If you think game software is bad for getting something useful published, try some other field, especially research related ones. I used to work for the drug company Merck- my father worked there for 30+ years as an organic chemist.
Number of drugs on the market that he made: 0. This is actually the typical output for a medicinal chemist- the fraction of compounds that become successful drugs is so small as to approach zero. My Dad was luckier than most- he actually got a compound to final human trials before it was canned.
Oh, and you don't exactly get a lot of latitude when it comes to deciding what avenues to pursue. The saving grace is that at least drug companies are realistic about deadlines- they know it takes years even with an all-out rush, so you don't have the pressure to ship by Christmas.
Standards for html, xml et al already exist, and Micromsoft's strategy of claiming to support the standards (and generally speaking, they do, to within the limit of bugs), BUT then adding "extensions" (spit) adn using marketplace clout to push those NON-standard extensions, si what sucks. Why can't they just go through the proper channels liek the rest of us?
What rest of us? Surely you're not speaking of Netscape here, are you? Netscape was the innovator of the WWW-embrace-and-extend, putting HTML extensions willy-nilly into the early versions of the browser. The screaming about this was loud and clear back in 1995. Even today, Netscape's standards compliance is limited at best, dismal at worst. (Dealing with Netscape's very limited Java 1.1 support is a major pain.)
There are no fully compliant browsers. Given the rate that the web is changing, there probably never will be.
The price/share of stock is basically meaningless. The only reason MSFT is down around 70 is because they've split about a dozen times. For example, INTC (Intel) is ~76 today. I bought a bunch of shares at ~90. I'm happy about the value though, since the stock split 2-1 recently- without that my shares would be worth ~150. Without splits MSFT would be worth well over 1000/share. (Anyone know exactly?)
Check the market cap- that's the actual value of the stock. MSFT is 100x that of RH, and both are severely inflated.
Actually, you are (somewhat) correct- I should have been more clear.
You will not see two guys in a garage introducing a drug, like you would a few guys in a garage coming up with a program that everyone will use. It takes a massive corporation to fund the testing and handle the liability.
You also will not see much "open source" drug development in the sense that the research will be open to all. Corporate drug research is very tightly controlled and heavily patented- it's the only way you can afford to go through the testing. You can get the results of the human studies of a given drug and will see occasionally papers on the actions of a drug, but no company will ever release the base research documents for perusal- it would be suicide.
Yes, university researchers will still publish. They do much of the basic research using public dollars. The applied stuff will never be open source.
Hey, software is just as much a part of devices today as any other. Why should there be different standards?
If I produce a valve for the Narcomed6000, don't test it adequately and it fails (killing the patient), I'm responsible. If my company produces jet engines that fail in flight and cause a crash, I'm responsible. In both cases I'll get sued. How is writing code that fails to sound an alarm or screws up a HUD any different?
There's a good reason why it costs millions to get a device FDA approved, ditto getting a plane in the air. I used to work for a drug company- it's in the 10-100s of millions there for a single drug. Why? Because people will die if you don't.
Open Source is no magic panacea. Bugs just don't go away- you need extreme levels of testing for products like these. If you can't pay for that level of testing as well as afford the insurance on such a product, then don't play. There's a good reason why there are no Open Source drug companies, and there never will be.
1) Unchallenged orthodoxy. Consider how hard it is for any pro-MS or anti-Linux comments to get published here. Each is quickly moderated down. This same effect will occur with e-journals- most of the folks interested enough to read the comments will most likely be workers in that field, who are used to the orthodox position.
2) Who can rate? Others have posted here with the exact same comment, and it's perfectly true. If I write a quantum chemistry paper (my ex-field), are you qualified to judge? After all, I can moderate posts here discussing the Linux kernel, something I have no experience with at all.
3) And finally, a combination of the two. There may be two or more camps, each pushing its own orthodoxy. Perhaps all the Christian fundamentalists will moderate down any paper on human evolution. After all, there are a lot of them, far more than evolutionary biologists. Similar things will occur in psychology (Scientologists), medicinal chemistry (homeopaths) and so forth.
Not really a workable scheme. The current peer review process works very well, and can be easily extended to e-journals. Keep what works.
At least AOL wants everyone to use their software, and not use it to lock people into Windows
No, they want to lock them into AOL. No difference. A closed, proprietary protocol that is changed at the whim of a large corporation to inhibit competition is bad. (It didn't just hurt MS guys- Yahoo's and other clients stopped working too.)
I count about half a dozen. What's interesting is the lack of condemmnation of AOL. If the sides were reversed there would be roughly 200 messages on this forum, 90% spitting bile at MS.
MS would deserve it. AOL deserves it too- why doesn't it occur?
Closed, proprietary protocols that are changed at a whim by a large corporation to stifle competition are
Good
Bad
It seems that most of the Slahdot readers believe (2) with a passion, unless of course the target is MS, in which case (1) applies
Does MS deserve it? Sure. Doesn't make it right though. If you truly believe (1), and I would argue any Open Source believer would, then what AOL is doing is simply wrong.
Check out the OS on the Dreamcast. MS is way ahead of you.
My personal thoughts, as someone who enjoys computer games. Until consoles have robust multiplayer, better resolution, better controllers, allow addons/patches, and have half decent strategy games I'm not going to bother. I've got a PC anyway- why do I need more hardware?
The author missed the real thrust of MS's efforts to get more webserver share.
It's not IIS, or some small webserver- it's Office 2k and the followups. No matter what Slashdot readers may think of Office, it is the office suite the world runs on. The newest version of Office have very tight integration with the web and IIS- for example, you can place live spreadsheets on the web using Excel. This is going to go over big in office intranets- it makes sharing documents really trivial.
Guess what- these functions don't run under Apache. Thus, IS staff have to maintain an IIS webserver to get the features that the various Office2k users want. (And I'll assure you they'll want them.)
Best of all, this is a no risk strategy wrt the Justice Department. All they're doing is improving their office suite, which Justice can't stop. Sure they're trying to kill Apache, but Apache isn't a company, and they aren't undercutting Apache's price to drive it out of the market since Apache is already free.
I've got to admire MS on this one. This is one seriously well designed strategy. They can't make headway against basic web stuff, so they'll leverage their real monopoly (Forget Windows- it's Office.) to make the basic web seem much less useful. It might even work.
The Republican party today is all for greater regulation- social control regulation, that is. Companies and gun lobbies, forget it- they can do whatever they want. Have a ounce of MJ and get thrown in jail for years. (Oh, the jail's overcrowded? Might as well release this armed robber- he's much less a threat to society.) Better create a Constitutional amendment just to ban a form of free speech, censor that Internet and keep gays in the closet while we're at it.
Sorry for the rant- this registered Republican has to blow off steam once in a while. It's too bad there's no party for socially liberal, fiscally conservative voters. (Yes, I know about the Libertarians, but they go too far. There are some things the Federal government should do, and the Libertarians as a whole aren't really willing to admit it.)
Try to get a job at MIT. Professors have lots of free time, so they have plenty of time to work on their own projects, such as writing open source software.
Snicker. Chuckle. BWAWAWAHAHWA!
Oh man, you're not a professor, are you? Professors have about zero free time: between teaching, writing grants, writing papers, supervising grad students, serving on committees, reviewing other papers and so forth, you'll find very little time to write software. (Unless it's part of your research, and even that you'll delegate to your students rather than write yourself.)
Take it from this pseduo-professor: don't become a prof unless you know what it's what you want to do. Certainly don't do it thinking you'll have free time.
Slashdot Mirror
Number of drugs on the market that he made: 0. This is actually the typical output for a medicinal chemist- the fraction of compounds that become successful drugs is so small as to approach zero. My Dad was luckier than most- he actually got a compound to final human trials before it was canned.
Oh, and you don't exactly get a lot of latitude when it comes to deciding what avenues to pursue. The saving grace is that at least drug companies are realistic about deadlines- they know it takes years even with an all-out rush, so you don't have the pressure to ship by Christmas.
Standards for html, xml et al already exist, and Micromsoft's strategy of claiming to support the standards (and generally speaking, they do, to within the limit of bugs), BUT then adding "extensions" (spit) adn using marketplace clout to push those NON-standard extensions, si what sucks. Why can't they just go through the proper channels liek the rest of us?
What rest of us? Surely you're not speaking of Netscape here, are you? Netscape was the innovator of the WWW-embrace-and-extend, putting HTML extensions willy-nilly into the early versions of the browser. The screaming about this was loud and clear back in 1995. Even today, Netscape's standards compliance is limited at best, dismal at worst. (Dealing with Netscape's very limited Java 1.1 support is a major pain.)
There are no fully compliant browsers. Given the rate that the web is changing, there probably never will be.
Check the market cap- that's the actual value of the stock. MSFT is 100x that of RH, and both are severely inflated.
Eric
You will not see two guys in a garage introducing a drug, like you would a few guys in a garage coming up with a program that everyone will use. It takes a massive corporation to fund the testing and handle the liability.
You also will not see much "open source" drug development in the sense that the research will be open to all. Corporate drug research is very tightly controlled and heavily patented- it's the only way you can afford to go through the testing. You can get the results of the human studies of a given drug and will see occasionally papers on the actions of a drug, but no company will ever release the base research documents for perusal- it would be suicide.
Yes, university researchers will still publish. They do much of the basic research using public dollars. The applied stuff will never be open source.
Eric
Hey, software is just as much a part of devices today as any other. Why should there be different standards?
If I produce a valve for the Narcomed6000, don't test it adequately and it fails (killing the patient), I'm responsible. If my company produces jet engines that fail in flight and cause a crash, I'm responsible. In both cases I'll get sued. How is writing code that fails to sound an alarm or screws up a HUD any different?
There's a good reason why it costs millions to get a device FDA approved, ditto getting a plane in the air. I used to work for a drug company- it's in the 10-100s of millions there for a single drug. Why? Because people will die if you don't.
Open Source is no magic panacea. Bugs just don't go away- you need extreme levels of testing for products like these. If you can't pay for that level of testing as well as afford the insurance on such a product, then don't play. There's a good reason why there are no Open Source drug companies, and there never will be.
1) Unchallenged orthodoxy. Consider how hard it is for any pro-MS or anti-Linux comments to get published here. Each is quickly moderated down. This same effect will occur with e-journals- most of the folks interested enough to read the comments will most likely be workers in that field, who are used to the orthodox position.
2) Who can rate? Others have posted here with the exact same comment, and it's perfectly true. If I write a quantum chemistry paper (my ex-field), are you qualified to judge? After all, I can moderate posts here discussing the Linux kernel, something I have no experience with at all.
3) And finally, a combination of the two. There may be two or more camps, each pushing its own orthodoxy. Perhaps all the Christian fundamentalists will moderate down any paper on human evolution. After all, there are a lot of them, far more than evolutionary biologists. Similar things will occur in psychology (Scientologists), medicinal chemistry (homeopaths) and so forth.
Not really a workable scheme. The current peer review process works very well, and can be easily extended to e-journals. Keep what works.
Eric
No, they want to lock them into AOL. No difference. A closed, proprietary protocol that is changed at the whim of a large corporation to inhibit competition is bad. (It didn't just hurt MS guys- Yahoo's and other clients stopped working too.)
MS would deserve it. AOL deserves it too- why doesn't it occur?
Eric
Closed, proprietary protocols that are changed at a whim by a large corporation to stifle competition are
- Good
- Bad
It seems that most of the Slahdot readers believe (2) with a passion, unless of course the target is MS, in which case (1) appliesDoes MS deserve it? Sure. Doesn't make it right though. If you truly believe (1), and I would argue any Open Source believer would, then what AOL is doing is simply wrong.
Eric
My personal thoughts, as someone who enjoys computer games. Until consoles have robust multiplayer, better resolution, better controllers, allow addons/patches, and have half decent strategy games I'm not going to bother. I've got a PC anyway- why do I need more hardware?
Eric
The author missed the real thrust of MS's efforts to get more webserver share.
It's not IIS, or some small webserver- it's Office 2k and the followups. No matter what Slashdot readers may think of Office, it is the office suite the world runs on. The newest version of Office have very tight integration with the web and IIS- for example, you can place live spreadsheets on the web using Excel. This is going to go over big in office intranets- it makes sharing documents really trivial.
Guess what- these functions don't run under Apache. Thus, IS staff have to maintain an IIS webserver to get the features that the various Office2k users want. (And I'll assure you they'll want them.)
Best of all, this is a no risk strategy wrt the Justice Department. All they're doing is improving their office suite, which Justice can't stop. Sure they're trying to kill Apache, but Apache isn't a company, and they aren't undercutting Apache's price to drive it out of the market since Apache is already free.
I've got to admire MS on this one. This is one seriously well designed strategy. They can't make headway against basic web stuff, so they'll leverage their real monopoly (Forget Windows- it's Office.) to make the basic web seem much less useful. It might even work.
Eric
The Republican party today is all for greater regulation- social control regulation, that is. Companies and gun lobbies, forget it- they can do whatever they want. Have a ounce of MJ and get thrown in jail for years. (Oh, the jail's overcrowded? Might as well release this armed robber- he's much less a threat to society.) Better create a Constitutional amendment just to ban a form of free speech, censor that Internet and keep gays in the closet while we're at it.
Sorry for the rant- this registered Republican has to blow off steam once in a while. It's too bad there's no party for socially liberal, fiscally conservative voters. (Yes, I know about the Libertarians, but they go too far. There are some things the Federal government should do, and the Libertarians as a whole aren't really willing to admit it.)
Eric
Snicker. Chuckle. BWAWAWAHAHWA!
Oh man, you're not a professor, are you? Professors have about zero free time: between teaching, writing grants, writing papers, supervising grad students, serving on committees, reviewing other papers and so forth, you'll find very little time to write software. (Unless it's part of your research, and even that you'll delegate to your students rather than write yourself.)
Take it from this pseduo-professor: don't become a prof unless you know what it's what you want to do. Certainly don't do it thinking you'll have free time.