So not only do we have to worry about getting our real jobs shipped overseas, but also our open source development as well! Won't there be anything left for an american techie?
I'm not sure if it's been done, or if plans are in the works, but Groklaw has been a tremendous boon to the Open Source community. Everybody involved with making that site, especially Pamela Jones, has done an enormous amount of expensive work, pro bono, on our (the Open Source community's) behalf. The evidence is out there, and thanks to Groklaw it is being found and the world is being informed.
I'd like to point everybody to the little paypal button on the groklaw sidebar. They deserve credit for their work. Are there any plans for some kind of big party at a linux conference for Pam Jones et al.? Maybe after the case is settled.
It's interesting that they basically ignored Cold Mountain... when it came out everyone was crying "Oscar bait!" I mean, if a decent Civil War epic love story, featuring a host of Academy Award winners and nominees, directed by the same man as a previous Best Picture, and released by Miramax can't even get nominated, what does that say about the Academy? Maybe they aren't so shallow after all...
I highly doubt that this would be the case. While Linux certainly can adopt and embrace any new technology that crops up, it is still carrying a significant quantity of baggage by being Unix-like and Posix-based. This is good for now, and Unix has certainly proven its ageworthiness. But at some point in the future, it will be a fool's errand to continue adopting new OS technology into a Posix-based system.
I foresee a radical new OS design to take hold in the not-so-distant future. It may come from a research lab like Bell Labs or it may come direct from the Open Source front. It will challenge the Unix-like assumptions of OS design, or maybe it will implement them more cleanly. Just like Windows outgrew DOS and was eventually moved to a VMS-like OS core (NT), Open Source operating systems will outgrow Unix.
Personally I would like to see an operating environment that is fully real-time (like QNX), and has support for fully transparent multithreading/multiprocessing. It should have a more-than-hierarchal filesystem model, with an advanced VFS at its core (sorta like Windows is attempting), database-like functionality (like Apple Newton, or the new Storage project), and the nondistinction between files and directories. All of these things are possible on top of Posix, but it would be much nicer if they were implemented at the core of the OS. As it stands, Linux is rather tied to a Posix core.
The article lists 3 negative points: 1) No VPN "wizard"
This is absurdly nitpicky. It might be a neat extra feature, but I don't think any OS has a VPN wizard in the base install.
2) America's Army isn't bundled.
Excuse me? Are you insane? Why in the name of heaven would Xandros bundle a 3D game with their OS that is being targeted at corporate desktops? Windows doesn't bundle any games besides a few amusements of their own, and I can't think of another distribution that would package any major 3rd-party game, let alone one that is as politically loaded as America's Army. Linux is very international, you know... What ever happened to acquiring software and installing it? Who says it has to be bundled with the OS?
3) No Gnome
While I would be the first to argue for Gnome over KDE in the first place, including Gnome with Xandros would really be the wrong decision. Gtk libraries are an inexcusable omission if that's the case, but Gnome is an entirely separate desktop environment. Xandros is taking a stand for one DE and I respect that, given that they are targeting their distribution to a very specific market. Windows doesn't include Litestep, OSX doesn't include a full OS9 environment, so I fail to see the precedent among commercially-targeted OSes. Both Gnome and KDE are designed from the ground-up to work in a vacuum, and any interoperability is, at the moment, kludgey at best.
The sad thing is, they will probably have a mechanism to block non-WMV-enabled clients from accessing the website at all, or at least severely inhibit. So, unless you are running IE on Windows with Windows Media Player (in all it's DRMed glory) installed, or bothered to associate WMP as a Mozilla plugin, you probably won't be able to visit these sites.
Now you probably don't care about visiting MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, but I can definitely foresee more sites adopting this if it ends up being profitable.
The fundamental difference between TV an the Internet is that the Internet is a communications tool, not a broadcast medium. Big websites want it to be more like a broadcast medium, and ISPs as well - hence the common upload/download bandwidth disparity and many ISPs blocking people from running any kind of server. The internet in general is not very conducive to making money for information distribution, but big corporations want to change it until it is. And you can bet they won't care about any open standards in the process.
There was a wonderful article about this change relatively recently... can anyone remember where?
How does copyright play into this? Clearly it's a trademark issue, but both the/. headline and the Register refer to copyright. Is "phoenetic domain" some hidden application of copyright law?
I'd like to see a desktop system built with maybe 8 of these running in SMP. You'd probably have about the same raw computing power as a high-end Intel or AMD dual-processor machine, and probably less power consumption. Where you'd really win is with usability and interactivity - a good SMP OS would handle multitasking properly among the CPUs. Your web browser would never interrupt your mp3 player again, and the UI would be unhindered by background processes. This may especially be the case with the on-die memory controllers.
The only problem being the fact that they could never sell it... only high-end server versions of Windows support high numbers of SMP CPUs. Obviously this isn't a problem for Linux users.
Who says it's just one machine? I don't know the system details, but it's quite possible that the system includes multiple actual computers that would have a firewall in front of everything, and eliminate the single point of failure. $15000 buys a lot of hardware, even if the system includes several "orbiters" and a fancy cell phone and whatever else.
"From the vaporware dept"... Michael, How can anything be vaporware if the company hasn't announced the product yet and its very existance is only a rumor?
It's not the DRM (I think you meant this instead of Direct Memory Access) that's the problem. If copyright owners want to restrict how their property is distributed, fine. The problem is that the DRM is not an open standard, and people who don't have Media Player 9 on Windows are forced to choose between breaking the law or being left with nothing to listen to. If, that is, this becomes a trend.
check out the goods at GarageGames. They have several great games available for linux (download the demos to see how well they work - well for me!) like Think Tanks and Orbz. Check out Marble Blast as well, although it's not multiplayer. Priced reasonably at $20 too!
Oh, and how about TuxRacer commercial? The demo's quite fun.
Are we talking about the same Keramik? The one with window decorations that are twice as big as they should be, piss-colored widget highlights that don't match the window decorations, "3D Effects" that appear to have been done by a 13-year old who just discovered photoshop?
Good riddance! Keramik was KDE's idea of "eye kandy" for 3.1, and looked like someone's poor first attempt at a GUI theme. About as streamlined as a yak. In a word: fugly!
Now they've gone with an off-color ripoff of the Windows XP window decorations (just like Ximian's Industrial), and a QT theme that looks like one of the GTK Smooth variations. Certainly an improvement over Keramik, but not exactly an original look. It seems like they were really sick of people complaining how Gnome is prettier.
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So not only do we have to worry about getting our real jobs shipped overseas, but also our open source development as well! Won't there be anything left for an american techie?
I'm not sure if it's been done, or if plans are in the works, but Groklaw has been a tremendous boon to the Open Source community. Everybody involved with making that site, especially Pamela Jones, has done an enormous amount of expensive work, pro bono, on our (the Open Source community's) behalf. The evidence is out there, and thanks to Groklaw it is being found and the world is being informed.
I'd like to point everybody to the little paypal button on the groklaw sidebar. They deserve credit for their work. Are there any plans for some kind of big party at a linux conference for Pam Jones et al.? Maybe after the case is settled.
And SCO issued a press release stating "I'm going to hold my breath until I get bought out. And ice cream before dinner!"
It's interesting that they basically ignored Cold Mountain... when it came out everyone was crying "Oscar bait!" I mean, if a decent Civil War epic love story, featuring a host of Academy Award winners and nominees, directed by the same man as a previous Best Picture, and released by Miramax can't even get nominated, what does that say about the Academy? Maybe they aren't so shallow after all...
I highly doubt that this would be the case. While Linux certainly can adopt and embrace any new technology that crops up, it is still carrying a significant quantity of baggage by being Unix-like and Posix-based. This is good for now, and Unix has certainly proven its ageworthiness. But at some point in the future, it will be a fool's errand to continue adopting new OS technology into a Posix-based system.
I foresee a radical new OS design to take hold in the not-so-distant future. It may come from a research lab like Bell Labs or it may come direct from the Open Source front. It will challenge the Unix-like assumptions of OS design, or maybe it will implement them more cleanly. Just like Windows outgrew DOS and was eventually moved to a VMS-like OS core (NT), Open Source operating systems will outgrow Unix.
Personally I would like to see an operating environment that is fully real-time (like QNX), and has support for fully transparent multithreading/multiprocessing. It should have a more-than-hierarchal filesystem model, with an advanced VFS at its core (sorta like Windows is attempting), database-like functionality (like Apple Newton, or the new Storage project), and the nondistinction between files and directories. All of these things are possible on top of Posix, but it would be much nicer if they were implemented at the core of the OS. As it stands, Linux is rather tied to a Posix core.
The article lists 3 negative points:
1) No VPN "wizard"
This is absurdly nitpicky. It might be a neat extra feature, but I don't think any OS has a VPN wizard in the base install.
2) America's Army isn't bundled.
Excuse me? Are you insane? Why in the name of heaven would Xandros bundle a 3D game with their OS that is being targeted at corporate desktops? Windows doesn't bundle any games besides a few amusements of their own, and I can't think of another distribution that would package any major 3rd-party game, let alone one that is as politically loaded as America's Army. Linux is very international, you know... What ever happened to acquiring software and installing it? Who says it has to be bundled with the OS?
3) No Gnome
While I would be the first to argue for Gnome over KDE in the first place, including Gnome with Xandros would really be the wrong decision. Gtk libraries are an inexcusable omission if that's the case, but Gnome is an entirely separate desktop environment. Xandros is taking a stand for one DE and I respect that, given that they are targeting their distribution to a very specific market. Windows doesn't include Litestep, OSX doesn't include a full OS9 environment, so I fail to see the precedent among commercially-targeted OSes. Both Gnome and KDE are designed from the ground-up to work in a vacuum, and any interoperability is, at the moment, kludgey at best.
The sad thing is, they will probably have a mechanism to block non-WMV-enabled clients from accessing the website at all, or at least severely inhibit. So, unless you are running IE on Windows with Windows Media Player (in all it's DRMed glory) installed, or bothered to associate WMP as a Mozilla plugin, you probably won't be able to visit these sites.
Now you probably don't care about visiting MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, but I can definitely foresee more sites adopting this if it ends up being profitable.
The fundamental difference between TV an the Internet is that the Internet is a communications tool, not a broadcast medium. Big websites want it to be more like a broadcast medium, and ISPs as well - hence the common upload/download bandwidth disparity and many ISPs blocking people from running any kind of server. The internet in general is not very conducive to making money for information distribution, but big corporations want to change it until it is. And you can bet they won't care about any open standards in the process.
There was a wonderful article about this change relatively recently... can anyone remember where?
How does copyright play into this? Clearly it's a trademark issue, but both the /. headline and the Register refer to copyright. Is "phoenetic domain" some hidden application of copyright law?
This submission is a quick mock-up. I can do a better one if you think it's good...
Good thinking, they should have it research computer security! I don't think you can throw the DMCA at a robot...
My first task as Master Builder would be to reinstate the Hard Core lego set. Makes a great gift!
Awesome, I was waiting for this. Definitely a reason to consider iTunes now.
How long until someone writes a command-line AAC2mp3 converter?
I'd like to see a desktop system built with maybe 8 of these running in SMP. You'd probably have about the same raw computing power as a high-end Intel or AMD dual-processor machine, and probably less power consumption. Where you'd really win is with usability and interactivity - a good SMP OS would handle multitasking properly among the CPUs. Your web browser would never interrupt your mp3 player again, and the UI would be unhindered by background processes. This may especially be the case with the on-die memory controllers.
The only problem being the fact that they could never sell it... only high-end server versions of Windows support high numbers of SMP CPUs. Obviously this isn't a problem for Linux users.
Who says it's just one machine? I don't know the system details, but it's quite possible that the system includes multiple actual computers that would have a firewall in front of everything, and eliminate the single point of failure. $15000 buys a lot of hardware, even if the system includes several "orbiters" and a fancy cell phone and whatever else.
CDC: Ohh! An envelope full of infectious scabs... This is the best Christmas ever!
"From the vaporware dept"... Michael, How can anything be vaporware if the company hasn't announced the product yet and its very existance is only a rumor?
Please, choose either the "Free beer vs. Free speech" option, or the "Gratis vs. Libre" option, not both.
It's not the DRM (I think you meant this instead of Direct Memory Access) that's the problem. If copyright owners want to restrict how their property is distributed, fine. The problem is that the DRM is not an open standard, and people who don't have Media Player 9 on Windows are forced to choose between breaking the law or being left with nothing to listen to. If, that is, this becomes a trend.
Psst, Taco doesn't actually write the blurbs, he just copies the first paragraph of the article.
Um, that should be 21, not 19 in the subject... I can't add this morning.
2+3=5
Is Nullsoft adopting a Fibonacci versioning system?
'cause that would be awesome.
check out the goods at GarageGames. They have several great games available for linux (download the demos to see how well they work - well for me!) like Think Tanks and Orbz. Check out Marble Blast as well, although it's not multiplayer. Priced reasonably at $20 too!
Oh, and how about TuxRacer commercial? The demo's quite fun.
Are we talking about the same Keramik? The one with window decorations that are twice as big as they should be, piss-colored widget highlights that don't match the window decorations, "3D Effects" that appear to have been done by a 13-year old who just discovered photoshop?
It's not as much of a ripoff as the new KDE theme, but the window buttons are shaped exactly the same.
Good riddance! Keramik was KDE's idea of "eye kandy" for 3.1, and looked like someone's poor first attempt at a GUI theme. About as streamlined as a yak. In a word: fugly!
Now they've gone with an off-color ripoff of the Windows XP window decorations (just like Ximian's Industrial), and a QT theme that looks like one of the GTK Smooth variations. Certainly an improvement over Keramik, but not exactly an original look. It seems like they were really sick of people complaining how Gnome is prettier.