... one of the researchers has a homepage with some seriously detailed background information on the technology involved. Drill down to the research index. An interview with one of the HP scientists is here. Anybody else notice all these people are from Rice?
It comes down, but it doesn't go up...
on
NASA's X-37
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· Score: 2
The X37 gets launched into orbit by something else, it doesn't get there on its own. From the Marshall fact sheet, it's a testbed for "the orbital and reentry phases of flight". It's not nearly as cool as the article lead made it sound. OTOH, the X38 "Space Lifeboat" has a certain sort of appeal... "We're hit! Order the crew to the escape pods!"
Hmmm, very revealing... According to the CMU website, the system (presumably Janus) is limited domain, which certainly makes things much easier. Still pretty cool, though.
First off, I want to make it clear that I'm not arguing against open source drivers, I'm arguing that a) open source drivers are necessary but insufficient to getting hardware running on different os's. and b) there are costs in resources and $$$ for a company in supporting an open process for drivers.
I was thinking in the context of drivers for things like new generation 3d boards, which are not reverse engineer-able in any useful sense.
You don't really "port" a 3d video driver from Windows to Linux, you write a brand new one, basically from scratch. Source code would be nice, but you still need the docs plus actual human beings to ask questions of. (Yeah, glide helps)
3Dfx has done a great job of this, but it took a some amount of liason work (==$$$) on 3dfx's part to make it happen. Every hour the 3dfx engineers spend talking to the linux driver guys is an hour a) they get paid and b) they aren't working on something else. It was probably worth it for them (hey, I bought one) but it was an "allocation of resources" problem just like in sim city.
Another reasons open sourcing drivers might cost a company : The drivers for 3d boards are areas of competition (the drivers can be as important as the chip design for producing good benchmark results)
Again, I _like_ the idea of an open driver development process. I bought and very happily use a 3dfx Voodoo3/2000 because of it. I hear nvidia is doing a great job as well.
... is what supporting an open source driver is for a manufacturer. Now, it might be worth it, but the there's a lot of support work that goes with releasing driver information. There's some generic stuff that goes with the chip, but each board is potentially different, and many board manufacturers simply don't have the resources to support an external driver porting effort. The people who know enough to write the docs are busy writing the next generation drivers. And in case you were wondering, no, just releasing a couple of binderfuls of specs is not generally enough to write a good driver.
Fearing you might be correct, I looked up the "I" word. Webster's Unabridged (1989) says "integrate" means to bring together or incorporate parts into a whole, which definition would tend to back you up. OTOH, "integratED", once you get past the religious/ethnic group thing, has to do with "combining or coordinating separate elements so as to provide a harmonious, interrelated whole", or "organized or structured so that constituent units function cooperatively", which I read as applying perfectly to the way unix tools talk to one another with pipes and structured text. OTGH, I suspect I'm preaching to the converted here:-P
"The percentage of users running Windows NT Workstation 4.0 whose PCs stopped working more than once a month was less than half that of Windows 95 users."
At the end of the paper there is a reference to T-Cube. It sounds pretty similiar, but I wasn't able to find an online copy of the T-Cube paper. There's an implementation for Newtons (with a short description) here
1. The deadline for CORBA Component model proposals isn't until August 1999, so no decision has been made.
2. The OMG press release doesn't say what Mr. Sessions implies. It certainly doesn't say that vendor/language neutrality is being abandonded for the Component Model. It's basically just says EJB and CORBA work real good together. Read it for yourself here
3. And finally, from ObjectWatch's home page: "We specialize in offering training and consulting on Microsoft's distributed component architectures"
,,, don't know how to use a computer. But then, most dads don't know how to use a computer, either. The "mom test" is sexist in the extreme. There just aren't enough intelligent people in the world that we can afford to alienate any of them, no matter what their age or sex. One article does very little harm, and can be laughed off. A persistent culteral bias towards considering women inferior in technical matters hurts everyone.
should probably not contain characterizations of people who disagree as "slashdot kiddies and their spiritual kin". It's needlessly inflamatory. It sounds good, and I'm sure it was satifying to write, but it cuts against the whole stated purpose of the essay. People who disagree with ESR are evidently "glib" and "stalwart would-be defenders of cultural purity" and "twits going on a rampage". They may be, but calling them that is descending to their level.
And to forstall one set of objections, this particular stalwart twit spends his spare time working on a couple of GPL'ed projects, with uncertain effect, but great conviction...
Slashdot Mirror
The X37 gets launched into orbit by something else, it doesn't get there on its own. From the Marshall fact sheet, it's a testbed for "the orbital and reentry phases of flight". It's not nearly as cool as the article lead made it sound. OTOH, the X38 "Space Lifeboat" has a certain sort of appeal... "We're hit! Order the crew to the escape pods!"
Hmmm, very revealing... According to the CMU website, the system (presumably Janus) is limited domain, which certainly makes things much easier. Still pretty cool, though.
First off, I want to make it clear that I'm not arguing against open source drivers, I'm arguing that a) open source drivers are necessary but insufficient to getting hardware running on different os's. and b) there are costs in resources and $$$ for a company in supporting an open process for drivers.
I was thinking in the context of drivers for things like new generation 3d boards, which are not reverse engineer-able in any useful sense.
You don't really "port" a 3d video driver from Windows to Linux, you write a brand new one, basically from scratch. Source code would be nice, but you still need the docs plus actual human beings to ask questions of. (Yeah, glide helps)
3Dfx has done a great job of this, but it took a some amount of liason work (==$$$) on 3dfx's part to make it happen. Every hour the 3dfx engineers spend talking to the linux driver guys is an hour a) they get paid and b) they aren't working on something else. It was probably worth it for them (hey, I bought one) but it was an "allocation of resources" problem just like in sim city.
Another reasons open sourcing drivers might cost a company : The drivers for 3d boards are areas of competition (the drivers can be as important as the chip design for producing good benchmark results)
Again, I _like_ the idea of an open driver development process. I bought and very happily use a 3dfx Voodoo3/2000 because of it. I hear nvidia is doing a great job as well.
-cks
... is what supporting an open source driver is for a manufacturer. Now, it might be worth it, but the there's a lot of support work that goes with releasing driver information. There's some generic stuff that goes with the chip, but each board is potentially different, and many board manufacturers simply don't have the resources to support an external driver porting effort. The people who know enough to write the docs are busy writing the next generation drivers. And in case you were wondering, no, just releasing a couple of binderfuls of specs is not generally enough to write a good driver.
Fearing you might be correct, I looked up the "I" word. Webster's Unabridged (1989) says "integrate" means to bring together or incorporate parts into a whole, which definition would tend to back you up. OTOH, "integratED", once you get past the religious/ethnic group thing, has to do with "combining or coordinating separate elements so as to provide a harmonious, interrelated whole", or "organized or structured so that constituent units function cooperatively", which I read as applying perfectly to the way unix tools talk to one another with pipes and structured text. OTGH, I suspect I'm preaching to the converted here :-P
"The percentage of users running Windows NT Workstation 4.0 whose PCs stopped working more than once a month was less than half that of Windows 95 users."
More here
Yeah, yeah, it's workstation and not server, totally different operating systems. Not.
The FAQ claims no source code is available "for security reasons". Hasn't the whole "security through obscurity" thing been discredited?
At the end of the paper there is a reference to T-Cube. It sounds pretty similiar, but I wasn't able to find an online copy of the T-Cube paper. There's an implementation for Newtons (with a short description) here
1. The deadline for CORBA Component model proposals isn't until August 1999, so no decision has been made.
2. The OMG press release doesn't say what Mr. Sessions implies. It certainly doesn't say that vendor/language neutrality is being abandonded for the Component Model. It's basically just says EJB and CORBA work real good together. Read it for yourself here
3. And finally, from ObjectWatch's home page: "We specialize in offering training and
consulting on Microsoft's distributed component architectures"
,,, don't know how to use a computer. But then, most dads don't know how to use a computer, either. The "mom test" is sexist in the extreme. There just aren't enough intelligent people in the world that we can afford to alienate any of them, no matter what their age or sex. One article does very little harm, and can be laughed off. A persistent culteral bias towards considering women inferior in technical matters hurts everyone.
should probably not contain characterizations of people who disagree as "slashdot kiddies and their spiritual kin". It's needlessly inflamatory. It sounds good, and I'm sure it was satifying to write, but it cuts against the whole stated purpose of the essay. People who disagree with ESR are evidently "glib" and "stalwart would-be defenders of cultural purity" and "twits going on a rampage". They may be, but calling them that is descending to their level.
And to forstall one set of objections, this particular stalwart twit spends his spare time working on a couple of GPL'ed projects, with uncertain effect, but great conviction...
Regardless of the worthiness of the task, speaking for people who didn't ask you to speak for them is bound to generate some resentment.
Did anyone else find the ad hominem attacks on his critics a little disturbing?