Well, 15 years eh? That means I'm getting old as well. It doesn't feel like it though! Can't remember how many years I've been reading but it must be 15 years (or close to it) as well. Congratulations!
Without using a framework like Moose (or Mouse even), Perl OO is less consistent (TMTOWTDI) and a bit harder. Moose automates and simplifies things like class accessors etc. so one could say Perl OO is also (potentially) more tedious without it.
I have to admit that I have not tried Bricolage. But I will say that I keep coming back to it, looking again and thinking about whether I could make use of it. So far, I've only been using HTML::Mason (which Bricolage can use).
What I would say is - thanks David! I might not use it just now, but I can see what a great framework it is - and have the choice of using it in the future.
I'm not sure if this has been addressed in 2.5 yet, so apologies if it has.
Many thanks to Andrew for all his work, especially with ext2/ext3 (but much more I know). I'd like him to consider making sure that direct IO is properly working in 2.5 (and 2.4 for that matter). In particular;
a) Support in ext3.
He posted a patch to the kernel list that added this, which I tested and it seems to work. It would be good if this is in the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel.
b) Correct functionality for non-4K multiple reads in ext2/ext3
i.e. less than 4K read as a remainder at the end of file. Again, Andrew posted a patch for this on the kernel list, and it seems to work. This is relevant for a) as well it seems.
Apart from that, all the stuff we need to make sure we can read and write as fast as possible to disk or RAID would be great. I need at least 300 MB/sec (PCI-X, U320 SCSI bus x2) but the more the better:-)
I'm interested in your statement that "TT2's power just blows mason away". I use Mason (occasionally) and quite like it. I have looked at TT as well, and it also seems pretty powerful.
So, what features and/or functionality in TT is so much better than Mason in your opinion?
I have not used KDevelop properly but remember popping it open a couple of years ago and poking around. I was quite impressed. The KDevelop team deserve a lot of praise for the quality of this application - well done!
Looking at the screenshots just now though (I know... shallow) made me think a little too much of XP. Really, pretty close - people will think Linux applications are just knock-off's of Microsoft's. I hope it's just a 'theme' but it has that 'fisher-price' XP look:-/
You're right about it's complexity. Clearcase is a very large and complicated SCM - but then it does a lot as well and is very powerful.
I've been a part time CC admin for about 1 1/2 years because our company had to start using it to be compatible with a client. We'd never used it before but were lucky to have someone else install and configure it for us initially. We all know CVS. CC has a steep learning curve and I am now far from an 'expert'. Mostly it's worked without problems thank goodness.
What's good? It's powerful and can track directory changes as well as deal with file deletions. It has a pretty good GUI.It manages to work fairly well 'multisite' (database sync with remote sites). It integrates well with Windows (e.g. MSVC). Good 3-way diff (but also good auto resolution in merges). Triggers on VOB operations. P.S. we use 'snapshot' views not 'dynamic' views, so we have a complete, local checkout of the 'repository'.
Bad? It's very large and complicated. The query language is very limited. Non-Windows GUI's are pretty bad (e.g. Solaris). I hope to see the Linux GUI and see if it's better than Solaris. It's expensive. Manual/doc overload.
Our CC VOB server is a 384Mb Ultra-5 Solaris 7 server - pretty underpowered. However, it seems to work fairly well for us - 8 engineers onsite - about 100 over 3 sites(Europe,US and Japan). VOB syncs make remote development work for us. The ultra-5 has been the most painful, and initially highly unreliable, part of the package. It's a pity that Rational seem to be spending less time on developing their non-Windows client capability.
I should mention that we do still use CVS though, for other projects. Another issue some of us feel with CC is the fact that things seem quite locked up in a proprietary DB format none of us really understand. Navigating a CVS repository, although sometimes hairy, can still be done. CC? I wouldn't know where to start.
We're looking forward to trying subversion now though.
I've been looking at what Bynari have been doing recently because pressure is coming down from on high to stick an Exchange server in at work. This is primarily because of it's collaboration features - shared calendars,contacts etc.
I have not tried their software but am impressed with reports I've read.
I understand that they get 'Exchange' behaviour through a clever use of IMAP and one does not need to buy Insight Server for this - it's packaged open-source software as has been mentioned. Although they do include a web-based configuration tool to make admin/config easier (as well as packaged anti-virus in the new version). For many people, the 'package' (especially the web front end) makes life a lot easier.
However, as long as the IMAP server understands ACL's then it's useable. They use Cyrus, which has this functionality. There's probably no reason that you couldn't replace Exim (the mail server component) with Postfix etc.
The really important and clever bit of the system is the work they've done on the client (Outlook) end - an Outlook plug-in (Insight Connector) that thinks it's talking to Exchange. This is commercial and proprietary - but affordable ( $40).
All in all, this is a great solution and must be a nightmare for MS.
After all, once any music is in digital form it's essentially pirated. 'Pirated' means criminal.
So, it's time we went after Tower Records. And Virgin. And HMV. After all, they sell music and the next stop is digital encoding - and ending up on a criminal enterprise like Napster. It's about time we put our foot down.
We need to protect the artist by shutting down music distribution wherever we find it!
To try and clarify what the original poster (Sylvanus) said, I should add to his list of products I think - let's add Visual Studio (or Visual.NET) say.
This is where MS rules the roost. Developer mindshare and tools. Producing applications 'easily', an integrated 'one stop' solution. So yes, open source can do all this, and more, but you can be sure that MS will be focused, as always , on making development a more egalitarian occupation. Businesses, and managers, appreciate this and MS finds itself inside a wonderful virtuous cycle of revenue generation.
And before you accuse me of being 'infected' - I hate 'marketing machines' as much as you. I haven't given up yet though.
You don't need to start clarifying your notes, at least not here. That was a very articulate and thought provoking piece you wrote and I could see a lot of truth in there. I don't write a '$' when I use the word 'Microsoft' either but consider it childish generally. In context however, it is still meaningful.
I think I agree with almost all you say but it's very easy to get depressed with it all. I deliberately held off replying to the original article because I did not want to exhibit any knee-jerk reaction - but the points made are valid. There's both a depressing and exciting aspect to it all though; depressing because no 'open' development process can ever match a single, rich and driven entity when it comes to market competition. The 'market' is often naive or easily herded after all. Exciting because the future can still be in our hands - we have the code after all, and ideas. And this can't be locked up.
We (at work) have been using Samba for over a year now to serve a small workgroup of NT users. None of us (least of all me, the default sysadmin) are experienced NT or Windows users.
We recently switched our main server from an old (10 years?) SGI Indigo2 XL to a new Dell server - Samba 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. The process of compiling, installing and configuring Samba was straightforward and I can safely say that Samba is one of the most impressive and useful pieces of software I have ever used. Well done and many thanks to all responsible!
I should also put in a good word for O'Reilly for allowing the free distribution of the 'Using Samba' book - invaluable.
Maintaining mixed unix/NT can be a real chore (and I won't even mention Clearcase), but Samba has made it work beautifully. It's a pity that we also ended up with a Syntax TAS (Totalnet Advanced Server) system - purely for Clearcase... it 'works' (well, actually it does), 'guaranteed support', 'recommended'...:-/
At some point in the future, when I have time, I'd like to shift Clearcase, and it's SMB appendage TAS, to a Linux/Samba server - just to show it can be done. Then I could get rid of the Ultra5! Which would make me very happy:-)
Now if only there was an easy/cheap way to manage unix and NT users/groups from a unix machine, minus any NT server ofcourse.
As my subject, I am sad that Linuxworld is a casualty. I've appreciated Nick Petreley's thoughtful journalism for quite a while and he always managed to pique my attention. A tip of the hat to Joe Barr and Rawn Shah as well (I hope I've got you names right!). I hope you find new homes that are as comfortable as LW.
That was one of the best discussions I have read about the
current state of the law with regards to copyright in the
USA. Fred von Lohmann deserves my praise for his lucid and
thought provoking paper. Thanks also to the EFF for bringing
this to us.
The paper raises some important issues and one must wonder
where the copyright laws leads. As I read the piece I
could not help but consider Slashdot itself and what
possible 'infringing' role it may play. In many ways
it mirrors the situation with Napster - a centralised
service, with 'control' over it's users and a 'direct
financial benefit' arising. I posit that there appears to
have been copyright 'infringement' on Slashdot in the past -
people reproducing protected works within a post or copying
elsewhere (and linking). We have probably also seen
infringement as far as the DMCA goes - any DeCSS code for
instance. Maybe this gives the folks at Slashdot sleepness
nights (or will in the future). It should certainly give the
users pause for thought. The time may come when Slashdot is
required by law to change it's moderation policies and start
actively removing and policing content (a 'moderation'
downwards won't suffice).
I also started to wonder about Ian Clarke's Freenet project.
Although it fits many, if not all, of Von Lohman's criteria
for possible safety (no central control, knowledge and
'open-source', amongst others), I can't help wondering
whether Ian's dug a hole for himself to a degree. I seem to
recall some pretty inflammatory statements regarding the
'death' of copyright coming from Ian in the past. One
wonders whether this opens him up to legal challenge of any
sort and an attack on the Freenet system. I have not gone
back and looked for any of his statements however and I
might be wrong. Whether a legal attack on such a system as
Freenet would be 'successful' (given it's architecture) is
moot. He might find himself in a personally uncomfortable
position.
Then again, he's not a US citizen. I live in the UK and
would love to see a discussion such as this on the copyright
issues here. However, given the increasingly international
(nay, global) flavour of copyright law today, I suspect we
will all be 'harmonised' at some point soon. The fact that
much of this law is treaty based worries me more since
national governments, and their electorate, are bypassed.
Public 'consultation' is a poor substitute, if it occurs at
all.
do you really think they'll turn off the analog channels?
My recollection is hazy, but I believe the timetable for switch off has been set quite aggresively in some places (I speak from a UK perspective). Many broadcasters are already simultaneously broadcasting digital.
Dates from 2004 - 2008 maybe.
In my, and IIRC, many peoples opinion, this is far too optimistic. I can't see how they can turn off analog until 90% of people (or greater) receive digital.
There could be some interesting times ahead leading to all the 'convergence' that keeps threatening to happen. TV, as a mass market content 'appliance', is the obvious battlefield over content/copy protection/restriction.
I have sympathy for what you say but feel urged to add a comment ;
The big-time pirates generally don't cost these companies much, since they sell in markets the MPAAers generally ignore due to too low sales.
There are 'bigtime pirates' out there and they cost some of these companies HUGE amounts of money in lost revenue. 'Low sales' in a market may well be due, almost entirely, to the ready availability of pirate information. Visit SE Asia, it's awash with illegal copies of anything digital (CD's,VCD's,DVD's etc.). DIRT cheap.
'Copy restrictions' are meant to prevent all unauthorised copying, whether consumer or 'big time pirate'.
I have to say that I am sick and tired of the idiot flamers, ranters and trolls that are popping up with increasing frequency nowadays. In fact, Slashdot itself seems to have got a lot worse over the past few weeks.
If people have nothing constructive or polite to say, then they should not say anything. Their foul-mouthed, spiteful and idiotic posts are tarring everyone with the same brush and I, for one, do not want to be associated with them in any way. It's easy (and still worthwhile) to remind people that these idiots are not representative of the community but after a while one gets tired of the never-ending stream of bile.
If the noise gets above a certain level, we're never going to find any signal anymore.
I'd definitely say it was time for a forum like Slashdot to review it's policy on what gets posted because it's been farcical seeing what's getting through recently.
We'll all rue the day when we're afraid to say we use Linux because people will immediately stereotype use as being rude,self-righteous, arrogant pricks.
You can't just look at the random numbers that are put out as "Linux users" since those (beyond being basically +/- 50%) numbers count people who most typically aren't going to buy a software package that costs $50 let alone one that cost $15,000.
Expensive software is not targeted at an average 'Linux user'. Are you really saying 'why bother'?
The potential market for cheap/fast,IA32/IA64 graphics systems is huge. SGI/NVidia/VA recognise this.
You've got to look at the professional market.
Exactly - many look forward to greater choice, cheaper, faster systems, and the extra benefit of being blessed by companies like SGI. I suspect the 'professional' market is what SGI are after (they have some experience in it, after all).
In that location you have a lot of artists, etc.
Who don't give too much of a shit what the OS is often - but who might know IRIX. The Linux desktop 'experience', although still requiring work, is good enough now. This is a non-issue. The artists will follow the applications - machines are fast, and cheaper, everyone's happy...
that don't particularily feel the need to admin their own box, or get into the nitty-gritty of unix and would rather have a turnkey system with professional support from the vendor (both for the hardware and software.)
Most 'professional' places have sys admins. A free OS makes 'turnkey' a unique proposition as well, no? As for 'professional' support, you've been able to get that for a long time (even before SGI, IBM, VA, or Redhat came along). Your arguments are nonsense.
[ nobody say Redhat or VA Linux or such. they still aren't in the same league as Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, et. al. ]
This has nothing to do with Redhat or VA Linux being in the 'same league' as SGI,IBM etc. Have you seen the amount of work SGI and IBM have been putting into Linux lately? You completely miss the point...
Softimage development is actually done by some company in Germany I think
Oops. No.
Soft is developed in Montreal, Canada. I think you're thinking of the Mental Ray renderer which is developed in Germany by Mental Images (a Linux port exists of this). It is separate and independent to Softimage 3D though.
Yes, sort of. Media Composers are mainly Mac but it's arguable whether some strategic OS shift didn't happen when Symphony was released - an NT uncompressed editing solution. Symphony is considered the 'high-end' Avid system. Ofcourse Softimage DS is a high-end system as well - running on NT only again.
As for lower-end systems - although still slightly anachronistic with respect to Avid, they've been making lower end systems for a while (Cinema, Xpress etc.) and are trying to make more in-roads at the lower end with DV enabled machines.
When MS took over Soft, NT was nowhere as far as multimedia applications went. The port of Soft went a long way to changing people's perception of the OS for graphics. I am hopeful that SGI might play the enabler (like MS for NT) for Linux multimedia.
People who read SGI news groups might remember a thread a long while ago called 'female spiders eat their lovers' - a thread that appeared after SGI's announcement of a joint initiative with MS on Farenheit. The thread was overwhelmingly negative and concerned about working with MS (given all the issues/FUD between DirectX and OpenGL). It could be sweetly ironic to see SGI bounce back with multimedia/graphics/openGL on Linux. Silicon Graphics, remember!
This is definitely an interesting development and quite unexpected. Once again, I applaud SGI for grabbing the bull by the horns and making a difference.
Now what I'd like to know is what's going on as far as SGI/Linux graphics machines go - you see, I have this old PC I'd love to upgrade soon:-)
From what I gather, it appears that SGI might be asking VA Linux to build the systems using Nvidia graphics hardware and, probably, an SGI openGL subsystem.
May I also make a suggestion that SGI consider what to do about the other multimedia API's they own - video and audio in particular. Although I cannot expect PC hardware to easily support an API like SGI's libvl, SGI should perhaps look to support this on hardware they build (or have built). What's the chance of ever seeing something like OpenVL and/or OpenAL?
After all, once XFS (and hopefully XLV) is ported, we'll need something substantial to thrash those disks - what's better than D1 video?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, 15 years eh? That means I'm getting old as well. It doesn't feel like it though! Can't remember how many years I've been reading but it must be 15 years (or close to it) as well. Congratulations!
A little unfair.
Without using a framework like Moose (or Mouse even), Perl OO is less consistent (TMTOWTDI) and a bit harder. Moose automates and simplifies things like class accessors etc. so one could say Perl OO is also (potentially) more tedious without it.
This is "News for Nerds". Well done. It's almost "meta" ...
I'm already running an Arm based server. It's called a QNAP NAS and the TS419P runs a Marvell Feroceon CPU "Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)" (cpuinfo).
It's running Debian Lenny (2.6.30-2-kirkwood) and thanks go to the Debian Arm team and Martin Michlmayr. Runs great.
Alastair
Basically, Microsoft are turning into something like IBM.
I have to admit that I have not tried Bricolage. But I will say that I keep coming back to it, looking again and thinking about whether I could make use of it. So far, I've only been using HTML::Mason (which Bricolage can use).
What I would say is - thanks David! I might not use it just now, but I can see what a great framework it is - and have the choice of using it in the future.
I'm not sure if this has been addressed in 2.5 yet, so apologies if it has.
;
2 9947&list=7493
4 515769523283&w=2
:-)
Many thanks to Andrew for all his work, especially with ext2/ext3 (but much more I know). I'd like him to consider making sure that direct IO is properly working in 2.5 (and 2.4 for that matter). In particular
a) Support in ext3.
He posted a patch to the kernel list that added this, which I tested and it seems to work. It would be good if this is in the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel.
http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=93
b) Correct functionality for non-4K multiple reads in ext2/ext3
i.e. less than 4K read as a remainder at the end of file. Again, Andrew posted a patch for this on the kernel list, and it seems to work. This is relevant for a) as well it seems.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=10
Apart from that, all the stuff we need to make sure we can read and write as fast as possible to disk or RAID would be great. I need at least 300 MB/sec (PCI-X, U320 SCSI bus x2) but the more the better
Keep up the great work!
I'm interested in your statement that "TT2's power just blows mason away". I use Mason (occasionally) and quite like it. I have looked at TT as well, and it also seems pretty powerful.
So, what features and/or functionality in TT is so much better than Mason in your opinion?
I have not used KDevelop properly but remember popping it open a couple of years ago and poking around. I was quite impressed. The KDevelop team deserve a lot of praise for the quality of this application - well done!
... shallow) made me think a little too much of XP. Really, pretty close - people will think Linux applications are just knock-off's of Microsoft's. I hope it's just a 'theme' but it has that 'fisher-price' XP look :-/
Looking at the screenshots just now though (I know
You're right about it's complexity. Clearcase is a very large and complicated SCM - but then it does a lot as well and is very powerful.
I've been a part time CC admin for about 1 1/2 years because our company had to start using it to be compatible with a client. We'd never used it before but were lucky to have someone else install and configure it for us initially. We all know CVS. CC has a steep learning curve and I am now far from an 'expert'. Mostly it's worked without problems thank goodness.
What's good? It's powerful and can track directory changes as well as deal with file deletions. It has a pretty good GUI.It manages to work fairly well 'multisite' (database sync with remote sites). It integrates well with Windows (e.g. MSVC). Good 3-way diff (but also good auto resolution in merges). Triggers on VOB operations. P.S. we use 'snapshot' views not 'dynamic' views, so we have a complete, local checkout of the 'repository'.
Bad? It's very large and complicated. The query language is very limited. Non-Windows GUI's are pretty bad (e.g. Solaris). I hope to see the Linux GUI and see if it's better than Solaris. It's expensive. Manual/doc overload.
Our CC VOB server is a 384Mb Ultra-5 Solaris 7 server - pretty underpowered. However, it seems to work fairly well for us - 8 engineers onsite - about 100 over 3 sites(Europe,US and Japan). VOB syncs make remote development work for us. The ultra-5 has been the most painful, and initially highly unreliable, part of the package. It's a pity that Rational seem to be spending less time on developing their non-Windows client capability.
I should mention that we do still use CVS though, for other projects. Another issue some of us feel with CC is the fact that things seem quite locked up in a proprietary DB format none of us really understand. Navigating a CVS repository, although sometimes hairy, can still be done. CC? I wouldn't know where to start.
We're looking forward to trying subversion now though.
You should check out what Bynari are doing ;
;
? Ar ticleID=24138n e/apr02/partner news.shtml
http://www.bynari.net
or a better designed web site
http://www.bynari.nl/
http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/linuxli
I've been looking at what Bynari have been doing recently because pressure is coming down from on high to stick an Exchange server in at work. This is primarily because of it's collaboration features - shared calendars,contacts etc.
I have not tried their software but am impressed with reports I've read.
I understand that they get 'Exchange' behaviour through a clever use of IMAP and one does not need to buy Insight Server for this - it's packaged open-source software as has been mentioned. Although they do include a web-based configuration tool to make admin/config easier (as well as packaged anti-virus in the new version). For many people, the 'package' (especially the web front end) makes life a lot easier.
However, as long as the IMAP server understands ACL's then it's useable. They use Cyrus, which has this functionality. There's probably no reason that you couldn't replace Exim (the mail server component) with Postfix etc.
The really important and clever bit of the system is the work they've done on the client (Outlook) end - an Outlook plug-in (Insight Connector) that thinks it's talking to Exchange. This is commercial and proprietary - but affordable ( $40).
All in all, this is a great solution and must be a nightmare for MS.
It's about time really.
After all, once any music is in digital form it's essentially pirated. 'Pirated' means criminal.
So, it's time we went after Tower Records. And Virgin. And HMV. After all, they sell music and the next stop is digital encoding - and ending up on a criminal enterprise like Napster. It's about time we put our foot down.
We need to protect the artist by shutting down music distribution wherever we find it!
--
Alastair
This is where MS rules the roost. Developer mindshare and tools. Producing applications 'easily', an integrated 'one stop' solution. So yes, open source can do all this, and more, but you can be sure that MS will be focused, as always , on making development a more egalitarian occupation. Businesses, and managers, appreciate this and MS finds itself inside a wonderful virtuous cycle of revenue generation.
And before you accuse me of being 'infected' - I hate 'marketing machines' as much as you. I haven't given up yet though.
--
Alastair
I think I agree with almost all you say but it's very easy to get depressed with it all. I deliberately held off replying to the original article because I did not want to exhibit any knee-jerk reaction - but the points made are valid. There's both a depressing and exciting aspect to it all though; depressing because no 'open' development process can ever match a single, rich and driven entity when it comes to market competition. The 'market' is often naive or easily herded after all. Exciting because the future can still be in our hands - we have the code after all, and ideas. And this can't be locked up.
--
Alastair
Since we're all in a group hug now :-)
We (at work) have been using Samba for over a year now to serve a small workgroup of NT users. None of us (least of all me, the default sysadmin) are experienced NT or Windows users.
We recently switched our main server from an old (10 years?) SGI Indigo2 XL to a new Dell server - Samba 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. The process of compiling, installing and configuring Samba was straightforward and I can safely say that Samba is one of the most impressive and useful pieces of software I have ever used. Well done and many thanks to all responsible!
I should also put in a good word for O'Reilly for allowing the free distribution of the 'Using Samba' book - invaluable.
Maintaining mixed unix/NT can be a real chore (and I won't even mention Clearcase), but Samba has made it work beautifully. It's a pity that we also ended up with a Syntax TAS (Totalnet Advanced Server) system - purely for Clearcase ... it 'works' (well, actually it does), 'guaranteed support', 'recommended' ... :-/
At some point in the future, when I have time, I'd like to shift Clearcase, and it's SMB appendage TAS, to a Linux/Samba server - just to show it can be done. Then I could get rid of the Ultra5! Which would make me very happy :-)
Now if only there was an easy/cheap way to manage unix and NT users/groups from a unix machine, minus any NT server ofcourse.
Cheers!
--
Alastair
London UK
It's been a pleasure. Now, get back to work! ;-)
Alastair
The paper raises some important issues and one must wonder where the copyright laws leads. As I read the piece I could not help but consider Slashdot itself and what possible 'infringing' role it may play. In many ways it mirrors the situation with Napster - a centralised service, with 'control' over it's users and a 'direct financial benefit' arising. I posit that there appears to have been copyright 'infringement' on Slashdot in the past - people reproducing protected works within a post or copying elsewhere (and linking). We have probably also seen infringement as far as the DMCA goes - any DeCSS code for instance. Maybe this gives the folks at Slashdot sleepness nights (or will in the future). It should certainly give the users pause for thought. The time may come when Slashdot is required by law to change it's moderation policies and start actively removing and policing content (a 'moderation' downwards won't suffice).
I also started to wonder about Ian Clarke's Freenet project. Although it fits many, if not all, of Von Lohman's criteria for possible safety (no central control, knowledge and 'open-source', amongst others), I can't help wondering whether Ian's dug a hole for himself to a degree. I seem to recall some pretty inflammatory statements regarding the 'death' of copyright coming from Ian in the past. One wonders whether this opens him up to legal challenge of any sort and an attack on the Freenet system. I have not gone back and looked for any of his statements however and I might be wrong. Whether a legal attack on such a system as Freenet would be 'successful' (given it's architecture) is moot. He might find himself in a personally uncomfortable position.
Then again, he's not a US citizen. I live in the UK and would love to see a discussion such as this on the copyright issues here. However, given the increasingly international (nay, global) flavour of copyright law today, I suspect we will all be 'harmonised' at some point soon. The fact that much of this law is treaty based worries me more since national governments, and their electorate, are bypassed. Public 'consultation' is a poor substitute, if it occurs at all.
Thanks for listening.
--
Alastair
London UK
My recollection is hazy, but I believe the timetable for switch off has been set quite aggresively in some places (I speak from a UK perspective). Many broadcasters are already simultaneously broadcasting digital.
Dates from 2004 - 2008 maybe.
In my, and IIRC, many peoples opinion, this is far too optimistic. I can't see how they can turn off analog until 90% of people (or greater) receive digital.
There could be some interesting times ahead leading to all the 'convergence' that keeps threatening to happen. TV, as a mass market content 'appliance', is the obvious battlefield over content/copy protection/restriction.
Maybe we'll end up with an 'analog underground'?
The big-time pirates generally don't cost these companies much, since they sell in markets the MPAAers generally ignore due to too low sales.
There are 'bigtime pirates' out there and they cost some of these companies HUGE amounts of money in lost revenue. 'Low sales' in a market may well be due, almost entirely, to the ready availability of pirate information. Visit SE Asia, it's awash with illegal copies of anything digital (CD's,VCD's,DVD's etc.). DIRT cheap.
'Copy restrictions' are meant to prevent all unauthorised copying, whether consumer or 'big time pirate'.
I have to say that I am sick and tired of the idiot flamers, ranters and trolls that are popping up with increasing frequency nowadays. In fact, Slashdot itself seems to have got a lot worse over the past few weeks.
If people have nothing constructive or polite to say, then they should not say anything. Their foul-mouthed, spiteful and idiotic posts are tarring everyone with the same brush and I, for one, do not want to be associated with them in any way. It's easy (and still worthwhile) to remind people that these idiots are not representative of the community but after a while one gets tired of the never-ending stream of bile.
If the noise gets above a certain level, we're never going to find any signal anymore.
I'd definitely say it was time for a forum like Slashdot to review it's policy on what gets posted because it's been farcical seeing what's getting through recently.
We'll all rue the day when we're afraid to say we use Linux because people will immediately stereotype use as being rude,self-righteous, arrogant pricks.
Expensive software is not targeted at an average 'Linux user'. Are you really saying 'why bother'?
The potential market for cheap/fast,IA32/IA64 graphics systems is huge. SGI/NVidia/VA recognise this.
You've got to look at the professional market.
Exactly - many look forward to greater choice, cheaper, faster systems, and the extra benefit of being blessed by companies like SGI. I suspect the 'professional' market is what SGI are after (they have some experience in it, after all).
In that location you have a lot of artists, etc.
Who don't give too much of a shit what the OS is often - but who might know IRIX. The Linux desktop 'experience', although still requiring work, is good enough now. This is a non-issue. The artists will follow the applications - machines are fast, and cheaper, everyone's happy ...
that don't particularily feel the need to admin their own box, or get into the nitty-gritty of unix and would rather have a turnkey system with professional support from the vendor (both for the hardware and software.)
Most 'professional' places have sys admins. A free OS makes 'turnkey' a unique proposition as well, no? As for 'professional' support, you've been able to get that for a long time (even before SGI, IBM, VA, or Redhat came along). Your arguments are nonsense.
[ nobody say Redhat or VA Linux or such. they still aren't in the same league as Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, et. al. ]
This has nothing to do with Redhat or VA Linux being in the 'same league' as SGI,IBM etc. Have you seen the amount of work SGI and IBM have been putting into Linux lately? You completely miss the point ...
Oops. No.
Soft is developed in Montreal, Canada. I think you're thinking of the Mental Ray renderer which is developed in Germany by Mental Images (a Linux port exists of this). It is separate and independent to Softimage 3D though.
Yes, sort of. Media Composers are mainly Mac but it's arguable whether some strategic OS shift didn't happen when Symphony was released - an NT uncompressed editing solution. Symphony is considered the 'high-end' Avid system. Ofcourse Softimage DS is a high-end system as well - running on NT only again.
As for lower-end systems - although still slightly anachronistic with respect to Avid, they've been making lower end systems for a while (Cinema, Xpress etc.) and are trying to make more in-roads at the lower end with DV enabled machines.
When MS took over Soft, NT was nowhere as far as multimedia applications went. The port of Soft went a long way to changing people's perception of the OS for graphics. I am hopeful that SGI might play the enabler (like MS for NT) for Linux multimedia.
People who read SGI news groups might remember a thread a long while ago called 'female spiders eat their lovers' - a thread that appeared after SGI's announcement of a joint initiative with MS on Farenheit. The thread was overwhelmingly negative and concerned about working with MS (given all the issues/FUD between DirectX and OpenGL). It could be sweetly ironic to see SGI bounce back with multimedia/graphics/openGL on Linux. Silicon Graphics, remember!
Now what I'd like to know is what's going on as far as SGI/Linux graphics machines go - you see, I have this old PC I'd love to upgrade soon :-)
From what I gather, it appears that SGI might be asking VA Linux to build the systems using Nvidia graphics hardware and, probably, an SGI openGL subsystem.
May I also make a suggestion that SGI consider what to do about the other multimedia API's they own - video and audio in particular. Although I cannot expect PC hardware to easily support an API like SGI's libvl, SGI should perhaps look to support this on hardware they build (or have built). What's the chance of ever seeing something like OpenVL and/or OpenAL?
After all, once XFS (and hopefully XLV) is ported, we'll need something substantial to thrash those disks - what's better than D1 video?
Keep up the great work!
Alastair