This big idea is supplemental to the basic web. Wouldn't it have been much worse if web pages required these extra tags of information? I don't see anything wrong with adding optional features to expand on a current system. This isn't a rewrite here. Lee didn't get the trajectory wrong. His original basic idea has taken off on its own. He and others later came up with additional ideas that may or may not add value. There's nothing wrong with that.
The semantic web does keep it simple. It's supplimental to current web pages and is optional. It simply adds more data for computers to read. It's something very basic that leaves the opportunity for much more complex things later. Anyone who can't understand a triple - a subject, verb, and object - probably failed second grade english.
I've tried a few CMS and read about many. Obviously some are more suitable than others for certain situations. Drupal has been perfect for running my twosites. One has a book and news stories while the other is purely a blog. Drupal's online documentation is very good and the community is very very helpful with users. I highly recommend it.
I also got corrupted data on a gentoo system using reiserfs. I'm only using it as a desktop. I'm under the impression that non-journaled file systems are best for databases. A good database will cache in memory as needed and read/write to disk efficiently. I would think for a webserver and database with many transactions you'd want a filesystem that keeps the CPU utilization low. I use ext2 for my database and web server. But I'm no system admin, I'm far from an expert...
I don't think they changed their minds. I get the impression they're waiting for.NET's XAML stuff to be released. I think that's why they haven't rewritten Office on.NET yet. Once it's XAML then it can be served from a web server. Longhorn will have built-in support for XAML apps, so I suppose clicking on an icon can launch Office over the web once the app's rewritten in XAML. Then it'll look like a native app and they'll use it as a selling point for Longhorn.
Of course this could have been done years ago with Mozilla's XUL...
The application is accessed through the web, not necessarily written as web pages. Being on WebSphere and available offline I can almost guarantee it's a Java application. It's copied to the client through the browser and then runs as a client application that can communicate with the WebSphere server. They definitely are not trying to sell an HTML office application here.
One reason Unix (in all its flavors) has been able to survive all these years is because it can run on a very wide variety of hardware platforms. It didn't die with any one vendor or set of hardware. One reason F/OSS software on Unix has survived for so long (X, emacs, etc.) is because they run across all flavors of Unix. F/OSS software doesn't need to die with any one implementation of Unix. RMS explained it well in The Art of Unix Programming. He's also right when he says it can expand beyond Unix. If software is cross-platform it can survive beyond the life of any one platform. It can also satisfy the needs of more users. For anything but OS-specific tools it's often best to make software cross-platform. Not only will it win over more users, but it won't be limited to any one bubble.
I get the impression de Icaza really does believe Gnome and Mono can become dominant on the desktop. He seems to have a decent grasp of the political and economic situation surrounding the debate. Plus he gives credit to Microsoft when appropriate (and sometimes when inappropriate in my opinion), so he's not overly zealous. You're correct in that he does have a vested interest. But I think he's a true believer.
The US economy is very dependant on foreign trade. Over time many other countries are becoming richer and influential. For example, today China's choice to use Linux doesn't matter much to the US. But if it's the next big market as many people believe then what standards they use will most certainly matter to the US. As trade with China grows and companies become more entagled overseas their choices will influence US companies.
Miguel believes porting apps like Evolution to Windows will help make people more comfortable with F/OSS and may therefore switch to Linux later. Since you have a great example here, do you agree? If your friends were off Outlook and all other closed source programs (i.e. they switch to Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) would they be comfortable then switching to Linux?
Microsoft Baseline security analyzer is more or less useless. It has missed many required updates, including the one which would have prevented Blaster. If you rely solely on this application you will likely not have all the latest patches. You're much better off going through all the security alerts and download pages finding patches for whatever you have.
Unfortunately I sometimes have to do this at work. But I'm much happier with Linux at home. One button and I'm patched with latest updates my distro is offering.
I'm a developer, not an admin. I don't patch machines. And the document was written on my own person time. A factual comparison of operating systems and development platforms is not propaganda.
I'm a developer, not an admin, so I have no control over the patching situation. But I can remember many times in the last year that a patch failed testing because it broke a VB application or caused network problems. If you're only running Microsoft applications then the patches probably won't break anything. But with custom applications only a fool would release Microsoft patches with no testing. A patch breaking our apps is just as bad (from management's perspective) as a virus breaking our network. Either way we can't work.
First, I didn't choose Windows. I recommended Linux and/or BSD with a 70 page research document to back it up. Management ignored it. Second, I'm a developer, not an admin, so I have no say in the patching process.
As a developer I can tell you when patch goes out that breaks an existing corporate app, execs get furious at the developers. If I write application X then any time X doesn't work it's my fault. No matter what, the apps have to work. The multi-billion dollar corporation comes to a halt if the fundamental custom apps aren't working. A problem caused by a patch from Microsoft can't always be resolved by adjusting code in our apps. Management cares a lot less if we're rooted because at least business can continue.
Of course I think Microsoft should be sued for some of the problems we have. I don't think everything in the EULA will hold up in court in every state. But it's not my decision. And I also agree management has no one to blame but themselves for sticking with Microsoft. They get what they deserve. All I can do is write the best apps I can and get paid for it.
Autoupdates and immediate patching aren't options for large corporate networks. Patches often break existing applications. Even after extensive testing some patches have caused more problems than they fixed. Windows Update sends enough information back to Microsoft for them to determine what's installed on our private network, so we block it from running.
It takes weeks to test a patch and push it out. Servers often can't be rebooted until weekends. Then there are users with special situations that require manual installs. It takes time to do hundreds of installs manually. It also takes time to get the patch onto the standard corporate "build" of Windows, so for a while new computers need the patch pushed out after logging into the network the first time, leaving a gaping hole for this virus to spread.
And let's face it; if your machine is not properly patched, it's probably already being used as a spam relay, so it's not the spammers who would want this.
In a corporate network environment, such as mine, a few weeks is barely enough time to get a patch onto every desktop. First a few days are spent testing it. Then it has to be pushed out to all of the users. Server patches often have to wait until weekends because they can't be down during the week. Then manual installs have to be done for all the "non-standard" setups.
Then there's the new computer I got yesterday with our standard corporate developer's build. Of course the build doesn't have the latest patches yet, so when I turn on the computer for the first time, immidately after logging in McAffee catches the virus. So then I have to hunt down the right patches from the right people and reboot repeatedly until I can log into the network without getting the virus.
So I lost all of yesterday fixing the problems on my two computers and my office is as up to date as possible with getting patches onto workstations. Machines go for weeks without new patches because it's impossible to distribute them when some break applications, and therefore require much testing.
I wrote a 70 page document explaining why we should switch from Windows to Linux. Management wouldn't even start to read it. This is what they get for their ignorance.
Because it also occurs with many other mammals, where culture and economy are not factors. I can't find anything online, but I've read that many mammals decrease birth rate when the population is living in limited space.
As I said, it's naturally occurring if you don't consider cultural influence. I can't speak for Mexico, but in India and China traditional culture expects large families. One reason in Indian culture is so the many children can provide for the elders. Changing tradition is obviously not easy, so could require mandates like China's (whether ethical or not is another debate).
Organ replacement can not eliminate all naturally occurring deaths. People will allow any organ to be replaced except for one: the brain. The rest of the body can live or be replaced with better parts, but the brain will not last forever. Either regenerative processes need to be developed or the brain needs to become downloadable. If we could recreate nerve cells exactly as needed or download a mind from one brain into another then we might be able to end natural death.
I think people really need to 1) stop having children...
Humans seem to naturally decrease reproductive rates when necessary. Excluding cultural factors, like some expecting couples to have as many children as possible to provide for the parents, people will have less children as overcrowding occurs. I'm not sure of the cultural influence, but the birth rate in Japan has slowed over the years. In metropolitan areas like NYC fewer couples have children. Studies have shown it's a natually occurring phenomenon without any conscious decisions being made.
Of course in some places cultural factors are a bigger influence, so it will have to be a conscious change over time.
I think most of us would consider an organism to be synthetic if it's built from scratch with non-living components.
So the question becomes, can one build a "living" (i.e. identical to a natural) virus from only the parts that make it up? In other words, would a virus, or any living thing, become alive once someone puts together all the parts in exactly the same way?
And then some might still say that just because it acts identical to the naturally occuring organism doesn't mean it's alive. It acts alive, but nature didn't give it a soul.
I think we'll end up with more questions than answers, more debate than decisions.
It seems that all Sphere does it take 2 dimensional windows and let you rotate them in the third dimension. How is that useful? I can't imagine any gain in productivity just because I can rotate windows. There's no innovation here at all yet.
Just as the 2D window interface was a paradigm shift 3D interfaces need the same shift. 2D windows make perfect sense in a 2D world. Right now they're just making 2D interfaces float into a 3rd dimension. What's needed is a completely original idea that really takes advantage of 3 dimensions. If I could come up with that original idea myself I'd be a very rich man, so I'm not saying it's easy. But this isn't paving the way toward anything great until someone comes up with something brilliant.
If they lose against IBM, will there be anything left for Red Hat to kick around, though?
Red Hat isn't looking to kick them around after they lose to IBM. Red Hat has a few goals: bring more of SCO's actions to light and into court by putting them on the legal defensive; helping IBM by bringing these things to light and legitimizing IBM's arguments if they win; hedging their bets in case IBM loses (if IBM loses, Red Hat's in big trouble, so this pre-emptive strike may help protect them or at least raise money for their future legal defense).
I think all Red Hat cares about is IBM winning. After they win it doesn't matter if there's anything left to kick around.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Irrelevant
"X Window System" is trademarked by The Open Group. "Windows" is not.
This is why groups come up with schemas and ontologies to share.
This big idea is supplemental to the basic web. Wouldn't it have been much worse if web pages required these extra tags of information? I don't see anything wrong with adding optional features to expand on a current system. This isn't a rewrite here. Lee didn't get the trajectory wrong. His original basic idea has taken off on its own. He and others later came up with additional ideas that may or may not add value. There's nothing wrong with that.
The semantic web does keep it simple. It's supplimental to current web pages and is optional. It simply adds more data for computers to read. It's something very basic that leaves the opportunity for much more complex things later. Anyone who can't understand a triple - a subject, verb, and object - probably failed second grade english.
I've tried a few CMS and read about many. Obviously some are more suitable than others for certain situations. Drupal has been perfect for running my two sites. One has a book and news stories while the other is purely a blog. Drupal's online documentation is very good and the community is very very helpful with users. I highly recommend it.
I also got corrupted data on a gentoo system using reiserfs. I'm only using it as a desktop. I'm under the impression that non-journaled file systems are best for databases. A good database will cache in memory as needed and read/write to disk efficiently. I would think for a webserver and database with many transactions you'd want a filesystem that keeps the CPU utilization low. I use ext2 for my database and web server. But I'm no system admin, I'm far from an expert...
I don't think they changed their minds. I get the impression they're waiting for .NET's XAML stuff to be released. I think that's why they haven't rewritten Office on .NET yet. Once it's XAML then it can be served from a web server. Longhorn will have built-in support for XAML apps, so I suppose clicking on an icon can launch Office over the web once the app's rewritten in XAML. Then it'll look like a native app and they'll use it as a selling point for Longhorn.
Of course this could have been done years ago with Mozilla's XUL...
The application is accessed through the web, not necessarily written as web pages. Being on WebSphere and available offline I can almost guarantee it's a Java application. It's copied to the client through the browser and then runs as a client application that can communicate with the WebSphere server. They definitely are not trying to sell an HTML office application here.
One reason Unix (in all its flavors) has been able to survive all these years is because it can run on a very wide variety of hardware platforms. It didn't die with any one vendor or set of hardware. One reason F/OSS software on Unix has survived for so long (X, emacs, etc.) is because they run across all flavors of Unix. F/OSS software doesn't need to die with any one implementation of Unix. RMS explained it well in The Art of Unix Programming. He's also right when he says it can expand beyond Unix. If software is cross-platform it can survive beyond the life of any one platform. It can also satisfy the needs of more users. For anything but OS-specific tools it's often best to make software cross-platform. Not only will it win over more users, but it won't be limited to any one bubble.
I get the impression de Icaza really does believe Gnome and Mono can become dominant on the desktop. He seems to have a decent grasp of the political and economic situation surrounding the debate. Plus he gives credit to Microsoft when appropriate (and sometimes when inappropriate in my opinion), so he's not overly zealous. You're correct in that he does have a vested interest. But I think he's a true believer.
The US economy is very dependant on foreign trade. Over time many other countries are becoming richer and influential. For example, today China's choice to use Linux doesn't matter much to the US. But if it's the next big market as many people believe then what standards they use will most certainly matter to the US. As trade with China grows and companies become more entagled overseas their choices will influence US companies.
Miguel believes porting apps like Evolution to Windows will help make people more comfortable with F/OSS and may therefore switch to Linux later. Since you have a great example here, do you agree? If your friends were off Outlook and all other closed source programs (i.e. they switch to Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) would they be comfortable then switching to Linux?
Microsoft Baseline security analyzer is more or less useless. It has missed many required updates, including the one which would have prevented Blaster. If you rely solely on this application you will likely not have all the latest patches. You're much better off going through all the security alerts and download pages finding patches for whatever you have.
Unfortunately I sometimes have to do this at work. But I'm much happier with Linux at home. One button and I'm patched with latest updates my distro is offering.
I'm a developer, not an admin. I don't patch machines. And the document was written on my own person time. A factual comparison of operating systems and development platforms is not propaganda.
I'm a developer, not an admin, so I have no control over the patching situation. But I can remember many times in the last year that a patch failed testing because it broke a VB application or caused network problems. If you're only running Microsoft applications then the patches probably won't break anything. But with custom applications only a fool would release Microsoft patches with no testing. A patch breaking our apps is just as bad (from management's perspective) as a virus breaking our network. Either way we can't work.
First, I didn't choose Windows. I recommended Linux and/or BSD with a 70 page research document to back it up. Management ignored it. Second, I'm a developer, not an admin, so I have no say in the patching process.
As a developer I can tell you when patch goes out that breaks an existing corporate app, execs get furious at the developers. If I write application X then any time X doesn't work it's my fault. No matter what, the apps have to work. The multi-billion dollar corporation comes to a halt if the fundamental custom apps aren't working. A problem caused by a patch from Microsoft can't always be resolved by adjusting code in our apps. Management cares a lot less if we're rooted because at least business can continue.
Of course I think Microsoft should be sued for some of the problems we have. I don't think everything in the EULA will hold up in court in every state. But it's not my decision. And I also agree management has no one to blame but themselves for sticking with Microsoft. They get what they deserve. All I can do is write the best apps I can and get paid for it.
Autoupdates and immediate patching aren't options for large corporate networks. Patches often break existing applications. Even after extensive testing some patches have caused more problems than they fixed. Windows Update sends enough information back to Microsoft for them to determine what's installed on our private network, so we block it from running.
It takes weeks to test a patch and push it out. Servers often can't be rebooted until weekends. Then there are users with special situations that require manual installs. It takes time to do hundreds of installs manually. It also takes time to get the patch onto the standard corporate "build" of Windows, so for a while new computers need the patch pushed out after logging into the network the first time, leaving a gaping hole for this virus to spread.
And let's face it; if your machine is not properly patched, it's probably already being used as a spam relay, so it's not the spammers who would want this.
In a corporate network environment, such as mine, a few weeks is barely enough time to get a patch onto every desktop. First a few days are spent testing it. Then it has to be pushed out to all of the users. Server patches often have to wait until weekends because they can't be down during the week. Then manual installs have to be done for all the "non-standard" setups.
Then there's the new computer I got yesterday with our standard corporate developer's build. Of course the build doesn't have the latest patches yet, so when I turn on the computer for the first time, immidately after logging in McAffee catches the virus. So then I have to hunt down the right patches from the right people and reboot repeatedly until I can log into the network without getting the virus.
So I lost all of yesterday fixing the problems on my two computers and my office is as up to date as possible with getting patches onto workstations. Machines go for weeks without new patches because it's impossible to distribute them when some break applications, and therefore require much testing.
I wrote a 70 page document explaining why we should switch from Windows to Linux. Management wouldn't even start to read it. This is what they get for their ignorance.
Because it also occurs with many other mammals, where culture and economy are not factors. I can't find anything online, but I've read that many mammals decrease birth rate when the population is living in limited space.
As I said, it's naturally occurring if you don't consider cultural influence. I can't speak for Mexico, but in India and China traditional culture expects large families. One reason in Indian culture is so the many children can provide for the elders. Changing tradition is obviously not easy, so could require mandates like China's (whether ethical or not is another debate).
Or the end of people dying altogether?
Organ replacement can not eliminate all naturally occurring deaths. People will allow any organ to be replaced except for one: the brain. The rest of the body can live or be replaced with better parts, but the brain will not last forever. Either regenerative processes need to be developed or the brain needs to become downloadable. If we could recreate nerve cells exactly as needed or download a mind from one brain into another then we might be able to end natural death.
I think people really need to 1) stop having children...
Humans seem to naturally decrease reproductive rates when necessary. Excluding cultural factors, like some expecting couples to have as many children as possible to provide for the parents, people will have less children as overcrowding occurs. I'm not sure of the cultural influence, but the birth rate in Japan has slowed over the years. In metropolitan areas like NYC fewer couples have children. Studies have shown it's a natually occurring phenomenon without any conscious decisions being made.
Of course in some places cultural factors are a bigger influence, so it will have to be a conscious change over time.
I think most of us would consider an organism to be synthetic if it's built from scratch with non-living components.
So the question becomes, can one build a "living" (i.e. identical to a natural) virus from only the parts that make it up? In other words, would a virus, or any living thing, become alive once someone puts together all the parts in exactly the same way?
And then some might still say that just because it acts identical to the naturally occuring organism doesn't mean it's alive. It acts alive, but nature didn't give it a soul.
I think we'll end up with more questions than answers, more debate than decisions.
It seems that all Sphere does it take 2 dimensional windows and let you rotate them in the third dimension. How is that useful? I can't imagine any gain in productivity just because I can rotate windows. There's no innovation here at all yet.
Just as the 2D window interface was a paradigm shift 3D interfaces need the same shift. 2D windows make perfect sense in a 2D world. Right now they're just making 2D interfaces float into a 3rd dimension. What's needed is a completely original idea that really takes advantage of 3 dimensions. If I could come up with that original idea myself I'd be a very rich man, so I'm not saying it's easy. But this isn't paving the way toward anything great until someone comes up with something brilliant.
If they lose against IBM, will there be anything left for Red Hat to kick around, though?
:)
Red Hat isn't looking to kick them around after they lose to IBM. Red Hat has a few goals: bring more of SCO's actions to light and into court by putting them on the legal defensive; helping IBM by bringing these things to light and legitimizing IBM's arguments if they win; hedging their bets in case IBM loses (if IBM loses, Red Hat's in big trouble, so this pre-emptive strike may help protect them or at least raise money for their future legal defense).
I think all Red Hat cares about is IBM winning. After they win it doesn't matter if there's anything left to kick around.
Of course the usual IANAL applies...