With Linux ports now ranging from PDAs to PCs to Workstations and now to Mainframes, Linux is acutally proof that you can write a portable OS without using a Mircokernel. The argument used to be that only a Microkernel based OS would be highly portable but Linux proves that this is not true. We've gone from 1 platform (IBM PCs) to lots of them (I have no clue what the current count is) with the first few being done with (virtually) no commercial backing.
Some companies out there (with deep pockets) who once claimed (or at least aimed for) portability across platforms, should be seriously embarassed by this. Linux proves that portability can be achieved under a traditional/monolithic kernel design. And while some OS purists/professors may argue about some of the finer points of this, it should be noted that Linux is here now and it works on a ton of platforms. The fact that it's free and (as far as an OS can be) cool is an added benefit, with the latter being lost on 99+% of the population...
The Church: protector of freedom and progress :-)
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Cybernauts Awake!
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· Score: 3
While I don't doubt the fact that this book raises a number of good/valid points, the source (Church of England) makes it (in my eyes) highly suspect. I don't want to get into another Church vs. Religion debate, but generally it seems the organized religion is generally more interested in controlling (some might even say censoring) information rather than promoting the freedom of ideas.
I'm sure that from their relative point of view their points are valid and important, but chances are that once you get past the obvious (technology makes distances 'shrink', etc.), their fundamental premises will be very different from my own; something I frequently encounter when reading arguments from many groups who adhere to a less libertarian point of view than I do.
This is not to say that this book is automatically bad because it stems from the CoE, but even if I would read it, I would read it with the following thoughts in the back of my mind: "What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?" Whatever you do, consider the source of your information and the biases (sp?) this (source) introduces. This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
why a company like Sun (which after all employs some pretty smart people coming from the free software (BSD) camp) makes such mistakes. Surely they have some people who understand the open source (GNU) mindset. So what do they do? They simply take someone elses work (Blackdown) and distribute it as theirs. While a legal move, this is something that anybody with half a brain could have predicted that it would cause some anger.
While Sun might make good hardware and have a decent OS, their attitude/actions speak louder than words: they want to side with the OSS community but not pay the price. They want ultimate control of their technology. This of course is their right but they should not be surprised if the OSS community doesn't follow/believe them anymore. They've disappointed too many people too often... interestingly enough, IBM (with it's monopolistic past) seems to get/accept the OSS mindset with a surprising agility. So it can be done. So why doesn't Sun get it? Maybe the real reason is that they're scared of Linux. Linux is improving at an incredible rate and already offers some benefits that Sun can't match (better user interface, nicer desktop, etc). How long until Linux is scalable enough that it starts invading Sun's territory of high-end servers? This probably is Sun's ultimate fear: they lost the desktop to Windows, they're under attack in the mid-tier (from Linux and NT) and Linux scalability seems to be improving rather fast. Despite all their claims, Linux (for them) is an enemy that threatens them (and radically devalues much of their software offering).
Hmm, JK paints this as a fundamental dilemma which only raises it's head now. Yet I would say that this is the oldest human dilemma: everytime we invent something we envision some use for it. After a while, someone figures out a different use for it and everybody goes: "Wow, we didn't see that coming."
Let's see:
Fire: Great stuff. Without fire, your house could not burn down. Unfortunately you food would also be cold.
Guns: You can now protect yourself from all sorts of creepy folk. Unfortunately guns enable this kind of folk to kill you at a distance.
Cars: You can travel all over the place at any time during the day or night. Of course that also means that you're stuck in traffic jams, pollute the environment and might get into ugly accidents.
Computers: Wow, we now have technology to analyze all the data we have. Once this is done on a massive scale, coroprations and governments will know more about you than was thought possible a few decades ago.
Nuclear Energy: Yeah! We now have safe energy. Unfortunately some people want to make bombs out of this stuff. Oh yes, if there's an acceident and you happen to live near such a plant, you won't be a happy camper.
So this seems to be natures way of saying There's no such things a a free lunch. Genetic engineering will just be the latest progress that will eventually bite us in the ass, with the difference this time around being that we're playing with the funamentals of life. However we have a history of playing with things before we actually understand them; the whole dilemma with genetically altered foods (and the dying butterflies) is just another illustration of what the future will bring. Brace yourself and let's just hope we get a lucky break...
I really doubt that the amount of money involved has anything to do with them passing the death sentence. Consider that China is a country where an all-powerful elite (the communist party) has access to all resources. If you look at most other (post)communist countries, corruption is rampant and reaches into (the) high(est) levels of government. While I'm no great expert on the Chinese situation, the little I hear about this seems to point at the fact that China is as bad (corruption wise) as all/most other (post)communist countries.
As such the dollar amound involved is not a big deal. If it were, a large number of Chinese officials would be very scared (of course they have their connections, but you get my point). What probably scared the Chinese (govt.) was that hacking is not only a threat to their fincancial system but much more: Hacking is (in their eyes) a threat to national security. In countries like China, an amazaing amount of (seemingly trivial) things are classified as state secrets. Hacking has to potential to attack this secrecy at the core and distribute whatever (sensitive) data world wide at the press of a button. It challenges the supreme access/control of the elite (communist party) over the flow of information; a bit No-No in the eyes of this very elite. No, governments do no like you divulging their secrets and China, having the type of government they do, is almost certain to be one of the countries most pissed off by this...
In an ideal world, there would be no secrets. In our world, (if you're in the wrong place) you get shot (or at least thrown into jail (if you're lucky))for divulging (so called classified) information... welcome to the 3rd millenium...
Hmm, now we'll have the TV industry wake up to the same threat the music industry is facing now. Not that the concept is not obvious (after all, at a low level everything is just a stream of 0s and 1s), but this must be a red flag in their face.
Much as we needed the recording industry over the past 50 years to press those damn CDs/Records and distribute them, we're currently relying on the TV studios and networks to make/distribute their products. Also witness the current TV climate: much as the recording industry creates their own hypes and ignores non-conventional artists, the TV (and movie) industry is falling victim of their own success. Their desire to standardize everything and make it 'safe' for (their) ideal targe audience (families with kids, etc) results in a product which excells in conformity and blandness.
Given this, advances in technology which make it possible to distribute (and eventually produce) decent quality TV programs at low costs, will lead to the proliferation of 'independant' studios. With their monopoly on creation/distribution of movies vanishing in internet time, the TV studios will eventually face the same tide the music industry is facing now: We don't really like them, we don't really need them anymore; let's move to a medium we can control and just ignore the studios. Looking at the sad state of the (currently +- 30) TV stations I get via cable, this may just be good... if nothing else, this means that as an independant producer you will be able to distribute your films to anyone who's on the internet. Wether anyone will care to watch your stuff is of course an entirely different matter.
OK, the (albeight very brief) comparison of the web browsers is nice. What this shows that we have a lot of partial implementations and a few solid good (ie: complete) browsers (at various stages of completion).
I think it is important that Mozilla eventually becomes a good/solid browser because it is the showcase for what open source can (or can't do). Looking at the usability of the last few mozialla builds, I can say that IMHO it's moving along OK and seems to be more stable everytime I download it. As such, I believe that the mozilla folks will eventually release a good, standards compliant browser. The key question here is: when? We have to run as fast as we can to catch up to MS and deprive them of the opportunity to bend the web to their own designs and currently Mozilla is the showcase product of that.
While I think the success of the Mozilla project is important for the obvious reasons (visibility, Linux should have an open source implementation of a key technology for the web, etc), I am not all that worried about the availablity of a proper browser under Linux. See, Linux right now has somewhere between 15-20 million users (as far as we can guess) and is doubling every year (even if it's not quite doubling it's growing like crazy). This means, that even should mozilla fail, there will be (in a year or so) a market of about 30-50 million potential users. I think this in itself will attract corporate interest: if you can get 20% of those users to pay you $20 (which is pretty reasonably for a decent browser if you have no alternative), you'd make somewhere in between $120M and $200M. Surely a potential customer base of such a size will continue to attract development efforts (if no decent free implementation is available).
Opera currently seems poised to become the alternative, commercial Linux browser if what I've heard about them holds true on their upcoming Linux port. I think Linux is big enough to attract software companies which can deliver a browser. Yes, it should be open source and this is where Mozilla comes in. I think however that no matter what happens, Linux will be able to operate on the web.
Lastly a few comments (responding to other posts):
Would I use IE under Linux? No Way in Hell. Unless MS guarantess that they will respect web standards. Knowing MS, this will not happen anytime soon. For me personally, the choice is Just say No!
Browser JVM quality: I couldn't care less. IMHO Java on the client/browser is a dead duck... Java on server is where it's alive and well... BTW, netscape under Linux is very stable once you turn off Java (although a proper JVM would be nice).
Linux in general: the more it grows (and it's use is expanding like crazy) the weight it carries... already it has long since passed the stage where companies can ignore it. It's weight will only increase. This weight will attract businesses, developers and lots of other folks.
Programming Pearls is very cool. The nice thing about it is that really explains in detail some of the thought processes which lead to a programming being written the way it is; it very nicely shows the tradeoffs involved in choosing one approach over another.
The other cool thing is, that this really is a book for programmers. I appreciate Donald Knuth as much as the next guy, but his books are so mathematical, that I found myself skipping over more of the material, than I thought was good. Programming Pearls is the opposite: it clearly lays out the algorithms involved and often has nice drawings of the actual datastructures used. For a book of it's deapth it's pleasanly short, sparse in math and to the point. Read it, think about it for a while, program for a while and then read it again... it'll be worth your time...
Current IP laws are ill suited for the 21st centur
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New Patent Treaty
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· Score: 5
This is bad news. I understand that the goal of a business is to make money, but the current spree of (often bogous) patents are enough to make me sick. We've all seen companies patenting 1-click shopping, shopping over the internet, data exchange between 2 computers and all sorts of other crazy things. Even though I'm basically opposed to this nonsense, I can see the point that however obvious and superflous these patents are, someone thought all this stuff up.
Now however, we extend this to genes, enzymes and who knows what else. So all of a sudden, it may be possible for an enterprise to own what may be basic building blocks of life or gene sequences that (may or may not) determine your intelligence, (at least partially) your character and all sorts of fancy stuff. This IMNSHO is just not acceptible. Each of us (and just about every living thing may) carry this stuff around with us and have been doing so since long before we ever heard the words IP lawyer... I don't think any company ought to be able to own this kind of stuff... this should be released to the public domain so anybody who cares to has access to it; sort of like electricity...
What happens 20 years down the road if someone actually finds (and patents) a gene sequence which improves intelligence? Would I, as a reasonably intelligent guy, own them royalties?? You know eventually business will try to do this. For many kinds on patents the proper (wishful) thinking may just be that old proverb (that already failed once miserably): Just Say No!
Of course you are free to sayt "Just say no", but who's gonna listen to you?? And what about the other 5billion+ people who just don't know or care?
I remember reading something similar a few years ago. Back then (this was a few years stealth planes first made their mark on the battle fields in Irak) the Australians had developed a radar device that could track these planes by the turbulence they generated.
Turns out that the shapes these planes were built to, which gives them their low radar profile, was very bad aerodynamically (in the sense that it caused a lot more turbulence than traditional planes would) which in turn enabled this radar to locate the turbulence. Not sure what happened to this project since, but the idea of tracking stealth planes by the turbulence they cause, is nothing new...
This kind of stuff is the most dangerous legacy from the cold war. Even in the west, where we at least have enough money to handle this stuff with proper security, the long term cleanup/deposit of the large amounts of highly radioactive is still an unsolved problem. We don't really know what do with it.
The situation in some the former eastern block, especially in the former USSR, however is much worse. These governments are cronically cash starved with some countries on the brink of insolvency. Pensions and salraies are often not being paid (or payed several weeks/months too late) and the old communist order has collapsed with (in some regions) not much of anything new to replace it. It is this abscence of government which makes the large stockpiles of nuclear fuel, weapons and waste very dangerous. Some/Much of the Russian nuclear (submarine) fleet is rotting in their harbors because there's no money/parts for repairs. Nuclear reactors (any many other vital parts of the infrastructure) don't get proper servicing/repairs. With authority breaking down to such a degree that even high caliber weapons are for sale by corrupt army officials, the question of strongly contaminated or even wapons grade materals is a serious one.
Even if we quit using nuclear power anytime soon (would be nice but don't hold your breath) we'll be stuck with large amounts of highly radioactive stuff for the next few thousand years...
I'm sure Corel has had enough contact with people like BP (and Linux folk in general) that there's really not much of an excuse for being contiunally clueless... I was (or still am) willing to give Corel the benefit of the doubt about their Linux/OpenSource romance but things like these make me very skeptical... I think it's about time they wised up and manage to produce a licence without any obvious problems... this is not rocket science and should be an achievable goal for a company that manages to writes pretty good software...
On the other hand, maybe a GNU inspired lawsuit against something as obvious a violation of the GPL as this one, might actually make other potential offenders think twice about actually doing so.
This is horrible. This is the electronic equivalent of saying: Yes, the government may break into your house, plant incriminating evidence against you or clean out your apartment (deleting your files or altering them in subtle ways that may not be apparent right away but still important). Of course the potential for abuse is gigantic...
So no, in Austalia your right to privacy in the digital domain have just been vaporized... I really hope that other governments don't copy this...
This is very nice... in much of the market Oracle is the default choice of DB these days for heavy duty applications... as such increased Linux support by Oracle is a key inidicator that that Linux will continue to grow in the server market... for the most part, this is probably at the expense of NT...
On a side note: Does anybody know if Oracle contributes any code (or actually, any projects like raw device DB access or other stuff)? I'm assuming they're at least contributing bug fixes but I'm hoping it's more (I just don't know). They have a lot of know-how and could potentially contribute some really cool stuff...
Hmm, this seems to be a problem in more areas than just IT. For example, when I was in college (admittedly more than 10 years ago), I was memorizing my way though advanced Calculus and Statistics, both of which were pretty much meaningless to me.
However, there were other areas of (applied) Math that would have been of great interest to me but weren't tought at the time: I'm thinking of stuff like cellular automata which back then were brand new and very exciting. As a software guy, this stuff was real and mad sense right away, but it was too new to have real classes on it.
I guess as our body of knowledge expands ever faster, we'll all have difficulties keeping up. I should also note that we seem to live in a complex age that defies simple solutions. It seems that this leads us into a life which is rich in knowledge and poor in wisdom... I'm not sure if the past was better, but I think it was simpler...
Easy of use definiteley is a relative term. I would say that ease of use is largely a factor of what you're used to. I learned UNIX first and find it (for most things) very straight forward to use. It took me a while to get used to Windows, but I feel that the Windows GUI has many annoying features that seriously make me question it's ease of use (for example: who ever came up with the notion that an active window should automatically be placed on top of the desktop, thus covering up everything else. That 'feature' just drives me nuts...)
Also, when something breaks and all you can do is click 'OK' and 'Cancel', the so-called ease of use starts to feel like a curse from hell. Microsoft has been very good at touting their ease of use, but this is only half the truth. I equate their ease of use with 'limiting my options'; something I'm not interested in when using a computer...
I think the best feature of the whole MS platform is the integration they provide: you can pretty much select any object and paste it into another application. That's pretty cool. Unfortunateley most other MS things I see, are like toys. Very nice looking but lacking in depth and flexibility...
Sure this is an interesting project, but I'm a bit doubtful concerning the impact this will have. Currently the Linux distros, as different as they are, all use the same kernel. Given that the issue of compatability/fragmentation is a real concern to any potential corporate (Linux) adopters, I'm wondering wether this won't just turn out to be food for MSs propaganda machine... after all we're taking Linux software and porting it to a different (yet still Unix based) kernel... technically though, this is probably good news as it will uncover some new bugs and make the software more portable...
In reply to your comments about the various ERP vendors supporting Linux, let me add the following about Peoplesoft (yes, they're my employer):
PeopleSoft currently supports the use of Linux as a DB server as long as you're running a certified version of your RDBMS.
From what I know (which may not be much as I work in a completely different area) we are planning to fully support Linux once we get a proper version of Tuxedo on Linux (the current one still seems to have some technical issues)...
No, this is not an official Peoplesoft statement; this is my view of Peoplesoft's Linux position...
The problem with analysts, is that they are (more often than not) wrong. Even the most reputable of them suffer from this: witness Gartner perdicting the victory of OS/2 of Windows, witness Gartner and everybody else predicting the death of the PC and the rise of NC, witness most of them explaining away the Linux phenomenon behind a wall of corporate (== risk averse) logic. The have turned vision into a bean counting excercise... the most surprising aspect of their existance however is the weight many a clueless person places on their guesses...
An other thing that ticks me off about them: they all seem to take MSs promises at face value, even though many things they announced never saw the light of day. Yet it is the Linux people who (according to them) have no roadmap.
Given the fact that any repair mission into space is gonna be pretty expensive and potentially dangerous, we should try to build self assembling/repairing structures... I'm pretty sure this is what Transmeta is up to (the stories about chip development you keep hearing are just decoys fed to the press)... watch out, the nanobots are coming for all of us...
Ob./: Wow, if I only had a beowulf custer of those nanobots...
I would appreciate it, if you would at least to me the courtesy of quoting me correctly:
I said: Now Germany (yes, I do know what I'm talking about), a country which in which I always assumed politicians lived in even darker ages than their US counterparts
Which you quoted as: Now Germany is a country that I always assumed lived in the darker ages
which is quite a difference. BTW, I never said I was a US citizen (and I'm not). Then again, why do I even both replying to an AC???
So Katz is upset because the official vision Walt Disney had is not alive anymore. Allow me to ask: So what? This seems to be the fate of any successful enterprise: you have a good idea, you innovate, you grow, you grow some more. All of a sudden you find that you're no longer a little company that can turn on a dime but a conglomerate which is subject to corporate VPs strategies, shareholder values, (expected) growing profits, pressure from the stock market and who knows what else.
How is this different from Apple? How is this different from Netscape, Sun, Oracle, etc? How is this different from so many other technology companies who started out with a vision, a desire to change the world and a few years later found themselves struggling to meet wall street earnings estimates and foregoing all principlies/vision in the process?
The fact that Katz is actually complaining about this, just drives home the fact that many of his essays seem to be situated a bit far from reality.
Interestingly enough, the only company which seems to have endured (actually prospered) and held on to it's (somewhat greedy) princicples, seems to be Microsoft. Then gain (fincancially speaking), they are in a league of their own.
One would think that the US is the most freedom loving country in the world. Whenever one of their god-given rights (such as the right to bear arms) is threatened, tons of people (ranging from stark raving mad to actually very reasonable) get up and scream. Yet, the US government can not get itself to use/apply reasonably (and realistic) encryption policies when dealing with it's citizens.
Now Germany (yes, I do know what I'm talking about), a country which in which I always assumed politicians lived in even darker ages than their US counterparts, shows us how it can be done. Maybe in a few decennia we'll all be able to look back at this and wonder why it wasn't obvious that encryption/privacy is (or should be) a fundamental human right in the electronic age.
I really do believe that the rise of Linux poses a fundamental problem for MS: how do you compete against something which is a lot cheaper (ie: free!) and is good enough? Remember that MS didn't win because they were the best; they won because they were good enough (and because of the fact that IBM basically gave them a monopoloy on a silver platter). I also believe, that Linux will find it's inroads onto the desktop, although the move will be a slow one.
Enter MS, buying up what seem poised to become software distribution channels in the next century. If they can manage to create MS exclusive distribution channels, than the whole war about the PC market will be a phyrric victory and we're back to squre one. Linux (and all other alternative OSs) will only be attractive to the users if it's available through the dominant distribution channels.
Then again, with Judge Jackson's FoF, there is hope. At least now it's official that they are a monopoly and abused their position to keep others out of the market. Previous encounters with the justice department ended with MS getting slapped on the wrist; lets hope that this time they are not let off so easily. Still, their aquisition spree worries me... yes, it's hard to fight a compnay that has more than 20 billion dollars in the bank...
I just wanted to exonerate the Linux-lovin'/. crowd and point out that not everyone who is a/. fan is a open-source/linux fan./. is bigger than that.
If the (last occurrance of the) word that in the above paragraph refers to OSS/Linux, then I think you are really mistaken... OSS/Linux has changed (and is still chaning) the computing landscape (hopefully) forever. I like./ quite a bit, but compared to OSS/Linux, it's puny..../ is (to some degree) the communities mouthpiece, but the only reason there is a community is due to the fact that we have OSS/Linux, not the other way around...
Slashdot Mirror
With Linux ports now ranging from PDAs to PCs to Workstations and now to Mainframes, Linux is acutally proof that you can write a portable OS without using a Mircokernel. The argument used to be that only a Microkernel based OS would be highly portable but Linux proves that this is not true. We've gone from 1 platform (IBM PCs) to lots of them (I have no clue what the current count is) with the first few being done with (virtually) no commercial backing.
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Some companies out there (with deep pockets) who once claimed (or at least aimed for) portability across platforms, should be seriously embarassed by this. Linux proves that portability can be achieved under a traditional/monolithic kernel design. And while some OS purists/professors may argue about some of the finer points of this, it should be noted that Linux is here now and it works on a ton of platforms. The fact that it's free and (as far as an OS can be) cool is an added benefit, with the latter being lost on 99+% of the population
While I don't doubt the fact that this book raises a number of good/valid points, the source (Church of England) makes it (in my eyes) highly suspect. I don't want to get into another Church vs. Religion debate, but generally it seems the organized religion is generally more interested in controlling (some might even say censoring) information rather than promoting the freedom of ideas.
I'm sure that from their relative point of view their points are valid and important, but chances are that once you get past the obvious (technology makes distances 'shrink', etc.), their fundamental premises will be very different from my own; something I frequently encounter when reading arguments from many groups who adhere to a less libertarian point of view than I do.
This is not to say that this book is automatically bad because it stems from the CoE, but even if I would read it, I would read it with the following thoughts in the back of my mind: "What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?" Whatever you do, consider the source of your information and the biases (sp?) this (source) introduces. This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
why a company like Sun (which after all employs some pretty smart people coming from the free software (BSD) camp) makes such mistakes. Surely they have some people who understand the open source (GNU) mindset. So what do they do? They simply take someone elses work (Blackdown) and distribute it as theirs. While a legal move, this is something that anybody with half a brain could have predicted that it would cause some anger.
... interestingly enough, IBM (with it's monopolistic past) seems to get/accept the OSS mindset with a surprising agility. So it can be done. So why doesn't Sun get it? Maybe the real reason is that they're scared of Linux. Linux is improving at an incredible rate and already offers some benefits that Sun can't match (better user interface, nicer desktop, etc). How long until Linux is scalable enough that it starts invading Sun's territory of high-end servers? This probably is Sun's ultimate fear: they lost the desktop to Windows, they're under attack in the mid-tier (from Linux and NT) and Linux scalability seems to be improving rather fast. Despite all their claims, Linux (for them) is an enemy that threatens them (and radically devalues much of their software offering).
While Sun might make good hardware and have a decent OS, their attitude/actions speak louder than words: they want to side with the OSS community but not pay the price. They want ultimate control of their technology. This of course is their right but they should not be surprised if the OSS community doesn't follow/believe them anymore. They've disappointed too many people too often
Let's see:
So this seems to be natures way of saying There's no such things a a free lunch. Genetic engineering will just be the latest progress that will eventually bite us in the ass, with the difference this time around being that we're playing with the funamentals of life. However we have a history of playing with things before we actually understand them; the whole dilemma with genetically altered foods (and the dying butterflies) is just another illustration of what the future will bring. Brace yourself and let's just hope we get a lucky break ...
I really doubt that the amount of money involved has anything to do with them passing the death sentence. Consider that China is a country where an all-powerful elite (the communist party) has access to all resources. If you look at most other (post)communist countries, corruption is rampant and reaches into (the) high(est) levels of government. While I'm no great expert on the Chinese situation, the little I hear about this seems to point at the fact that China is as bad (corruption wise) as all/most other (post)communist countries.
...
... welcome to the 3rd millenium ...
As such the dollar amound involved is not a big deal. If it were, a large number of Chinese officials would be very scared (of course they have their connections, but you get my point). What probably scared the Chinese (govt.) was that hacking is not only a threat to their fincancial system but much more: Hacking is (in their eyes) a threat to national security. In countries like China, an amazaing amount of (seemingly trivial) things are classified as state secrets. Hacking has to potential to attack this secrecy at the core and distribute whatever (sensitive) data world wide at the press of a button. It challenges the supreme access/control of the elite (communist party) over the flow of information; a bit No-No in the eyes of this very elite. No, governments do no like you divulging their secrets and China, having the type of government they do, is almost certain to be one of the countries most pissed off by this
In an ideal world, there would be no secrets. In our world, (if you're in the wrong place) you get shot (or at least thrown into jail (if you're lucky))for divulging (so called classified) information
Hmm, now we'll have the TV industry wake up to the same threat the music industry is facing now. Not that the concept is not obvious (after all, at a low level everything is just a stream of 0s and 1s), but this must be a red flag in their face.
... if nothing else, this means that as an independant producer you will be able to distribute your films to anyone who's on the internet. Wether anyone will care to watch your stuff is of course an entirely different matter.
Much as we needed the recording industry over the past 50 years to press those damn CDs/Records and distribute them, we're currently relying on the TV studios and networks to make/distribute their products. Also witness the current TV climate: much as the recording industry creates their own hypes and ignores non-conventional artists, the TV (and movie) industry is falling victim of their own success. Their desire to standardize everything and make it 'safe' for (their) ideal targe audience (families with kids, etc) results in a product which excells in conformity and blandness.
Given this, advances in technology which make it possible to distribute (and eventually produce) decent quality TV programs at low costs, will lead to the proliferation of 'independant' studios. With their monopoly on creation/distribution of movies vanishing in internet time, the TV studios will eventually face the same tide the music industry is facing now: We don't really like them, we don't really need them anymore; let's move to a medium we can control and just ignore the studios. Looking at the sad state of the (currently +- 30) TV stations I get via cable, this may just be good
I think it is important that Mozilla eventually becomes a good/solid browser because it is the showcase for what open source can (or can't do). Looking at the usability of the last few mozialla builds, I can say that IMHO it's moving along OK and seems to be more stable everytime I download it. As such, I believe that the mozilla folks will eventually release a good, standards compliant browser. The key question here is: when? We have to run as fast as we can to catch up to MS and deprive them of the opportunity to bend the web to their own designs and currently Mozilla is the showcase product of that.
While I think the success of the Mozilla project is important for the obvious reasons (visibility, Linux should have an open source implementation of a key technology for the web, etc), I am not all that worried about the availablity of a proper browser under Linux. See, Linux right now has somewhere between 15-20 million users (as far as we can guess) and is doubling every year (even if it's not quite doubling it's growing like crazy). This means, that even should mozilla fail, there will be (in a year or so) a market of about 30-50 million potential users. I think this in itself will attract corporate interest: if you can get 20% of those users to pay you $20 (which is pretty reasonably for a decent browser if you have no alternative), you'd make somewhere in between $120M and $200M. Surely a potential customer base of such a size will continue to attract development efforts (if no decent free implementation is available).
Opera currently seems poised to become the alternative, commercial Linux browser if what I've heard about them holds true on their upcoming Linux port. I think Linux is big enough to attract software companies which can deliver a browser. Yes, it should be open source and this is where Mozilla comes in. I think however that no matter what happens, Linux will be able to operate on the web.
Lastly a few comments (responding to other posts):
Programming Pearls is very cool. The nice thing about it is that really explains in detail some of the thought processes which lead to a programming being written the way it is; it very nicely shows the tradeoffs involved in choosing one approach over another.
... it'll be worth your time ...
The other cool thing is, that this really is a book for programmers. I appreciate Donald Knuth as much as the next guy, but his books are so mathematical, that I found myself skipping over more of the material, than I thought was good. Programming Pearls is the opposite: it clearly lays out the algorithms involved and often has nice drawings of the actual datastructures used. For a book of it's deapth it's pleasanly short, sparse in math and to the point. Read it, think about it for a while, program for a while and then read it again
Now however, we extend this to genes, enzymes and who knows what else. So all of a sudden, it may be possible for an enterprise to own what may be basic building blocks of life or gene sequences that (may or may not) determine your intelligence, (at least partially) your character and all sorts of fancy stuff. This IMNSHO is just not acceptible. Each of us (and just about every living thing may) carry this stuff around with us and have been doing so since long before we ever heard the words IP lawyer ... I don't think any company ought to be able to own this kind of stuff ... this should be released to the public domain so anybody who cares to has access to it; sort of like electricity ...
What happens 20 years down the road if someone actually finds (and patents) a gene sequence which improves intelligence? Would I, as a reasonably intelligent guy, own them royalties?? You know eventually business will try to do this. For many kinds on patents the proper (wishful) thinking may just be that old proverb (that already failed once miserably): Just Say No!
Of course you are free to sayt "Just say no", but who's gonna listen to you?? And what about the other 5billion+ people who just don't know or care?
I remember reading something similar a few years ago. Back then (this was a few years stealth planes first made their mark on the battle fields in Irak) the Australians had developed a radar device that could track these planes by the turbulence they generated.
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Turns out that the shapes these planes were built to, which gives them their low radar profile, was very bad aerodynamically (in the sense that it caused a lot more turbulence than traditional planes would) which in turn enabled this radar to locate the turbulence. Not sure what happened to this project since, but the idea of tracking stealth planes by the turbulence they cause, is nothing new
This kind of stuff is the most dangerous legacy from the cold war. Even in the west, where we at least have enough money to handle this stuff with proper security, the long term cleanup/deposit of the large amounts of highly radioactive is still an unsolved problem. We don't really know what do with it.
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The situation in some the former eastern block, especially in the former USSR, however is much worse. These governments are cronically cash starved with some countries on the brink of insolvency. Pensions and salraies are often not being paid (or payed several weeks/months too late) and the old communist order has collapsed with (in some regions) not much of anything new to replace it. It is this abscence of government which makes the large stockpiles of nuclear fuel, weapons and waste very dangerous. Some/Much of the Russian nuclear (submarine) fleet is rotting in their harbors because there's no money/parts for repairs. Nuclear reactors (any many other vital parts of the infrastructure) don't get proper servicing/repairs. With authority breaking down to such a degree that even high caliber weapons are for sale by corrupt army officials, the question of strongly contaminated or even wapons grade materals is a serious one.
Even if we quit using nuclear power anytime soon (would be nice but don't hold your breath) we'll be stuck with large amounts of highly radioactive stuff for the next few thousand years
I'm sure Corel has had enough contact with people like BP (and Linux folk in general) that there's really not much of an excuse for being contiunally clueless ... I was (or still am) willing to give Corel the benefit of the doubt about their Linux/OpenSource romance but things like these make me very skeptical ... I think it's about time they wised up and manage to produce a licence without any obvious problems ... this is not rocket science and should be an achievable goal for a company that manages to writes pretty good software ...
On the other hand, maybe a GNU inspired lawsuit against something as obvious a violation of the GPL as this one, might actually make other potential offenders think twice about actually doing so.
This is horrible. This is the electronic equivalent of saying: Yes, the government may break into your house, plant incriminating evidence against you or clean out your apartment (deleting your files or altering them in subtle ways that may not be apparent right away but still important). Of course the potential for abuse is gigantic ...
... I really hope that other governments don't copy this ...
So no, in Austalia your right to privacy in the digital domain have just been vaporized
This is very nice ... in much of the market Oracle is the default choice of DB these days for heavy duty applications ... as such increased Linux support by Oracle is a key inidicator that that Linux will continue to grow in the server market ... for the most part, this is probably at the expense of NT ...
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On a side note: Does anybody know if Oracle contributes any code (or actually, any projects like raw device DB access or other stuff)? I'm assuming they're at least contributing bug fixes but I'm hoping it's more (I just don't know). They have a lot of know-how and could potentially contribute some really cool stuff
Hmm, this seems to be a problem in more areas than just IT. For example, when I was in college (admittedly more than 10 years ago), I was memorizing my way though advanced Calculus and Statistics, both of which were pretty much meaningless to me.
... I'm not sure if the past was better, but I think it was simpler ...
However, there were other areas of (applied) Math that would have been of great interest to me but weren't tought at the time: I'm thinking of stuff like cellular automata which back then were brand new and very exciting. As a software guy, this stuff was real and mad sense right away, but it was too new to have real classes on it.
I guess as our body of knowledge expands ever faster, we'll all have difficulties keeping up. I should also note that we seem to live in a complex age that defies simple solutions. It seems that this leads us into a life which is rich in knowledge and poor in wisdom
Easy of use definiteley is a relative term. I would say that ease of use is largely a factor of what you're used to. I learned UNIX first and find it (for most things) very straight forward to use. It took me a while to get used to Windows, but I feel that the Windows GUI has many annoying features that seriously make me question it's ease of use (for example: who ever came up with the notion that an active window should automatically be placed on top of the desktop, thus covering up everything else. That 'feature' just drives me nuts ...)
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Also, when something breaks and all you can do is click 'OK' and 'Cancel', the so-called ease of use starts to feel like a curse from hell. Microsoft has been very good at touting their ease of use, but this is only half the truth. I equate their ease of use with 'limiting my options'; something I'm not interested in when using a computer
I think the best feature of the whole MS platform is the integration they provide: you can pretty much select any object and paste it into another application. That's pretty cool. Unfortunateley most other MS things I see, are like toys. Very nice looking but lacking in depth and flexibility
Sure this is an interesting project, but I'm a bit doubtful concerning the impact this will have. Currently the Linux distros, as different as they are, all use the same kernel. Given that the issue of compatability/fragmentation is a real concern to any potential corporate (Linux) adopters, I'm wondering wether this won't just turn out to be food for MSs propaganda machine ... after all we're taking Linux software and porting it to a different (yet still Unix based) kernel ... technically though, this is probably good news as it will uncover some new bugs and make the software more portable ...
In reply to your comments about the various ERP vendors supporting Linux, let me add the following about Peoplesoft (yes, they're my employer):
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PeopleSoft currently supports the use of Linux as a DB server as long as you're running a certified version of your RDBMS.
From what I know (which may not be much as I work in a completely different area) we are planning to fully support Linux once we get a proper version of Tuxedo on Linux (the current one still seems to have some technical issues)
No, this is not an official Peoplesoft statement; this is my view of Peoplesoft's Linux position
The problem with analysts, is that they are (more often than not) wrong. Even the most reputable of them suffer from this: witness Gartner perdicting the victory of OS/2 of Windows, witness Gartner and everybody else predicting the death of the PC and the rise of NC, witness most of them explaining away the Linux phenomenon behind a wall of corporate (== risk averse) logic. The have turned vision into a bean counting excercise ... the most surprising aspect of their existance however is the weight many a clueless person places on their guesses ...
An other thing that ticks me off about them: they all seem to take MSs promises at face value, even though many things they announced never saw the light of day. Yet it is the Linux people who (according to them) have no roadmap.
Given the fact that any repair mission into space is gonna be pretty expensive and potentially dangerous, we should try to build self assembling/repairing structures ... I'm pretty sure this is what Transmeta is up to (the stories about chip development you keep hearing are just decoys fed to the press) ... watch out, the nanobots are coming for all of us ...
./: Wow, if I only had a beowulf custer of those nanobots ...
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Sorry, 'couldn't resist
I said: Now Germany (yes, I do know what I'm talking about), a country which in which I always assumed politicians lived in even darker ages than their US counterparts
Which you quoted as: Now Germany is a country that I always assumed lived in the darker ages
which is quite a difference. BTW, I never said I was a US citizen (and I'm not). Then again, why do I even both replying to an AC???
So Katz is upset because the official vision Walt Disney had is not alive anymore. Allow me to ask: So what? This seems to be the fate of any successful enterprise: you have a good idea, you innovate, you grow, you grow some more. All of a sudden you find that you're no longer a little company that can turn on a dime but a conglomerate which is subject to corporate VPs strategies, shareholder values, (expected) growing profits, pressure from the stock market and who knows what else.
How is this different from Apple? How is this different from Netscape, Sun, Oracle, etc? How is this different from so many other technology companies who started out with a vision, a desire to change the world and a few years later found themselves struggling to meet wall street earnings estimates and foregoing all principlies/vision in the process?
The fact that Katz is actually complaining about this, just drives home the fact that many of his essays seem to be situated a bit far from reality.
Interestingly enough, the only company which seems to have endured (actually prospered) and held on to it's (somewhat greedy) princicples, seems to be Microsoft. Then gain (fincancially speaking), they are in a league of their own.
One would think that the US is the most freedom loving country in the world. Whenever one of their god-given rights (such as the right to bear arms) is threatened, tons of people (ranging from stark raving mad to actually very reasonable) get up and scream. Yet, the US government can not get itself to use/apply reasonably (and realistic) encryption policies when dealing with it's citizens.
Now Germany (yes, I do know what I'm talking about), a country which in which I always assumed politicians lived in even darker ages than their US counterparts, shows us how it can be done. Maybe in a few decennia we'll all be able to look back at this and wonder why it wasn't obvious that encryption/privacy is (or should be) a fundamental human right in the electronic age.
I really do believe that the rise of Linux poses a fundamental problem for MS: how do you compete against something which is a lot cheaper (ie: free!) and is good enough? Remember that MS didn't win because they were the best; they won because they were good enough (and because of the fact that IBM basically gave them a monopoloy on a silver platter). I also believe, that Linux will find it's inroads onto the desktop, although the move will be a slow one.
... yes, it's hard to fight a compnay that has more than 20 billion dollars in the bank ...
Enter MS, buying up what seem poised to become software distribution channels in the next century. If they can manage to create MS exclusive distribution channels, than the whole war about the PC market will be a phyrric victory and we're back to squre one. Linux (and all other alternative OSs) will only be attractive to the users if it's available through the dominant distribution channels.
Then again, with Judge Jackson's FoF, there is hope. At least now it's official that they are a monopoly and abused their position to keep others out of the market. Previous encounters with the justice department ended with MS getting slapped on the wrist; lets hope that this time they are not let off so easily. Still, their aquisition spree worries me
I just wanted to exonerate the Linux-lovin' /. crowd and point out that not everyone who is a /. fan is a open-source/linux fan. /. is bigger than that.
... OSS/Linux has changed (and is still chaning) the computing landscape (hopefully) forever. I like ./ quite a bit, but compared to OSS/Linux, it's puny ... ./ is (to some degree) the communities mouthpiece, but the only reason there is a community is due to the fact that we have OSS/Linux, not the other way around ...
If the (last occurrance of the) word that in the above paragraph refers to OSS/Linux, then I think you are really mistaken