outside commercial companies have always built the stuff. Boeing, TRW, lockheed, pratt & whitney.. my father worked on the design of space shuttle turbopumps at P&W way back in the day. Though the govt provided security for such companies:)
this is a big deal because of the sheer age of the spacecraft. It's older than most of the readers of/. and still transmitting away..considering the thing was built to last a few years at most.. so much for that MTBF:)
heh sure they would go from scratch. You have to remember most of their OS's probably date back to the 1960s. Everything since then has simply been patched and upgraded as hardware changes. Basic security designs dont change that much...
Re:Linux Zealotry, Slashdot, and Growing Moderatio
on
id On Linux: Bad News
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· Score: 1
heh ah but look at the troubles of redhat. In cases such as dell..dell is selling physical hardware. I'm sure a hardware seller would love to put linux on a system..they dont have to pay a licensing fee to microsoft.
The problem with redhat is, they dont sell anything substantial..a cd and a book. Woo. As broadband connections grow, more and more people are going to just download the thing, and you can get more support online than in any book. Their investors know this, and are starting to get more than a little spooked (from $150 a share to $6!)
In any case, the problem still exists of the GPL "everything free" culture of linux. That's a hostile business environment. For companies that make a mint making software for the masses which DONT use linux..linux is hardly worth a breath. The exception being hardware makers..writing a driver for linux isnt that big a deal. But porting some large office suite or graphics package is. And when the culture of linux says "what? they're going to sell it? absurd!".. why bother? This is why corel, adobe etc pull out...
(personally i wouldnt let UT's enormous beauracracy touch my software;)..yes i attend there)
Given that online music is here to stay, whether it be in the form of streaming audio, or MP3s being traded, I have to ask what you all would think the best way to combine protecting the rights of the artists, and the rights of the people to enjoy music on their computers.
Surely an answer that will appeal to the majority of people and the majority of artists must lie somewhere in the middle between the two extremes of "making everything free" and "banning all music swapping".
the little ditty at the beginning of that is TMBG (if you watch the credits closely you'll see their name scroll by)
Re:Linux Zealotry, Slashdot, and Growing Moderatio
on
id On Linux: Bad News
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· Score: 1
True enough. I should've been more specific...of course not all linux users are zealots. I know a number myself who have something of a love-hate relationship with the OS.
I think the most serious flaw with linux is the fact its under GPL... the GPL is very anti-business (GPL == no money, business == money..therefore business != GPL) in its very form. The culture that's built up around GPL makes it very difficult for a company to make money off linux (yes i know not all software must be GPL'd..but the culture is that way).
If anyone was working an open source project that they'd like to have a business based around some day, I would definately tell them to NOT GPL it under any circumstances.
It sure is. The current version running needs alot of work..i've been meaning to update the sourceforge page, but college finals are coming up..heh something to do over xmas i suppose. i started on the next revision which greatly improves things and should make things like writing games for it pretty simple (right now, adding modules is almost a chore) and vastly improves the database routines.
I think its real beauty is how easy it is to setup by people with not much experience. I know of a couple 15 year old kids who had their own site running in 1 night. Things like apache, mysql and so on dont HAVE to be complicated. It just seems that way because of the lack of documentation written with the general user in mind.
I can:) with my software i've done such a thing..i know this sounds terribly spamming, but it's my darling piece of code. Granted, it's got no online games yet (i've been meaning to code in some little ones..particularly a remake of lemonade stand..that was so addictive).
It's relatively easy to setup..i wrote the instructions for installing for a normal person, even though it uses apache and mysql. I know of a few people with no programming or networking experience running it off their home computers. Check out the site at The Machine
I have begun work on just such a project..in fact i began work on it over a year ago. The results of it can be viewed at The Machine. The code for it is also freely available from there. It's tightly knit..probably wouldnt work very well for massive systems with hundreds of thousands of accounts. The site currently has about 1900 or so, and averages a few thousand pageviews a day. About the amount your larger BBSes would have back in the day. I'm working on bringing more of a sense of community to it..but currently it works quite well.
I can recall trying to setup my dos bbs as telnetabble a few years ago.. at the time a few utilities did exist in the form of driver's that would fool the bbs into thinking a telnet port was a serial port, thus making you able to telnet onto a specific node. It worked somewhat well actually.
hmm actually something like that could be done...one must remember that these kind of things really are in their infancy still. heh..even though they were developed years ago for dial-ups, no web infrastructure or libraries (at least not standardized ones) exist...
True enough. I cant tell you how many centrist message's ive posting questioning some aspects of linux that just some seem to hold common sense, only to get them modded down by the zealots. Yet another reason why linux will never take off..many people can't accept enough ideas to standardize..indeed, calling standards something for sheep.
Heh, I should know, i run a project working on just such a thing, and unlike alot of sourceforge's, mine's beyond alpha and in use by more than 1 website.. I'd post the sourceforge link here, but that page isn't quite ready so i'll just post the link to my site using the software...
The Machine
Though I'm sure this will get modded down, or at least receive nasty flames.
Companies want someone to blame when software fails. They want to be reassured that their software is good. They pay thousands of dollars for this reassurance. Now, what's sounds more reassuring..software produced by a company used by 90% of the world, traded publicly..or software created by a few guys in their spare time for free. In the case of free software, they basically receive it with no guarantee it will work properly. Most companies will not gamble in this way. It's corporate culture, and that's bigger than most governments, much less the comparably puny "free software" movement. Indeed, look at telia going with IBM, and you bet IBM is providing support for all the software on the machine. It may be linux, but i doubt it's the same thing most people on/. use.
Furthermore, most software companies arent going to bother porting their software to linux or developing for it. Why? Because of the linux culture. Linux culture is based around the GPL, which is about as business-friendly as communism.
That's right, the GPL is the licensing equivalent of Communism.
Now before you turn your ears (or eyes) off, realize the similarities between them. I'm not anti-free software, and i'm not anti-communist. They represent moral plateaus, and i think free software is excellent. But no company will ever base their product line, or even dedicate that many resources, to developing for a culture that's based around the GPL. It enforces that software must be free. Business is about making money. Therefore, something inherantly free, does not go well with the profit-needing business. This is why corel, adobe and other big names are dropping their linux programs. This is why companies like red hat are sliding into danger..investors have realized the fundamental flaw of combining making money (business) with something you cant legally make much money with.
So how does this all tie together? Well since big companies are going to barely support linux, if at all, other companies arent going to want to invest their critical systems in software that's unsupported by other big companies. This will all limit the migration to consumer desktops. Consumers will want to use the same software they use at work.
And that's the catch. Linux will always have it's place, as it should, but it will never dominate. And it's just downright dumb to base your business off it.
Though I'm sure this will get modded down, or at least receive nasty flames.
Companies want someone to blame when software fails. They want to be reassured that their software is good. They pay thousands of dollars for this reassurance. Now, what's sounds more reassuring..software produced by a company used by 90% of the world, traded publicly..or software created by a few guys in their spare time for free. In the case of free software, they basically receive it with no guarantee it will work properly. Most companies will not gamble in this way. It's corporate culture, and that's bigger than most governments, much less the comparably puny "free software" movement.
Furthermore, most software companies arent going to bother porting their software to linux or developing for it. Why? Because of the linux culture. Linux culture is based around the GPL, which is about as business-friendly as communism.
That's right, the GPL is the licensing equivalent of Communism.
Now before you turn your ears (or eyes) off, realize the similarities between them. I'm not anti-free software, and i'm not anti-communist. They represent moral plateaus, and i think free software is excellent. But no company will ever base their product line, or even dedicate that many resources, to developing for a culture that's based around the GPL. It enforces that software must be free. Business is about making money. Therefore, something inherantly free, does not go well with the profit-needing business. This is why corel, adobe and other big names are dropping their linux programs. This is why companies like red hat are sliding into danger..investors have realized the fundamental flaw of combining making money (business) with something you cant legally make much money with.
So how does this all tie together? Well since big companies are going to barely support linux, if at all, other companies arent going to want to invest their critical systems in software that's unsupported by other big companies.
And that's the catch. Linux will always have it's place, as it should, but it will never dominate. And it's just downright dumb to base your business off it.
this is how it works in houston. dialing 7 digits results in a error message. Though dialing a 1 before the local area codes also results in an error message. Everyone simply dials 10. No muss, no fuss, and after a week people stopped complaining and just got on with their lives.
In houston 10 digit dialing was enacted a few years ago, and the same doomsayers were going about claiming how hard it would be for people to remember numbers, costs of changing business cards etc...
But everyone did it. And it works fine. Now that I live in austin it's eminently weird to dial 7 digits all over again (though with my houston-based cell phone i still have to dial 10 digits no matter where i am). So my cell is 10, my local phone is 7, and long distance is 11, or 4 digits for intra-building calls. Now that is confusing. Switching to uniform 10 digit dialing is easy and not the pain in the ass everyone thinks it is.
heh so you're saying linux (i assume you mean some GUI flavor), is superior because you dont have to click a box in the corner. And it takes 1 less mouseclick. Hah. If this is the best argument to present against MS's interface in comparison to some flavor of linux... no wonder 90% of the world still uses windows on their desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
exactly. in fact, they should be following my every move in a van.
outside commercial companies have always built the stuff. Boeing, TRW, lockheed, pratt & whitney.. my father worked on the design of space shuttle turbopumps at P&W way back in the day. Though the govt provided security for such companies :)
this is a big deal because of the sheer age of the spacecraft. It's older than most of the readers of /. and still transmitting away..considering the thing was built to last a few years at most.. so much for that MTBF :)
Yet they can hear this thing loud and clear from 83 million miles away. heheh..
heh sure they would go from scratch. You have to remember most of their OS's probably date back to the 1960s. Everything since then has simply been patched and upgraded as hardware changes. Basic security designs dont change that much...
The problem with redhat is, they dont sell anything substantial..a cd and a book. Woo. As broadband connections grow, more and more people are going to just download the thing, and you can get more support online than in any book. Their investors know this, and are starting to get more than a little spooked (from $150 a share to $6!)
In any case, the problem still exists of the GPL "everything free" culture of linux. That's a hostile business environment. For companies that make a mint making software for the masses which DONT use linux..linux is hardly worth a breath. The exception being hardware makers..writing a driver for linux isnt that big a deal. But porting some large office suite or graphics package is. And when the culture of linux says "what? they're going to sell it? absurd!".. why bother? This is why corel, adobe etc pull out...
(personally i wouldnt let UT's enormous beauracracy touch my software ;)..yes i attend there)
Surely an answer that will appeal to the majority of people and the majority of artists must lie somewhere in the middle between the two extremes of "making everything free" and "banning all music swapping".
the little ditty at the beginning of that is TMBG (if you watch the credits closely you'll see their name scroll by)
I think the most serious flaw with linux is the fact its under GPL... the GPL is very anti-business (GPL == no money, business == money..therefore business != GPL) in its very form. The culture that's built up around GPL makes it very difficult for a company to make money off linux (yes i know not all software must be GPL'd..but the culture is that way).
If anyone was working an open source project that they'd like to have a business based around some day, I would definately tell them to NOT GPL it under any circumstances.
I think its real beauty is how easy it is to setup by people with not much experience. I know of a couple 15 year old kids who had their own site running in 1 night. Things like apache, mysql and so on dont HAVE to be complicated. It just seems that way because of the lack of documentation written with the general user in mind.
Currently I use JSP..i rather like it :) But not to get into language holy wars. They all have their places.
It's relatively easy to setup..i wrote the instructions for installing for a normal person, even though it uses apache and mysql. I know of a few people with no programming or networking experience running it off their home computers. Check out the site at The Machine
I have begun work on just such a project..in fact i began work on it over a year ago. The results of it can be viewed at The Machine. The code for it is also freely available from there. It's tightly knit..probably wouldnt work very well for massive systems with hundreds of thousands of accounts. The site currently has about 1900 or so, and averages a few thousand pageviews a day. About the amount your larger BBSes would have back in the day. I'm working on bringing more of a sense of community to it..but currently it works quite well.
I can recall trying to setup my dos bbs as telnetabble a few years ago.. at the time a few utilities did exist in the form of driver's that would fool the bbs into thinking a telnet port was a serial port, thus making you able to telnet onto a specific node. It worked somewhat well actually.
hmm actually something like that could be done...one must remember that these kind of things really are in their infancy still. heh..even though they were developed years ago for dial-ups, no web infrastructure or libraries (at least not standardized ones) exist...
Why not have completely open source free hardware? I bet i can make LCD panels in my kitchen!
True enough. I cant tell you how many centrist message's ive posting questioning some aspects of linux that just some seem to hold common sense, only to get them modded down by the zealots. Yet another reason why linux will never take off..many people can't accept enough ideas to standardize..indeed, calling standards something for sheep.
Heh, I should know, i run a project working on just such a thing, and unlike alot of sourceforge's, mine's beyond alpha and in use by more than 1 website.. I'd post the sourceforge link here, but that page isn't quite ready so i'll just post the link to my site using the software... The Machine
I'd be even more concerned with the inability to spell words such as "extreme".
Companies want someone to blame when software fails. They want to be reassured that their software is good. They pay thousands of dollars for this reassurance. Now, what's sounds more reassuring..software produced by a company used by 90% of the world, traded publicly..or software created by a few guys in their spare time for free. In the case of free software, they basically receive it with no guarantee it will work properly. Most companies will not gamble in this way. It's corporate culture, and that's bigger than most governments, much less the comparably puny "free software" movement. Indeed, look at telia going with IBM, and you bet IBM is providing support for all the software on the machine. It may be linux, but i doubt it's the same thing most people on /. use.
Furthermore, most software companies arent going to bother porting their software to linux or developing for it. Why? Because of the linux culture. Linux culture is based around the GPL, which is about as business-friendly as communism.
That's right, the GPL is the licensing equivalent of Communism.
Now before you turn your ears (or eyes) off, realize the similarities between them. I'm not anti-free software, and i'm not anti-communist. They represent moral plateaus, and i think free software is excellent. But no company will ever base their product line, or even dedicate that many resources, to developing for a culture that's based around the GPL. It enforces that software must be free. Business is about making money. Therefore, something inherantly free, does not go well with the profit-needing business. This is why corel, adobe and other big names are dropping their linux programs. This is why companies like red hat are sliding into danger..investors have realized the fundamental flaw of combining making money (business) with something you cant legally make much money with.
So how does this all tie together? Well since big companies are going to barely support linux, if at all, other companies arent going to want to invest their critical systems in software that's unsupported by other big companies. This will all limit the migration to consumer desktops. Consumers will want to use the same software they use at work.
And that's the catch. Linux will always have it's place, as it should, but it will never dominate. And it's just downright dumb to base your business off it.
Companies want someone to blame when software fails. They want to be reassured that their software is good. They pay thousands of dollars for this reassurance. Now, what's sounds more reassuring..software produced by a company used by 90% of the world, traded publicly..or software created by a few guys in their spare time for free. In the case of free software, they basically receive it with no guarantee it will work properly. Most companies will not gamble in this way. It's corporate culture, and that's bigger than most governments, much less the comparably puny "free software" movement.
Furthermore, most software companies arent going to bother porting their software to linux or developing for it. Why? Because of the linux culture. Linux culture is based around the GPL, which is about as business-friendly as communism.
That's right, the GPL is the licensing equivalent of Communism.
Now before you turn your ears (or eyes) off, realize the similarities between them. I'm not anti-free software, and i'm not anti-communist. They represent moral plateaus, and i think free software is excellent. But no company will ever base their product line, or even dedicate that many resources, to developing for a culture that's based around the GPL. It enforces that software must be free. Business is about making money. Therefore, something inherantly free, does not go well with the profit-needing business. This is why corel, adobe and other big names are dropping their linux programs. This is why companies like red hat are sliding into danger..investors have realized the fundamental flaw of combining making money (business) with something you cant legally make much money with.
So how does this all tie together? Well since big companies are going to barely support linux, if at all, other companies arent going to want to invest their critical systems in software that's unsupported by other big companies.
And that's the catch. Linux will always have it's place, as it should, but it will never dominate. And it's just downright dumb to base your business off it.
this is how it works in houston. dialing 7 digits results in a error message. Though dialing a 1 before the local area codes also results in an error message. Everyone simply dials 10. No muss, no fuss, and after a week people stopped complaining and just got on with their lives.
But everyone did it. And it works fine. Now that I live in austin it's eminently weird to dial 7 digits all over again (though with my houston-based cell phone i still have to dial 10 digits no matter where i am). So my cell is 10, my local phone is 7, and long distance is 11, or 4 digits for intra-building calls. Now that is confusing. Switching to uniform 10 digit dialing is easy and not the pain in the ass everyone thinks it is.
(so)
heh so you're saying linux (i assume you mean some GUI flavor), is superior because you dont have to click a box in the corner. And it takes 1 less mouseclick. Hah. If this is the best argument to present against MS's interface in comparison to some flavor of linux... no wonder 90% of the world still uses windows on their desktop.