Yes, and Adobe Photoshop could be modified to become a program that indoctrinates me in Marxist philosophy. What's the point? That a user installing an application needs to trust its source? This has been true ever since there has been third party software.
While the application development environment was locked, it made sense to play this cat-and-mouse game of jailbreaking phones to get at 3rd part apps. Now that Apple has created a rich ecosystem of free and fairly priced applications, I've lost all interest in the process. I happily scrubbed my phone and went with a clean build of 1.2.
Of course, there are a different set of motivations behind carrier unlocking.
Sorry, story doesn't check out. The prevailing estimate is that Skype has 10,000,000 users. That's not "active" users, but everyone who has ever signed up. So, a $3Bn valuation translates to $300 per "registered" user. Now I've worked in the industry enough to know that half of these users are likely garbage - there are probably less that 1,000,000 active users - but let's say that there are 2,000,000 - that's still $1500/user. How many of those use only the free service and not the premium services? I'd guess most of them. Thus, their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) can't average more than a few dollars/month across their active user base.
In what world is Skype worth a multi-billion dollar value? The technology is not novel - anyone could build a "free" VOIP PC-PC service with premium bridges to the POTS infrastructure.
If I were a shareholder of one of these companies thinking about throwing BILLIONS as Skype, I'd make sure that I had a full study done of the cost to replicate ALL of the Skype infrastructure: Net cost: Millions. This is a horrible buy. Even if you consider "buying" Skype's customer base, the valuation per customer is absolutely abusrd.
What's interesting about this is that in some sense, an iPod user has the least reason to switch, as Apple has done such a good job of making iTunes work as well as it could possibly be expect to on both the Mac and the PC. Is it just a design thing?
I'm all for the trend, though, whatever the reason.
It's unfair to characterize my earlier statements as "idiotic". The idea of sharing those sentiments on/. may in fact have been idiotic, but the statements were all fair.
I'm not arguing that anyone should do anything. Just as it's Microsoft's right to release Word as a closed-source application, it's a GPL developer's right to release under that license.
It's my contention that there's often a knee-jerk reaction - due to the popularity and chic of the GPL - that people use that license to "give away" their software, when they really haven't considered their aims. If their aim is to encourage the eocsystem of the sort-of-free-but-free-in-our-sandbox GPL economy, then the GPL makes sense. If, however, their goal is to give away their work as a gift to the greater community, then I think that aim is served by releasing code into the public domain - or at very least with a BSD-ish license.
Take for example something like GIMP - released under the GPL, it results in a fair image editing program, but one practically available only to the subset of the world's users who understand what it is, how to find it, and how to use it. If, however, GIMP were released into the public domain, it would in short order raise the quality of every image editing program on the planet - and reduce their costs - all without losing the availability of the program itself. Under which scenario does the world's computing community benefit most? My money's on the latter.
This wasn't a troll. I understand the GPL. I understand its aims. Still, you can't tell me that something in the public domain isn't more free than something released under the GPL. It's just not. The GPL places specific restrictions on how I can use the code. Software in the public domain has no restrictions.
People write "free" software for different reasons - some as a hook to sell "supported" or "commercial" versions, but most just to contribute to the greater good. These are the folks that I'm addressing: If you are creating software for others to freely use, make it truly free.
If you want your software to be free - free on both counts, release it without any restrictions into the public domain. It seems that most GPL developers are so scared that someone is going to take their software and make money on it - or worse still, take control over their project. If their intellectual contribution is so valuable, then they will retain de facto control no matter what - and so the why the #$#^ care so much if someone else makes money off of software that includes your work. That's real charity - not the cowardly selfish charity that the GPL embodies.
I would have agreed with the parent until my last computer purchase. Until about a month ago, my main gaming machine was a dual Athlon MP 1800+ with a Radeon 9700. It was a nice box that I built myself (the 9700 was a later upgrade) that would play almost any modern game at acceptable framerates. When after 2 years or so of hard use the motherboard failed, I started putting together a newegg order to replace components...
Of course, I could no longer use my old graphics card (if you're going to go new, you need PCI Express), and I wanted SATA, and of course it needed newer memory, oh and an upgraded power supply. I had my newegg cart all ready to go with a mobo, processor, video card memory, power supply, faster DVD burner, etc - when it occurred to me to price compare buying the same stuff from Dell. It turned out that buying a Dell XPS with all of the same stuff pre-built only cost me about $200 more.
I have to say that I'm pretty happy that I chose the Dell over building it myself this time around (and I've built literally dozens of workstations and servers from scratch). In less than two days from clicking the "order" button, I was up and running. Had I hand-built the machine, it'd be inevitable that I'd be waiting weeks for some component. On top of all of that, if something breaks, I can make Dell fix it.
So, here's at least one person qualified and knowledgable enough to build his own machine from scratch but didn't find the cost savings nearly worth it.
I've been a technology guy at two companies that, at least for a time, were very serious about building software for PDAs and other handheld devices. These days, all of the momentum has shifted to writing applications for phones.
That said, I've had occasion to use at length every single Palm (including the newest Treos and Clies), Pocket PC, MagicCap device, etc.
To this day, I keep a Newton MP2100 charged and ready to go behind my desk. Why? Meetings. The Newton's larger form factor makes it ideal for taking notes in meetings. Laptops are too distracting and unnatural, and anything with a smaller screen is too awkward. Further, the Newt's handwriting recognition makes note taking a natural task. Try graffiti for a lengthy set of detailed meeting notes, and you'll see what I mean.
It helps that the user community has kept up with change. I use NewtSync to sync the notes I take on my Newton back to OS X. It also nicely copies my calendar, contacts, and to-do lists to my Newton.
I must admit that I've ben eying an OQO, but with each passing day, its fixed specs are starting to seem less and less impressive, and I don't think I could see myself typing away at one during a meeting.
I love it when I come across my friends playing some whimpy sneak-around game. I routinely taunt them with "Oh, be careful! You don't want those bad men to see you! You had better hide! Go and hide behind the wall like a little girl!"
Give me a real grame like HL or Quake or FarCry any day. I've totally given up on sneaky shooters.
No amount of storming into rooms armed with loads of guns and laying waste to massive amounts of my enemies will ever become dull.
For what it's worth, RHEL AS found my 3Ware SATA card and array during its default installaion without any hassles. That being said, I ended up buying the card after looking around and finding that people were having hassles with cheap Promise controllers and other buit-into-motherboard SATA RAID controllers. The 3Ware card ($140 or so on newegg) has been worth every dime.
Now, this may not be a "mainstream" distro now, but if this version of RHEL (3) does it, Fedora Core is likely to as well.
Well, Jack Bauer Had One
on
OQO Examined
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The Fox TV show 24 has been a paid-placement bonanza for interesting tech gear for a while. An OQO was used by the CTU (for non-24 fans, that's the "Counter Terrorism Unit") pretty heavily in hours 20 or 21 this year (Season 3). I'm pretty sure that the screens it was throwing off were dummied up, but the hardware was unmistakable. In season 1, there were so many Apple computers used, that it seemed at times like an Apple commercial. In season 2 (and even the previews for season 2), a new Powermac G5 showed up just after they were announced, but before the time that anyone but the Pope and Steve Jobs himself actually had their hands on one.
I've been dying for one since the announcement, and will be first in line to try one (to complement my laptop, multiple desktops and army of servers that I have). Then again, I was first in line to buy a new Newton, the first Linux Zaurus, and the original Rio MP3 player.
I suppose I'm one of the 50,000 suckers that Handspring co-founder Donna Dubinsky described by saying in a talk I once heard as "50,000 people will buy anything. Talk talk to me once you've sold 200,000." (my weak-memory paraphrase).
I have two WiFi APs at home. One of these has a WEP key, and is the one all of my devices use. It bridges directly to my "real" network. The other one I leave open just out of the goodness of my heart. I have a dedicated NAT router behind it, and connections coming in on the open access point are the only things that use that router.
So far, no problems, and people have thanked me heartily for giving them internet access in a pinch.
Given this setup, what risks do I run? The only one I can think of is that someone has a bunch of kiddie porn torrents just waiting to start up in a server in a van somewhere. Does that really happen? If Osama Bin Laden walks down my street (he'd probably strut, actually), and uses my "free" WiFi to send threatening emails to major governments, do I go to Guantanamo Bay?
How is this different from NYC offering free WiFi access in Bryant Park?
Here's a little suggestion for the movie makers. Forget Zaphod's second head and third arm. Write them out of the story.
Part of the charm of the original radio play was the dialog between these "guys". In radio, it's easy to toss out the fact that a character has a second head, but then move on. In TV or in the movies, you're saddled with it. It's a terrible distraction, it's awkward, and it ruins all of the interpersonal dynamics.
I believe that the relevant US case here is Whelan v. Jaslow, in which the court finds that copyright protection of computer programs may extend beyond the programs' literal code to their structure, sequence, and organization.
The article mentions that the worm "spread from usenet", and was uploaded to usenet from an account obtained with a stolen credit card.
Here's what I don't get:
1. How does a worm "spread from usenet"? Are there really people who are saavy enough to use usenet and are willing to click on a.pif file in some random post?
2. Why bother with the stolen credit card thing? Can't you use Google News to make postings for free?
I hacked one of the configuration files to make it run at full native resolution on my 20" cinema display. I'm suprised that my older Radeon 7500 graphics card can hack it, but it does, and it looks amazing at this res.
If anyone needs to try some unsupported resolution, let me know, and I'll go back and figure out how I did it.
I saw the movie yesterday, and I was shocked when a number of people walked out in the middle of the Zion "dance" scene. I'm totally flummoxed by this, as I thought it was one of the coolest scenes in the film. I suppose that not many of the Matrix's core audiences have been to dances like that before.
In fact, the only moment of the whole film where I had a genuine "woah" reaction was the moment during this scene when the music shifted from the Zion music to the club-house-dance music and the camera style abruptly changed. Something about that instant was amazing.
Did anyone catch Princeton's Black History professor Cornel West as one of the Zion rulers? Awesome.
You mentioned that you were looking at a VAIO R505. Stop. Stay away. Go no further.
I just replaced a R505 with a 12" PowerBook. In every respect, the Apple is the superior machine:
The R505 series of Vaio feel very very cheap. The nice metal cover that had been on the older series Vaios has been replaced by a run-of-the-mill piece of plastic. After a year, the screen hinge barely works, and the power adapter socket will only make an adequate connection when I hold it just right.
On paper, the R505 is smaller, but it doesn't feel any smaller. The way the 12"PB is hinged makes it open in a very compact way - unlike the R505 which seems to need a great deal more room to fully open. On a train or plane, the 12" PB can be held on the tray table with the screen at a reasonable angle even with the seat reclined in front of you. No chance of doing this with the Vaio.
Finally, the PB12" is much much smaller when you consider its relative size with the DVD drive installed. On the Vaio, you need to plug the unit into its base to get the DVD drive - doubling the size and weight of the thing. With the Apple, it's just there, and just works.
You say you're fine with a PCMCIA 802.11 solution, but have you really used one of these for any length of time? The antenna portion of the card makes for an awkward fit - especially compared with the elegance of the Mac's built-in airport.
Don't get me started on OSX. You want to run Linux why? Honestly, with X11 installed within OSX, I'm finding it hard to find reasons to run Linux.
No, I don't want the crappy "relaxing ball". I want the t-shirts that i KNOW you have under the counter. No, I don't want to have a discussion with you about my enterprise needs. I just need a t-shirt. Don't make me come back there and get it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and Adobe Photoshop could be modified to become a program that indoctrinates me in Marxist philosophy. What's the point? That a user installing an application needs to trust its source? This has been true ever since there has been third party software.
Shame on Slashdot for pushing this.
While the application development environment was locked, it made sense to play this cat-and-mouse game of jailbreaking phones to get at 3rd part apps. Now that Apple has created a rich ecosystem of free and fairly priced applications, I've lost all interest in the process. I happily scrubbed my phone and went with a clean build of 1.2.
Of course, there are a different set of motivations behind carrier unlocking.
Sprint is planning on spinning its wireline services into a separate corporation following the completion of their integration with Nextel.
Sorry, story doesn't check out. The prevailing estimate is that Skype has 10,000,000 users. That's not "active" users, but everyone who has ever signed up. So, a $3Bn valuation translates to $300 per "registered" user. Now I've worked in the industry enough to know that half of these users are likely garbage - there are probably less that 1,000,000 active users - but let's say that there are 2,000,000 - that's still $1500/user. How many of those use only the free service and not the premium services? I'd guess most of them. Thus, their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) can't average more than a few dollars/month across their active user base.
Sorry, still doesn't make any sense.
In what world is Skype worth a multi-billion dollar value? The technology is not novel - anyone could build a "free" VOIP PC-PC service with premium bridges to the POTS infrastructure.
If I were a shareholder of one of these companies thinking about throwing BILLIONS as Skype, I'd make sure that I had a full study done of the cost to replicate ALL of the Skype infrastructure: Net cost: Millions. This is a horrible buy. Even if you consider "buying" Skype's customer base, the valuation per customer is absolutely abusrd.
You have a IH pickup? That's awesome!
What's interesting about this is that in some sense, an iPod user has the least reason to switch, as Apple has done such a good job of making iTunes work as well as it could possibly be expect to on both the Mac and the PC. Is it just a design thing?
I'm all for the trend, though, whatever the reason.
It's unfair to characterize my earlier statements as "idiotic". The idea of sharing those sentiments on /. may in fact have been idiotic, but the statements were all fair.
I'm not arguing that anyone should do anything. Just as it's Microsoft's right to release Word as a closed-source application, it's a GPL developer's right to release under that license.
It's my contention that there's often a knee-jerk reaction - due to the popularity and chic of the GPL - that people use that license to "give away" their software, when they really haven't considered their aims. If their aim is to encourage the eocsystem of the sort-of-free-but-free-in-our-sandbox GPL economy, then the GPL makes sense. If, however, their goal is to give away their work as a gift to the greater community, then I think that aim is served by releasing code into the public domain - or at very least with a BSD-ish license.
Take for example something like GIMP - released under the GPL, it results in a fair image editing program, but one practically available only to the subset of the world's users who understand what it is, how to find it, and how to use it. If, however, GIMP were released into the public domain, it would in short order raise the quality of every image editing program on the planet - and reduce their costs - all without losing the availability of the program itself. Under which scenario does the world's computing community benefit most? My money's on the latter.
This wasn't a troll. I understand the GPL. I understand its aims. Still, you can't tell me that something in the public domain isn't more free than something released under the GPL. It's just not. The GPL places specific restrictions on how I can use the code. Software in the public domain has no restrictions.
People write "free" software for different reasons - some as a hook to sell "supported" or "commercial" versions, but most just to contribute to the greater good. These are the folks that I'm addressing: If you are creating software for others to freely use, make it truly free.
The GPL is cowardly.
If you want your software to be free - free on both counts, release it without any restrictions into the public domain. It seems that most GPL developers are so scared that someone is going to take their software and make money on it - or worse still, take control over their project. If their intellectual contribution is so valuable, then they will retain de facto control no matter what - and so the why the #$#^ care so much if someone else makes money off of software that includes your work. That's real charity - not the cowardly selfish charity that the GPL embodies.
I would have agreed with the parent until my last computer purchase. Until about a month ago, my main gaming machine was a dual Athlon MP 1800+ with a Radeon 9700. It was a nice box that I built myself (the 9700 was a later upgrade) that would play almost any modern game at acceptable framerates. When after 2 years or so of hard use the motherboard failed, I started putting together a newegg order to replace components...
Of course, I could no longer use my old graphics card (if you're going to go new, you need PCI Express), and I wanted SATA, and of course it needed newer memory, oh and an upgraded power supply. I had my newegg cart all ready to go with a mobo, processor, video card memory, power supply, faster DVD burner, etc - when it occurred to me to price compare buying the same stuff from Dell. It turned out that buying a Dell XPS with all of the same stuff pre-built only cost me about $200 more.
I have to say that I'm pretty happy that I chose the Dell over building it myself this time around (and I've built literally dozens of workstations and servers from scratch). In less than two days from clicking the "order" button, I was up and running. Had I hand-built the machine, it'd be inevitable that I'd be waiting weeks for some component. On top of all of that, if something breaks, I can make Dell fix it.
So, here's at least one person qualified and knowledgable enough to build his own machine from scratch but didn't find the cost savings nearly worth it.
There'll be no need for a flying car, as you'll instantly be transformed into a hyperintelligent, pan-dimensional being.
I've been a technology guy at two companies that, at least for a time, were very serious about building software for PDAs and other handheld devices. These days, all of the momentum has shifted to writing applications for phones.
That said, I've had occasion to use at length every single Palm (including the newest Treos and Clies), Pocket PC, MagicCap device, etc.
To this day, I keep a Newton MP2100 charged and ready to go behind my desk. Why? Meetings. The Newton's larger form factor makes it ideal for taking notes in meetings. Laptops are too distracting and unnatural, and anything with a smaller screen is too awkward. Further, the Newt's handwriting recognition makes note taking a natural task. Try graffiti for a lengthy set of detailed meeting notes, and you'll see what I mean.
It helps that the user community has kept up with change. I use NewtSync to sync the notes I take on my Newton back to OS X. It also nicely copies my calendar, contacts, and to-do lists to my Newton.
I must admit that I've ben eying an OQO, but with each passing day, its fixed specs are starting to seem less and less impressive, and I don't think I could see myself typing away at one during a meeting.
I love it when I come across my friends playing some whimpy sneak-around game. I routinely taunt them with "Oh, be careful! You don't want those bad men to see you! You had better hide! Go and hide behind the wall like a little girl!"
Give me a real grame like HL or Quake or FarCry any day. I've totally given up on sneaky shooters.
No amount of storming into rooms armed with loads of guns and laying waste to massive amounts of my enemies will ever become dull.
For what it's worth, RHEL AS found my 3Ware SATA card and array during its default installaion without any hassles. That being said, I ended up buying the card after looking around and finding that people were having hassles with cheap Promise controllers and other buit-into-motherboard SATA RAID controllers. The 3Ware card ($140 or so on newegg) has been worth every dime.
Now, this may not be a "mainstream" distro now, but if this version of RHEL (3) does it, Fedora Core is likely to as well.
The Fox TV show 24 has been a paid-placement bonanza for interesting tech gear for a while. An OQO was used by the CTU (for non-24 fans, that's the "Counter Terrorism Unit") pretty heavily in hours 20 or 21 this year (Season 3). I'm pretty sure that the screens it was throwing off were dummied up, but the hardware was unmistakable. In season 1, there were so many Apple computers used, that it seemed at times like an Apple commercial. In season 2 (and even the previews for season 2), a new Powermac G5 showed up just after they were announced, but before the time that anyone but the Pope and Steve Jobs himself actually had their hands on one.
I've been dying for one since the announcement, and will be first in line to try one (to complement my laptop, multiple desktops and army of servers that I have). Then again, I was first in line to buy a new Newton, the first Linux Zaurus, and the original Rio MP3 player.
I suppose I'm one of the 50,000 suckers that Handspring co-founder Donna Dubinsky described by saying in a talk I once heard as "50,000 people will buy anything. Talk talk to me once you've sold 200,000." (my weak-memory paraphrase).
I have two WiFi APs at home. One of these has a WEP key, and is the one all of my devices use. It bridges directly to my "real" network. The other one I leave open just out of the goodness of my heart. I have a dedicated NAT router behind it, and connections coming in on the open access point are the only things that use that router.
So far, no problems, and people have thanked me heartily for giving them internet access in a pinch.
Given this setup, what risks do I run? The only one I can think of is that someone has a bunch of kiddie porn torrents just waiting to start up in a server in a van somewhere. Does that really happen? If Osama Bin Laden walks down my street (he'd probably strut, actually), and uses my "free" WiFi to send threatening emails to major governments, do I go to Guantanamo Bay?
How is this different from NYC offering free WiFi access in Bryant Park?
$499 says my plasma TV dims to half of its original brightness before this story stops dominating slashdot.
Here's a little suggestion for the movie makers. Forget Zaphod's second head and third arm. Write them out of the story.
Part of the charm of the original radio play was the dialog between these "guys". In radio, it's easy to toss out the fact that a character has a second head, but then move on. In TV or in the movies, you're saddled with it. It's a terrible distraction, it's awkward, and it ruins all of the interpersonal dynamics.
Lose the head. You'll be glad you did.
I believe that the relevant US case here is Whelan v. Jaslow, in which the court finds that copyright protection of computer programs may extend beyond the programs' literal code to their structure, sequence, and organization.
The article mentions that the worm "spread from usenet", and was uploaded to usenet from an account obtained with a stolen credit card.
.pif file in some random post?
Here's what I don't get:
1. How does a worm "spread from usenet"? Are there really people who are saavy enough to use usenet and are willing to click on a
2. Why bother with the stolen credit card thing? Can't you use Google News to make postings for free?
I hacked one of the configuration files to make it run at full native resolution on my 20" cinema display. I'm suprised that my older Radeon 7500 graphics card can hack it, but it does, and it looks amazing at this res.
If anyone needs to try some unsupported resolution, let me know, and I'll go back and figure out how I did it.
matthewATappliedinformation.com
http://www.stovepipehat.com (my slash site)
I saw the movie yesterday, and I was shocked when a number of people walked out in the middle of the Zion "dance" scene. I'm totally flummoxed by this, as I thought it was one of the coolest scenes in the film. I suppose that not many of the Matrix's core audiences have been to dances like that before.
In fact, the only moment of the whole film where I had a genuine "woah" reaction was the moment during this scene when the music shifted from the Zion music to the club-house-dance music and the camera style abruptly changed. Something about that instant was amazing.
Did anyone catch Princeton's Black History professor Cornel West as one of the Zion rulers? Awesome.
I just replaced a R505 with a 12" PowerBook. In every respect, the Apple is the superior machine:
The R505 series of Vaio feel very very cheap. The nice metal cover that had been on the older series Vaios has been replaced by a run-of-the-mill piece of plastic. After a year, the screen hinge barely works, and the power adapter socket will only make an adequate connection when I hold it just right.
On paper, the R505 is smaller, but it doesn't feel any smaller. The way the 12"PB is hinged makes it open in a very compact way - unlike the R505 which seems to need a great deal more room to fully open. On a train or plane, the 12" PB can be held on the tray table with the screen at a reasonable angle even with the seat reclined in front of you. No chance of doing this with the Vaio.
Finally, the PB12" is much much smaller when you consider its relative size with the DVD drive installed. On the Vaio, you need to plug the unit into its base to get the DVD drive - doubling the size and weight of the thing. With the Apple, it's just there, and just works.
You say you're fine with a PCMCIA 802.11 solution, but have you really used one of these for any length of time? The antenna portion of the card makes for an awkward fit - especially compared with the elegance of the Mac's built-in airport.
Don't get me started on OSX. You want to run Linux why? Honestly, with X11 installed within OSX, I'm finding it hard to find reasons to run Linux.
No, I don't want the crappy "relaxing ball". I want the t-shirts that i KNOW you have under the counter. No, I don't want to have a discussion with you about my enterprise needs. I just need a t-shirt. Don't make me come back there and get it.