Remember the big sewage spill in California (Van Nuys?) a few weeks back? They were doing a Y2K test and experienced a power failure. Did you actually read the report or just the headline? One valve didn't reset properly. They caught it fairly quick. I got the impression that any power outage would have caused the problem. How many Y2K test plans included killing the power in the middle of the test? I would suspect that a lot of fringe problems might be uncovered if we actually do lose power during the rollover. How many of you guys have sat down with your utility company to hear what they have to say? I've sat down with the one for the company I work for. These guys have been done with all of the critical stuff for a while. It's pretty much payroll, accounting, and Windows on the desktop that's a problem at companies. This particular power company (in Kansas City, Kansas) just lost their main power plant to a coal fire. They did just fine over the hottest week in the summer. Paid through the ass for grid electricity. They tell us that peak energy in the winter is half of that in the summer and that they have tons of procedures for zero power, zero phone start-ups and manual switching of electric grid blocks. Plus, any site that needs energy mission critical (like hospitals) already has generator backup for emergencies. Their biggest concerns are twofold. 1. People automatically flipping on generators at midnight without putting a manual disconnect to the rest of the electrical system. (This would fry the nearest transformer or something like that.) 2. People going out at midnight on New Years and shooting off guns and hitting an electrical box. They say it happens every year. ------------------------------------------------ -------
"I see a lot of Windows usersand defenders claiming that if Linux dominated the corporate desktop, that the virus situation would be no better than it is for Windows now."
This is _true_ because there is nothing about these two virii/worms that has to do with Windows. It has to do with Microsoft's applications that ship with Windows... their Office and Internet applications allow you to do all kinds of screwy integration and "macro" (really code) that 99.5% of users never, ever use. If you can write a program that deletes files on a computer, and you can write a program that takes advantage of the ability to create and send automated e-mail, then you can do what this latest one did on any OS in the world. Why? Because you wouldn't want to take away either functionality from the user, but you can tie the two together.
The problem here is that dumb people will launch ANYTHING straight from e-mail they've received. Like all of the best ways to screw up a system, people are the easiest. (Like taking down 911 by having 30 people call at the same time... slashdot effect a 911 system? hmmm.)
Anyway, the point is that worms and trojans don't have a damn thing to do with the OS. Any fool can create them. The Melissa guy just came up with a pretty smart way of getting people to accept mail and attachments they shouldn't.
The OS doesn't have a thing to do with these latest problems, it's the applications and the users. ------------------------------------------ -------------
1. Show how the Microsoft benchmarks are flawed from a practicality standpoint. Find a listing somewhere of a "common" piece of hardware (like, say, the best selling Dell or IBM server that ships with NT.) I like the $ limits on hardware that someone else proposed. Slap Linux and NT on the same hardware for a $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $50,000 server setup. Set up a deal with ZDNet before testing that all results of the test are free to the public and open source. No backroom tweaking crap. Do it all in the open with virgin systems.
2. Show how the premise of Microsoft's assertions are flawed. Get a consortium of people (Linus, Perens, Raymond, etc.) to come forward and say that Linux is a free community, not a corporation or entity. There is no entity to "challenge" Microsoft. Get this sent out and released as an open letter. If possible, get ZDNet and others to post the open letter in their various magazines.
3. Use Microsoft's own tests against them. You don't need to actually challenge their numbers. They essentially proved that Linux is a good, viable piece of software that maybe isn't as fast. If Linux was crap, it wouldn't have run in the first place. Taunt Microsoft. Say, hey a company with billions of dollars in cash and hundreds, even thousands of developers can only do twice as good as a bunch of disorganized hackers who code in their free time. Say, "sure, if your application needs to serve 3,000 requests a second, go ahead and get NT. For everything else, Linux will do!"
Now, how to get the word out? Well, letters to the editors, open letters from the big wigs, etc. Get a slogan... "Linux, it's fast enough." ---------------------------------------- ---------------
Your hatred of all things katz seems to distract you from the interesting point of the article... That is, what was bought and sold was a 100% virtual item. Cell phone time and debit card cash all have tangible, real world conversions. A character in a game is 100% virtual. Outside of the realm of a computer and the internet, it simply does not exist and is wholly irrelevant.
Sure, Katz may point out the "obvious", but I bet you were sitting around last week going "you know, we're starting to trade virtual things like they're real objects". Obvious things never are... until they're pointed out to us. --------------------------------------------- ----------
Wrong. Apple has opensourced the QuickTime server and apparently rewritten the APSL. Version1.1? http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990419/ca_apple_c_1.ht ml and http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990419/ca_apple_c_2.ht ml are the press releases. --------------------------------------- ----------------
When the tide of open source licenses has abated, the original movement will still be there because of loyalty.
These things aren't going to undermine Open Source, because opening source code is not the complete answer. There has to be a sense of community and of actually building something, not just being a glorified bug eradicator for some stingy corporation that can't fix its own problems. That's why these new licenses are just a marketing ploy, and that's why the true Open Source community will still be intact when the hype wears off.
Well, you obviously don't realize that the Mac community is probably stronger and more vehement than the Linux Community. Just because it's not _your_ community, doesn't mean that Open Source won't work for Macintosh fans. Besides, when someone in the Linux world decides that they want to build their own streaming server, you can bet they'll go check out Apple's code.
Be thankful for what Apple's giving out. The truth is that Open Source w/o a major organization behind it results in projects that only the Open Source people care about. Apple's going to write Quicktime Server and try to drive it to the market regardless of whether or not anybody out there can see the source code or not.
Imagine this... The Linux community ports the Quicktime Streaming Server to all of those boxes that ISP's are using to serve sites with freeware like Apache, etc. Then, for a few hundred dead presidents, they can have the latest and greatest Streaming OS running off their equipment... Hell, Slashdot could have hosted the Star Wars trailer themselves then... and no aborted downloads at 20 Megs. ------------------------------------------- ------------
As a consumer why do I care about any proposed "standard" ??
Well, here's how the industry works. They might be a bunch of separate companies, but they're all in it together as a money making scheme to keep their distribution network to themselves. Among the methods they use currently are:
1. Create unique ways of getting CD's and tapes on store shelves so that only "approved" groups can get into the distribution network. (This is slowly changing as companies that specialize in distributing independent artists have emerged.)
2. Create bizarre ways of getting music played on radio and MTV. (Just try getting a song played on radio that isn't being pimped by a big record company.)
3. Create a legal atmosphere where they get a kick back on every blank piece of recordable or re-recordable audio media sold.
4. Create a legal atmosphere where artists/rights owners get kick backs based on the amount of airplay their songs get. (Once or twice a year, radio stations send playlists back to a few writers groups to get money for how much their artists are played.)
Everything that's done in the music industry is to control and manipulate profits. They're worse than Microsoft. Did you ever wonder how much the actual artists get for a CD you buy of theirs? They're lucky if they make more than a buck.
On the other hand, artists who have made it and go direct can get over $4 a CD.
Now, you tell me if the record companies are protecting the artists or themselves? Hopefully, the internet will allow artists an even playing field in order to promote themselves without having to give away 75% of their money to record companies. (Not to mention having their original recordings being owned by the labels. Hell, Prince had to re-record 1999 in order to sell it himself!)
You should care because the record industry has already proven their power to get legislation passed that seals their place in the music industry. Imagine a $2 fee added to every MP3 player to recoup the dollars supposedly lost on pirated material. It is not outside the range of possibilities because they've shown in the past they can get $ for media. Well, since the internet erases the media, they will go for the player. ----------------------------------------- --------------
Hey where did the experts come from
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
>There is a big difference between selective breeding, natural selection, hybridization and genetic engineering.
There is? In what book did you find this out? A mutation is a mutation. A gene is a gene. I don't care what the source. With selective breeding, you take years to get the result you want by just waiting for the proper bizarre mutation.
Come on, what you're saying is about as silly as saying there's a big difference between in vitro fertilization and the natural kind. Sure, you deposit the sperm in a cup instead of the more pleasant way, but the end result is that a sperm and an egg meet and start dividing in the way that causes a zygote to form instead of just more cells. Same thing with cloning.
We're talking DNA here. Breeding and hybridization work by 1. combining two different sets of DNA or 2. looking through the set of genetic mutations in your breeding stock and picking out the two most favorable mutations.
What this bozo in the article (more than likely, the news bozo who rewrote a press release and got the story wrong) doesn't have is a logical way to get genes from one thing to another. They don't just jump ship. (This is the biological equivalent of throwing FUD at those bad "hackers" who make nasty viruses. Oooh!)
The main way we have of doing this now is retroviruses. That's how they get glow in the dark plants. But those are engineered organisms who's purpose it is to inject a bit of DNA into a living cell. Then, that DNA replicates over and over. This is how normal viruses work, but, they usually produce more of themselves. Modify the virus to produce more of a chemical, and walla, you're effectively putting seeds inside of single cells. Talk about tiny fields. Hopefully, these are what the guy is really talking about, not just genetic engineering in general. (I suppose a retrovirus could get turned lose.)
But even then, the only result of the genes is simply to produce a certain compound. It's that compound that gives the benefit.
But you have to get infected by a retrovirus for the DNA to be injected in you. Plants have been making chlorophyll for years, and you don't see any of us turning green from eating spinach. This guy is silly if he's talking about any old Genetic modification.
Science uses the Microsoft method, make a beta, try it. Don't fix it until there's a known problem. Why? Because not using because of the unknowns doesn't outweigh the benefits of using right now. -------------------------------------------- -----------
Clearly folks, code is a "circuit". It is a plan, a concept that works. It is not communication. After all, your code just gets translated to 1's and 0's at some point for the real effect.
But, now for the kicker. Certain companies are trying to sheild technical designs with copyrights of sound. One of the phone companies (GE? AT&T?) is trying to copyright the sound of a modem dialing in and Harley Davidson is trying to copyright the sound of their special engines. The claimed result? That no one can use those sounds. The actual result? No one can make a machine that makes those sounds.
This means effectively that no one can use that particular modem string and protocol and no one can make an engine using the same concept as a Harley Davidson machine.
I particualarly _like_ patents and controls as long as we don't go to far down the slippery slope. If you invent something, release it quick under a free license so that everyone can use it.
But, also, remember that when you code Linux so that IBM can use it to build an incredibly powerful cluster in days, so can any terrorist throughout the known world... without having MS's piracy patrol trying to shut them down. It's the old "fire" in a crowded theater debate.
The problem with code is that it's instantly transferrable and doesn't deteriorate. You can hide the plans to a missile in a desert compound, but when you post code that _anyone_ in the world can freely copy, you might as well be posting the instructions for how to build a missile. The computer technology for weapons creation is just as important. -------------------------------------- -----------------
OK, I was a bit too general there. However, I see supporting Java and OpenGL as merely trying to do what MS is not, like picking through the MS garbage heap to see what MS has pitched out.
I disagree. OpenGL is there to appease John Cormack more than anything else. Java is there to just get up to speed and to get a few more apps available to Mac users.
My real question is this - what has Apple stolen from Microsoft?
Well, I see them stealing business sense from them. Jobs has come in as a messiah (=Gates), unleashed the iMac with known limitations (but "good enough"), and has released a next generation OS (MacOSX Server) before it's perfect so that the users can work out the bugs. They've also done things like Java and OpenGl in order to gain key players on their side. Jobs has hired super smart people to get the work done for him, and he's right on top of them. This is all classic Gates.
So, Apple may not have stolen Microsoft technology, but they have taken on Microsoft's attitude. (BTW, USB isn't exactly an Apple technology. But, Apple was the first to embrace it in an uncompromised position instead of along 17 other different ports.) ----------------------------------------- --------------
Slashdot Mirror
Remember the big sewage spill in California (Van Nuys?) a few weeks back? They were doing a Y2K test and experienced a power failure. Did you actually read the report or just the headline? One valve didn't reset properly. They caught it fairly quick. I got the impression that any power outage would have caused the problem. How many Y2K test plans included killing the power in the middle of the test? I would suspect that a lot of fringe problems might be uncovered if we actually do lose power during the rollover. How many of you guys have sat down with your utility company to hear what they have to say? I've sat down with the one for the company I work for. These guys have been done with all of the critical stuff for a while. It's pretty much payroll, accounting, and Windows on the desktop that's a problem at companies. This particular power company (in Kansas City, Kansas) just lost their main power plant to a coal fire. They did just fine over the hottest week in the summer. Paid through the ass for grid electricity. They tell us that peak energy in the winter is half of that in the summer and that they have tons of procedures for zero power, zero phone start-ups and manual switching of electric grid blocks. Plus, any site that needs energy mission critical (like hospitals) already has generator backup for emergencies. Their biggest concerns are twofold. 1. People automatically flipping on generators at midnight without putting a manual disconnect to the rest of the electrical system. (This would fry the nearest transformer or something like that.) 2. People going out at midnight on New Years and shooting off guns and hitting an electrical box. They say it happens every year.- -------
-----------------------------------------------
"I see a lot of Windows usersand defenders claiming that if Linux dominated the
- -------------
corporate desktop, that the virus situation would be no better than it is for
Windows now."
This is _true_ because there is nothing about these two virii/worms that has to do with Windows. It has to do with Microsoft's applications that ship with Windows... their Office and Internet applications allow you to do all kinds of screwy integration and "macro" (really code) that 99.5% of users never, ever use. If you can write a program that deletes files on a computer, and you can write a program that takes advantage of the ability to create and send automated e-mail, then you can do what this latest one did on any OS in the world. Why? Because you wouldn't want to take away either functionality from the user, but you can tie the two together.
The problem here is that dumb people will launch ANYTHING straight from e-mail they've received. Like all of the best ways to screw up a system, people are the easiest. (Like taking down 911 by having 30 people call at the same time... slashdot effect a 911 system? hmmm.)
Anyway, the point is that worms and trojans don't have a damn thing to do with the OS. Any fool can create them. The Melissa guy just came up with a pretty smart way of getting people to accept mail and attachments they shouldn't.
The OS doesn't have a thing to do with these latest problems, it's the applications and the users.
-----------------------------------------
Hey,
- ---------------
The way to beat this is to fight it properly.
1. Show how the Microsoft benchmarks are flawed from a practicality standpoint. Find a listing somewhere of a "common" piece of hardware (like, say, the best selling Dell or IBM server that ships with NT.) I like the $ limits on hardware that someone else proposed. Slap Linux and NT on the same hardware for a $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $50,000 server setup. Set up a deal with ZDNet before testing that all results of the test are free to the public and open source. No backroom tweaking crap. Do it all in the open with virgin systems.
2. Show how the premise of Microsoft's assertions are flawed. Get a consortium of people (Linus, Perens, Raymond, etc.) to come forward and say that Linux is a free community, not a corporation or entity. There is no entity to "challenge" Microsoft. Get this sent out and released as an open letter. If possible, get ZDNet and others to post the open letter in their various magazines.
3. Use Microsoft's own tests against them. You don't need to actually challenge their numbers. They essentially proved that Linux is a good, viable piece of software that maybe isn't as fast. If Linux was crap, it wouldn't have run in the first place. Taunt Microsoft. Say, hey a company with billions of dollars in cash and hundreds, even thousands of developers can only do twice as good as a bunch of disorganized hackers who code in their free time. Say, "sure, if your application needs to serve 3,000 requests a second, go ahead and get NT. For everything else, Linux will do!"
Now, how to get the word out? Well, letters to the editors, open letters from the big wigs, etc. Get a slogan... "Linux, it's fast enough."
---------------------------------------
thom,
- ----------
Your hatred of all things katz seems to distract you from the interesting point of the article... That is, what was bought and sold was a 100% virtual item. Cell phone time and debit card cash all have tangible, real world conversions. A character in a game is 100% virtual. Outside of the realm of a computer and the internet, it simply does not exist and is wholly irrelevant.
Sure, Katz may point out the "obvious", but I bet you were sitting around last week going "you know, we're starting to trade virtual things like they're real objects". Obvious things never are... until they're pointed out to us.
--------------------------------------------
*bzzzt*
t ml and http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990419/ca_apple_c_2.ht ml are the press releases.- ----------------
Wrong. Apple has opensourced the QuickTime server and apparently rewritten the APSL. Version1.1? http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990419/ca_apple_c_1.h
--------------------------------------
When the tide of open source licenses has abated, the original movement will still be there because of loyalty.
- ------------
These things aren't going to undermine Open Source, because opening source code is not the complete answer. There has to be a sense of community and of actually building something, not just being a glorified bug eradicator for some stingy corporation that can't fix its own problems. That's why these new licenses are just a marketing ploy, and that's why the true Open Source community will still be intact when the hype wears off.
Well, you obviously don't realize that the Mac community is probably stronger and more vehement than the Linux Community. Just because it's not _your_ community, doesn't mean that Open Source won't work for Macintosh fans. Besides, when someone in the Linux world decides that they want to build their own streaming server, you can bet they'll go check out Apple's code.
Be thankful for what Apple's giving out. The truth is that Open Source w/o a major organization behind it results in projects that only the Open Source people care about. Apple's going to write Quicktime Server and try to drive it to the market regardless of whether or not anybody out there can see the source code or not.
Imagine this... The Linux community ports the Quicktime Streaming Server to all of those boxes that ISP's are using to serve sites with freeware like Apache, etc. Then, for a few hundred dead presidents, they can have the latest and greatest Streaming OS running off their equipment... Hell, Slashdot could have hosted the Star Wars trailer themselves then... and no aborted downloads at 20 Megs.
------------------------------------------
As a consumer why do I care about any proposed "standard" ??
- --------------
Well, here's how the industry works. They might be a bunch of separate companies, but they're all in it together as a money making scheme to keep their distribution network to themselves. Among the methods they use currently are:
1. Create unique ways of getting CD's and tapes on store shelves so that only "approved" groups can get into the distribution network. (This is slowly changing as companies that specialize in distributing independent artists have emerged.)
2. Create bizarre ways of getting music played on radio and MTV. (Just try getting a song played on radio that isn't being pimped by a big record company.)
3. Create a legal atmosphere where they get a kick back on every blank piece of recordable or re-recordable audio media sold.
4. Create a legal atmosphere where artists/rights owners get kick backs based on the amount of airplay their songs get. (Once or twice a year, radio stations send playlists back to a few writers groups to get money for how much their artists are played.)
Everything that's done in the music industry is to control and manipulate profits. They're worse than Microsoft. Did you ever wonder how much the actual artists get for a CD you buy of theirs? They're lucky if they make more than a buck.
On the other hand, artists who have made it and go direct can get over $4 a CD.
Now, you tell me if the record companies are protecting the artists or themselves? Hopefully, the internet will allow artists an even playing field in order to promote themselves without having to give away 75% of their money to record companies. (Not to mention having their original recordings being owned by the labels. Hell, Prince had to re-record 1999 in order to sell it himself!)
You should care because the record industry has already proven their power to get legislation passed that seals their place in the music industry. Imagine a $2 fee added to every MP3 player to recoup the dollars supposedly lost on pirated material. It is not outside the range of possibilities because they've shown in the past they can get $ for media. Well, since the internet erases the media, they will go for the player.
----------------------------------------
>There is a big difference between selective breeding, natural selection, hybridization and genetic engineering.
- -----------
There is? In what book did you find this out? A mutation is a mutation. A gene is a gene. I don't care what the source. With selective breeding, you take years to get the result you want by just waiting for the proper bizarre mutation.
Come on, what you're saying is about as silly as saying there's a big difference between in vitro fertilization and the natural kind. Sure, you deposit the sperm in a cup instead of the more pleasant way, but the end result is that a sperm and an egg meet and start dividing in the way that causes a zygote to form instead of just more cells. Same thing with cloning.
We're talking DNA here. Breeding and hybridization work by 1. combining two different sets of DNA or 2. looking through the set of genetic mutations in your breeding stock and picking out the two most favorable mutations.
What this bozo in the article (more than likely, the news bozo who rewrote a press release and got the story wrong) doesn't have is a logical way to get genes from one thing to another. They don't just jump ship. (This is the biological equivalent of throwing FUD at those bad "hackers" who make nasty viruses. Oooh!)
The main way we have of doing this now is retroviruses. That's how they get glow in the dark plants. But those are engineered organisms who's purpose it is to inject a bit of DNA into a living cell. Then, that DNA replicates over and over. This is how normal viruses work, but, they usually produce more of themselves. Modify the virus to produce more of a chemical, and walla, you're effectively putting seeds inside of single cells. Talk about tiny fields. Hopefully, these are what the guy is really talking about, not just genetic engineering in general. (I suppose a retrovirus could get turned lose.)
But even then, the only result of the genes is simply to produce a certain compound. It's that compound that gives the benefit.
But you have to get infected by a retrovirus for the DNA to be injected in you. Plants have been making chlorophyll for years, and you don't see any of us turning green from eating spinach. This guy is silly if he's talking about any old Genetic modification.
Science uses the Microsoft method, make a beta, try it. Don't fix it until there's a known problem. Why? Because not using because of the unknowns doesn't outweigh the benefits of using right now.
-------------------------------------------
Clearly folks, code is a "circuit". It is a plan, a concept that works. It is not communication. After all, your code just gets translated to 1's and 0's at some point for the real effect.
- -----------------
But, now for the kicker. Certain companies are trying to sheild technical designs with copyrights of sound. One of the phone companies (GE? AT&T?) is trying to copyright the sound of a modem dialing in and Harley Davidson is trying to copyright the sound of their special engines. The claimed result? That no one can use those sounds. The actual result? No one can make a machine that makes those sounds.
This means effectively that no one can use that particular modem string and protocol and no one can make an engine using the same concept as a Harley Davidson machine.
I particualarly _like_ patents and controls as long as we don't go to far down the slippery slope. If you invent something, release it quick under a free license so that everyone can use it.
But, also, remember that when you code Linux so that IBM can use it to build an incredibly powerful cluster in days, so can any terrorist throughout the known world... without having MS's piracy patrol trying to shut them down. It's the old "fire" in a crowded theater debate.
The problem with code is that it's instantly transferrable and doesn't deteriorate. You can hide the plans to a missile in a desert compound, but when you post code that _anyone_ in the world can freely copy, you might as well be posting the instructions for how to build a missile. The computer technology for weapons creation is just as important.
-------------------------------------
OK, I was a bit too general there. However, I see supporting Java and OpenGL as merely trying to do what MS is not, like picking through the MS garbage heap to see what MS has pitched out.
- --------------
I disagree. OpenGL is there to appease John Cormack more than anything else. Java is there to just get up to speed and to get a few more apps available to Mac users.
My real question is this - what has Apple stolen from Microsoft?
Well, I see them stealing business sense from them. Jobs has come in as a messiah (=Gates), unleashed the iMac with known limitations (but "good enough"), and has released a next generation OS (MacOSX Server) before it's perfect so that the users can work out the bugs. They've also done things like Java and OpenGl in order to gain key players on their side. Jobs has hired super smart people to get the work done for him, and he's right on top of them. This is all classic Gates.
So, Apple may not have stolen Microsoft technology, but they have taken on Microsoft's attitude. (BTW, USB isn't exactly an Apple technology. But, Apple was the first to embrace it in an uncompromised position instead of along 17 other different ports.)
----------------------------------------