I think you fundamentally fail to understand the nature of the Web as a medium. One of the things that differentiates the web from, say gopher or a magazine, is that every page can be directly linked to, and can have links. This creates an organizational structure in which the basic unit is a page, not a site (or book, or magazine). I think this is a good thing. Whether it is good or not, it is indisputably true.
This allows for much more usefull and dynamic configurations than a less fully interconnected graph would have. It also means that every web page must stand (or fail) on its own. On a fundamental level every file, be it text, image, or other, is offered independently by the web server.
Any file with a unique permanent URL can be linked to, or even included in (via frames or tags) any HTML page, or fetched directly by URL. That is the basic nature of the web. Creating a business model which ignores the way the world is is unwise. Trying to change reality to support that business model is arrogant and stupid.
I remind you that he said no *killer* apps. All of the apps you mentioned are examples of categories in which we have software of (at best) comperable quality to what is available for windows. A killer app would be one that is so dramatically more usefull than what is available for other OSs as to justify running unix just to be able to use that app.
Changing operating systems takes work. No matter how well we clone windows and mac interfaces, unix will still be different. If it wasn't, there'd be no point to its existance. Some of us will choose unix for its inherent technical merit, but most people won't. A killer application would be something good enough that it would be obvious to a generic user that the effort of switching to unix is justified.
The value of a general-purpose computing device is fairly obvious. It's versatile, upgradable and presumably more affordable than owning a plethora of specialty devices.
For the special-purpose device to displace the generalised one, it needs to offer the things "real" computers don't offer: portability and unobtrusiveness. We are successfully miniaturising all the important components of computers save two: The keyboard and the monitor.
The size of both is constrained not only by the technology but by the user. A keyboard must reasonably accommodate two hands, and the information value of a monitor is directly proportional to its size. Without fundamentally new ideas for both, the portable/specialist device is dead in the water.
There have been some moderate advances in the input category (styluses), but nothing significant in terms of output. Until you can get the display quality of a 19-inch monitor into a 6-inch space, there's nothing doing.
My personal favorite phantasy solution is contacts with an embedded display system. What's yours?
The short answer is - I don't know. It's posible that they've managed to get their costs substantially lower than what I've seen elsewhere. It's also possible that their average user in your price bracket uses the net little enough that their lack of use ballances out your use. Or it's possible that GIS is willingly losing money on that particular pricing option in the hopes that its marketing value will lead to long-term benefits that outweigh the immediate costs. Who knows?
But not completely so. The postal service is not going to become a competitive force in the internet economy per se.
But they could definitely enhance their value in what they already do. The idea of having the P.O. accept electronic documents and print them near their destination is cool. They could add electronic tracking to messages sent, or allow you to query the status of your P.O. box electronically. They could reduce stamp costs by supporting an e-cash like system for printing your own stamps, etc. There is definitely room for the postal service to improve themselves using the internet. Assigned e-mail addresses to every physical one is not, or course, one of them.
Ok, My math must suck. $15 + $1 does not equal $18. It equals $16. Scale my numbers back accordingly, and I don't think it changes the point, but still.... oops.
Some services are motivated by generosity, personal enthusiasm, and other altruistic goals. I'm not talking about those.
For-profit corporations do not willingly lose money. If they're not selling something to you, they're selling you to someone. Would you rather be they customer or the product? Which do you think gets better treatment?
The advertiser-supported ISPs are going to have a hell of a time staying in business. A quick look at the business model:
Income: Web Advertising rates. Common rates for a banner add are in the 1 to 10 cents per "eyeball", or pair thereof, depending mostly on how well-targeted the ad is. Absent very sophisticated (and rare on an ISP level) profiling, the ISP cannot really identify what the user is interested in, in order to carefully target ads. Moreover, the free-ISP user demographic is likely to be mostly internet newbies, which is the kiss of death for an e-commerce site. So it's very unlikely that a free ISP will be getting more than 1 cent per ad. Click-throughs can be worth as much as 25 cents in some cases, though it's likely to be much less, especially since a forced click-through doesn't signify real interest and is therefore less valuable to the advertiser than a voluntary click-through. Porn sites, which often use pop-up windows to essentially force a click-through, rarely get more than 3 or 4 cents per click-through. And porn is very profitable. Posit a maximum of 5 cents per click-through of revenue.
Expense: Based on Earthlink's SEC filings, and the data of other companies (including my own employer), it is generally accepted that about $13 per user per month is the minimum cost for an unlimited time or > 15 hrs per month dialup account. That covers only direct costs, not advertising. Moreover, that level of efficiency requires on the order of 1 million users. Cost per user looks more like $20 per month for most smaller companies. Further, it tends to cost about $15 - $20 in initial costs (including advertising) to get a user. 18 months is a fairly average length of time for a user to stick with an ISP, so the ISP *must* recover its initial investment within that time to make a profit. Given the annoyingness of ads, it's unlikely that a free ISP will have a better retention rate. Let's suppose J. Random Free ISP is doing about $15 per month, at best. Further, they need to recoup $18 (to be simple) in 18 months. So they need $18 per user per month to break even. Add another 10% to make it sufficiently profitable to bother, and you need $20.
That's 2,000 ads or 400 click-throughs (or some combination thereof) per user per month. At best. Our average unlimited-time user logs about 15 hours a month. At that rate, the free ISP needs to serve each user 125 adds an hour (or 24 click-throughs) to break even. That's a pretty weak proposition. I wouldn't put any money on it.
You cannot give someone data and also not give them that data. It's the lesson of MP3 and DVD. It's why copy protection doesn't work. It's the root of the Quake problem, Diablo hacks, and the CAD issue.
Once someone has data, they can store it, copy it, modify it, retransmit it and sell it. There is no technological remedy to this. The only way to control what happens to data is to control (or at least approve) all the hardware and software that will ever come into contact with it. With physical media, nothing can stop me from picking it up and carrying it somewhat unintended. Over the network, noone can know who's sniffing. There is no possible way to be sure I haven't modified my hardware or software to mimic an approved configuration, but behave otherwise. It is inherently, provably, not technologically possible. End of story.
If there is an acceptable level of failure, such as with piracy, one can use legal means to discourage unauthorised behaviour. Where the gains are high, and the risks unimportant, as with Quake, you can trust the client, and hope it doesn't result in excessive problems. But when a single failure is unacceptable - as with important commercial data - the answer is simply don't do it. Know that any data you give someone may end up public knowlege, and do not give anyone more data than you trust them with. If you misplace your trust, that is a human error with no technical solution.
This seems to fall in the gray area around the borders of free software.
It is distictly a good thing: They are giving the users (us) the ability to modify the source code and help the product serve our needs/wants better.
But it's not a great thing. A basic principle of fairness involving free software is that of symetry. (See HTN by ESR) That is to say, all developers are equal partners. Under the GPL, the y can use my code to improve their product, but I can also use their code to improve mine.
As far as I can tell, Epic isn't going to directly impose an unfair license, but is getting much the same effect circuitously: By only open-sourcing certain parts of their software, they don't allow other developers the benefit of their most usefull code, or give working code for a complete program. Now, they're still giving out good code, and they're still allowing us to customize it, so Epic's move is definitely a Good Thing, and a step in the right direction. But it's also something of a tease, and we ought to encourage them to seek a fuller and more equal partnership with the open-source community.
I am versed almost exclusively in U.S. law, which is of course different. I'm not sure if we have a similar law w/r/t contract issues, but I know that's it's not as clear in other situations.
In a fairly recent case, a system administrator, who had adult material which was legal in the state where he (and his server) reside was indicted under the laws of the state someone was in when they downloaded the materials. He paid a fine, and there was no appeal. This case is one of many similar ones. Under such a precedent, you could be charged under the laws of any country from which someone can connect to your service. How'd you like to be arrested next time you visit Hong Kong for violating Chinese political speech laws?
This assuredly good news, but I'm a little disappointed that it even needs be discussed.
One thing that has been fundamentally obvious for a long time is that the new world of global telecommunications and "cyberspace" necessitates a serious legal rethinking. It's not at all clear "where" something happens or exists. The courts are decades behind the pace of technology at it is. In the 80s I ran a local BBS and came across this issue. If there is a legal dispute between two users, it was unclear whether the laws of the location of the BBS, the location of the accused, or the location of the accuser applied. I had imagined that this would be resolved by an act of congress within a few years. Yeah right. Over a decade later, the situation has become tremendously murkier, and no legal progress has been made.
We live in a world in which nobody knows where they are, or whose laws apply to them. A message travelling between two cities in Switzerland could go through half a dozen countries on the way. Or several dozen. And people imagine that they can even *define* an import or export, let alone monitor, regulate or tax them?!!
I haven't got any grand insights into generating passwords, but I have a system I like for tracking them. It's a little like the "zones" idea someones else mentioned.
For the most critical things (bank, broker, root on anything important) I have a different password for each one. I come up with passwords using any of usual "easy to remember, hard to guess" schemes. I change passwords every two months for these.
But, having gone to the effort of memorizing the passwords, I don't want to throw that work away. So once I'm not using a password for anything critically important, I push it down the stack for use on less-important accounts.
Why is it suprising that Red Hat and Debian chose to name their inventions after themselves? It's like asking why von Neumann machines are named after von Neumann, even though everybody uses the idea. People like credit for what they do, especially when they're not getting anything else for it.
Red Hat is a commercial enterprise. They sell software. Being good, happy people, they put everything they write under the GPL. This means others can use it, which is the idea. But if everyone else is going to use Red Hat's software, what competitive advantage does Red Hat have? Their brand. Red Hat's business model is based on people associating Red Hat with quality. And that means they are going to want credit for their ideas. So it makes all the sense in the world, that Red Hat wants their name on RPM, even in other distros.
And Debian? They're not in it for the money. Think about academia for a moment here. When you put in lots of work and come up with good ideas, you want something for it. If it's not money, it's respect and recongnition. So of course Debian wants credit for what they create.
Oh come on and open your eyes for a moment. Yes, it's very far from a complete or usefull system, but it represents a possible solution to one of the weaknesses of current speach recognition. It's not the whole puzzle, but it's a usefull piece.
This post rediculously romanticizes Apple. Apple Computer is not salvation, and Steve Jobs isn't the savior. Apple is a computer company. They make and sell computers. In some ways they are good computers and in some ways they are bad. But they are not liberating. There is nothing individualistic or idealistic about the computers or the company. They are a large company out to make a profit, and do so unscrupulously. Apple has been no more reluctant to screw its customers and competitors than Microsoft, only less profitable at it.
The Motorola PowerPC 7400, which apple calls a "G4" and claims credit for, is a powerful chip to be sure. But it isn't as much faster than a Pentium as the carefully chosen benchmarks would suggest. Apple didn't invent it and had nothing significant to do with the development. All they are doing is riding on the coattails of a good product and claiming credit for it, all the while pushing an overpriced and underperforming system.
Sorry, it's just a product. And the only creative genius at Apple is their marketing. "Think Different" is just a corporate slogan. Just like "where do you want to go today?". Katz seems to have bought it hook, line and sinker - but it just aint so.
A point which Mr. Glave repeatedly bring up, and rightly so, is the issue of trustworthiness and bias in reporting. He points out that in a forum such as Slashdot, you have no assurance of tne legitmacy or truthfulness of a story. This is completely true. As he observes, the reader must make their own assessment of stories based on their source, others' comments, and whether or not facts can be confirmed through other sources. There is, however, the implicit assumption that this is not the case with traditional journalism.
I think it may not be correct to assume that traditional journalism can be, should be, or is trusted. I do not believe that many (in the Slashdot community) distrust journalist's motives, but rather their technical competence. It doesn't take much work (in any field) to find mutually contradictory traditional articles discussing the same event or issue. This implies that at least one of them had their facts wrong. Not a rarity. Moreover, when two journalists agree about the facts, the interpetation, analyses, focus and conclusions are often wildly different. So if a reader wants any assurance of the accuray or insightfulness of an article, they really need to look at multiple articles, consider the gredibility or the journalist and his or her sources, and check out the primary sources themselves. Just as with Slashdot.
One particulaly relevant issue is the nature of Slashdot's subject matter. It is usually technical and computer related. This implies two things: The first is that due to the highly specialized nature of the material, it is possible, even probable, that the journalist does not have enough expertise to separate truth, spin, and downright fiction. This is through no fault of the journalist - computing is just too broad a field for any magazine to have an expert in every possible subject. It is also the case that tech company claims are notoriously unreliable: Most copy is written by people who specialize in marketing and PR, not by engineers. Which makes it likely that the writer doesn't understand the truth, and (even with the best of intentions) doesn't want to burden the reader with technical information they won't understand anyway. So even with no malice, curicial errors and omissions are the norm. Becaus very few people really understand it, the computing world is driven as much by perception a fact. So companies have every reason to put their particular spin on things. So you have a lot of places for truth, and especially an understanding of what's significant, to get lost or distorted.
The second is the availability of confirmation. The intenet makes is possible to put primary sources like unvarnished data and scholarly writings at the readers' fingertips. People in the technology field are likely to have the ability and inclination to do so. If this information is not available, that's information in and of itself. So it is a subject area that is conducive to the kind of verification that a forum like Slashdot calls for. Thus, Slashdot is in the enviable position of covering material that plays to it's own strenghts and its competition's weeknesses.
"I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato.
"the flip side is that you don't have [an editor's] assurance in what is to be trusted and what isn't to be trusted."
Yep, asking too much. Or rather giving up too much. There are some absolutely wonderful C programming books, but they don't cover GTK. Uneqiuvocally, I recommend O'Reilly's "Practical C Programming" It's not platform-specific, but takes a very unixy approach. It is a potentially difficult book, tackling some algorithms and data structures, including pointers and memory management. These might be drawbacks to the neophyte programmer, but are definitely a plus if you come in with some experience.
It's possible to write drivers for anything. It's not possible to write a single driver for all winmodems, since there are so many different types. Further, it's not possible (or at least very hard) to write drivers for winmodems without information from the manufacturer, since the interface is not documented nor standardardized.
But, it's quite possible to make the rest of the code "friendly" to winmodem drivers by modularizing the modem code and writing skeletal drivers, which makes the task of writing a winmodem driver as easy as possible.
Red Hat's number as to what part of their sales are for support are probably low. I'm sure many people buy Red Hat Official Linux because it's all they know of. But many also do not. As for myself, whenever I officially buy Red Hat officialy, it's for the support. I could have just grabbed a CD off my shelf and installed the latest Red Hat, or any other distro, for next to no money. Or bought a disc from LinuxMall. In essence, what I'm doing is paying $80 for some books and a support contract. I could buy books for $30 or so. Besides which, I already have books, and my clients will probable never read the manuals anyway, so I could probaby skip the books, too.
So basically, every Red Hat sale to me is a $50 - $80 support contract, which lets me tell my client that they have support available from the vendor. And I imagine, I'm not alone in this.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a totally unnecessary post. I'm checking the link in my signature to make sure that it points to my new server for DeCSS. Woo-hoo.
I think you fundamentally fail to understand the nature of the Web as a medium. One of the things that differentiates the web from, say gopher or a magazine, is that every page can be directly linked to, and can have links. This creates an organizational structure in which the basic unit is a page, not a site (or book, or magazine). I think this is a good thing. Whether it is good or not, it is indisputably true.
This allows for much more usefull and dynamic configurations than a less fully interconnected graph would have. It also means that every web page must stand (or fail) on its own. On a fundamental level every file, be it text, image, or other, is offered independently by the web server.
Any file with a unique permanent URL can be linked to, or even included in (via frames or tags) any HTML page, or fetched directly by URL. That is the basic nature of the web. Creating a business model which ignores the way the world is is unwise. Trying to change reality to support that business model is arrogant and stupid.
I remind you that he said no *killer* apps. All of the apps you mentioned are examples of categories in which we have software of (at best) comperable quality to what is available for windows. A killer app would be one that is so dramatically more usefull than what is available for other OSs as to justify running unix just to be able to use that app.
Changing operating systems takes work. No matter how well we clone windows and mac interfaces, unix will still be different. If it wasn't, there'd be no point to its existance. Some of us will choose unix for its inherent technical merit, but most people won't. A killer application would be something good enough that it would be obvious to a generic user that the effort of switching to unix is justified.
A plant. We've created an artifical algae substitute. Kinda cool eh?
Back when he was president, I used to sign credit card receipts George Herbert Walker Bush. My name is Eric Anderson. Nobody ever complained....
The value of a general-purpose computing device is fairly obvious. It's versatile, upgradable and presumably more affordable than owning a plethora of specialty devices.
For the special-purpose device to displace the generalised one, it needs to offer the things "real" computers don't offer: portability and unobtrusiveness. We are successfully miniaturising all the important components of computers save two: The keyboard and the monitor.
The size of both is constrained not only by the technology but by the user. A keyboard must reasonably accommodate two hands, and the information value of a monitor is directly proportional to its size. Without fundamentally new ideas for both, the portable/specialist device is dead in the water.
There have been some moderate advances in the input category (styluses), but nothing significant in terms of output. Until you can get the display quality of a 19-inch monitor into a 6-inch space, there's nothing doing.
My personal favorite phantasy solution is contacts with an embedded display system. What's yours?
The short answer is - I don't know. It's posible that they've managed to get their costs substantially lower than what I've seen elsewhere. It's also possible that their average user in your price bracket uses the net little enough that their lack of use ballances out your use. Or it's possible that GIS is willingly losing money on that particular pricing option in the hopes that its marketing value will lead to long-term benefits that outweigh the immediate costs. Who knows?
But not completely so. The postal service is not going to become a competitive force in the internet economy per se.
But they could definitely enhance their value in what they already do. The idea of having the P.O. accept electronic documents and print them near their destination is cool. They could add electronic tracking to messages sent, or allow you to query the status of your P.O. box electronically. They could reduce stamp costs by supporting an e-cash like system for printing your own stamps, etc. There is definitely room for the postal service to improve themselves using the internet. Assigned e-mail addresses to every physical one is not, or course, one of them.
Ok, My math must suck. $15 + $1 does not equal $18. It equals $16. Scale my numbers back accordingly, and I don't think it changes the point, but still .... oops.
Some services are motivated by generosity, personal enthusiasm, and other altruistic goals. I'm not talking about those.
For-profit corporations do not willingly lose money. If they're not selling something to you, they're selling you to someone. Would you rather be they customer or the product? Which do you think gets better treatment?
The advertiser-supported ISPs are going to have a hell of a time staying in business. A quick look at the business model:
Income: Web Advertising rates. Common rates for a banner add are in the 1 to 10 cents per "eyeball", or pair thereof, depending mostly on how well-targeted the ad is. Absent very sophisticated (and rare on an ISP level) profiling, the ISP cannot really identify what the user is interested in, in order to carefully target ads. Moreover, the free-ISP user demographic is likely to be mostly internet newbies, which is the kiss of death for an e-commerce site. So it's very unlikely that a free ISP will be getting more than 1 cent per ad. Click-throughs can be worth as much as 25 cents in some cases, though it's likely to be much less, especially since a forced click-through doesn't signify real interest and is therefore less valuable to the advertiser than a voluntary click-through. Porn sites, which often use pop-up windows to essentially force a click-through, rarely get more than 3 or 4 cents per click-through. And porn is very profitable. Posit a maximum of 5 cents per click-through of revenue.
Expense: Based on Earthlink's SEC filings, and the data of other companies (including my own employer), it is generally accepted that about $13 per user per month is the minimum cost for an unlimited time or > 15 hrs per month dialup account. That covers only direct costs, not advertising. Moreover, that level of efficiency requires on the order of 1 million users. Cost per user looks more like $20 per month for most smaller companies. Further, it tends to cost about $15 - $20 in initial costs (including advertising) to get a user. 18 months is a fairly average length of time for a user to stick with an ISP, so the ISP *must* recover its initial investment within that time to make a profit. Given the annoyingness of ads, it's unlikely that a free ISP will have a better retention rate. Let's suppose J. Random Free ISP is doing about $15 per month, at best. Further, they need to recoup $18 (to be simple) in 18 months. So they need $18 per user per month to break even. Add another 10% to make it sufficiently profitable to bother, and you need $20.
That's 2,000 ads or 400 click-throughs (or some combination thereof) per user per month. At best. Our average unlimited-time user logs about 15 hours a month. At that rate, the free ISP needs to serve each user 125 adds an hour (or 24 click-throughs) to break even. That's a pretty weak proposition. I wouldn't put any money on it.
You cannot give someone data and also not give them that data. It's the lesson of MP3 and DVD. It's why copy protection doesn't work. It's the root of the Quake problem, Diablo hacks, and the CAD issue.
Once someone has data, they can store it, copy it, modify it, retransmit it and sell it. There is no technological remedy to this. The only way to control what happens to data is to control (or at least approve) all the hardware and software that will ever come into contact with it. With physical media, nothing can stop me from picking it up and carrying it somewhat unintended. Over the network, noone can know who's sniffing. There is no possible way to be sure I haven't modified my hardware or software to mimic an approved configuration, but behave otherwise. It is inherently, provably, not technologically possible. End of story.
If there is an acceptable level of failure, such as with piracy, one can use legal means to discourage unauthorised behaviour. Where the gains are high, and the risks unimportant, as with Quake, you can trust the client, and hope it doesn't result in excessive problems. But when a single failure is unacceptable - as with important commercial data - the answer is simply don't do it. Know that any data you give someone may end up public knowlege, and do not give anyone more data than you trust them with. If you misplace your trust, that is a human error with no technical solution.
This seems to fall in the gray area around the borders of free software.
It is distictly a good thing: They are giving the users (us) the ability to modify the source code and help the product serve our needs/wants better.
But it's not a great thing. A basic principle of fairness involving free software is that of symetry. (See HTN by ESR) That is to say, all developers are equal partners. Under the GPL, the y can use my code to improve their product, but I can also use their code to improve mine.
As far as I can tell, Epic isn't going to directly impose an unfair license, but is getting much the same effect circuitously: By only open-sourcing certain parts of their software, they don't allow other developers the benefit of their most usefull code, or give working code for a complete program.
Now, they're still giving out good code, and they're still allowing us to customize it, so Epic's move is definitely a Good Thing, and a step in the right direction. But it's also something of a tease, and we ought to encourage them to seek a fuller and more equal partnership with the open-source community.
I am versed almost exclusively in U.S. law, which is of course different. I'm not sure if we have a similar law w/r/t contract issues, but I know that's it's not as clear in other situations.
In a fairly recent case, a system administrator, who had adult material which was legal in the state where he (and his server) reside was indicted under the laws of the state someone was in when they downloaded the materials. He paid a fine, and there was no appeal. This case is one of many similar ones. Under such a precedent, you could be charged under the laws of any country from which someone can connect to your service. How'd you like to be arrested next time you visit Hong Kong for violating Chinese political speech laws?
This assuredly good news, but I'm a little disappointed that it even needs be discussed.
One thing that has been fundamentally obvious for a long time is that the new world of global telecommunications and "cyberspace" necessitates a serious legal rethinking. It's not at all clear "where" something happens or exists. The courts are decades behind the pace of technology at it is. In the 80s I ran a local BBS and came across this issue. If there is a legal dispute between two users, it was unclear whether the laws of the location of the BBS, the location of the accused, or the location of the accuser applied. I had imagined that this would be resolved by an act of congress within a few years. Yeah right. Over a decade later, the situation has become tremendously murkier, and no legal progress has been made.
We live in a world in which nobody knows where they are, or whose laws apply to them. A message travelling between two cities in Switzerland could go through half a dozen countries on the way. Or several dozen. And people imagine that they can even *define* an import or export, let alone monitor, regulate or tax them?!!
I haven't got any grand insights into generating passwords, but I have a system I like for tracking them. It's a little like the "zones" idea someones else mentioned.
For the most critical things (bank, broker, root on anything important) I have a different password for each one. I come up with passwords using any of usual "easy to remember, hard to guess" schemes. I change passwords every two months for these.
But, having gone to the effort of memorizing the passwords, I don't want to throw that work away. So once I'm not using a password for anything critically important, I push it down the stack for use on less-important accounts.
Repeat as far down as one cares to go.
Why is it suprising that Red Hat and Debian chose to name their inventions after themselves? It's like asking why von Neumann machines are named after von Neumann, even though everybody uses the idea. People like credit for what they do, especially when they're not getting anything else for it.
Red Hat is a commercial enterprise. They sell software. Being good, happy people, they put everything they write under the GPL. This means others can use it, which is the idea. But if everyone else is going to use Red Hat's software, what competitive advantage does Red Hat have? Their brand. Red Hat's business model is based on people associating Red Hat with quality. And that means they are going to want credit for their ideas. So it makes all the sense in the world, that Red Hat wants their name on RPM, even in other distros.
And Debian? They're not in it for the money. Think about academia for a moment here. When you put in lots of work and come up with good ideas, you want something for it. If it's not money, it's respect and recongnition. So of course Debian wants credit for what they create.
Oh come on and open your eyes for a moment. Yes, it's very far from a complete or usefull system, but it represents a possible solution to one of the weaknesses of current speach recognition. It's not the whole puzzle, but it's a usefull piece.
This post rediculously romanticizes Apple. Apple Computer is not salvation, and Steve Jobs isn't the savior. Apple is a computer company. They make and sell computers. In some ways they are good computers and in some ways they are bad. But they are not liberating. There is nothing individualistic or idealistic about the computers or the company. They are a large company out to make a profit, and do so unscrupulously. Apple has been no more reluctant to screw its customers and competitors than Microsoft, only less profitable at it.
The Motorola PowerPC 7400, which apple calls a "G4" and claims credit for, is a powerful chip to be sure. But it isn't as much faster than a Pentium as the carefully chosen benchmarks would suggest. Apple didn't invent it and had nothing significant to do with the development. All they are doing is riding on the coattails of a good product and claiming credit for it, all the while pushing an overpriced and underperforming system.
Sorry, it's just a product. And the only creative genius at Apple is their marketing. "Think Different" is just a corporate slogan. Just like "where do you want to go today?". Katz seems to have bought it hook, line and sinker - but it just aint so.
A point which Mr. Glave repeatedly bring up, and rightly so, is the
issue of trustworthiness and bias in reporting. He points out that in a
forum such as Slashdot, you have no assurance of tne legitmacy or
truthfulness of a story. This is completely true. As he observes, the
reader must make their own assessment of stories based on their source,
others' comments, and whether or not facts can be confirmed through
other sources. There is, however, the implicit assumption that this is
not the case with traditional journalism.
I think it may not be correct to assume that traditional journalism
can be, should be, or is trusted. I do not believe that many (in the
Slashdot community) distrust journalist's motives, but rather their
technical competence. It doesn't take much work (in any field) to find
mutually contradictory traditional articles discussing the same event or
issue. This implies that at least one of them had their facts wrong.
Not a rarity. Moreover, when two journalists agree about the facts, the
interpetation, analyses, focus and conclusions are often wildly
different. So if a reader wants any assurance of the accuray or
insightfulness of an article, they really need to look at multiple
articles, consider the gredibility or the journalist and his or her
sources, and check out the primary sources themselves. Just as with
Slashdot.
One particulaly relevant issue is the nature of Slashdot's subject
matter. It is usually technical and computer related. This implies two
things: The first is that due to the highly specialized nature of the
material, it is possible, even probable, that the journalist does not
have enough expertise to separate truth, spin, and downright fiction.
This is through no fault of the journalist - computing is just too broad
a field for any magazine to have an expert in every possible subject.
It is also the case that tech company claims are notoriously
unreliable: Most copy is written by people who specialize in marketing
and PR, not by engineers. Which makes it likely that the writer doesn't
understand the truth, and (even with the best of intentions) doesn't
want to burden the reader with technical information they won't
understand anyway. So even with no malice, curicial errors and
omissions are the norm. Becaus very few people really understand it,
the computing world is driven as much by perception a fact. So
companies have every reason to put their particular spin on things. So
you have a lot of places for truth, and especially an understanding of
what's significant, to get lost or distorted.
The second is the availability of confirmation. The intenet makes is
possible to put primary sources like unvarnished data and scholarly
writings at the readers' fingertips. People in the technology field are
likely to have the ability and inclination to do so. If this
information is not available, that's information in and of itself. So
it is a subject area that is conducive to the kind of verification that
a forum like Slashdot calls for. Thus, Slashdot is in the enviable
position of covering material that plays to it's own strenghts and its
competition's weeknesses.
"I still believe that people go to sites
like Wired News and PC
Week because they have this curiosity for
the truth and this
underlying belief that services [like
Slashdot] don't always
get it right, and they need an independent
verification," said Berinato.
"the flip side is that
you don't have [an editor's] assurance in
what is to be
trusted and what isn't to be trusted."
What sort of centralization is that you want that Kerberos doesn't offer?
Yep, asking too much. Or rather giving up too much. There are some absolutely wonderful C programming books, but they don't cover GTK. Uneqiuvocally, I recommend O'Reilly's "Practical C Programming" It's not platform-specific, but takes a very unixy approach. It is a potentially difficult book, tackling some algorithms and data structures, including pointers and memory management. These might be drawbacks to the neophyte programmer, but are definitely a plus if you come in with some experience.
Is the User Friendly Project For Humanity getting anywhere?
It's possible to write drivers for anything. It's not possible to write a single driver for all winmodems, since there are so many different types. Further, it's not possible (or at least very hard) to write drivers for winmodems without information from the manufacturer, since the interface is not documented nor standardardized.
But, it's quite possible to make the rest of the code "friendly" to winmodem drivers by modularizing the modem code and writing skeletal drivers, which makes the task of writing a winmodem driver as easy as possible.
So basically, every Red Hat sale to me is a $50 - $80 support contract, which lets me tell my client that they have support available from the vendor. And I imagine, I'm not alone in this.