiable for a few unions to begin gathering steam, although the vast majority (the referenced poll from the article not withstanding) of IT workers will not feel the need to join. As a collective bargaining entity they just aren't needed yet.
--CTH
--
When you sit back and think about it, it's quite an astonishing acomplishment for one person. The OS itself has some interesting design features, but just the factthat it got designed and created at all (by one person) is quite amazing
Great work Kurt.
--CTH
--
yah, I've got to admit, those Amray DVD cases are pretty nice... and useful.
--
Words will become pasee as used in common language but this book and other like it present the history behind the work, the concepts that contributed to the modern definition and usage, as well as the technology that was the base requirement for the initial use of the word. It's always interesting to evaluate history with a fresh perspective.
--CTH
--
There gets to be a point where laptops become too small to be usable. In the early days on laptops, when this issue came up because regardless of the physical dimentions of the laptop, the keyboards were shrinking, and the displays were routinely only 60% of the size of the laptop lid. At this point there was a lot of overhead for various system componants which have now been shrunk down to miniscule sizes.
Now, instead of getting small keyboards because of the mechanicas of keyboards, or small displays becauce of the technology of displays, the only barier is the overall physical dimensions of the devices. We're getting smaller and smaller user interface componants merely because of the overall physical dimentions of the box (I realize someone pointed out thet they could have gone with a 10" screen where they went with 8" here, but as a general rule, this is valid I think).
So, I ask, 'How Small is Too Small?"
There comes a point where the shrinking size of these devices will make them unusable. Alternative user interface technologies like Retinal Scanning Displays and Optical Response Pointing Devices will come of age not because the technology has matured, but because we simply can't efficiently use treditional laptops that are any smaller then they actually are.
--CTH
--
You're right. My point has nothing to do with XML. It has to do with the general architectural goals of Instant Messaging systems. While web content is not intended to be real-time, and as duch, it is not a major incumberence to be told to go and get a client plugin of some kind to view content, it would be a major incumberence to the realtime nature of the system if dis-similar clients with dis-similar capabilities were used on the same IM service, for example, if I send a message to my buddy who uses a lesser IM client, and he is notified to updata a particular plugin in order to view currently incoming content, he is far less likely to take immediate action, then if my message to him imediately is displayed without issue. My point is, the minimum standards clients must adhere to would have to be far more stringent than the minimum requirements for something like a web browser.
--CTH
--
I was really annoyed when AOL started sending me CDs rather than floppies because I can't use the CDs for anything but coasters, and now I have plenty of coasters.
Why can't they start sending me CD-RWs, at least I could use those. Especially now, since I'll actually have to pay for them. AOL-Time/Warner should consider it a PR expense. Most of the people who gripe about AOL would stop complaining if AOL was supplying them with CD-RWs.
And now in these harsh economic times when the price of CR-Rs is going through the roof... (I'll have to check my couch for lost change).
--CTH
--
Daniel, Man, if your management thinks the way you do on this issue, more power to ya, I just doubt the gaming industry as a whole has as progressive a view on this issue as you seem to.
--CTH
--
- Users' chat capabilities will be dictated by the client they use.
- The common method for making Open Standards profitable, is to develop proprietary extentions and enhancements to that standard (which make it no longer standards complient, as it was intended)
IM is not like the web. you can not expect to vive away a client then make money on selling a server with enhancements. The real-time nature of IM serves to magnify the problem that the web has always encountered, relating to the capabilities of the browser with respect to the server, or the content being served. On the web, you'll occasionally see pages that indicate they require special featured of IE or NS6 or what have you. If I recieved an IM message, intended for my viewing in real-time, and instead of being able to view it, I was instructed to get a newer IM client with more capabilities, this would not only srve to agrivate me, it would also serve to completely destroy the valie of an Instant Messaging system, because the content was not delivered in realtime as is the goal of IM.On the web, this is a minor annoyance, because vary little content is intended for realtime viewing (with the exception of some streaming audio/video content, etc.), but inthe IM arena this would be a serious problem.
So, here's my question. Where's the revenue stream? Is it in systems integration? It's certainly not in server sales alone. It might be in the provision of the service as a whole, but I don't see anyone getting away with charging a per-message fee at this point.
The only viable business model I can see is in integration, "We will integrate our IM system with your home automation system, or the hospital's heart monitors" or whatever. I can see possibly selling 'conduits' connecting existing email infastructures, paging systems, and monitoring solutions with a freely provided OSS IM solution, but that's kind of a streach.
Don't get me wrong. OSS IM solutions are great, but I'm not sure I see where the revenue streams are going to be coming from.
--CTH
--
This is the most comprehensive site I've found for deep bakground on Carbon Nanotubes: http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html
--CTH
--
I agree, any specialized system is going to be cheaper to manufacture, and easier to operate. Between, on one end, Game consoles - with their ease of use, cost & performance benefits - and Linux, sits Windows. This is why you don't see game designers writing games for consoles, then Linux, then windows. Because their customer base follows the usage pattern Consoles, Windows, Linux - in that order.
--
Open source is beginning to take on characteristics of the commercial software industry, which is good, because OSS and commercial ventures must not be mutually sxclusive ideas, in order for OSS to maintain it's momentum. There simply isn't a large enough market for SPARC Linux distributions.
People will rant against commercial software, and promote open source, but in fact the two are coming together in ways that no-one ever imagined. OSS promotes a sort of social order and behavioral dynamic which promotes growth and inovation, (ragardless of what Microsoft might say about it), but OSS also seems to actually benefit from market forces relating to the 'retirement' of un-popular or niche products. Don't get me wrong - Linux support for SPARC, is a great thing, for those of us who use it, but we are few and far between. As a percentage of the Linux user community, we will account for less and less as the comunity grows, and PC hardware continues be converted to commodity status, becoming cheaper and cheaper, while SUN hardware remains proprietary, and achieves market penetration only in high end applications.
Open Source is benefiting (as a whole) from commercial market forces which microsoft seems to believe only exist in the treditional software market.
That said, I'm sad to see support for SPARC dwindling, although this is the great thing about OSS, if you want it, it's there for your use, and if you want to establish a support community for it, you are free to do so.
--CTH
--
Support of comonly used APIs will contribute to linux native ports of popular games, WineX and other emulation solutions are a step in the right direction.
Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of any development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaminga is a great contribution twards this goal. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.
As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.
This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others
The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change.
--CTH
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This is nothing new. Regardless of weather the memo is fake or legitimate, the article underscores the evolution of Microsoft's known corporate software policies.
.NET services). While it was at one point in Microsoft's interest to sell off desktop realestate, they have now discovered that if they prevent the sale of that realestate, they can sell other realestate much larger, although slightly further away (ASP based services).
Windows 3.1 was provided as an add-on PC productivity tool. Windows 95 was introduced as the primary PC productivity enviroment. Windowd 98 and ME were the frst steps in OS based network integration of the consumer PC.
Windows 3.1 cane with a few weak core apps and depended on 3rd parties for additional apps and services. With the advent on windows95, Bill realized that desktop realestate was a comodity to be sold and bartered with. Windows 98 and ME allowed for network integration which drematically increased the salable realestate using activeDesktop.
Windoes XP gives Microsoft the opportunity to sell internet based 'realestate' which is of course infinately more expansive. If, however a service is available locally, users are far less likely to make use of a remotely hosted or ASP based service (or the
Again, this is nothing new. Microsoft realized that it is more profitable to sell extensive resources to users, than it is to sell pieces of a limited resource to vendors.
--CTH
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There are two types of movement which inspire 'retro' movements in their honor. First, movements posessing a certain stylistic characteristic, such as clothing - where styles come into fashion and go out of fashion every two decades or so. Second, there are those movements that come and go as part of a greater trend, such as we see here in technology.
It takes a true inovator to devise a method to leverage a pre-existing product set and customer base in a new way, by adding a relitively small piece of new technology, allowing users to utilize the existing products in an entirely new way.
--CTH
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I remember the old days when it was un-heard-of to put an email address on a business card. That was back when the most pretentious thing you could do was wear an ivy league college tie. Needing a more arogant thing to do, I guess now ivy league grads can put their ivy league email address on their business card. Just wait. Some resourceful student at havard, MIT or Princeton will setup their own host 'alumni.mit.edu' or whatever similar hostname isn't already in use, and sell addresses to those of us who wish we had attended institution X.
Never mind the obvious, that it'd be illegal to sell university bandwidth, as a stdent there, you could pay your way through school selling addresses.
But in all seriousness, it's nise to see that there's yet another opportunity for pretentiousness and college snobbery made possible through the wonders if the internet
--CTH
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I've been reading on /. and other places, the many complaints people have about copanies like RedHat, Ximian, and Esel subverting OpenSource software, splintering code and other such things
I personally had my doubts about the validity of these complaints but it's good to see some positive work being done by Redhat in the area of OpenSource advocacy.
--CTH
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I'm a big fan of enlightened self-interest. I'd like to see more companies follow the spirit of the law (or in this case, the license) but I can't fault them for following it to the letter instead. As far as I can tell, Apple has done nothing wrong, or illegal. I'm a big fan of open-source. It ads tremendous amounts of value to computing platforms around the world and if companies keep their wits about them, they can benefit as much as the users from the resources made available through open-source. since the OSS initiative is really community driven, these companies need to become community-minded in order to avoid incurring the wrath of others within the community. This is simple neighborhood politics. - Keep your yard clean and tidy, do not take your neighbor's newspaper in the morning, do not piss in the neighborhood pool. This is basic stuff.
Companies work in the interests of their shareholders, from which they have taken money - why can't this principle work for the open source community from which they take resources; because there isn't an SEC type organization breathing down their neck?
Having said this, the referenced article was heady on rhetoric and light on fact. It's be vary interesting to see a more balanced article exploring this issue. as anyone put together, for example a list of the most OSS-friendly companies? (exclusing those that were built entirely on OSS, of course).
--CTH
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I agree. Escrow is suitable only for proprietary applications. You can't require a company to escrow a piece of software they themselves are licensing.
.NET initiatives.
The solution instead is to provide a type of business operations insurance. This would be comprised of the type of contract provisions discussed in the referenced article, as well as perhaps a real teeditional insurance policy paid for as part of the ASP contract, which would pay in the event of loss of business related to discontinuation of operations by your ASP. I realize you'd be hard pressed to find an insurer who would be willing to write such a policy. Perhaps LLoyds of London...
The other possibility is, of course, to distribute and replicate your ASP usage, among several competitors, which has the obvious downside of reducing the marginal returns recieved by using an ASP to begin with. Based on that though, it seems that the entire ASP business model is flawed, or there are simply insurmountable obstacles to ASP market entry, in that, there would be a requirement for any ASP to be deemed viable; that it have cash reserves or some kind of endowment established for the purpose of providing a buffer in the event of discontinuation of operations. This endowment would be held in trust, available to be spent only in the event that the company chooses to discontinue operations (of course no one in their right mind would setup a company in this way). The ASP could then creadibly make the statement "We Garentee that our customers will recieve at least a one year notice in the event that we choose to diccontinue operations". The company would then, in effect, be self-insured. At the moment, one of the only companies I can think of that could agfford to do this is Microsoft, in their
I relize these are all relitively outlandish ideas, but I wantedto throw them out there. Maybe someone can put some meaningful business logic around them.
--CTH
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Sony, as well as many other vendors (including Handspring, which is composed of disgruntled Palm Computing hardware engineers)have in recent months, proven that Palm Computing's business model will in fact work.
IN a press release around the time of their spinn off prom 3Com, Palm said 'We want to become the Mocrosoft oh handheld devices'. Now that may have a vary different meaninf for this audience, than what they intended, however, they seem to be well on their way to achieving their goal of being THE OS vendor for handheld devices. There was some debate when they made this announcement as to weather they could viably continue to build and support the palm line of handheld hardware devices as well as license their OS to 3rd party vendors. So far, the popularity of their os is not in question. Weather they can derive enough revenue from licensing the OS alone, is.
The introduction of this new high quality Sony device, as well as the offerings from other hardware vendors are now driving an increased rate of adoption of the OS. Palm is well on it's way to a successful and profitable future.
--CTH
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