On the contrary, last night at a Fake Steve Jobs appearance/meetup in Los Angeles, Dan was recommending that everyone read Groklaw, that it was one of the best tech blogs out there. I was there, at Rand Corporation. When the talk rolled around to the SCO fiasco, I introduced myself as a member of the nerd community and offered that a common perception regarding his mea culpa post is that he did not directly apologize to the community and PJ for things he wrote over the years. On the spot, he did put it in so many words: "I'm sorry". Good enough for me.
What about open source distributors and users? Just asking. Fully expecting Microsoft to violate the spirit of this settlement as usual and land back in court in a year or so.
You posted "burn in hell" and you do not consider that flamebait? - JOKE!! [1]
Come on my friend, calm down, it was a slashdot modding, nothing to get worked up about. I get modded down regularly by Microsoft minions and it is nothing that a small tactical nuclear warhead would not fix.
Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power. ...and if you back into a fire hydrant, the gas tank explodes.
Do you mean this lawsuit? [news.com] I thought M$ sued to get Novell to join the dark side, not after it had already joined... Gee, I wonder why somebody modded you down for posting that? M$ minion with mod points perhaps?
Novell signed the pact and a lot of good that did, Microsoft has sued Novell anyway. Do not deal with the devil, it may seem tempting but in the end you will regret it.
Bigger, faster, shinier. There, I did not even have to read the article:-)
Seriously, we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with a (well design) object embedding, event driven model. On the kernel side, besides the usual tide of incoming devices, there is a whole lot more room for optimization of pretty much every major subsystem. Believe it or not. The dominant trend will be more kernel functionality running in user space, like FUSE, power management, and features we haven't yet imagined, but which are just an awful lot easier to write in user space, and less easy to break the rest of the kernel. Besides bloating up with dozens or hundreds of new features, the embedded kernel variant will start to shrink in order to fit better on embedded devices such as low-end feature phones. Even more developers will switch from developing on Windows to developing on Linux. By 2010, millions will carry tuxpods:-)
Microsoft makes about 50 billion USD per year.[1] That is only 1% of Microsoft's one year revenue. Anyone who thinks this is going to deter Microsoft from anti-competitive practices is badly mistaken. If I recall correctly, the EU is able to fine Microsoft up to 5% of global revenue for each product in violation of EU competition laws. A large caliber weapon by any standard. Obviously, Microsoft blinked.
Requiring a businesses with a monopoly advantage to provide access to such interface documentation as they have themselves internally, at no more than a reasonable charge to cover the legitimate costs of supplying that information, for the purposes of allowing interoperability, is one thing. Requiring them to provide complete specs, at no charge at all, to anyone who asks for any reason, is something else entirely. Oh, and that is why the GPL completely fails to work, which requires every distributor to provide full source code to any user who wants it, monopoly advantage or not. Oh wait, the GPL works just fine. So Microsoft, with several tens of billions of dollars to its advantage, ought to be able to muddle through somehow, hmm, don't you think?
Actually, I would say you missed the point by a wide margin. The point is, those who need the specs can get them. Which amounts to a handful of CIFS developers.
I save in.doc only if I got the document in.doc, and then not always. Any new document I save in.odf. I normally send.odf documents by email, and when somebody tells me "I can't open it" I send them this link.
I think we are de-valuing the meaning of the word It may be possible that you are not aware of the combined magnitude of the bandwidth of 1) the GPU, 2) 7 autonomous vector processors and 3) a dual core PPC at 3 Ghz. Take that silly number (I didn't add it up myself just now, but I will) and multiple by 8, using a standard Linux cluster interconnect, and yup, it's a supercomputer. On the 500 list? Maybe not quite, but probably on the 5,000 list if there was one.
And if you think eight is the biggest PS3 cluster anybody is going to build, I've got a 640 KB PC to sell you.
Okay, that's great. Hard drives will get bigger. The problem is they aren't getting any faster. Not true. Media transfer speed increases as the data capacity increases (though less than linearly) and seek "rate" improves in terms of number of tracks the head passes over in the same time. What doesn't increase much at all is rotation speed, which means that average seek time gets worse and worse over time in relation to transfer speed. It's still very fast though, currently about 6-7 ms for commodity drives. If you're unhappy with the overall performance of your disk system, it isn't the fault of the drives, it's how the OS and applications use them. For the most part, pretty horribly inefficiently.
flash storage has been growing faster than HD for the past few years. About 6-7 years ago, a big HD would 80 GB, while a big flash card would be 32 MB, i.e. a ratio of about 2500. Now, a big HD is 500 GB and a big flash card is 16 GB, which means the ratio is more around 30. Basically, flash has been growing nearly 100 times faster. If it keeps doing that (I've no idea whether it will), flash storage will be bigger then HD in about 5 years. Nice historical observation, however the flash price curve has now about settled down to something more resembling Moore's law, as opposed to the nigh-on miraculous rate of the previous few years. Hitachi's prediction is also in line with Moore's law. If nothing dramatic happens to change those relative rates then the current factor of 25-50 price difference will remain for quite a few years yet. Put it another way, I won't be putting my rotating media optimization skillz out to pasture just yet.
See this lovely Computerworld article without possibility of reader feedback, that completely fails to mention the Microsoft connection or patent troll element:
OK guys, you know what to do. Be polite. Computerworld just doesn't quite understand the concept of journalistic integrity, please explain it to them patiently, and provide some of the specifics they omitted.
many people do believe that "innovators" should be compensated for their ideas. Many other people believe that "the deal" did not originally cover algorithms and business methods, should not have been changed to do so, and should be changed back.
I'd go one further and say that patent licencing should be compulsory -- and licencing fees should be the same for every user. In fact, maybe it should be the patent office that sets the amount of the fees. That won't work for free-as-in-speech-and-beer open source. Only enforcing the spirit of antitrust laws and ending the creeping land grab of the software commons will work.
ALL companies have ex-Microsofties on the payroll, with some recent hires. Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. Go ahead, ask around. I'll bet you have a former Microsoft employee on your team! But patent troll companies? Seems rather a coincidence, so well correlated with the filing of the suit. And so perfectly coordinated with Steve Ballmer's recent threats. And the suit only filed against Red Hat and Novell, the two largest Linux vendors. Not against any other software companies, of which many must surely be in "violation" according to the legal theories of this nest of bottom feeding leeches.
Really, this supposed infighting doesn't exist, and having these articles on slashdot just helps us be part of Microsoft's mouthpiece. The infighting exists and it is arguably harmful, but it is nothing new. All the rapid progress in Linux that I know of has been accompanied by infighting, as strident, if not more. Just one example, the BitKeeper wars, which split the Linux kernel in half but never at any time slowed down progress. Quite the contrary.
It may be that tension is actually helpful to the creative process. Though by the time it gets personal, the useful part effect has usually gone by. We could probably progress even faster by learning better how to defuse, back down, compromise at the interpersonal level. But please, never compromise at the technical level.
power is only availible at the ends. This means that if you want repeaters (all modern undersea cables have them as it is very hard to get a decent data rate over that kind of distance without them). In other words your cable generally has to contain high voltage DC power wiring as well as the fibers that actually carry your data. I wonder if the economics would justify development of some kind of undersea thermoelectric plant, mid-ocean? A big engineering challenge obviously, but if it cut the power that has to be carried in the cable by half, just maybe there could be a cost case.
Surely, dropping rumble was about the lawsuit, everybody knew that. But to be honest, it really is a dumb feature. A well engineered sound effect can be really surprising, immersive or moody. I never found the feeble little vibration on my previous-gen box immersive at all. More like "oh the controller's vibrating again, interesting that somebody thought I'd appreciate that". I want the controller to vibrate roughly as much as I would want to have a smell-generating unit, capable of generating two different smells.
Or maybe it's a sign that everyone genuinely couldn't care less about the PS3 at this point? I wouldn't say that. I'm entirely happy with mine, it is in pretty much continuous use here, mainly as a video player. My wife likes to browse Youtube with it, in preference to her PC. As a game machine the graphics are spectacular. I lost a lot of hours of my life to Elder Scrolls. Looking forward to see what the cell architecture can do with a really physics intensive game. The thing has just worked without a hiccup from right out of the box. No problem configuring wireless. The internet browser is functional, though no Opera or Firefox. The controllers are impressive, a nice balanced design and they run a surprisingly long time on a charge. Running Linux is a nice plus. I fully expect some fun hacks to arrive in due course.
Wii owns the lower end gaming market, no doubt about it. But Wii doesn't come anywhere close to the graphics power of the PS3, and cutesy is not what I'm looking for in a game. PS3 seems to have been targetted right at me, and I seriously doubt I'm alone. I don't know what more I'd ask for in it. More titles, as if I had time for that:-)
Slashdot Mirror
What about open source distributors and users? Just asking. Fully expecting Microsoft to violate the spirit of this settlement as usual and land back in court in a year or so.
Who is York Capital and what is the connection to Bill Gates?
You posted "burn in hell" and you do not consider that flamebait? - JOKE!! [1]
Come on my friend, calm down, it was a slashdot modding, nothing to get worked up about. I get modded down regularly by Microsoft minions and it is nothing that a small tactical nuclear warhead would not fix.
[1] Hell, flames, get it?
Novell signed the pact and a lot of good that did, Microsoft has sued Novell anyway. Do not deal with the devil, it may seem tempting but in the end you will regret it.
Bigger, faster, shinier. There, I did not even have to read the article :-)
:-)
Seriously, we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with a (well design) object embedding, event driven model. On the kernel side, besides the usual tide of incoming devices, there is a whole lot more room for optimization of pretty much every major subsystem. Believe it or not. The dominant trend will be more kernel functionality running in user space, like FUSE, power management, and features we haven't yet imagined, but which are just an awful lot easier to write in user space, and less easy to break the rest of the kernel. Besides bloating up with dozens or hundreds of new features, the embedded kernel variant will start to shrink in order to fit better on embedded devices such as low-end feature phones. Even more developers will switch from developing on Windows to developing on Linux. By 2010, millions will carry tuxpods
Actually, I would say you missed the point by a wide margin. The point is, those who need the specs can get them. Which amounts to a handful of CIFS developers.
I save in .doc only if I got the document in .doc, and then not always. Any new document I save in .odf. I normally send .odf documents by email, and when somebody tells me "I can't open it" I send them this link.
And if you think eight is the biggest PS3 cluster anybody is going to build, I've got a 640 KB PC to sell you.
From halflifesource.com, whatever that is:
http://www.halflifesource.com/news/ip_innovation_files_patent_lawsuit_against_red_hat_novell/article9765.htm
Same deal, incomplete coverage with no possibility of visible reader feedback.
Just look here for a few more: http://news.google.com/?ncl=1121891361&hl=en&topic=t
Like the Computer world puff piece, slanted coverage and no possibility for visible reader feedback:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2201116/red-hat-novell-targeted-patent
See this lovely Computerworld article without possibility of reader feedback, that completely fails to mention the Microsoft connection or patent troll element:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9042418&intsrc=hm_list
OK guys, you know what to do. Be polite. Computerworld just doesn't quite understand the concept of journalistic integrity, please explain it to them patiently, and provide some of the specifics they omitted.
Go!
It may be that tension is actually helpful to the creative process. Though by the time it gets personal, the useful part effect has usually gone by. We could probably progress even faster by learning better how to defuse, back down, compromise at the interpersonal level. But please, never compromise at the technical level.
Surely, dropping rumble was about the lawsuit, everybody knew that. But to be honest, it really is a dumb feature. A well engineered sound effect can be really surprising, immersive or moody. I never found the feeble little vibration on my previous-gen box immersive at all. More like "oh the controller's vibrating again, interesting that somebody thought I'd appreciate that". I want the controller to vibrate roughly as much as I would want to have a smell-generating unit, capable of generating two different smells.
Wii owns the lower end gaming market, no doubt about it. But Wii doesn't come anywhere close to the graphics power of the PS3, and cutesy is not what I'm looking for in a game. PS3 seems to have been targetted right at me, and I seriously doubt I'm alone. I don't know what more I'd ask for in it. More titles, as if I had time for that
Missed the "k", my bad. Not that that should justify some of the responses...