Much of the actual work of the Centrino wireless hardware is performed in software [...] Intel is hesitant to provide the information that will allow people to write a driver for Linux, because that information would necessarily provide 100% of the software engineering necessary for someone else to create a Centrino-like hardware solution.
That's fine, because it makes the case even clearer. So what I'm buying when I buy Centrino is actually closed source, proprietary software. And I can't even ditch it like the operating system that came with my laptop, because the software is so closed that it even locks up some of my hardware from me if I don't use it.
If Centrino is all-software (or mostly-software), all the better. Then all the arguments why I don't like it have already been made.
Exactly. It's just that it takes too much time, and without corporate backing it will take a while until enthusiasts, hackers, whatever-you-call-them have gotten this time together. And in a market so fast-changing as this, a year or two until a free, reverse-engineered driver is released, puts it pretty much out of the question.
A hardware company (chip manufacturer, global player) would have much more incentive and the necessary financial means to achieve something like that.
If we believe that software should be free, i.e. open and accessible
to anyone, either for ethical reasons or simply because it will
result in better technology, then I don't see why hardware should be
any different. This world would be a better place if I had an
enforceable right to get the specs of my car, my fridge, or my
laptop, if I so desire.
What trade secrets is Intel trying to protect? From whom?
Other chipmakers, I presume. So that nobody could produce an
alternative wireless card to go with a Pentium M processor or some
such.
But wouldn't anyone who's capable of designing and producing his own
chipset be able to dissect the Centrino architecture and reengineer
it, either by careful blackbox testing or by actually taking a
microscope and looking at the chips? Am I way off mark here?
But if it's not other chipmakers they are protecting this from, if it
actually is a software issue, then they are simply dancing to the
tune of Microsoft due to whatever behind-the-scenes agreement they
have with them.
And IBM will surely support Linux on ThinkPads, when customers want it. ("Customers" for IBM being large corporations and governments.)
That's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Right now, there's no option for any large corporation or government to deploy Linux on their ThinkPads because IBM doesn't support it. Given recent advances in desktop usability, customers would probably be just as open to switch their laptops to Linux, as they were switching their servers.
With servers, however, I have the impression that it was IBM that actively marketed the option to use Linux on them, and they convinced customers to do it. Why wouldn't that work on the client?
At least you've got one! I'm constantly perplexed as to why most IBM ThinkPads that are supposedly "designed for [insert Windows version here]" don't have a Windows key.
That is perhaps the single evidence of resistance against Windows within the entire IBM ThinkPad division. Apart from that, I'm constantly perplexed at how Windows-centric that part of the company actually is.
And this from a company that has declared Linux as their reference platform for all future hardware and software development years ago. To this day, you cannot buy a ThinkPad with Linux on it; you can't even buy one that will work 100% under Linux (e.g. hibernation, which you cannot set up except under Windows, no Linux drivers for the new UltraNav touchpads, no pressure from IBM on Intel to release the specs for their Centrino hardware, so that Linux drivers could be written for it, even if it wasn't done by IBM).
Talk about immobility of a big corporation. It sure looks like the "reference platform" decision has been deliberately ignored within the ThinkPad division to this day. In the light of this, the lack of a Windows key actually seems like a faint sign of hope:-)
For example, I'd like to see OpenOffice for Mac OS X finished a little earlier. I'd be willing to spend a little money on that.
I'm sure there are lots of people who feel the same about this or the other feature or port. It would be great if there was an infrastructure where people could donate money and programmers could take up work that these people wanted, the results being released as free software. It would be a great way of making a living with the stuff that we like doing.
I therefore don't understand your point that "I'd be willing to spend some money, but would hate it if it ended up in the pockets of someone who just continued with what he was already doing." -- I think that's the best way to spend your money, because it's gonna support the work of someone who is in it not just for the money. But sometimes, it does take money to pay the bills...
Seriously, I think I understand your point that you actually want your feature to be given priority. But you could make contracts to guarantee that, set deadlines, and what have you.
I call myself a "free software consultant", and I am making a considerable fraction of my income writing free software. I am paid by companies who use free software, and who want me to enhance it with new features. The other part of my income is teaching seminars in the J2EE field, and doing regular consulting work, usually with an emphasis on free software solutions. From my personal experience, I can say there are lots of opportunities if you really want to work in this field, and put the emphasis on free software.
I've been using Thinkpads ever since, and always had Linux as my main operating system on them. My first annoyance is one with IBM, which is that even today there is no way for you to buy a Thinkpad loaded with Linux instead of Windows, and that they don't even make particular efforts to make their machines usable under Linux. Biggest gripe: there's no way to make hibernation work under Linux, you need Windows to at least set it up, and a Windows partition to save the hibernation data into. And this from a company that declared Linux as its reference platform for all future hardware and software development. Ha!
The second annoyance is a purely Linux-related one: not even suspending the laptop works reliably under Linux. It used to be almost bearable, but with recent kernel versions and/or recent Xfree86 my machine has started to hang after suspend in about 5-10% of all cases. Why can't this ever work right?
(I'm omitting my Thinkpad model number on purpose; if you look at all those Linux-on-Thinkpad pages on the net, you see that it's a persistent problem throughout the entire product family.)
So the stage for next-generation P2P is already set. Each server only distributes a randomly chosen snippet of a song, cut at defined intervals (the first 30 seconds, the second 30 seconds, etc.). To download a full copy, you need to get all the pieces from different servers. If the piece size is not too small, and there is enough redundancy in the system, this might work without problems.
Of course, as soon as this started working, they would try and rewrite the laws to forbid it. And on to the next iteration...
Here's a rough, carbon-based translation of the Heise news article. Please don't hold me liable for it:-)
The Organization of German Software Industries (VSI) considers its
view reinforced that using Open-Source-Software leads to
jurisdictional uncertainties. On behalf of VSI, Professor Gerald
Spindler of the law faculty at the University of Goettingen examined
"Jurisdictional Questions of Open Source Software". In more than 100
pages he examines the situation from different perspectives: Author's
Rights (Urheberrecht), Usage Rights (Verwertungsrecht), and
Liability Rights (??, Haftungsrecht).
Spindler spots jurisdictional uncertainties for all parties involved:
Developers may be held liable if software does not work as expected,
even if they only participated marginally in the development, rather
than being a lead developer. Employers could walk on thin ice if
they pay employees for writing Open Source Software. And buyers of
such software must be prepared that liability is limited to the
criteria common for items given away for free, i.e. severe negligence
only.
Although one could argue about one or the other detail of the study,
it spells out many problems. The license that is probably most
popular for free software, the GPL, is hardly considered to be fully
enforceable in the German maze of laws. For VSI, the results are
probably most welcome, in order to spread uncertainty among people
interested in Open Source, who are currently watching the actions of
SCO against IBM eagerly.
Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But surely, they did wait until
North America was in full view for the image? If not, who would
recognize the Earth, after all?
But humor & politics aside, this is a great picture. You would think
that just for this picture a considerable fraction of the mission's
budget would have been justified.
The article claims there is evidence, even "new" evidence, but it doesn't actually cite this evidence so that you could verify it for yourself. No link, nothing.
The actual incidents that it reports are about passengers causing havoc because they refuse to turn their mobiles off -- not because these mobiles are doing any actual harm.
Those numbers... I actually mixed up two numbers in the parent post. It should actually be 2052 m/s^2 on the second stage, which would be a about 200g.
I was wondering what the driver had to say after he got out of this thing, but then I did the maths...
Not sure if I interpret the numbers correctly, but for the acceleration I get 207 m/s^2 on the first, 4.65 sec stage, and 755 m/s^2 on the second, 1.3 sec stage, which is about 21g and 76g, respectively.
One thing that I sorely miss from my Usenet days is that people were
encouraged to cite only relevant context in their messages. Newbies
who would cite entire messages, and perhaps not even putting their
own text into the cited message, were kindly being told that this was
a waste of bandwidth, and difficult to read for others.
In today's e-mail communication, dragging entire messages, sometimes
four and five levels deep, along with your e-mail seems to be the
norm. It's probably because all of the common mailreaders today
insert a copy of the replied-to message before you even start typing.
Most people probably believe it has to be that way, and that you may
not even be allowed to delete the cited text.
It may not be a waste of bandwidth today, but it is a waste of
storage space, besides being a pain to wade through for the reader.
Is it worth reminding people to cite only relevant context, e.g. on a
mailing list? Or am I missing something -- is there perhaps,
somewhere, a good argument for citing entire messages, and carrying
them around in your e-mails? Or is it time to write mailreaders that
simply don't do this by default?
I guess I just don't get your problem here.. it's a
US-centric website, and this is explained in the FAQ, but you have a
problem when a US-centric story is posted and it's not billed as
such?
The point is that about one quarter or perhaps one third of the people
who look at this story will have to figure out themselves that this
is US-only. It may take them a few minutes, a failed attempt to
fill in the online form of this site, which doesn't know about
other countries, etc.
Slashdot is normally much more globally-oriented than, for example,
CNN, which is a national news site by definition. CNN is talking to
Americans, and only Americans by default, and everyone from another
country who lurks there is fully aware of that.
Slashdot is different.
There are many stories submitted by, for example, Europeans here, and
things that happen in Europe, e.g. new European legislation, is
usually being followed quite attentively by the Slashdot crowd.
Given this, I think it would simply be appropriate to flag a US-only
article as such, if it's not immediately clear from the context.
Call it a matter of style.
I think these are two separate issues, (a) being US-centric in where the news normally come from, and whom they are most relevant for, and (b) ignoring the fact that there are non-US readers in the way a story is written.
The former is absolutely fine with me, while the latter... as I said, strikes me as a little odd.
Additionally, there wasn't any way to see reports and graphs of where your money is going. Knowing how much money you have is nice, but knowing how you're spending it every month is nicer.
Not sure what you mean by that. I'm using bar graphs and pie charts of where my money is going all the time. Recent versions of GnuCash also have cash flow reporting.
Besides, I hear from a lot of people who start using it for billing and taxes, which definitely means a shift toward small to medium businesses. And the guys who develop it are quite ambitious and have lots of ideas for more advanced features.
Free software may be fine and dandy, but some of us don't actually mind *paying* for software if said software does the job well.
I would be more than happy to pay the GnuCash developers if there was a common mechanism by which free software developers could be rewarded. (And yes, I'm donating money to one or another free software project occasionally already.)
As the saying goes: this is about freedom, not price. MoneyDance ties you to this particular company; you are at their mercy if you need enhancements to the product, or whatever. With free software, you, or anyone you chose to hire for the job, can make whatever enhancements you need. That's the promise of the free software model, and I'm definitely prepared to pay for something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
That's fine, because it makes the case even clearer. So what I'm buying when I buy Centrino is actually closed source, proprietary software. And I can't even ditch it like the operating system that came with my laptop, because the software is so closed that it even locks up some of my hardware from me if I don't use it.
If Centrino is all-software (or mostly-software), all the better. Then all the arguments why I don't like it have already been made.
A hardware company (chip manufacturer, global player) would have much more incentive and the necessary financial means to achieve something like that.
If we believe that software should be free, i.e. open and accessible to anyone, either for ethical reasons or simply because it will result in better technology, then I don't see why hardware should be any different. This world would be a better place if I had an enforceable right to get the specs of my car, my fridge, or my laptop, if I so desire.
Other chipmakers, I presume. So that nobody could produce an alternative wireless card to go with a Pentium M processor or some such.
But wouldn't anyone who's capable of designing and producing his own chipset be able to dissect the Centrino architecture and reengineer it, either by careful blackbox testing or by actually taking a microscope and looking at the chips? Am I way off mark here?
But if it's not other chipmakers they are protecting this from, if it actually is a software issue, then they are simply dancing to the tune of Microsoft due to whatever behind-the-scenes agreement they have with them.
That's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Right now, there's no option for any large corporation or government to deploy Linux on their ThinkPads because IBM doesn't support it. Given recent advances in desktop usability, customers would probably be just as open to switch their laptops to Linux, as they were switching their servers.
With servers, however, I have the impression that it was IBM that actively marketed the option to use Linux on them, and they convinced customers to do it. Why wouldn't that work on the client?
That is perhaps the single evidence of resistance against Windows within the entire IBM ThinkPad division. Apart from that, I'm constantly perplexed at how Windows-centric that part of the company actually is.
And this from a company that has declared Linux as their reference platform for all future hardware and software development years ago. To this day, you cannot buy a ThinkPad with Linux on it; you can't even buy one that will work 100% under Linux (e.g. hibernation, which you cannot set up except under Windows, no Linux drivers for the new UltraNav touchpads, no pressure from IBM on Intel to release the specs for their Centrino hardware, so that Linux drivers could be written for it, even if it wasn't done by IBM).
Talk about immobility of a big corporation. It sure looks like the "reference platform" decision has been deliberately ignored within the ThinkPad division to this day. In the light of this, the lack of a Windows key actually seems like a faint sign of hope :-)
Ahh, sorry, I modded you down because of a mouse slip. Replying therefore to remove the moderation. Good post.
I therefore don't understand your point that "I'd be willing to spend some money, but would hate it if it ended up in the pockets of someone who just continued with what he was already doing." -- I think that's the best way to spend your money, because it's gonna support the work of someone who is in it not just for the money. But sometimes, it does take money to pay the bills...
Seriously, I think I understand your point that you actually want your feature to be given priority. But you could make contracts to guarantee that, set deadlines, and what have you.
I call myself a "free software consultant", and I am making a considerable fraction of my income writing free software. I am paid by companies who use free software, and who want me to enhance it with new features. The other part of my income is teaching seminars in the J2EE field, and doing regular consulting work, usually with an emphasis on free software solutions. From my personal experience, I can say there are lots of opportunities if you really want to work in this field, and put the emphasis on free software.
Nice story, and I've told it a couple of times myself. Looks like it simply isn't true, though.
The second annoyance is a purely Linux-related one: not even suspending the laptop works reliably under Linux. It used to be almost bearable, but with recent kernel versions and/or recent Xfree86 my machine has started to hang after suspend in about 5-10% of all cases. Why can't this ever work right?
(I'm omitting my Thinkpad model number on purpose; if you look at all those Linux-on-Thinkpad pages on the net, you see that it's a persistent problem throughout the entire product family.)
Of course, as soon as this started working, they would try and rewrite the laws to forbid it. And on to the next iteration...
The Organization of German Software Industries (VSI) considers its view reinforced that using Open-Source-Software leads to jurisdictional uncertainties. On behalf of VSI, Professor Gerald Spindler of the law faculty at the University of Goettingen examined "Jurisdictional Questions of Open Source Software". In more than 100 pages he examines the situation from different perspectives: Author's Rights (Urheberrecht), Usage Rights (Verwertungsrecht), and Liability Rights (??, Haftungsrecht).
Spindler spots jurisdictional uncertainties for all parties involved: Developers may be held liable if software does not work as expected, even if they only participated marginally in the development, rather than being a lead developer. Employers could walk on thin ice if they pay employees for writing Open Source Software. And buyers of such software must be prepared that liability is limited to the criteria common for items given away for free, i.e. severe negligence only.
Although one could argue about one or the other detail of the study, it spells out many problems. The license that is probably most popular for free software, the GPL, is hardly considered to be fully enforceable in the German maze of laws. For VSI, the results are probably most welcome, in order to spread uncertainty among people interested in Open Source, who are currently watching the actions of SCO against IBM eagerly.
Keep going, America.
This is only the main page, all links point to NASA.
But humor & politics aside, this is a great picture. You would think that just for this picture a considerable fraction of the mission's budget would have been justified.
The actual incidents that it reports are about passengers causing havoc because they refuse to turn their mobiles off -- not because these mobiles are doing any actual harm.
Those numbers... I actually mixed up two numbers in the parent post. It should actually be 2052 m/s^2 on the second stage, which would be a about 200g.
Not sure if I interpret the numbers correctly, but for the acceleration I get 207 m/s^2 on the first, 4.65 sec stage, and 755 m/s^2 on the second, 1.3 sec stage, which is about 21g and 76g, respectively.
No, there wasn't a driver in this thing :-)
In today's e-mail communication, dragging entire messages, sometimes four and five levels deep, along with your e-mail seems to be the norm. It's probably because all of the common mailreaders today insert a copy of the replied-to message before you even start typing. Most people probably believe it has to be that way, and that you may not even be allowed to delete the cited text.
It may not be a waste of bandwidth today, but it is a waste of storage space, besides being a pain to wade through for the reader.
Is it worth reminding people to cite only relevant context, e.g. on a mailing list? Or am I missing something -- is there perhaps, somewhere, a good argument for citing entire messages, and carrying them around in your e-mails? Or is it time to write mailreaders that simply don't do this by default?
Slashdot is normally much more globally-oriented than, for example, CNN, which is a national news site by definition. CNN is talking to Americans, and only Americans by default, and everyone from another country who lurks there is fully aware of that.
Slashdot is different. There are many stories submitted by, for example, Europeans here, and things that happen in Europe, e.g. new European legislation, is usually being followed quite attentively by the Slashdot crowd.
Given this, I think it would simply be appropriate to flag a US-only article as such, if it's not immediately clear from the context. Call it a matter of style.
The former is absolutely fine with me, while the latter ... as I said, strikes me as a little odd.
strikes me as a little odd.
Besides, I hear from a lot of people who start using it for billing and taxes, which definitely means a shift toward small to medium businesses. And the guys who develop it are quite ambitious and have lots of ideas for more advanced features.
As the saying goes: this is about freedom, not price. MoneyDance ties you to this particular company; you are at their mercy if you need enhancements to the product, or whatever. With free software, you, or anyone you chose to hire for the job, can make whatever enhancements you need. That's the promise of the free software model, and I'm definitely prepared to pay for something like that.