Anybody else get the feeling that our representatives in Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, are more concerned with their petty squabbles and party lines than actually getting anything interesting done with the country?
Every time I read a story like this I see one party putting something forward, and the other one trying to sink it with gimpy tactics like this Hispanic rights limitations clause.
Wouldn't it make sense for Transmeta to rush in the delivery of the much hyped webpads that was supposed to showcase the primary benefits of the Crusoe processor?
It seems to be coming to light that the crusoe can't compete with Intel on performance and may not provide enough power savings in a traditional laptop to make a difference, so they need to find a niche market and quickly. I though that was their business plan from the start but it looks like we'll just see some regular notebooks coming out with fairly normal features and eventually Transmeta will be unable to justify their existence to manufacturers or consumers.
"Oh man, they just got the rambus!"
"We're gonna rambus those fools, and if they don't like it, they can suck my rambus."
"Put your rambus in the air, and wave it like you just don't care!"
From da soft: "... implementing IPv6 to further networking research on the Windows NT/2000 platform."
Translation: "...IPv4 was really really hard. I didn't really get it. One time I was working on the NT4 drivers and I forgot what line I needed to GOTO and it turned out that all network traffic was getting opened as an Excel spreadsheet. I was moved to the talking paperclip project, but now I'm back for IPv6 cause it's easier!"
"Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals." The new material will immediately go into use as packaging for products such as cassette tapes, finally fulfilling science's dream of "the most irritating fuckin' thing to open of all time."
Is it not about time for a more efficient way of organizing developers than the time honoured, but woefully inefficient mailing list? I know OSS people have a reputation for refusing to adopt new ways of working but this is insane.
We need something new and standard that is threaded, searchable and publicly accessable. Plain email just isn't an efficient medium for organizing tasks of this complexity and people's input and work get lost, or at the very least goes unrecognized.
Is there _any_ movement out there away from the primary use of mailing lists as an organizing medium?
After reading some of the info regarding the new Python release I see that they've decided to release 1.6 under an open source license that they believe to be compatible with GPL, although it seems RMS disagrees. This is the second item today that I've seen that has potential licensing woes.
Why is it that we need to many different licenses? If the concern is to be GPL compatible then why not release under the GPL?
It seems to be an important task to iron out the major differences between the most popular licenses and get everybody under one legal roof in case problems start to develop. I doubt we have the legal resources to create and defend rigorously 7 types of licenses.
Is it just me or is Helix code deserving of some serious respect for taking care of alot of the nasty details of the Linux desktop, and doing it while looking better than any group of applications I've ever seen on any *nix.
I recommend all their stuff to anyone who's new to Unix and it always leads to a much better first impression for Linux in general.
If they can finish their Outlook replacement apps then they will have brought Linux perhaps 40% closer to being a windows desktop replacement for many companies.
It seems to me that the problem with previous micropayment schemes was not the scheme itself, but that there was never a situation in which the convenience of using the system outweighed the risks associated with trusting an outside party with your money and transactions.
eBay provided the fluid marketplace that created the situation where that convenience overrode the inherent mistrust of a newcomer like PayPal.
eBay brought the idea of the auction as a sales model to the forefront of the net, they also pioneered community based trust mechanisms that let their model survive even though they don't back transactions directly (something that would have quickly invalidated their business model).
What was supposed to be a concept that allowed high-brow concepts like online media micropayments seems to have come about largely because of the requirements of some people to sell $5 pens and beany babies.
Probably important not to forget that no matter how large the venture capital some firm gets to change the internet, most likely it won't succeed unless we decide it will.
If only Linux could get behind some of the Java developments in gaming (Java 3D w/ acceleration, midi and sound mixing, etc) then it would be easier and less expensive for people like us to write some games in our spare time.
"Gaming" under Linux doesn't have to mean commercial games.
(For an example, check out the realtime strategy link in the.sig).
On the FreeDB site they say that the CDDB server was GPL'ed originally. Is this the case? Is that source code still available or have they attempted to change the license?
Other than that, it is my firm belief that a company will reap what it sows and once enough people get sick of them then things like FreeDB will take off.
Most people don't realize that midget obesity is a serious problem and that Adobe is just stepping up here in the best interests of those little people affected. Macromedia has flaunted its use of Flabbed Midgets for a long time now and it's not fair to us or them that they can benefit from Adobe's considerable R&D expense regarding these short, fat people -
oh wait, what did you say? Trapped gidget? Oh, tabbed widgets. Right.
Hey, no one likes the damn Windows media player, but can't you see the point in getting the message out to those who need it most - those with the Windows media player?
What's the point in preaching Linux to a Linux only media set? It defeats the whole purpose. However, this seems to be more and more the attitude of "open" systems.
"Hey, let's convince them to use our operating system by not using any of their file formats and make remarks about them when they ask for information in those formats."
It's the high school cafeteria attitude, finally brought to software!
From the text of this post it looks like all this stuff is live.
<Drunken Undershirt Speech>Maybe if Slashdot wasn't owned by the damn multinational media and was still a small site like it used to be back when it sucked, then now it wouldn't suck as much as my pet pig on this here tree bark.</DUS>
An excellent analysis of the probability of success of this experiment.
These questions are of interest to us all, and I guess they must be because at least 1/3 of the stories on here are related to these issues.
Authors seem to have it both the best and the worst on the interenet currently. The best because it's easy to distribute their content economically and the baseline machine / internet connection can handle their medium easily. The worst because they're the poor cousin on the bandwidth requirements scale so their stuff is also easiest to rip off. I hope something's worked out so we can all benefit.
I think the comments posted so far are missing the point, this is not simply a search engine system being open sourced but a content management system.
This is a super important piece of software for a major website to have available for free. Sure you can serve up a zillion hits with Apache, but how do you manage the pipeline of getting structured content from writers and artists onto that site in a timely and efficient manner?
It's a thorny problem and the solutions available now are very expensive and I hear not that great. This coupled with Apache and the free XML tools that are out there now should combine to make a killer, free, web suite a reality.
I was just wondering, since the Seti@Home dudes are always talking about how they need to keep the source code under control to keep any semblance of scientific integrity, something which I think makes sense, does the porting of the block cruncher to other systems affect this goal at all?
For example, if there's a rounding error in one of the floating point libraries for whatever OS you're compiling for, let's just take the common example of a 6 processor embedded PCI card, wouldn't that invalidate the results from that computer as much as the Seti@Home source being modified?
No matter what the performance results of new ATI products, you can pretty much guarantee that it will be at least 2 driver releases after the actual release of the card when you will be able to play any games with stability, and you will also be pretty much guaranteed that the card will NEVER get it's drivers to the state where everything works satisfactorily.
ATI has burned me too many times by abandoning my card before the drivers get mature enough to be stable and consequently I won't be buying any of their stuff again.
The problem with open source initiatives seems to with creativity, and this hurts in game developement the most.
I have yet to see an open source project that is not a clone or a close relative of something that already exists in the world. Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
Open source breeds innovation, not invention and in the world of game design this is death.
My current theory is that new ideas need alot of high-bandwidth discussions, i.e. face to face meetings, to hash out and transfer the idea from one brain to another. Open source projects rarely have this luxury and so perhaps are forced into pointing their efforts at a well understood problem.
Summary: I find it unlikely that an amazing open source game will emerge under the current community conditions.
I hate to point out the obvious, but I've seen alot of posts here saying we've got a few milestones to go before the feature set is complete, and then speed optimizations begin.
This does not make sense.
IE has something like 70% of the browser market now, mainly because it just browses, nothing else.
Mozilla Team: Please consider freezing the features right now. You already have the best rendering engine, prove it by making the necessary optimizations. Then we can all have a prominent UI based opensource app to point to as a success.
"Stop eating your own dog food, and finish the damn browser."
Is anyone else sick of daily updates on this trial when any actual penalties or remedies won't be in effect for another 7 years or so, allowing for the proper appeals?
This is not another boring "Slasher should cover more " posts, it's in the media at large.
This will be interesting as most cell phone pricing packages charge you for an email message received on your phone whether you want it or not. What will happen when they let through 300 messages from a worm cruising around and you get a $150 phone bill.
Spam from these sorts of viruses is irritating when you're on a flat rate internet connection, it's gonna be a serious issue when you pay per message.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody else get the feeling that our representatives in Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, are more concerned with their petty squabbles and party lines than actually getting anything interesting done with the country?
Every time I read a story like this I see one party putting something forward, and the other one trying to sink it with gimpy tactics like this Hispanic rights limitations clause.
Why can't we all just get along?
<single tear>
Wouldn't it make sense for Transmeta to rush in the delivery of the much hyped webpads that was supposed to showcase the primary benefits of the Crusoe processor?
It seems to be coming to light that the crusoe can't compete with Intel on performance and may not provide enough power savings in a traditional laptop to make a difference, so they need to find a niche market and quickly. I though that was their business plan from the start but it looks like we'll just see some regular notebooks coming out with fairly normal features and eventually Transmeta will be unable to justify their existence to manufacturers or consumers.
This presents a whole new range of phrases:
"Oh man, they just got the rambus!"
"We're gonna rambus those fools, and if they don't like it, they can suck my rambus."
"Put your rambus in the air, and wave it like you just don't care!"
Ok, that last one may take some time to catch on.
From da soft: "... implementing IPv6 to further networking research on the Windows NT/2000 platform."
Translation: "...IPv4 was really really hard. I didn't really get it. One time I was working on the NT4 drivers and I forgot what line I needed to GOTO and it turned out that all network traffic was getting opened as an Excel spreadsheet. I was moved to the talking paperclip project, but now I'm back for IPv6 cause it's easier!"
"Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals." The new material will immediately go into use as packaging for products such as cassette tapes, finally fulfilling science's dream of "the most irritating fuckin' thing to open of all time."
Is it not about time for a more efficient way of organizing developers than the time honoured, but woefully inefficient mailing list? I know OSS people have a reputation for refusing to adopt new ways of working but this is insane.
We need something new and standard that is threaded, searchable and publicly accessable. Plain email just isn't an efficient medium for organizing tasks of this complexity and people's input and work get lost, or at the very least goes unrecognized.
Is there _any_ movement out there away from the primary use of mailing lists as an organizing medium?
After reading some of the info regarding the new Python release I see that they've decided to release 1.6 under an open source license that they believe to be compatible with GPL, although it seems RMS disagrees. This is the second item today that I've seen that has potential licensing woes.
Why is it that we need to many different licenses? If the concern is to be GPL compatible then why not release under the GPL?
It seems to be an important task to iron out the major differences between the most popular licenses and get everybody under one legal roof in case problems start to develop. I doubt we have the legal resources to create and defend rigorously 7 types of licenses.
Is it just me or is Helix code deserving of some serious respect for taking care of alot of the nasty details of the Linux desktop, and doing it while looking better than any group of applications I've ever seen on any *nix.
I recommend all their stuff to anyone who's new to Unix and it always leads to a much better first impression for Linux in general.
If they can finish their Outlook replacement apps then they will have brought Linux perhaps 40% closer to being a windows desktop replacement for many companies.
Good work guys and keep it up.
It seems to me that the problem with previous micropayment schemes was not the scheme itself, but that there was never a situation in which the convenience of using the system outweighed the risks associated with trusting an outside party with your money and transactions.
eBay provided the fluid marketplace that created the situation where that convenience overrode the inherent mistrust of a newcomer like PayPal.
eBay brought the idea of the auction as a sales model to the forefront of the net, they also pioneered community based trust mechanisms that let their model survive even though they don't back transactions directly (something that would have quickly invalidated their business model).
What was supposed to be a concept that allowed high-brow concepts like online media micropayments seems to have come about largely because of the requirements of some people to sell $5 pens and beany babies.
Probably important not to forget that no matter how large the venture capital some firm gets to change the internet, most likely it won't succeed unless we decide it will.
If only Linux could get behind some of the Java developments in gaming (Java 3D w/ acceleration, midi and sound mixing, etc) then it would be easier and less expensive for people like us to write some games in our spare time.
"Gaming" under Linux doesn't have to mean commercial games.
(For an example, check out the realtime strategy link in the
On the FreeDB site they say that the CDDB server was GPL'ed originally. Is this the case? Is that source code still available or have they attempted to change the license?
Other than that, it is my firm belief that a company will reap what it sows and once enough people get sick of them then things like FreeDB will take off.
Most people don't realize that midget obesity is a serious problem and that Adobe is just stepping up here in the best interests of those little people affected. Macromedia has flaunted its use of Flabbed Midgets for a long time now and it's not fair to us or them that they can benefit from Adobe's considerable R&D expense regarding these short, fat people -
oh wait, what did you say? Trapped gidget? Oh, tabbed widgets. Right.
Forget it.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Hey, no one likes the damn Windows media player, but can't you see the point in getting the message out to those who need it most - those with the Windows media player?
What's the point in preaching Linux to a Linux only media set? It defeats the whole purpose. However, this seems to be more and more the attitude of "open" systems.
"Hey, let's convince them to use our operating system by not using any of their file formats and make remarks about them when they ask for information in those formats."
It's the high school cafeteria attitude, finally brought to software!
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Didn't this thing just end yesterday?
From the text of this post it looks like all this stuff is live.
<Drunken Undershirt Speech>Maybe if Slashdot wasn't owned by the damn multinational media and was still a small site like it used to be back when it sucked, then now it wouldn't suck as much as my pet pig on this here tree bark.</DUS>
Nice.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
An excellent analysis of the probability of success of this experiment.
These questions are of interest to us all, and I guess they must be because at least 1/3 of the stories on here are related to these issues.
Authors seem to have it both the best and the worst on the interenet currently. The best because it's easy to distribute their content economically and the baseline machine / internet connection can handle their medium easily. The worst because they're the poor cousin on the bandwidth requirements scale so their stuff is also easiest to rip off. I hope something's worked out so we can all benefit.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I think the comments posted so far are missing the point, this is not simply a search engine system being open sourced but a content management system.
This is a super important piece of software for a major website to have available for free. Sure you can serve up a zillion hits with Apache, but how do you manage the pipeline of getting structured content from writers and artists onto that site in a timely and efficient manner?
It's a thorny problem and the solutions available now are very expensive and I hear not that great. This coupled with Apache and the free XML tools that are out there now should combine to make a killer, free, web suite a reality.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I was just wondering, since the Seti@Home dudes are always talking about how they need to keep the source code under control to keep any semblance of scientific integrity, something which I think makes sense, does the porting of the block cruncher to other systems affect this goal at all?
For example, if there's a rounding error in one of the floating point libraries for whatever OS you're compiling for, let's just take the common example of a 6 processor embedded PCI card, wouldn't that invalidate the results from that computer as much as the Seti@Home source being modified?
Hotnutz.com - Funny
No matter what the performance results of new ATI products, you can pretty much guarantee that it will be at least 2 driver releases after the actual release of the card when you will be able to play any games with stability, and you will also be pretty much guaranteed that the card will NEVER get it's drivers to the state where everything works satisfactorily.
ATI has burned me too many times by abandoning my card before the drivers get mature enough to be stable and consequently I won't be buying any of their stuff again.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Mouse is an orgnaization that gets computers into schools in and around New York City.
They need all sorts of people, proprammers, networking people, etc. I'm not sure whether they have operations in other parts of the country as well.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
And my vote for worst processor name in current production: IBM's Power3-III!
Jeez, get some imagination ya nerds.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The problem with open source initiatives seems to with creativity, and this hurts in game developement the most.
I have yet to see an open source project that is not a clone or a close relative of something that already exists in the world. Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
Open source breeds innovation, not invention and in the world of game design this is death.
My current theory is that new ideas need alot of high-bandwidth discussions, i.e. face to face meetings, to hash out and transfer the idea from one brain to another. Open source projects rarely have this luxury and so perhaps are forced into pointing their efforts at a well understood problem.
Summary: I find it unlikely that an amazing open source game will emerge under the current community conditions.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I hate to point out the obvious, but I've seen alot of posts here saying we've got a few milestones to go before the feature set is complete, and then speed optimizations begin.
This does not make sense.
IE has something like 70% of the browser market now, mainly because it just browses, nothing else.
Mozilla Team: Please consider freezing the features right now. You already have the best rendering engine, prove it by making the necessary optimizations. Then we can all have a prominent UI based opensource app to point to as a success.
"Stop eating your own dog food, and finish the damn browser."
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Is anyone else sick of daily updates on this trial when any actual penalties or remedies won't be in effect for another 7 years or so, allowing for the proper appeals?
This is not another boring "Slasher should cover more " posts, it's in the media at large.
Realtime news isn't that important.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
This will be interesting as most cell phone pricing packages charge you for an email message received on your phone whether you want it or not. What will happen when they let through 300 messages from a worm cruising around and you get a $150 phone bill.
Spam from these sorts of viruses is irritating when you're on a flat rate internet connection, it's gonna be a serious issue when you pay per message.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
You seem like the kind of person who would have laughed at the first computers and stuck to his handy mechanical calculator.
And of course having not read the articles, you add a bunch of e-commerce bashing in there for good measure.
Nice work.
Hotnutz.com - Funny