I wonder how they would look if they showed how many applications and device drivers break this gaurantee? Does this include multi-headed systems running OpenGL, compilers, wordprocessors etc? If so, they're insane.
They're full of half-truths. Part way through the comparison they compare costs of running NT to costs of "UNIX", then they make hard statements with soft words like "prone to bugs."
I would really like to see this challenge taken up and for someone to investigate their claims. I sent off a bit of email to some interesting people who may be able to answer this challenge... at least it can't be said that I'm doing nothing about this.
NT is a decent OS. I don't like it very much, but it certainly has its places. It is just not that good.
There is no middle ground here. Companies are being asked by the government "how much damage did Mitnick do?", they reply "The development costs were $xx Million."
I don't think it is the company's fault that the government can't tell the difference between development costs and damages.
2600 does have a point. The damages held against Mitnick should at least be reflected by losses presented at shareholder's meetings. I don't know this for a fact, but from what is presented, it seems as though Mitnick's damages only exist in the minds of management. The accountants don't seem to even know that $xx Million somehow dissapeared.
If Mitnick sold the information to a competing company, or posted the soruce code publicly... clearly comprimising the company's ability to turn a profit from its intellectual property, then I could understand the dollar figures.
I don't believe he ever did anything of the sort though.
If those figures -- loss of uninsured and poorly guarded intellectual property -- were made public, I know I would take my money out of the company.
It seems as though these are all potential losses. By the time Mitnick is out of prison, the IP will only be worth a tiny fraction of these numbers.
This too applies to Nokia. If they did not report the losses, they should not be reporting the 'property' as lost or stolen.
I don't understand how $200USD is a terrible pricepoint. If it is small enough, durable enough and low powered, people will be willing to pay.
Anything over $100USD is out of reach of the vast majority of high-school kids.
Now the RIO is a lousy sale. Expensive and very limited. The worst of both worlds. This thing has 1000% of the capacity and abilities for 200% of the price. I just hope the microdrive is low powered and durable...
If this thing had an IR port to do mass data transfers with my computer (or other recorders), it would be a great alternative to floppies/zip/whatever. I don't think the recording industry would like people swapping music over IR too much though.
"The reason why my machine will be cheaper is that it will use a lot less memory, a lower-cost processor, a simpler power supply and a lower-cost operating system."
This is good... I will not buy a portable computer and use it as a portable computer until a few things happen:
It must be cheap enough to easily replace if lost, stolen or broken.
It must be durable enough that it won't be easily broken.
It MUST have a long battery life. I mean 8 hours or more on rechargable cells. (not a bag full of battery packs)
It must be versatile. With standard ports (IR RS232 etc)
It must support files and features of a desktop (no pocket apps. older low-powered apps are fine, just not castrated pocket apps!)
It must be easy to read from.
It must make intelligent use of keyboard space or a good input device.
I am very willing to sacrifice:
colour
power
audio/video
GUI. I don't need a GUI!!!
Pointing Device!
Multitasking!
Zeos made a 286 clone palmtop which met most of these criteria. Very standard, long life, good keyboard etc. It ran DOS, and could run 1-2-3 and Wordperfect for Dos. 10 years ago, they had a palmtop with more features and longer battery life than modern WinCE machines.
Compaq has a perfect example of WinCE garbage. I tried to load a 400k book. The font was unreadable, so I tried to load it into "pocket word", it used another 400k to load the document from the ramdisk into "memory", and it ran out of memory when it used another 400k to select the text of the document... I couldn't even change the font, or split up the document just to be able to make the font big enough to read!
All the while I was being taunted by wasted screen real-estate in scroll bars telling me that the document had more than one page, a Start menu telling me that only pocket-word was running, and a status bar telling me that I could manipulate the window labeled pocket-word in various ways.
To kick it all off, the unit was about 7" wide. 6.5" were keyboard. They wasted no space in placing a full-scale replica 'enter' key on the keyboard, and a full scale tab key... leaving less than 5" for the home row. Are they stupid?
Hewlett Packard was crazy enough to put a numeric keypad on one of these things.
and the industry wonders why there is such a small market for palm-sized devices?
The article is simply bringing up the point that some software systems are mission critical. Software failure can be just as catostrophic as an engineering failure.
On the other hand...
"Many have called themselves software engineers," said John R. Speed, executive director of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. "Wrong. They're the local music dropout who chooses to use that title."
It is pretty rare that I lose respect for someone after only a sentence -- don't tell me that this could be quoted out of context.
I suppose this guy could be referring to "uneducated" hacks. Even then, this is just a horrible thing to say about people who study the fine arts. Somebody should write a song about this guy:-)
Regardless, I have always agreed that without proper acredation, programmers have no right to call themselves "engineers."
It doesn't mean that everyone needs to be an engineer to write code. It just means that engineers will make gobs of money as project managers for software. Engineers will be soley responsible when hundreds of children are killed by a faulty instruction controlling a safety valve.
Doesn't the y2.038k rely upon unix using a signed long integer? Isn't the ANSI C implementation of time based on an unsigned long?
This would mean that applications and microcontrollers which were programmed properly would not have a problem for roughly another hundred years... not another 38 years.
Could somebody help me if I'm wrong about this? Why would anybody need a signed long time?
The mainstream media is likely to distort any story to be as controversial and poigiant as possible while squeezing it into 22 minutes of dramatic 911 calls, crying kids and choice quotes from dime-store sociologists.
How about snail-mailing every principal, vice principal and guidance councellor in North America?
Perhaps a standardized letter?
Some of them did some good things, like promoting geeky clubs in schools and not forcing people to eat in their cafeterias. Others it seems like to degrade students as much as possible.
Or perhaps at the very least, we could create a website where the outpouring of email could have identifying markings stripped off, and focus on what seems to be the problem... parents, teachers, police officers and principals who are critical or neglegant --- along with another area where success stories could be posted. Things which saved people from bitter isolation and torment.
There has to be a better way to handle this than to have bullies and jerks all over the country laugh at heart-felt testamonies from tortured schoolkids on NBC, while sociologists tell these kids to talk to their parents, teachers or guidance councellors.
I never bought Intel's line that this has anything to do with security.
Personally, I think it has more to do with tracking stolen or overclocked chips. I'm pretty indifferent too all of it. Intel's only mistake seems to be to try to sell the public on this sort of thing. Especially for security purposes.
I wonder what it would take to 'emulate' a Pentium on a Pentium, and forge the ID?
Battery life, size and usable life of the machine are more important to me. Spinning media seems nowhere close to solid state in these regards.
Personally, Samsung has a bad track record with me. There's always something horrible about everything they design. I bet this thing will have a battery hatch which breaks easily, or a volume control which crackles... something dumb like that marring some great piece of engineering.
Just look at the useless Java on their website... There's a prime example.
Funny, That roughly adds up to three mid-tower cases side-by side. The latter is probably cheaper too.
It seems like the worst of both worlds. Unless it comes with a built-in keyboard tray and monitor pedestal.
I would personally like to see a case with the drive bays and the expansion slots both in front. I'm sure it would be too expensive to bother with though.
Why is it that when a website burdened with old hardware and an underperforming operating system posts news about a site running on NT, that the NT site can't handle the load?
Are they running that close to their peak all the time?
When their site is serving faster than one page in half-an-hour, could somebody tell me what they are running?
They aren't giving me enough throughput to fill up a 1200 baud modem here.
There are two things about this 'Internet war' concept which I think are fatally flawed.
First, remember that old parable of the blind man describing an elephant?
I think you'll get just as reliable information from a civilian describing a war. All they see is what's happening in their own backyard.
Secondly, I would like to think that, unlike television, the loudest voice on the Internet is not the one with the most to gain. I would like to think that it is the one with the most to say -- But I would be gullible and idealistic to think that a vast and very personal communications medium is any less succeptable to propaganda or corruption than the mainstream media.
If you received an email which read "Please stop bombing my home." Would you believe it? If you didn't, would you trust what you read online anymore?
People are still going to flock to CNN because they know what CNN's motives are.
TT setting the fee for commercial linux devl.
on
Harmony Rides Again
·
· Score: 1
I personally have a strong distaste for the idea of one company charging money for commercially developed applications under Linux.
It is a sad state of affairs when 99% of the operating system is developed in good faith for the sake of better code, and the last 1% charges 100% of the commercial development fees.
If KDE became the GUI for Linux, Linux would be the cash cow for Troll Tech. I have nothing against making money from open source, but I do have a problem with making money by dipping into the pockets of everyone else who is trying to make a buck.
With QT making up a layer of the OS, Linux is no longer a free OS, it is a vehicle for Troll Tech.
It really bothers me... but it can be a good thing.
If the desktop fragments into a totally free Linux with Gnome, vs a pay-per-developer KDE, one will have the advantage of being free from influence of corporations, the other will have the advantage of real financial corporate backing.
For me it is not about a "totally free operating environment and applications", it is about having an uncorruptable development platform.
Microsoft does not even charge money to develop applications for their environment.
You cannot develop shareware for KDE. If you want to share a tool, you either have to pay up, or give it away... or write it for windows, where you don't have such restrictions.
It's just my opinion. KDE is great, but it is taking a very lazy shortcut. These legal limitations do not need to exist.
I read the essay on the "security hole" in open source.
By the same token this fellow should watch his back. His mechanic might put a bomb under his car just in case he doesn't pay up. His banks can be robbed by their employees, and his system administrators may design back-doors in his trusted networks.
After all the IE security holes, backorifice, the PGP exploits etc... this fellow has the gaul to say that a closed source system is immune to malicious backdoors? The only peer review closed-source seems to get is in backdoor exploits!
Excuse me while I kill my locksmith. He knows too much.
If he wants to make a point, he should at least place emphasis on the kind of subtle attacks which are possible. Unfortunately, I don't think he knows enough about computers to be able to recognize them.
I think I'll go put a floppy in my drive and "comprimize" my "top dog" access on my NT box. It is certainly harder to prevent than slipping backdoors into Linux.
(Damn, I've just wasted a half-hour of my life... oh well.)
It is definately an improvement. There is some new irritating sluggishness which makes me feel like I'm working with a Java applet or something, but I can hope for all that to dissapear in the final release. I like the "Translate" button and some of the implied features.. some very very neat (old and unoriginal, but neat) ideas. IE5 still beats it for redrawing speed on win32, just turn on full window dragging and start moving some corners to see how fast it can keep up. IE is so smooth that it is fun to watch lines wrap. So far Commmunicator 5, is a flickering sluggish pain, but it keeps everything infront of your eyes and readable. Which is more than I can say for Communicator 4. I hope the final is faster, but it meets my minimum requirements: I won't be afraid of touching the border of my browser and waiting five seconds for a redraw. Wow, do I hate Netscape 4. Some of the new, not so visible features are very exciting. It is a good sign, I hope they get this one right.
Why can't a demon penguin be associated with something I agree with!
All this politics is tripe. I don't see a strong argument anywhere here other than that the author feels that RMS and the FSF are power tripping... and if they are, I don't really care!
Personally, I don't think Linux would be at all strong as it is today if it were not for the GPL. But I'm not going to call it GNU/Linux either. If the GPL was not tough enough to demand intellectual property rights, there would be no end to the bickering and in-fighting.
Now that that's been said, you can pay Troll Tech for the commercial licence for QT and then you don't have to distribute or reveal the source.
I don't think there is anything preventing commercial QT licences from movign from their flat $1299USD rate to any figure they desire.
Troll Tech is using the free software model to popularize their libraries, and they are cashing in on commercial software. It is perfectly valid, and they are quite honest about it. I emailed them on that subject. I don't have to like it though.
Voice Recognition remote control. There's a neat upgrade.
As for the great white north, how about a computer-controlled car stereo heater?
I don't mind having to warm the thing up before I use it, or taking it out of the car every night, but if I forget it in the car, I don't want to have to buy a new one.
Expect more companies to hop on that bandwagon. Cyrix Corp., which makes low-cost computer processors, says it also is interested in working on Linux, once it finalizes its 3-D Now! technology, a rival version of MMX.
I wonder when Cyrix will create this 3DNow! Technology to compete with MMX?
Perhaps Apple should get in touch with BellAtlantic and ask them why they do not support Macs. They should probably also find out if there is any way that Macintosh could help them support the platform.
Who knows, they could go one step further and get the Mac logo placed in Bell's ads.
Just imagine the commercials. "Here's a Mac getting connected to ADSL... <click>."
There must be a way to escalate this issue.
(I know that there is no real technical issue here... it sounds like red tape and corporate sloth. One of the higher-ups needs a letter from another higher-up to give the command to offer support for the platform. Until then, either the yes-people will not budge on the issue, or it will take years of complaints to move up the chain of management.)
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how they would look if they showed how many applications and device drivers break this gaurantee? Does this include multi-headed systems running OpenGL, compilers, wordprocessors etc? If so, they're insane.
They're full of half-truths. Part way through the comparison they compare costs of running NT to costs of "UNIX", then they make hard statements with soft words like "prone to bugs."
I would really like to see this challenge taken up and for someone to investigate their claims. I sent off a bit of email to some interesting people who may be able to answer this challenge... at least it can't be said that I'm doing nothing about this.
NT is a decent OS. I don't like it very much, but it certainly has its places. It is just not that good.
I hope someone humiliates them.
There is no middle ground here. Companies are being asked by the government "how much damage did Mitnick do?", they reply "The development costs were $xx Million."
I don't think it is the company's fault that the government can't tell the difference between development costs and damages.
2600 does have a point. The damages held against Mitnick should at least be reflected by losses presented at shareholder's meetings. I don't know this for a fact, but from what is presented, it seems as though Mitnick's damages only exist in the minds of management. The accountants don't seem to even know that $xx Million somehow dissapeared.
If Mitnick sold the information to a competing company, or posted the soruce code publicly... clearly comprimising the company's ability to turn a profit from its intellectual property, then I could understand the dollar figures.
I don't believe he ever did anything of the sort though.
If those figures -- loss of uninsured and poorly guarded intellectual property -- were made public, I know I would take my money out of the company.
It seems as though these are all potential losses. By the time Mitnick is out of prison, the IP will only be worth a tiny fraction of these numbers.
This too applies to Nokia. If they did not report the losses, they should not be reporting the 'property' as lost or stolen.
Don't forget Celerons which failed when overclocked.
I don't understand how $200USD is a terrible pricepoint. If it is small enough, durable enough and low powered, people will be willing to pay.
Anything over $100USD is out of reach of the vast majority of high-school kids.
Now the RIO is a lousy sale. Expensive and very limited. The worst of both worlds. This thing has 1000% of the capacity and abilities for 200% of the price. I just hope the microdrive is low powered and durable...
If this thing had an IR port to do mass data transfers with my computer (or other recorders), it would be a great alternative to floppies/zip/whatever. I don't think the recording industry would like people swapping music over IR too much though.
I'm babbling again.
This is good... I will not buy a portable computer and use it as a portable computer until a few things happen:
I am very willing to sacrifice:
Zeos made a 286 clone palmtop which met most of these criteria. Very standard, long life, good keyboard etc. It ran DOS, and could run 1-2-3 and Wordperfect for Dos. 10 years ago, they had a palmtop with more features and longer battery life than modern WinCE machines.
Compaq has a perfect example of WinCE garbage. I tried to load a 400k book. The font was unreadable, so I tried to load it into "pocket word", it used another 400k to load the document from the ramdisk into "memory", and it ran out of memory when it used another 400k to select the text of the document... I couldn't even change the font, or split up the document just to be able to make the font big enough to read!
All the while I was being taunted by wasted screen real-estate in scroll bars telling me that the document had more than one page, a Start menu telling me that only pocket-word was running, and a status bar telling me that I could manipulate the window labeled pocket-word in various ways.
To kick it all off, the unit was about 7" wide. 6.5" were keyboard. They wasted no space in placing a full-scale replica 'enter' key on the keyboard, and a full scale tab key... leaving less than 5" for the home row. Are they stupid?
Hewlett Packard was crazy enough to put a numeric keypad on one of these things.
and the industry wonders why there is such a small market for palm-sized devices?
(Palm Pilot excepted from criticism.)
The article is simply bringing up the point that some software systems are mission critical. Software failure can be just as catostrophic as an engineering failure.
On the other hand...
It is pretty rare that I lose respect for someone after only a sentence -- don't tell me that this could be quoted out of context.
I suppose this guy could be referring to "uneducated" hacks. Even then, this is just a horrible thing to say about people who study the fine arts. Somebody should write a song about this guy :-)
Regardless, I have always agreed that without proper acredation, programmers have no right to call themselves "engineers."
It doesn't mean that everyone needs to be an engineer to write code. It just means that engineers will make gobs of money as project managers for software. Engineers will be soley responsible when hundreds of children are killed by a faulty instruction controlling a safety valve.
They can have that job, I don't mind.
Doesn't the y2.038k rely upon unix using a signed long integer? Isn't the ANSI C implementation of time based on an unsigned long?
This would mean that applications and microcontrollers which were programmed properly would not have a problem for roughly another hundred years... not another 38 years.
Could somebody help me if I'm wrong about this? Why would anybody need a signed long time?
The mainstream media is likely to distort any story to be as controversial and poigiant as possible while squeezing it into 22 minutes of dramatic 911 calls, crying kids and choice quotes from dime-store sociologists.
How about snail-mailing every principal, vice principal and guidance councellor in North America?
Perhaps a standardized letter?
Some of them did some good things, like promoting geeky clubs in schools and not forcing people to eat in their cafeterias. Others it seems like to degrade students as much as possible.
Or perhaps at the very least, we could create a website where the outpouring of email could have identifying markings stripped off, and focus on what seems to be the problem... parents, teachers, police officers and principals who are critical or neglegant --- along with another area where success stories could be posted. Things which saved people from bitter isolation and torment.
There has to be a better way to handle this than to have bullies and jerks all over the country laugh at heart-felt testamonies from tortured schoolkids on NBC, while sociologists tell these kids to talk to their parents, teachers or guidance councellors.
I never bought Intel's line that this has anything to do with security.
Personally, I think it has more to do with tracking stolen or overclocked chips. I'm pretty indifferent too all of it. Intel's only mistake seems to be to try to sell the public on this sort of thing. Especially for security purposes.
I wonder what it would take to 'emulate' a Pentium on a Pentium, and forge the ID?
Battery life, size and usable life of the machine are more important to me. Spinning media seems nowhere close to solid state in these regards.
Personally, Samsung has a bad track record with me. There's always something horrible about everything they design. I bet this thing will have a battery hatch which breaks easily, or a volume control which crackles... something dumb like that marring some great piece of engineering.
Just look at the useless Java on their website... There's a prime example.
Funny, That roughly adds up to three mid-tower cases side-by side. The latter is probably cheaper too.
It seems like the worst of both worlds. Unless it comes with a built-in keyboard tray and monitor pedestal.
I would personally like to see a case with the drive bays and the expansion slots both in front. I'm sure it would be too expensive to bother with though.
Why is it that when a website burdened with old hardware and an underperforming operating system posts news about a site running on NT, that the NT site can't handle the load?
Are they running that close to their peak all the time?
When their site is serving faster than one page in half-an-hour, could somebody tell me what they are running?
They aren't giving me enough throughput to fill up a 1200 baud modem here.
There are two things about this 'Internet war' concept which I think are fatally flawed.
First, remember that old parable of the blind man describing an elephant?
I think you'll get just as reliable information from a civilian describing a war. All they see is what's happening in their own backyard.
Secondly, I would like to think that, unlike television, the loudest voice on the Internet is not the one with the most to gain. I would like to think that it is the one with the most to say -- But I would be gullible and idealistic to think that a vast and very personal communications medium is any less succeptable to propaganda or corruption than the mainstream media.
If you received an email which read "Please stop bombing my home." Would you believe it? If you didn't, would you trust what you read online anymore?
People are still going to flock to CNN because they know what CNN's motives are.
I personally have a strong distaste for the idea of one company charging money for commercially developed applications under Linux.
It is a sad state of affairs when 99% of the operating system is developed in good faith for the sake of better code, and the last 1% charges 100% of the commercial development fees.
If KDE became the GUI for Linux, Linux would be the cash cow for Troll Tech. I have nothing against making money from open source, but I do have a problem with making money by dipping into the pockets of everyone else who is trying to make a buck.
With QT making up a layer of the OS, Linux is no longer a free OS, it is a vehicle for Troll Tech.
It really bothers me... but it can be a good thing.
If the desktop fragments into a totally free Linux with Gnome, vs a pay-per-developer KDE, one will have the advantage of being free from influence of corporations, the other will have the advantage of real financial corporate backing.
For me it is not about a "totally free operating environment and applications", it is about having an uncorruptable development platform.
Microsoft does not even charge money to develop applications for their environment.
You cannot develop shareware for KDE. If you want to share a tool, you either have to pay up, or give it away... or write it for windows, where you don't have such restrictions.
It's just my opinion. KDE is great, but it is taking a very lazy shortcut. These legal limitations do not need to exist.
I read the article,
I read the talkback,
I read the essay on the "security hole" in open source.
By the same token this fellow should watch his back. His mechanic might put a bomb under his car just in case he doesn't pay up. His banks can be robbed by their employees, and his system administrators may design back-doors in his trusted networks.
After all the IE security holes, backorifice, the PGP exploits etc... this fellow has the gaul to say that a closed source system is immune to malicious backdoors? The only peer review closed-source seems to get is in backdoor exploits!
Excuse me while I kill my locksmith. He knows too much.
If he wants to make a point, he should at least place emphasis on the kind of subtle attacks which are possible. Unfortunately, I don't think he knows enough about computers to be able to recognize them.
I think I'll go put a floppy in my drive and "comprimize" my "top dog" access on my NT box. It is certainly harder to prevent than slipping backdoors into Linux.
(Damn, I've just wasted a half-hour of my life... oh well.)
Microsoft is just giving the customer what they want. By bundling the books together, they add value to the package.
The fact that you can buy the books separately does not mean that the whole thing is not one whole integrated book.
It is definately an improvement. There is some new irritating sluggishness which makes me feel like I'm working with a Java applet or something, but I can hope for all that to dissapear in the final release. I like the "Translate" button and some of the implied features.. some very very neat (old and unoriginal, but neat) ideas. IE5 still beats it for redrawing speed on win32, just turn on full window dragging and start moving some corners to see how fast it can keep up. IE is so smooth that it is fun to watch lines wrap. So far Commmunicator 5, is a flickering sluggish pain, but it keeps everything infront of your eyes and readable. Which is more than I can say for Communicator 4. I hope the final is faster, but it meets my minimum requirements: I won't be afraid of touching the border of my browser and waiting five seconds for a redraw. Wow, do I hate Netscape 4. Some of the new, not so visible features are very exciting. It is a good sign, I hope they get this one right.
Oh, and anybody acually register and SEE the results of the competition?
Live!
Before your very eyes!
The Man who made the statue of Liberty dissapear, presents the latest Microsoft benchmarks!
It all makes sense now!
Why can't a demon penguin be associated with something I agree with!
All this politics is tripe. I don't see a strong argument anywhere here other than that the author feels that RMS and the FSF are power tripping... and if they are, I don't really care!
Personally, I don't think Linux would be at all strong as it is today if it were not for the GPL. But I'm not going to call it GNU/Linux either. If the GPL was not tough enough to demand intellectual property rights, there would be no end to the bickering and in-fighting.
Am I insane?
I don't like the license.
Now that that's been said, you can pay Troll Tech for the commercial licence for QT and then you don't have to distribute or reveal the source.
I don't think there is anything preventing commercial QT licences from movign from their flat $1299USD rate to any figure they desire.
Troll Tech is using the free software model to popularize their libraries, and they are cashing in on commercial software. It is perfectly valid, and they are quite honest about it. I emailed them on that subject. I don't have to like it though.
Voice Recognition remote control. There's a neat upgrade.
As for the great white north, how about a computer-controlled car stereo heater?
I don't mind having to warm the thing up before I use it, or taking it out of the car every night, but if I forget it in the car, I don't want to have to buy a new one.
I wonder when Cyrix will create this 3DNow! Technology to compete with MMX?
Silly journalists.
Perhaps Apple should get in touch with BellAtlantic and ask them why they do not support Macs. They should probably also find out if there is any way that Macintosh could help them support the platform.
Who knows, they could go one step further and get the Mac logo placed in Bell's ads.
Just imagine the commercials. "Here's a Mac getting connected to ADSL... <click>."
There must be a way to escalate this issue.
(I know that there is no real technical issue here... it sounds like red tape and corporate sloth. One of the higher-ups needs a letter from another higher-up to give the command to offer support for the platform. Until then, either the yes-people will not budge on the issue, or it will take years of complaints to move up the chain of management.)
What was fixed in 2.2.1?