Wrong again, most of the students who come here don't make plans to leave. They settle here. In my past 3.5 yrs in college I have seen 90% of foreign nationals do something or other to stay even overstay their visa time.
I think you're wrong on this one.
The vast majority of foreign students go home. Many are bonded by their governments or companies, have families back home, can't get an visa, or maybe just don't want to stay. Students know if they overstay their visa then they can't get a job anyway.
I'd say the 90% figure is about right, but it's for students who leave not stay. I'd argue only 1 or 2 out of every 10 foreign students stay on for any period of time. And usually it's only the best ( >3.8 GPA holders, quite often ) that get sponsored to stay.
This is just my observation from working/studying at a university with a very high foreign student population for the last 6.5 years.
I am getting really fed up with these appeals to make the general population of either our nation or the world PAY for internet access for others. Internet access is *NOT* equivalent to food or health care.
First of all, nobody is making do anything. They are asking for a dontation. If you don't think it's prudent use of your hard earned money, then don't give.
Second of all, internet access is not equivalent to food or health care, but it could be considered as part of a close third. Communication.
The internet is a very cheap but capable communications device. Email allows people who don't have a phone and can not pay of a service to send messages to love ones, as someone else stated.
It does not mean everyone is going to have a laptop with 11b. There could be one office, similar to a telegraph office, for send and delivering messages.
World news can be printed, everyday and distributed. How much would a newspaper subscription cost otherwise? Maybe it's read over the radio, maybe it's sold at a price closer to what locals can afford.
This kind of crap is frivilous, back-patting BS being done by people who want to feel like they are "making the world a better place." In truth, they are accomplishing nothing.
How easily you dispatch the hard work and efforts of others trying to do good for people that probably never could repay them.
By your logic, virtually every peice of software written for windows belongs to microsoft, as it uses their libraries.
Logic does not apply here. I can write software and stipulate that users must give me their first-born as payment. You are free to choose my software, or if you think the licensing terms are unreasonable, go buy someone elses package.
Microsoft requires you give them money for their software, it is their right. BSD does not require you to distribute modifications, it is their right as well.
Your right is to pick the software package that has a license that suits your purposes most.
Never is there any notion that the company creating the 3rd party libraries I use gets any rights at all to my software. Yet, if the library was GPL'ed tomorrow, all of a sudden my work should be free?
You always have the option of not using the GPL software. Nobody's forcing you too.
There is a big difference, however: Troll Tech has a dual licensing model, and they claim that the ability to license their software commercially is necessary to finance their open source efforts. In contrast, when other companies sponsor open source efforts, the sponsors do not retain any special rights to the sponsored software.
That is true. And I agree with you on the Sun point as well. Both Sun and TrollTech hold special rights to the software, and Ximian doesn't.
The thing is all those companies are asking What is the sweet spot? How can I make money and still be open source?. I don't think anyone has perfected this yet, so the dual license is just another attempt at profitability using open source. You can't blame TrollTech for trying either.
Ximian tries to recoup it's cost by (i) services such as red carpet (ii) contracts from HP and Sun ( or at least they use to ) (iii) selling proprietary software ( exchange connector ) (vi) VC money ( probably ). They are in no way out of the woods yet. Although I wish them good luck.
IBM is an entirely different animal. With IBM's size, they can easily put entire teams on linux and write that off as expenses on their exteremly lucrative consulting division's budget. Consultant groups do very well with open source, but very few give back. Most of the time the software producers, be it the sole programmer in his spare time or the open source company is left holding the bill for development. And yes, there is a bill involved, and it gets larger every year as software gets more complex.
My point is to ask "what is fair"? If someone is going to make money on trolltechs investment, should trolltech get something out of it? How is trolltech to continue to produce open source code if they do not have a reliable revenue stream?
Quote: The stated premise behind both the Sharp Zaurus GUI and KDE is that non-commercial open source efforts simply can't deliver a high quality GUI
For your information both of the most popular linux desktop have strong commercial ties.
It just isn't open-source versus commercial anymore. People need to get out of this mindset. Ximian puts a lot of money into GNOME, and GNOME would not have been as far along as it had without their full time programmers.
Do yourself a favor. Sit down one of those days and map out (i) Who are the most prominent open source programmers, and (ii) What commercial entity is sponsering them, if any.
It's a little game called "follow the money". You'd be surprise how much of open source relies on commercial backing. Look at all the developers Redhat, IBM, and others are putting on the kernel. Don't you think that Transmeta is in one way or the other facilitating Linus's work on the kernel? Even if it isn't part of his job title? I'd guess that they are.
And that's not a bad thing.
Quote:open source supposedly needs companies like Troll Tech to help with GUIs.
It doesn't need TrollTech, but any help should be appreciated, I'd say.
If that is true, I think it really calls into question the entire open source effort.
No it doesn't. Not in any way, shape or form. Open source and commercial can co-exist fine.
By the way as a zaurus owner, I agree with your main point. Zaurus should have at least shipped with a X-server in the ROM.
If you can't make a buck, you can't eat, and sooner or later, you will stop breathing.
I think you're missing a big part of the picture.
Financial advances are extremely important but aren't the only advances to take into consideration. All your arguments dealt with the "financial" state of linux and open source in general. Slashdot is a geek site, and so it's understandable that most people are discussing the technical changes for the year.
In terms of technology, 2002 was an outstanding year for linux.
Still, you brought up an important aspect few open source advocates are willing to discuss. That is, how does open source sustain its current growth?
It is said that statiscally, by tomorrow or day after, Microsoft would have made more money than linux vendors make all year, given the market stays the same as it was last few years. That is, MS makes in 2 days what most linux companies make in a year. I hate to throw unchecked stats around, but even if this is remotely the case, then opensource companies have a long fight ahead of them.
I believe open source users have to find ways to spend more on open source in the year 2003. Money is the life line of business, not good will.
Yeah, it's free so why spend?
Well if you "support" open source but you buy a dell desktop, a compaq ipaq, or you influence any buying decisions that acquire these things, then you all the open source advocacy is for nothing. Because your vote that really counts, your dollars, is going to Microsoft.
The ILECs and other broadband carriers have nothing to fear from CDMA and should begin to embrace working together with them.
They have a lot to fear.
I know a few friends who don't have home phone lines. A decade ago that would have been almost impossible to do. The number of people who've done this is small, but growing.
Next month, I plan to cut my home phone line. I can't wait to say good riddance to Bellsouth.
Currently an alternative for DSL is cable. But even the cable companies should fear cell service providers as well.
Just recently Sprint came up with $40 always on internet ( not including minutes, I assume ). Service is bad, sure, the phone choice is limited, definately, the speeds are slow. But it's only a start and I'm sure the rest of the industry will catch up, and service will improve.
You have to understand most people don't *need* broadband, and can get by very well on dialup speeds. Myself included. GSM/GPRS, bluetooth, a phone plan that allows me enough data to surf the web on average of 1/2hr per day, is all I need. And I think that would suit many other people just fine as well.
Look to Japan for example. I've heard it's more of the norm to not have a landline in younger demographics ( can't verify that ).
Eventually, the local phone companies are going to realize all that money they spent trying to keep their monopoly was wasted. As wireless is going to do them in anyway.
If it doesn't have chicks and beer, then it's not a party.
"LANGathering" maybe, or "LANGet-together" why not, but I'm sorry it's not a party.
The geek subculture is cool and all but still.
Although strictly speaking it is a "party" I'd say the name should be changed lest some poor soul wonders into one of those things expecting to get laid.
Re:consider running an opcode cache
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Simply asked, simply answered: there is no "official" PHP opcode caching because PHP relies on the Zend engine and the PHP developers work very closely with the people at Zend, who sell the Zend Performance Suite
That's the main answer I'm hearing. But zend is very expensive.
Maybe there's a compromise. How about a modest PHP opcode cache that has only some of zend's features; ie. a little bit slower and more conservative than zends.
I appreciate the work the zend guys have done, trust me I do. But that's an important feature to leave out.
consider running an opcode cache
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Most server side scripting engines nowadays employ opcode caching. Code is compiled the first time executed, but run from memory the rest of the time.
This is different from HTML output caching.
Opcode caching is said to increase performance by 30-200% depending on the cache code you use and your app.
With about 30% of apache installs running PHP, and with more than 50% of the web running apache, I'm surprise the PHP does not include an opcode cache with the install.
That's a lot of wasted cpu cycles:) Just compiling PHP scripts on every page hit.
There are open source caches out there, see the link in my sig.
I spent much of my teens playing videogames. Although I found time to do other things ( played high school bball for a number of years ), it was not uncommon for me to put in 18 hour days, several days in succession during break. And all in all I preferred video games to people a lot of the time, which I suspected was not healthy.
I started my computer science degree because of this fascination with games.
Eventually it occurred to me that the video game was just a generic "challenge" for me, and that there were more rewarding challenges out there because the payoffs are not mostly virtual.
My point is find out what the game really does for you, then try different things that fulfill that need. For me...
Game is challenging -> substituted with programming which I so as challenging as well
Game is something to "master" -> start playing the guitar. Something to practise and master and helps with the chicks:)
Game stimulates social interaction -> I go to clubs, beach, bookstores, etc...
I am getting really tired of Open Source zealots criticizing.NET just because Microsoft created it.
Ok, because, we don't agree with your stance we're zealots now? Whatever happened to free software advocates?
I have lots of doubts with.NET because it's from Microsoft. I don't think my concerns are unfounded. They've done enough in the past, now they arouse my suspicion just by them twitching.
How many times does a person have to screw you over before you stop trusting them? Similarly how many times does a company have to resort to shady tactics before you decide that it's probably in their corporate culture to do so.
My arguements against.NET are not technical, other than I don't think it brings enough to the table to warrant much of interest. It's mostly that sooner or later MS will find a way to screw open source interest with it.
Yeah, and I was one of the poor saps trying to convince him otherwise.
Why go into a business relationship with Microsoft with (i) these kinds of legal unknowns and (ii) their record on the matter?
Reminds of the Simpsons episode I saw a while back where Lisa is conducting an experiment; Which is smarter, Bart or a Hamster. The hamster tries to get at some food gets electrocuted twice and thus gives up. Bart continualy gets shocked but reaches for the food ad infinitum.
As far as I can tell, anybody who is shipping anything remotely resembling a Java platform implementation has a contractual agreement with Sun.
If that's true it's only needed because certain companies, are greedy enough to try to pollute the language with their own platform dependent extensions for their own gain.
There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html
PS. I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.
I was amazed how much free time I had after I cancelled my cable ( when Directv anyway ). I didn't think I watched much tv a day, but I guess a show here, and a movie there adds up.
Now I'm getting much more done, including coding projects I'd been dragging for a while.
I'll be honest, I miss it now and then ( especially the sundance channel ), when I get really bored, but I always seem to find something slightly more productive or entertaining to do.
In business you start projects all the time with "The probability of them suing us is slight", it's called risk management.
Maybe that's just me, but I'd say risk management is keeping a balanced portfolio, or having a certain amount of your assets liquid.
I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk. "Managed" risk implies that the risk was un-avoidable, I'd say. At any rate, it's Miguel's call, his money.
Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?
(i) Sun has supported third party implentations to the point where they used a third party implementations themself. What's the original linux jvm a third party jvm ( name was black-something, I can't remember). IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs.
(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.
(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.
Microsoft has already written.NET for another platform (Rotor, for BSD.)
Yeah, and there was also Internet Explorer for Solaris, look how long that was supported.
And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono
Why not communicate to the rest of the industry as to their intentions?
An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.
An interview does not make a legal contract either.
Why send so much time and effort with no legal protections? All Mono has is the apparent "good will" of a company known for being overly aggressive to the point of breaking the law on occasion.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're wrong on this one.
The vast majority of foreign students go home. Many are bonded by their governments or companies, have families back home, can't get an visa, or maybe just don't want to stay. Students know if they overstay their visa then they can't get a job anyway.
I'd say the 90% figure is about right, but it's for students who leave not stay. I'd argue only 1 or 2 out of every 10 foreign students stay on for any period of time. And usually it's only the best ( >3.8 GPA holders, quite often ) that get sponsored to stay.
This is just my observation from working/studying at a university with a very high foreign student population for the last 6.5 years.
from the I-want-new-shiny-things-to-distract-me -from-my-mind-numbly-unfulfilled-life-and-I-want-i t-now! dept.
I admit, I'm guilty of this too.
First of all, nobody is making do anything. They are asking for a dontation. If you don't think it's prudent use of your hard earned money, then don't give.
Second of all, internet access is not equivalent to food or health care, but it could be considered as part of a close third. Communication.
The internet is a very cheap but capable communications device. Email allows people who don't have a phone and can not pay of a service to send messages to love ones, as someone else stated.
It does not mean everyone is going to have a laptop with 11b. There could be one office, similar to a telegraph office, for send and delivering messages.
World news can be printed, everyday and distributed. How much would a newspaper subscription cost otherwise? Maybe it's read over the radio, maybe it's sold at a price closer to what locals can afford.
This kind of crap is frivilous, back-patting BS being done by people who want to feel like they are "making the world a better place." In truth, they are accomplishing nothing.
How easily you dispatch the hard work and efforts of others trying to do good for people that probably never could repay them.
When was the last time you tried that?
Logic does not apply here. I can write software and stipulate that users must give me their first-born as payment. You are free to choose my software, or if you think the licensing terms are unreasonable, go buy someone elses package.
Microsoft requires you give them money for their software, it is their right. BSD does not require you to distribute modifications, it is their right as well.
Your right is to pick the software package that has a license that suits your purposes most.
Never is there any notion that the company creating the 3rd party libraries I use gets any rights at all to my software. Yet, if the library was GPL'ed tomorrow, all of a sudden my work should be free?
You always have the option of not using the GPL software. Nobody's forcing you too.
Matlab for linux http://www.mathworks.com/products/system.shtml/Uni x
That is true. And I agree with you on the Sun point as well. Both Sun and TrollTech hold special rights to the software, and Ximian doesn't.
The thing is all those companies are asking What is the sweet spot? How can I make money and still be open source?. I don't think anyone has perfected this yet, so the dual license is just another attempt at profitability using open source. You can't blame TrollTech for trying either.
Ximian tries to recoup it's cost by (i) services such as red carpet (ii) contracts from HP and Sun ( or at least they use to ) (iii) selling proprietary software ( exchange connector ) (vi) VC money ( probably ). They are in no way out of the woods yet. Although I wish them good luck.
IBM is an entirely different animal. With IBM's size, they can easily put entire teams on linux and write that off as expenses on their exteremly lucrative consulting division's budget. Consultant groups do very well with open source, but very few give back. Most of the time the software producers, be it the sole programmer in his spare time or the open source company is left holding the bill for development. And yes, there is a bill involved, and it gets larger every year as software gets more complex.
My point is to ask "what is fair"? If someone is going to make money on trolltechs investment, should trolltech get something out of it? How is trolltech to continue to produce open source code if they do not have a reliable revenue stream?
For your information both of the most popular linux desktop have strong commercial ties.
It just isn't open-source versus commercial anymore. People need to get out of this mindset. Ximian puts a lot of money into GNOME, and GNOME would not have been as far along as it had without their full time programmers.
Do yourself a favor. Sit down one of those days and map out (i) Who are the most prominent open source programmers, and (ii) What commercial entity is sponsering them, if any.
It's a little game called "follow the money". You'd be surprise how much of open source relies on commercial backing. Look at all the developers Redhat, IBM, and others are putting on the kernel. Don't you think that Transmeta is in one way or the other facilitating Linus's work on the kernel? Even if it isn't part of his job title? I'd guess that they are.
And that's not a bad thing.
Quote:open source supposedly needs companies like Troll Tech to help with GUIs.
It doesn't need TrollTech, but any help should be appreciated, I'd say. If that is true, I think it really calls into question the entire open source effort.
No it doesn't. Not in any way, shape or form. Open source and commercial can co-exist fine.
By the way as a zaurus owner, I agree with your main point. Zaurus should have at least shipped with a X-server in the ROM.
I think you're missing a big part of the picture.
Financial advances are extremely important but aren't the only advances to take into consideration. All your arguments dealt with the "financial" state of linux and open source in general. Slashdot is a geek site, and so it's understandable that most people are discussing the technical changes for the year.
In terms of technology, 2002 was an outstanding year for linux.
Still, you brought up an important aspect few open source advocates are willing to discuss. That is, how does open source sustain its current growth?
It is said that statiscally, by tomorrow or day after, Microsoft would have made more money than linux vendors make all year, given the market stays the same as it was last few years. That is, MS makes in 2 days what most linux companies make in a year. I hate to throw unchecked stats around, but even if this is remotely the case, then opensource companies have a long fight ahead of them.
I believe open source users have to find ways to spend more on open source in the year 2003. Money is the life line of business, not good will. Yeah, it's free so why spend?
Well if you "support" open source but you buy a dell desktop, a compaq ipaq, or you influence any buying decisions that acquire these things, then you all the open source advocacy is for nothing. Because your vote that really counts, your dollars, is going to Microsoft.
Actually, sounds like a lot of cops I've encountered.
They have a lot to fear.
I know a few friends who don't have home phone lines. A decade ago that would have been almost impossible to do. The number of people who've done this is small, but growing.
Next month, I plan to cut my home phone line. I can't wait to say good riddance to Bellsouth.
Currently an alternative for DSL is cable. But even the cable companies should fear cell service providers as well.
Just recently Sprint came up with $40 always on internet ( not including minutes, I assume ). Service is bad, sure, the phone choice is limited, definately, the speeds are slow. But it's only a start and I'm sure the rest of the industry will catch up, and service will improve.
You have to understand most people don't *need* broadband, and can get by very well on dialup speeds. Myself included. GSM/GPRS, bluetooth, a phone plan that allows me enough data to surf the web on average of 1/2hr per day, is all I need. And I think that would suit many other people just fine as well.
Look to Japan for example. I've heard it's more of the norm to not have a landline in younger demographics ( can't verify that ).
Eventually, the local phone companies are going to realize all that money they spent trying to keep their monopoly was wasted. As wireless is going to do them in anyway.
Anyone else caught this from the new scientist article?
My word! They make bikinis that size?
If it doesn't have chicks and beer, then it's not a party.
"LANGathering" maybe, or "LANGet-together" why not, but I'm sorry it's not a party.
The geek subculture is cool and all but still.
Although strictly speaking it is a "party" I'd say the name should be changed lest some poor soul wonders into one of those things expecting to get laid.
That's the main answer I'm hearing. But zend is very expensive.
Maybe there's a compromise. How about a modest PHP opcode cache that has only some of zend's features; ie. a little bit slower and more conservative than zends.
I appreciate the work the zend guys have done, trust me I do. But that's an important feature to leave out.
This is different from HTML output caching.
Opcode caching is said to increase performance by 30-200% depending on the cache code you use and your app.
With about 30% of apache installs running PHP, and with more than 50% of the web running apache, I'm surprise the PHP does not include an opcode cache with the install.
That's a lot of wasted cpu cycles :) Just compiling PHP scripts on every page hit.
There are open source caches out there, see the link in my sig.
Although this must have been a joke, I don't think it's funny, slashdot does have a lot of young readers.
I single hit of heroin is all you need to become addicted. This has been documented, mentioned in interviews with many heroin addicts.
If you think you have a problem...
I spent much of my teens playing videogames. Although I found time to do other things ( played high school bball for a number of years ), it was not uncommon for me to put in 18 hour days, several days in succession during break. And all in all I preferred video games to people a lot of the time, which I suspected was not healthy.
I started my computer science degree because of this fascination with games.
Eventually it occurred to me that the video game was just a generic "challenge" for me, and that there were more rewarding challenges out there because the payoffs are not mostly virtual.
My point is find out what the game really does for you, then try different things that fulfill that need. For me...
Ok, because, we don't agree with your stance we're zealots now? Whatever happened to free software advocates?
I have lots of doubts with .NET because it's from Microsoft. I don't think my concerns are unfounded. They've done enough in the past, now they arouse my suspicion just by them twitching.
How many times does a person have to screw you over before you stop trusting them? Similarly how many times does a company have to resort to shady tactics before you decide that it's probably in their corporate culture to do so.
My arguements against .NET are not technical, other than I don't think it brings enough to the table to warrant much of interest. It's mostly that sooner or later MS will find a way to screw open source interest with it.
Yeah, and I was one of the poor saps trying to convince him otherwise.
Why go into a business relationship with Microsoft with (i) these kinds of legal unknowns and (ii) their record on the matter?
Reminds of the Simpsons episode I saw a while back where Lisa is conducting an experiment; Which is smarter, Bart or a Hamster. The hamster tries to get at some food gets electrocuted twice and thus gives up. Bart continualy gets shocked but reaches for the food ad infinitum.
This depends entirely on how one uses their laptop.
My laptop has been by workstation for years now. I just ordered a new 1.3GHz to replace my 333MHz. Use it to surf, compile, read email, etc.
Not because it's a laptop does it mean that you have to take it everywhere. Just means that you can when really necessary.
Having a dual-proc laptop would be nice. Just as having a dual-proc regular workstation would be cool.
That's probably not going to happen though, not unless you can turn one proc on and off on the fly to save battery.
If that's true it's only needed because certain companies, are greedy enough to try to pollute the language with their own platform dependent extensions for their own gain.
There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html
PS. I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.
I was amazed how much free time I had after I cancelled my cable ( when Directv anyway ). I didn't think I watched much tv a day, but I guess a show here, and a movie there adds up.
Now I'm getting much more done, including coding projects I'd been dragging for a while.
I'll be honest, I miss it now and then ( especially the sundance channel ), when I get really bored, but I always seem to find something slightly more productive or entertaining to do.
Maybe that's just me, but I'd say risk management is keeping a balanced portfolio, or having a certain amount of your assets liquid.
I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk. "Managed" risk implies that the risk was un-avoidable, I'd say. At any rate, it's Miguel's call, his money.
Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?
(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.
(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.
Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either. In business you don't start projects with "well, maybe they won't sue us...".
With any .NET implementation, Microsoft holds the patent card, heck they hold the copyright card as well; a whole lot of them.
Any .NET implemenation that is not officially sanctioned by Microsoft in a legally binding way is making a very risky bet.
I say, Either Miguel knows something we don't, or he is being a bit callous with Ximian VC money in this case.
Yeah, and there was also Internet Explorer for Solaris, look how long that was supported.
And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono
Why not communicate to the rest of the industry as to their intentions?
An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.
An interview does not make a legal contract either.
Why send so much time and effort with no legal protections? All Mono has is the apparent "good will" of a company known for being overly aggressive to the point of breaking the law on occasion.
And that's not much!