big deal. Apple did this years ago with their DR emulator; it translated 68k to ppc on the fly, and is still in use today on every powermac! It'll execute 68k code faster than real 68k boxes.
The equivalent technology was the core of MAE, the Mac Application Environment for Solaris and HP-UX(?).
Bell Labs did a static version with its flashport stuff, which apparently is gone. It translated 68k assembly/binaries to powerpc binaries.
Sounds like the only difference is you can retarget the back & front ends, a la MAME.
* client access licensing. Some commerical vendors license on a per-user basis. By switching to an open-source product, the cost of these licenses is negated.
* support. The big guys want support, and they want a company that'll be around for a couple of years. They want it 24/7, too. Note that even though MS doesn't give support, really, the perception is they do due to the large number of MCSEs out there. Interesting proposition.
* blame. It's easier to blame microsoft and not get fired than blame some puny vendor nobody's heard of. If the culture is heavily political, alternatives to the canonical vendors will not be considered.
* technical capabilities. The technical abilities of various corporations vary tremendously. While it's exciting to learn new stuff, it's less exciting for the corporation to have someone take 4 weeks to learn stuff that does what their stuff does now for less...and that person may not be able to do it.
The thing to remember is ease-of-use matters. Joe schmoe doesn't have a box at home where he plays with software after work. Joe has a family and a life outside the technical world that is more important than his job and any technical doodads.
A radical idea for/. folks, but true. Basically nobody really cares about this stuff. If they do care, address them with the above points.
or something of that ilk to baseline your system. Install the app, then figure out what changed using the provided tools. This is really the only way to do it.
Ideally, you'd put your system in a quiescent state before doing this so you can isolate the changes to your system to one app. You probably want to pull the various temp directories out of the watch list (/tmp,/var/tmp,/var/run, etc) since they tend to bear the brunt of changes.
The most common places that'll be changed are:/etc/rc scripts (for startup),/var (for a telltale),/etc/services (maybe), and/var/pkg (or the equivalent).
One thing that was brought up by the article but conveniently ignored by/.ters is this juicy tidbit: maybe Palm's going down because they licensed their OS.
Yep, Palm licensees are eating into its market share. Yep, they're leeching off the hard work done by Palm, Inc. Yep, they're causing the destruction of the mothership, and Palm won't be able to survive on OS licenses alone.
Gee, the article even mentioned that Apple had that problem a while back.
Maybe licensing your stuff isn't such a good model after all?
One of the things that people "conveniently" forget about the early days of PC's and clones is this: nobody licensed anything from anyone, except Microsoft. The clone market emerged because of a mistake, not because of a concious decision; more precicely, the mistake was the result of lots of design decisions, but the non-proprietary nature of the original PC was a time-to-market and supplier/logistical issue, not a strategic decision.
Indeed, everyone these days thinks that clones are great, that they drive down prices, that they are good for the consumer. That may be so, but they're terrible for producers. There are ways to make money in a commodity business, but it doesn't leave a lot of money for R&D. When your margins go south, you're left with, well, sweatshops and assembly lines.
Why beat the dead horse? Because dumb geek myths like this one propagate out to the real world, and destroy real companies like palm. Maybe this'll teach everyone not to spread the "proprietary is bad" meme, because while it may not be demonstratably wrong, it's not demonstratably right either.
CDDB's big asset wasn't the data, it was the thousands of users who performed data entry for the CDDB database for free. Shit, Adaptec should charge them to use CDDB, because it's essentially providing GraceNote with free data entry personnel!
why not send them a bunch of lawyers in the mail? After all, lawyers are the ultimate gifts that keep on giving; they brighten any relationship, and spread cheer, goodwill, and fair dealing. And they don't take up that valuable rack space that you never have enough of.
"Lawyers - Peace through Strength"
"Lawyers - Don't do Businesss without One"
"Lawyers - Yeah I trust you, but I don't want it up the butt again"
"Lawyers - Mutually Assured Reaming"
"Lawyers - Bring a lawyer to the table, everyone loses."
"Lawyers - what does pyhrric mean again?"
But - that's what competition in the software industry is all about: copying features and interfaces from other people. It's a fact that there are really few new ideas, just variations on old ones. Imagine:
IBM sues Oracle for using Relational Database Technology. "They took the relational concepts and our query language and stomped our ass."
VisiCorp sues Microsoft for spreadsheet clone. "Hey, spreadsheets were our idea! And MultiPlan really sucks, too!"
Lotus sues Microsoft for using 1-2-3 command keys. "Geez...why didn't they come up with their own keys?"
Heck, the whole history of open source software is reinventing the wheel so you wouldn't have to pay for it...and the same could be said for the history of any industry. "I can make the same thing cheaper and better."
public domain = anyone can do anything with the stuff. no ownership. no rights. no protections. no warrantees. no responsibility. no restrictions. this is what "free" means: no strings attached.
Free Software with conditions isn't free under any definition of the word "free." Free means I can take the code and embed it into my $1.5m project, stamp my name on it and resell it, or whatever. Anything less isn't free, by definition. Amusing that the Free Software Foundation doesn't actually promote Free Software, it promotes zero-cost software.
If you want your code to be free, stuff it into the public domain! Let it wander off into the distance, with no hope of renumeration in the future.
The PowerPC chip is a niche player. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the various ecologies in which it's dominant continue to be viable.
But - promoting diversity for diversity's sake is just plain silly. Diversity is a strategic choice, not a tactical choice, and it's very difficult to push strategic choices down the throats of users, especially when cost is involved. It's going to be practically impossible to get PPC stuff down to the commodity pricing level of the x86 world, and that's fine, because they're for different markets. Is there a value proposition for PowerPCs at the current price points? Yes! Does that value proposition make sense at the commodity level? Obviously the answer is no, because, well, x86 is good enough.
When it comes to non-standard computing environments, however, PowerPC chips are much better. Low power, low heat, good performance with few compromises, all combine into an attractive and compelling package. In restricted environments, the heat dissipation characteristics alone are compelling.
So remember, it's just a chip. There are more important things to get worked up about, like licensing schemes and such.
I don't think RedHat has any system management stuff built in, except for an SNMP agent. What does google use to make sure all these boxes are up, running, working, and healthy?
Because hypercard was really easy, so easy that joe blow could create something they could use at home even if joe blow had no programming skills, talent, or inclination. It was the first, and probably is still the only authoring environment that is easy enough for practically anyone to use.
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big deal. Apple did this years ago with their DR emulator; it translated 68k to ppc on the fly, and is still in use today on every powermac! It'll execute 68k code faster than real 68k boxes.
The equivalent technology was the core of MAE, the Mac Application Environment for Solaris and HP-UX(?).
Bell Labs did a static version with its flashport stuff, which apparently is gone. It translated 68k assembly/binaries to powerpc binaries.
Sounds like the only difference is you can retarget the back & front ends, a la MAME.
Here are some things to think about:
/. folks, but true. Basically nobody really cares about this stuff. If they do care, address them with the above points.
* client access licensing. Some commerical vendors license on a per-user basis. By switching to an open-source product, the cost of these licenses is negated.
* support. The big guys want support, and they want a company that'll be around for a couple of years. They want it 24/7, too. Note that even though MS doesn't give support, really, the perception is they do due to the large number of MCSEs out there. Interesting proposition.
* blame. It's easier to blame microsoft and not get fired than blame some puny vendor nobody's heard of. If the culture is heavily political, alternatives to the canonical vendors will not be considered.
* technical capabilities. The technical abilities of various corporations vary tremendously. While it's exciting to learn new stuff, it's less exciting for the corporation to have someone take 4 weeks to learn stuff that does what their stuff does now for less...and that person may not be able to do it.
The thing to remember is ease-of-use matters. Joe schmoe doesn't have a box at home where he plays with software after work. Joe has a family and a life outside the technical world that is more important than his job and any technical doodads.
A radical idea for
or something of that ilk to baseline your system. Install the app, then figure out what changed using the provided tools. This is really the only way to do it.
/var/tmp, /var/run, etc) since they tend to bear the brunt of changes.
/etc/rc scripts (for startup), /var (for a telltale), /etc/services (maybe), and /var/pkg (or the equivalent).
Ideally, you'd put your system in a quiescent state before doing this so you can isolate the changes to your system to one app. You probably want to pull the various temp directories out of the watch list (/tmp,
The most common places that'll be changed are:
Becuase Apple fundamentally upsets the free software folks. Why?
It's simple. Apple reminds them that aesthetics, elegance, and design are things that you very rarely get for free, anywhere.
It may also be that people, for the most part, are cheap...and nobody wants to be reminded that they get what they pay for.
One thing that was brought up by the article but conveniently ignored by /.ters is this juicy tidbit: maybe Palm's going down because they licensed their OS.
Yep, Palm licensees are eating into its market share. Yep, they're leeching off the hard work done by Palm, Inc. Yep, they're causing the destruction of the mothership, and Palm won't be able to survive on OS licenses alone.
Gee, the article even mentioned that Apple had that problem a while back.
Maybe licensing your stuff isn't such a good model after all?
One of the things that people "conveniently" forget about the early days of PC's and clones is this: nobody licensed anything from anyone, except Microsoft. The clone market emerged because of a mistake, not because of a concious decision; more precicely, the mistake was the result of lots of design decisions, but the non-proprietary nature of the original PC was a time-to-market and supplier/logistical issue, not a strategic decision.
Indeed, everyone these days thinks that clones are great, that they drive down prices, that they are good for the consumer. That may be so, but they're terrible for producers. There are ways to make money in a commodity business, but it doesn't leave a lot of money for R&D. When your margins go south, you're left with, well, sweatshops and assembly lines.
Why beat the dead horse? Because dumb geek myths like this one propagate out to the real world, and destroy real companies like palm. Maybe this'll teach everyone not to spread the "proprietary is bad" meme, because while it may not be demonstratably wrong, it's not demonstratably right either.
CDDB's big asset wasn't the data, it was the thousands of users who performed data entry for the CDDB database for free. Shit, Adaptec should charge them to use CDDB, because it's essentially providing GraceNote with free data entry personnel!
What a bunch of lamers.
why not send them a bunch of lawyers in the mail? After all, lawyers are the ultimate gifts that keep on giving; they brighten any relationship, and spread cheer, goodwill, and fair dealing. And they don't take up that valuable rack space that you never have enough of.
"Lawyers - Peace through Strength"
"Lawyers - Don't do Businesss without One"
"Lawyers - Yeah I trust you, but I don't want it up the butt again"
"Lawyers - Mutually Assured Reaming"
"Lawyers - Bring a lawyer to the table, everyone loses."
"Lawyers - what does pyhrric mean again?"
But - that's what competition in the software industry is all about: copying features and interfaces from other people. It's a fact that there are really few new ideas, just variations on old ones. Imagine:
IBM sues Oracle for using Relational Database Technology. "They took the relational concepts and our query language and stomped our ass."
VisiCorp sues Microsoft for spreadsheet clone. "Hey, spreadsheets were our idea! And MultiPlan really sucks, too!"
Lotus sues Microsoft for using 1-2-3 command keys. "Geez...why didn't they come up with their own keys?"
Heck, the whole history of open source software is reinventing the wheel so you wouldn't have to pay for it...and the same could be said for the history of any industry. "I can make the same thing cheaper and better."
public domain = anyone can do anything with the stuff. no ownership. no rights. no protections. no warrantees. no responsibility. no restrictions. this is what "free" means: no strings attached.
Free Software with conditions isn't free under any definition of the word "free." Free means I can take the code and embed it into my $1.5m project, stamp my name on it and resell it, or whatever. Anything less isn't free, by definition. Amusing that the Free Software Foundation doesn't actually promote Free Software, it promotes zero-cost software.
If you want your code to be free, stuff it into the public domain! Let it wander off into the distance, with no hope of renumeration in the future.
Just don't call something free when it isn't.
The PowerPC chip is a niche player. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the various ecologies in which it's dominant continue to be viable.
But - promoting diversity for diversity's sake is just plain silly. Diversity is a strategic choice, not a tactical choice, and it's very difficult to push strategic choices down the throats of users, especially when cost is involved. It's going to be practically impossible to get PPC stuff down to the commodity pricing level of the x86 world, and that's fine, because they're for different markets. Is there a value proposition for PowerPCs at the current price points? Yes! Does that value proposition make sense at the commodity level? Obviously the answer is no, because, well, x86 is good enough.
When it comes to non-standard computing environments, however, PowerPC chips are much better. Low power, low heat, good performance with few compromises, all combine into an attractive and compelling package. In restricted environments, the heat dissipation characteristics alone are compelling.
So remember, it's just a chip. There are more important things to get worked up about, like licensing schemes and such.
I don't think RedHat has any system management stuff built in, except for an SNMP agent. What does google use to make sure all these boxes are up, running, working, and healthy?
by pipelining the redundant secondarily pollutant fixtures through the appropriate ministries, we discovering telemesh synergies with your potato.
because:
* peering arrangements create static routes
* problems on dynamic routes are difficult to debug
Combine these two factors and you can see the problem.
Because hypercard was really easy, so easy that joe blow could create something they could use at home even if joe blow had no programming skills, talent, or inclination. It was the first, and probably is still the only authoring environment that is easy enough for practically anyone to use.