There is no deadline so there is plenty of time to focus on usability.
It took Mozilla five years to reach a usable product. Opera did it in two. There is a certain advantage to customer facing commercial software. At the very least it plugs a market demand until the software becomes a commodity. It also blazes a trail so that commodity software like Open Source can do it right.
Sadly I don't see many closed source projects that have very good usability so that reasoning evidently doesn't work out very well.
Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, RealPlayerOne, MSAccess, Quicktime (Sorenson), and iTunes are all examples of commercial products that people pay money for, and would like to have ported to Linux. While Open Source alternatives exist for some of them, they are either comparatively immature or have certain legal encumbrances that prevent them from being introduced into a commercial distro.
I get much quicker times on support from most opensource.
How long did GNOME 2.0 go without a way to add or remove menu items via the GUI? 2.0-2.4, that's how long. Open Source addresses things faster if it's in their interest or meets their ideals. That's not a criticism, but a fact of how it works. Money talks, and the potential loss of a support contract will often make software houses bust their butts to solve problems and add features that would normally be considered "boring".
Open Source seems to be ok with closed source software.
Then why can't I get a Linux kernel driver that isn't kernel version specific? Or software binaries that don't require me to fight with the version of GLIBC I have? Or a software packaging method that doesn't require me to chase down 5000+ dependencies just to install a video player?
Open Source doesn't like the idea of commercial anything, and commercial anything often fears shrinking profits and lost business opportunities. However, the two sides of the coin can accomplish more by working together. Where would the Internet be today if the original TCP/IP stack hadn't been under the BSD license?
I'm certainly not arguing that PostGreSQL is a poor database. I use it myself and love it. But everything that I named (scalability, performance, corporate support) all offer certain advantages in many corporate situations. PostGreSQL evens the playing field by allowing small competitors to have many of the same capabilities but without the same scale.
I find your example of Oracle/Apache quite funny, being Oracle comes with two Apache products, httpd and tomcat.
It actually makes my point more than anything. The fact that Oracle supports and ships these open source products along with their commercial products shows that the two can and should work together. Take the best from both worlds instead of fighting to have one community with all the power.
because they're different and opposite in philosophy
Says you and Stallman. The Apache people seem to think otherwise. And I'd say that they've done an exceedingly good job of making their point. As have the Mozilla people.
Stallman's philosophy is that every piece of software in existence should be free. That raises the question of who's going to pay for all the R&D, usability studies, artwork, customer support, etc? In Apache's case, a large number of interested corporations and individuals have helped foot the bill for a greater cause. Same for the Mozilla project, save that Netscape/AOL ate a large portion of the bill. RedHat, SuSE, and other commercial entities continually help foot the bill for GNOME, KDE, the kernel, dev tools, and other desktop development.
And yet, SuSE (wisely) held onto YaST and SAX long enough to give themselves an edge over the competition. If it was open source to begin with, what would SuSE's advantage have been?
The ideas are not mutually exclusive. Only the desire to not work together makes them mutually exclusive.
I have a question. Why should Open Source software and closed source software be at each other's throats? Shouldn't the two be cooperating more than fighting? Here's the advantages I see to each of them:
Open Source
Spreads the cost of software across a large number of parties
Encourages interoperability and standards support
Prevents the wheel from being reinvented every day
Commercial/Closed Source
More time focus on usability
Quick response to critical issues
More resources to throw at high quality software
These advantages are not mutually exclusive. Thus I might use Apache as my webserver because of its tremendous standards compliance and support, while I'll use Oracle for its scalability, performance, and corporate support. Instead of deciding that everything should be open or closed, let's focus on making things open when it makes sense, and supporting things that are closed when it makes sense.
Plutonium 238 goes for about $1000.00 a gram. I'm not paying $10,000.00 for my cellphone battery.
I don't know of anyone who would. At least not up front. Obviously, one could count on Pu getting cheaper as more market demand appears. (After all, we've got a ton or two of the stuff just sitting around in pools, heating water.) But what can be done about the current prices?
The answer lies in leasing the batteries instead of selling them outright. For one, this means you'll get your materials back (very important!). For another, it means that you can spread the cost over time.
Pu-238 has a half life of about 87 years. Let's assume that gives us a battery lifetime of 40 years. Well, the cost would then work out to a lease price of $250 per year. Definitely on the expensive side, but not out of the ballpark. (Especially for executives who can never carry around enough spare batteries.)
The real trick comes in at the end of the battery's lifetime. Our 40 year old battery will still have 75% of its plutonium intact. That means that we can reprocess it and add a mere 2.5 grams of new plutonium. That means that the price of our new battery has now dropped to a mere $2,500 or $62.50 per year! Combined with the fact that prices WILL drop as more plutonium is added to the market, Pu-238 batteries could be a winning long-term proposition.
As I said, it's really only dangerous if inhaled. Potentially, you could ingest some, but the reality is that your body usually passes it through without damage. (Of course, Nader has a very different opinion.)
Many other materials we use are dangerous as well. Lead us prevalent throughout our culture, uranium is used to make false teeth whiter and brighter, many of the materials your computer is constructed of are carcinogens, batteries are highly toxic, etc. It's simply a matter of doing one's best to protect the consumer against himself. PU-238 melted into a lead block isn't likely to cause much damage.
The primary reason that they are so large is to shield against unprotected reentry from orbit. The actual thermocouples are quite small and have been implanted in everything from pacemakers to electronic ocean buoys. They're also very cheap to come by.
The who thing could be miniaturized more by using a tiny SRG (Stirling Radioisotope Generator). You see, instead of a thermocouple, an SRG is a tiny Stirling engine. The PU-238 heats the air inside the piston, the piston rise until an exhaust port is reached, the heat is exchanged through the exhaust port, and the piston falls. The whole assembly could easily be small enough to fit inside a cell phone battery or a laptop battery. My figures show that about 10 grams should be more than enough to power your cell phone. (~1.3 W).
I hate to spoil a joke, but I'm going to use this opportunity to inject some radiation education:
1. Pu-238 is an Alpha Emitter. 2. Alpha particles can't penetrate your skin (or even a sheet of paper) and are only dangerous if they are inhaled. 3. From the EPA: "The isotope, plutonium-238, is not useful for nuclear weapons. However it generates significant heat through its decay process, which make it useful as a power source. Using a thermocouple, a device that converts heat into electric power, satellites rely on plutonium as a power source. Tiny amounts also provide power to heart pacemakers."
But plutonium! Oh my! But remember to make a deposit at the sperm bank in case you want to have kids in the future.
Pu-238 is an Alpha Emitter. Since Alpha particles can't even penetrate a sheet of paper, all the radiation would be converted into heat. That heat would then power a small Stirling engine which would turn a dynamo. If anyone's interested, I could post a simple diagram I did of the design.
How about instead of making better batteries, we make it so the electronics don't use as much electricity?
That's the approach that Apple takes. Their iBook line gets ~4 hours on a single charge. The problem is that they're bumping up against the lower limits of power consumption while still offering reasonable performance. If you want lower power consumption, you're going to have to give something up. That something is screen size, processor speed, hard disk, and memory.
Personally, I'd like a little Pu-238 to power my laptop with. I figure that about 600 grams would power my laptop nonstop for ~40 years.
The tour guide pointed out the limited weaponry and the aluminum superstructure, then enumerated the extensive electronic detection gear, concluding: "that means she can't fight worth a damn, but we'll know exactly who's blowing us out of the water!"
Your story is BS. The US Navy has an Alliance Support contract with Microsoft
Since when? I did receive a call from a lady purporting to be an officer of the US Navy. This leaves three possibilities:
1. No such support contract yet existed. 2. She was not a staff member who knew how to obtain that support (she was working on a day off, remember). 3. She simply wasn't who she said she was.
Even if they didn't have the support agreement, anyone can call MS 24x7 and speak to a support engineer.
In the end, that was more or less what I recommended she do. My guess is simply that she was inexperienced with NT systems and didn't know who to call. It had seemed odd to me that she hadn't at least tried Microsoft support, but she probably assumed they'd be closed.
I certainly can't prove it happened, but I can tell you everything I remember. If you don't believe me, well... *shrug*
I remember getting an interesting tech support call back in 1998. A naval officer was attempting to get Windows NT Server running and was wondering if we could help. (We were business support and her husband worked for our business.) Apparently all of her regular outlets for support were shut down for the weekend (or maybe it was a holiday, I don't remember) and she needed to get the computers running on time for the deadline. We didn't support NT Server, so I really couldn't help her.
When I passed the story on to coworkers, they didn't entirely believe me. After all, why would the Military use NT computers for mission critical applications? Then about a month later, the story of the USS Blueridge hit the presses. I was vindicated!:-) Too bad the Blueridge didn't fail. It might have given the Admirals the idea that NT computers were a bad idea for naval warfare. Instead they had to go and refit an entire ship (the Yorktown) that later had to be towed back to port.
With any luck, they've learned enough that the USS Ronald Regan won't be suffering systems failures anytime soon.
the HMS bork bork bork is a joke... actually all naval vessles made in the last 60 years are a joke compared to the real battleships of WW-II.
That's because they don't need to go in for close combat. Firing massive shells is a relic of the days when naval wars were fought with cannons. These days a carrier would strike your battleship from over 100 miles out and sink her without a single useful shot fired by the battleship. Not to mention that armor is relatively ineffective against many modern weapons that are designed to pierce armor. Thus naval warfare focuses on a different set of abilities:
1. Ability to launch a strike from great distances. 2. Speed to quickly enter and exit a theater of operations (U.S.S Enterprise [CVN-65] did 32 knots, non-stop, around the world!) 3. Stealth to sneak up on a ship without getting blasted from a hundred miles away. (Subs still rule this area.) 4. Screening ships and weapons to shoot down incoming planes. 5. Survivability via ability to float despite massive internal damage. 6. G.I. proofing so that no one accidentally blows up the ship from the inside. (Don't laugh, this happened several times in WWII.)
The truth however, is that any major conflict would probably see a total loss of all seagoing vessels. They'd simply start lobbing nukes at one another until they are all destroyed or capsized.
Other than that, I don't know. I think it's a cremonial thing only. Probably has a great story behind it that I never heard.
Here's what I found on the subject. Sadly, it seems that most of the lore behind the sponsor is lost in time.
My old boat was last seen at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard waiting for her turn to go into the death dock and be cut up for scrap. Thanks draft dodger Bill "the blazing zipper" Clinton.
Aye. Here she is in '97. I assume she's been long turned to scrap.
I have to say that it was painful to see how much our ships had deteriorated after Clinton. Not only that, but how much public awareness had dropped. When CNN did an expose on our carriers, my coworkers were amazed at how truly large and powerful the vessels were. I could only bring myself to comment that it was good to see them used again instead of rotting somewhere at sea.
Bush has had a hard time revitalizing our military, but he is actually doing it. If he ever figures out how to convey integrity (and goes and fixes the damn prison situation; treat them like OFFICERS dammit!) he'll be remembered as a fine president.
BTW, you may already know about it, but this list may be of use to you.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no deadline so there is plenty of time to focus on usability.
It took Mozilla five years to reach a usable product. Opera did it in two. There is a certain advantage to customer facing commercial software. At the very least it plugs a market demand until the software becomes a commodity. It also blazes a trail so that commodity software like Open Source can do it right.
Sadly I don't see many closed source projects that have very good usability so that reasoning evidently doesn't work out very well.
Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, RealPlayerOne, MSAccess, Quicktime (Sorenson), and iTunes are all examples of commercial products that people pay money for, and would like to have ported to Linux. While Open Source alternatives exist for some of them, they are either comparatively immature or have certain legal encumbrances that prevent them from being introduced into a commercial distro.
I get much quicker times on support from most opensource.
How long did GNOME 2.0 go without a way to add or remove menu items via the GUI? 2.0-2.4, that's how long. Open Source addresses things faster if it's in their interest or meets their ideals. That's not a criticism, but a fact of how it works. Money talks, and the potential loss of a support contract will often make software houses bust their butts to solve problems and add features that would normally be considered "boring".
Open Source seems to be ok with closed source software.
Then why can't I get a Linux kernel driver that isn't kernel version specific? Or software binaries that don't require me to fight with the version of GLIBC I have? Or a software packaging method that doesn't require me to chase down 5000+ dependencies just to install a video player?
Open Source doesn't like the idea of commercial anything, and commercial anything often fears shrinking profits and lost business opportunities. However, the two sides of the coin can accomplish more by working together. Where would the Internet be today if the original TCP/IP stack hadn't been under the BSD license?
I'm certainly not arguing that PostGreSQL is a poor database. I use it myself and love it. But everything that I named (scalability, performance, corporate support) all offer certain advantages in many corporate situations. PostGreSQL evens the playing field by allowing small competitors to have many of the same capabilities but without the same scale.
I find your example of Oracle/Apache quite funny, being Oracle comes with two Apache products, httpd and tomcat.
It actually makes my point more than anything. The fact that Oracle supports and ships these open source products along with their commercial products shows that the two can and should work together. Take the best from both worlds instead of fighting to have one community with all the power.
because they're different and opposite in philosophy
Says you and Stallman. The Apache people seem to think otherwise. And I'd say that they've done an exceedingly good job of making their point. As have the Mozilla people.
Stallman's philosophy is that every piece of software in existence should be free. That raises the question of who's going to pay for all the R&D, usability studies, artwork, customer support, etc? In Apache's case, a large number of interested corporations and individuals have helped foot the bill for a greater cause. Same for the Mozilla project, save that Netscape/AOL ate a large portion of the bill. RedHat, SuSE, and other commercial entities continually help foot the bill for GNOME, KDE, the kernel, dev tools, and other desktop development.
And yet, SuSE (wisely) held onto YaST and SAX long enough to give themselves an edge over the competition. If it was open source to begin with, what would SuSE's advantage have been?
The ideas are not mutually exclusive. Only the desire to not work together makes them mutually exclusive.
Open Source
Commercial/Closed Source
These advantages are not mutually exclusive. Thus I might use Apache as my webserver because of its tremendous standards compliance and support, while I'll use Oracle for its scalability, performance, and corporate support. Instead of deciding that everything should be open or closed, let's focus on making things open when it makes sense, and supporting things that are closed when it makes sense.
But you probably haven't heard the news ? There will be no more official glibc release.
/. posts]
[Post censored by the committee for clean language in
In fact, we get more pain from Linux distributions, who work at break neck speed to break Wine.
And all other software too. Am I the only one who's getting tired of trying to play matchup with GLIBC versions?
Well, I do have a review in my journal. It's the free download version tho.
IIRC, states get Federal funding for road projects. As a result, even the poorest state tends to keep their road construction budget quite high.
Of course, this only applies to the US.
Plutonium 238 goes for about $1000.00 a gram. I'm not paying $10,000.00 for my cellphone battery.
I don't know of anyone who would. At least not up front. Obviously, one could count on Pu getting cheaper as more market demand appears. (After all, we've got a ton or two of the stuff just sitting around in pools, heating water.) But what can be done about the current prices?
The answer lies in leasing the batteries instead of selling them outright. For one, this means you'll get your materials back (very important!). For another, it means that you can spread the cost over time.
Pu-238 has a half life of about 87 years. Let's assume that gives us a battery lifetime of 40 years. Well, the cost would then work out to a lease price of $250 per year. Definitely on the expensive side, but not out of the ballpark. (Especially for executives who can never carry around enough spare batteries.)
The real trick comes in at the end of the battery's lifetime. Our 40 year old battery will still have 75% of its plutonium intact. That means that we can reprocess it and add a mere 2.5 grams of new plutonium. That means that the price of our new battery has now dropped to a mere $2,500 or $62.50 per year! Combined with the fact that prices WILL drop as more plutonium is added to the market, Pu-238 batteries could be a winning long-term proposition.
As I said, it's really only dangerous if inhaled. Potentially, you could ingest some, but the reality is that your body usually passes it through without damage. (Of course, Nader has a very different opinion.)
Many other materials we use are dangerous as well. Lead us prevalent throughout our culture, uranium is used to make false teeth whiter and brighter, many of the materials your computer is constructed of are carcinogens, batteries are highly toxic, etc. It's simply a matter of doing one's best to protect the consumer against himself. PU-238 melted into a lead block isn't likely to cause much damage.
The primary reason that they are so large is to shield against unprotected reentry from orbit. The actual thermocouples are quite small and have been implanted in everything from pacemakers to electronic ocean buoys. They're also very cheap to come by.
The who thing could be miniaturized more by using a tiny SRG (Stirling Radioisotope Generator). You see, instead of a thermocouple, an SRG is a tiny Stirling engine. The PU-238 heats the air inside the piston, the piston rise until an exhaust port is reached, the heat is exchanged through the exhaust port, and the piston falls. The whole assembly could easily be small enough to fit inside a cell phone battery or a laptop battery. My figures show that about 10 grams should be more than enough to power your cell phone. (~1.3 W).
Here's my design.
Here. As before, sorry to spoil your joke. :-)
I hate to spoil a joke, but I'm going to use this opportunity to inject some radiation education:
1. Pu-238 is an Alpha Emitter.
2. Alpha particles can't penetrate your skin (or even a sheet of paper) and are only dangerous if they are inhaled.
3. From the EPA: "The isotope, plutonium-238, is not useful for nuclear weapons. However it generates significant heat through its decay process, which make it useful as a power source. Using a thermocouple, a device that converts heat into electric power, satellites rely on plutonium as a power source. Tiny amounts also provide power to heart pacemakers."
Know anyone who's got a pacemaker?
But plutonium! Oh my! But remember to make a deposit at the sperm bank in case you want to have kids in the future.
Pu-238 is an Alpha Emitter. Since Alpha particles can't even penetrate a sheet of paper, all the radiation would be converted into heat. That heat would then power a small Stirling engine which would turn a dynamo. If anyone's interested, I could post a simple diagram I did of the design.
it would keep your balls warm too
And the current batteries don't?
How about instead of making better batteries, we make it so the electronics don't use as much electricity?
That's the approach that Apple takes. Their iBook line gets ~4 hours on a single charge. The problem is that they're bumping up against the lower limits of power consumption while still offering reasonable performance. If you want lower power consumption, you're going to have to give something up. That something is screen size, processor speed, hard disk, and memory.
Personally, I'd like a little Pu-238 to power my laptop with. I figure that about 600 grams would power my laptop nonstop for ~40 years.
The tour guide pointed out the limited weaponry and the aluminum superstructure, then enumerated the extensive electronic detection gear, concluding: "that means she can't fight worth a damn, but we'll know exactly who's blowing us out of the water!"
;-)
Look on the bright side. At least CIC is happy...
Ten seconds before they bite the dust.
from the looks of it, the vessel in question appears to be a non-threat('nt?) for sonar, and radar based targeting systems.
i'm considering that thermal, and optical targeting systems will have no problems at all.
Optical & Thermal detection range == Deck fired weapons range
In other words, the Visby will know you're there, but you won't know she's there until you've got a few missiles heading your way.
Your story is BS. The US Navy has an Alliance Support contract with Microsoft
Since when? I did receive a call from a lady purporting to be an officer of the US Navy. This leaves three possibilities:
1. No such support contract yet existed.
2. She was not a staff member who knew how to obtain that support (she was working on a day off, remember).
3. She simply wasn't who she said she was.
Even if they didn't have the support agreement, anyone can call MS 24x7 and speak to a support engineer.
In the end, that was more or less what I recommended she do. My guess is simply that she was inexperienced with NT systems and didn't know who to call. It had seemed odd to me that she hadn't at least tried Microsoft support, but she probably assumed they'd be closed.
I certainly can't prove it happened, but I can tell you everything I remember. If you don't believe me, well... *shrug*
I remember getting an interesting tech support call back in 1998. A naval officer was attempting to get Windows NT Server running and was wondering if we could help. (We were business support and her husband worked for our business.) Apparently all of her regular outlets for support were shut down for the weekend (or maybe it was a holiday, I don't remember) and she needed to get the computers running on time for the deadline. We didn't support NT Server, so I really couldn't help her.
:-) Too bad the Blueridge didn't fail. It might have given the Admirals the idea that NT computers were a bad idea for naval warfare. Instead they had to go and refit an entire ship (the Yorktown) that later had to be towed back to port.
When I passed the story on to coworkers, they didn't entirely believe me. After all, why would the Military use NT computers for mission critical applications? Then about a month later, the story of the USS Blueridge hit the presses. I was vindicated!
With any luck, they've learned enough that the USS Ronald Regan won't be suffering systems failures anytime soon.
the HMS bork bork bork is a joke... actually all naval vessles made in the last 60 years are a joke compared to the real battleships of WW-II.
That's because they don't need to go in for close combat. Firing massive shells is a relic of the days when naval wars were fought with cannons. These days a carrier would strike your battleship from over 100 miles out and sink her without a single useful shot fired by the battleship. Not to mention that armor is relatively ineffective against many modern weapons that are designed to pierce armor. Thus naval warfare focuses on a different set of abilities:
1. Ability to launch a strike from great distances.
2. Speed to quickly enter and exit a theater of operations (U.S.S Enterprise [CVN-65] did 32 knots, non-stop, around the world!)
3. Stealth to sneak up on a ship without getting blasted from a hundred miles away. (Subs still rule this area.)
4. Screening ships and weapons to shoot down incoming planes.
5. Survivability via ability to float despite massive internal damage.
6. G.I. proofing so that no one accidentally blows up the ship from the inside. (Don't laugh, this happened several times in WWII.)
The truth however, is that any major conflict would probably see a total loss of all seagoing vessels. They'd simply start lobbing nukes at one another until they are all destroyed or capsized.
You joke, but the USS Yorktown didn't think it was so funny. :-P
Other than that, I don't know. I think it's a cremonial thing only. Probably has a great story behind it that I never heard.
Here's what I found on the subject. Sadly, it seems that most of the lore behind the sponsor is lost in time.
My old boat was last seen at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard waiting for her turn to go into the death dock and be cut up for scrap. Thanks draft dodger Bill "the blazing zipper" Clinton.
Aye. Here she is in '97. I assume she's been long turned to scrap.
I have to say that it was painful to see how much our ships had deteriorated after Clinton. Not only that, but how much public awareness had dropped. When CNN did an expose on our carriers, my coworkers were amazed at how truly large and powerful the vessels were. I could only bring myself to comment that it was good to see them used again instead of rotting somewhere at sea.
Bush has had a hard time revitalizing our military, but he is actually doing it. If he ever figures out how to convey integrity (and goes and fixes the damn prison situation; treat them like OFFICERS dammit!) he'll be remembered as a fine president.
BTW, you may already know about it, but this list may be of use to you.