For most business scenarios, I would suggest that it is rarely a good idea to roll your own system.
It might work out if you are very savvy, have a local store for components or over-purchase for spares, are planning to stick around as a consistent technical resource rather than touch and go, and you don't anticipate a heavy workload precluding you from tedious debug efforts.
If you go out to newegg for your parts, then don't build your own. You'll either get unacceptable downtime waiting for replacement parts or have to buy replacement parts just in case. The big brands take advantage of economies of scale and have ample spare parts to dispatch relatively quickly at no extra charge. As a builder of systems for the home, I know the warranties on the parts are no where near acceptable for business continuity (always a huge effort to try to get warranty replacement).
Additionally, with an IBM, Dell, HP, or Lenovo system, you can generally get a field technician out to do tedious debug when the system fails in a non-obvious way.
It's not that much more to buy a total system, you have an extra amount of resource behind it, and if all else fails, you can generally still service them like a home-built system (at the cost of compromised warranty).
I consider the possibility of an incomplete model of gravity as sort of like newtonian physics. We do all sorts of local observations and the models work fine, but then under 'fantastic' scenarios beyond our ability to observe or reproduce things don't work out right, i.e. extremely fast speeds. Then Einstein provides us with relativity and it provides a factor that makes it all work and even fits cleanly into Newtonian models as a term that is immeasurably small to explain how things appear to act different without having to apply totally different rules at some arbitrary point.
Dark matter may be something real, but right now it only manifests as something to get the math to work out using our current understanding. At the huge scale or even along a dimensional relationship we can't understand, some factor emerges that knocks off our predictions but is ever present with immeasurably small impact in the 'well-understood' cases. I personally consider either case equally likely, there is either a thing (dark matter) or a mechanism out there that just exists as a big question mark until either collaborating data on where and what the dark matter is appears, or a more precise model comes out to explain the discrepencies away.
Not really. Yes, there is something of an arms race for the top500, but even after the top500 no longer lists a system it will almost certainly still be in use by someone for practical purposes other than benchmarking.
For one, the protocol defined address specifically as 32-bit. Functions processing IPv4 generally use unsigned integers for the address. Functions to do a variable length address would take longer to process/route. The routing tables would likely be atrocious even if it theoretically could work.
In short, it only does better at backwards compatibility at the extremely superficial aspect of entering addresses textually looking more usual and making a more specific effort for an existing IP to map trivially to a new scheme. Existing IPv4 stacks would have had no easier time trying to talk to 192.168.2.250.2 than fd7e:691a:da42::1. Besides, having the high values magically become reserved on the host portion of existing networks would conflict with existing host addresses in use.
IPv6 can work but has been subject to three major pitfals: -It looks scarily different. People treating addresses like phone-numbers and not doing DNS in a ubiquitous has exacerbated the problem. -They completely omitted a strategy for v4-only to v6-only communication until this year. For a long time they didn't want to endorse anything with the letters 'NAT' in them and delayed a sane interop strategy hoping the problem would magically disappear so the 'evil' NAT wouldn't become a pillar of v6. I'm optimistic that the results of this year paves the way for meaningful progress. -v6 and associated protocol largely chose to throw the baby out with the bathwater on many fronts. v6 for a long time declared DHCP dead, then when DHCP was revived for v4, they threw out the existing behavior and started from scratch, eliminating many option codes and changing client identifier behavior to be hard for existing DHCP admins to deal with. This has in some cases rendered workflows in IPv4 simply impossible and in many more exacerbates the first problem in that a *lot* of relearning and reworking is required to acheive the same results with IPv6 as in IPv4.
Considering a DVD with mp3s already can hold thousands (probably an *average* person's audio library would fit on one single-layer DVD).
Secondly, I thought optical media for MP3 storage would be great and so I got a headunit some years ago explicitly with MP3 DVD capability. The problem when compared to even USB flash is the seek time is noticeably slow. Even if you operationally did all sorts of tricks (e.g. prebuffer the beginning of the 'next' track), you won't hit all the cases of navigation and nothing mitigates the initial spin-up and index time.
Considering that USB flash is relatively inexpensive, focusing on home-written optical media would be a waste. BluRay may have a place as a player for publisher provided movies, but publishers will never sell a large audio collection in one chunk to warrant anything other than uncompressed CD on their end.
4) It needs to be open-source for this model to work. Some software isn't. =)
Not true. Adobe publishes their closed flash plugin via their own proprietary apt and yum repositories. The distros allow arbitrary vendors to hook into the single update management infrastructure with nothing more than the end user's permission.
I do not want to compile from source every time I want to install some app on an older or uncommon system.
And you generally didn't with debian even back in the 90s, Fedora since near its inception, Ubuntu for so long as it had existed, or modern SuSE. If you pick an 'uncommon system', that's your choice, a choice you can ignore but a good choice for someone who needs something 'uncommon' that a proprietary platform will not deliver.
WidgetFoo could just as well check for updates itself and not have a system tray app runnin for that. Example - Firefox - when it is running it checks for updates, but does not leave a system tray icom to do that when it's not running.
Still not much better. I don't want an app launch to suddenly be arbitrarily delayed while an update applies. Repository management with third-party repository support means one single process assures currency even when an application is not running, without being obtrusive.
Then maybe you should ask the out-of-business (or not) game or app developer to update its product to make it run on a Windows version that was released 8 years after they released the product?
There are some pieces that may require it, but a great deal of Windows libraries are intended to provide full backwards compatibility. Given that backwards compatibility, pessimistically forcing old library versions seems overkill. I have fired up ancient proprietary applications in linux without a whole lot of LD_PRELOAD or similar junk because even the latest and greatest libraries often maintain a stable ABI.
Yes, until an app somehow clashes with the political view of Debian creators.
I meant they got the mechanics right, not that their package selection is practical. The great thing is that for apt and yum, third parties supply their signing keys and location and the user is no longer beholden to the philosophy of Debian. Besides, Ubuntu exists now as a bit more pragmatic alternative to the more idealistic Debian and Fedora approach as a starting point.
The profiling/tracing issue is moot. Either way the ability to have robust tracing/profiling/debugging tools that can start from the beginning or attach to a process in progress and safely report as much as possible is great for production environments.
The quickest way to characterize any problem is with low level trace information. Trying to think through all the possible differences between a test and production environment *usually* can produce results eventually, but stack traces, syscalls, and more show the failure so precisely that a reproduction procedure is often trivial.
I do not want to execute installshield or any similar crap/wizard for every little thing I install.
I do not want to have a system tray/task manager full of two dozen vendor's update checker processes, each individually bugging me about how I'm running WidgetFoo 1.8.1.20.1.3, and it is critically important that I execute WidgetFoo's custom one-off graphical update wizard with 3 or 4 pages to click through to get to 1.8.1.20.1.4. Then rinse and repeat once per app instead of knocking them out in one shot/dialog/icon/process.
I do not want each application to bundle their ancient ass directx library or ancient library from visual studio or any other similar crap.
Windows installs were not historically 'easy' due to any effort on MS's part (installshield and friends made an entire business out of covering for MS' lack of help, even as MSI matured into a usable solution). Linux (specifically Debian) really got this right first. Apple recognized that model and made it a great success on the iPhone, setting the tone for all of modern mobile devices. Debian did it right first and never gets the credit.
Only one I see is Fortune 500 rank, which is probably the sketchiest measure of all. Largely, how much revenue they recently moved without regard for customer base or profits.
If going by $ profit, they trail companies including IBM. If going by profit margin, obviously by above they lose to everyone they lose to above. If going by market cap, they lose to IBM and Apple at least.
Apple or IBM depending on your opinion probably fairly could claim it.
I don't know about employee count, reliable public numbers are more than one google away for the biggest companies and I'm too lazy to do more than that.
This is not a popularity contest, first off. It's about doing what you do well. So long as your share is 'sufficient', who cares about the rest.
Secondly, think about the technical reasons for Linux's leadership in the datacenters of the world. The sensibilities of Linux map well to most Datacenter concerns with its heritage of imitating Unix philosophy while at the same time adapting to new things. It has also found a place in the hearts of 'power users' who appreciate the flexibility. However, go onto the average desktop, and the open-endedness becomes a liability. Even if you do a good job of hiding the advanced flexibility under the hood, application developers have a hard time coping with the large landscape of possible configurations and paths whilst supporting users lacking the ability to navigate. In short, Linux started from a high-end philosophy and has had to work down, with a bit of awkwardness at the home desktop. MS has the opposite issue, they are taking philosophies built around the home desktop and trying to go up without compromising the home desktop. As a consequence, they cannot achieve equivalent flexibility and capability unless they alienate their base. I think on a technical level, Linux would have to sacrifice things that would make it no longer good at its core.
Finally, the desktop isn't about intrinsic quality, by and large, it's about being 'default'. Most of those desktop numbers are people who never change from default. As a consequence, there is an established economy around paying hardware vendors to allow crapware in. Every windows license on a pre-made desktop/laptop system is probably a net profit for the vendor due to the crapware it comes with. Windows when installed without agenda isn't nearly so horrible as Windows installed by either your corporate standards or your vendor. Datacenters are going to reinstall the servers any way you slice it to meet their own standards and manageability, so they have less attachment to on-disk software.
You may want to find a better source if true, that source doesn't explicitly mention networking. It does call applications 'clients', but that need not imply networking and may have more to do with comparing and contrasting X to Wayland.
If they do networking, are they learning anything about network utilization from the likes of NX? High-latency kills X thoroughly (*especially* Java GUI apps), it'd be nice if this is indeed a follow-on *and* obviates the need for something like NX to retrofit the mistakes of the past.
That's the single biggest move on B&N's part that has me firmly looking at the Kindle if I finally seriously try electronic reading instead of books. I don't need an iPad alike, I'd want something that stands a decent shot of an enjoyable reading experience even if it conflicts with non-reading uses.
I don't think E-ink displays can be cut any more easily than LCDs. Similarly, wishing to 'magic away' the controlling electronics doesn't seem a feasible request.
Ultimately, I doubt any of these technologies would be a convincing replica for backlit colored plastic if you are going for accuracy, though LCD might come closest by virtue of being the only one to be based on translucency rather than emission or reflection, though I don't think it would mimick it accurately anyway.
Amazon's interest in the technology involves replacing their current tech which can't do video either. Say what you will about Amazon, but their philosophy and strategy around Kindle is clear and consistent. Battery life and paper-like contrast and visibility are king. Barnes and Noble went LCD, but Amazon so far seems that they are sticking to E ink. The fact they haven't moved is either because there's some unspecified hit to battery life, the black and white contrast is degraded, or the price is too high for their price point.
I've heard it time and time again when some piece of software owned by a large company is open source or at least given away for free as a tool to sell other stuff or addons.
Inevitably, some business leader will see that the company 'moves', let's say, 10 million installations of product at 0 dollars. They will inevitably pull some number out of their ass as to how much they think that software is worth (say 100 dollars per install, though invariably they'll come up with a far more convoluted per-client,per-instance, per-core scheme). Then, they'll say 'if we had only charged 100 dollars like it is truly with, we would have made a billion dollars!'. They'll fight, debate, capture the imagination of someone actually empowered to make the call and poof, start trying to charge 100 bucks a pop for a formerly free product.
Suddenly, the rate of new installs drops to a trickle at best, leaving everyone wondering 'what happened?' when the answer should be obvious to anyone with a cursory understanding of basic economics.
Of course, it may be that Oracle fully realizes this is a long shot, but they somehow think that without this panning out, they see no point in Java really surviving anyway. As a technical observer, that seems like a horrible mistake on the level of cutting their legs off with respect to their commercial Java software, but who knows.
Only X has a pretty solid seamless story. NX added better network performance and connection loss tolerance. I would say NX is the optimal approach. It is, however, not without it's warts (the one I can think of is the inability for remote apps to get into the systray when using NX as opposed to X.
Star Trek frequently was more space opera than science fiction, but they did have a significant amount of content that was science fiction. They beat to death exploring the concept of advanced species interacting with primitive species, the rights, sympathies, and responsibilities inherent in that scenario. They discussed what defines something as being alive versus a thing and how that line blurs with sophisticated AI. It's issues like this that would fairly fall into 'pure' science fiction.
The point of 'space opera' is that it is fiction that has science-y stuff in it. You could've replaced the spaceships with naval ships and cylons with any subjugated group of people and had largely the same show with a different aesthetic. Star Wars, Firefly, and Princess of Mars are examples of Space Opera. This is not meant as a derogatory categorization, just an explanation of what someone who would use 'pure' as a qualifier of science fiction would say about these works. I enjoyed all of them (though BSG had kinda lost me as it came to the end).
'Pure' Sci-fi is fiction intrinsically about issues raised by mankind's mastery and exploration of science. Asimov and Phillip K Dick generally fall more squarely into this category, and Star Trek can fall into this category more frequently than most things that would appear on Sci-Fi. I would say Frankenstein (the book, not any of the movies) would be 'pure' sci-fi that isn't particularly futuristic or steampunk, which is a good example of how sci-fi need not be about the future, space, or otherwise ubiquitous advanced technology, whereas 'space opera' pretty much requires these for the sake of aesthetics and lack of deep contemplation of issues rooted in science.
I would say it isn't fundamentally different than a slave uprising. It's a case of an upended power dynamic with consequences that look much the same.
The points of BSG that could be argued as being almost fiction about science were existential type things with the cylons (particularly the cylons that had thought they were human), but largely all of that went more into mysticism than science oriented, and wasn't at its core much different than finding out your ancestry is rooted in an enemy nation.
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For most business scenarios, I would suggest that it is rarely a good idea to roll your own system.
It might work out if you are very savvy, have a local store for components or over-purchase for spares, are planning to stick around as a consistent technical resource rather than touch and go, and you don't anticipate a heavy workload precluding you from tedious debug efforts.
If you go out to newegg for your parts, then don't build your own. You'll either get unacceptable downtime waiting for replacement parts or have to buy replacement parts just in case. The big brands take advantage of economies of scale and have ample spare parts to dispatch relatively quickly at no extra charge. As a builder of systems for the home, I know the warranties on the parts are no where near acceptable for business continuity (always a huge effort to try to get warranty replacement).
Additionally, with an IBM, Dell, HP, or Lenovo system, you can generally get a field technician out to do tedious debug when the system fails in a non-obvious way.
It's not that much more to buy a total system, you have an extra amount of resource behind it, and if all else fails, you can generally still service them like a home-built system (at the cost of compromised warranty).
If people stole and presumably watch the movie Far Cry, *they* should be suing the studio for emotional distress or something.
*NO ONE* should be subjected to a Uwe Boll film.
You can buy/build a house on acres of wooded property. Private, low maintenance, no HOA living.
Horrible residential internet though.
I frequent those areas and its some of the most awesome living. Drawing talent away from RTP doesn't seem infeasible.
I consider the possibility of an incomplete model of gravity as sort of like newtonian physics. We do all sorts of local observations and the models work fine, but then under 'fantastic' scenarios beyond our ability to observe or reproduce things don't work out right, i.e. extremely fast speeds. Then Einstein provides us with relativity and it provides a factor that makes it all work and even fits cleanly into Newtonian models as a term that is immeasurably small to explain how things appear to act different without having to apply totally different rules at some arbitrary point.
Dark matter may be something real, but right now it only manifests as something to get the math to work out using our current understanding. At the huge scale or even along a dimensional relationship we can't understand, some factor emerges that knocks off our predictions but is ever present with immeasurably small impact in the 'well-understood' cases. I personally consider either case equally likely, there is either a thing (dark matter) or a mechanism out there that just exists as a big question mark until either collaborating data on where and what the dark matter is appears, or a more precise model comes out to explain the discrepencies away.
I don't think I could live in a town that will probably stay in beta forever.
Not really. Yes, there is something of an arms race for the top500, but even after the top500 no longer lists a system it will almost certainly still be in use by someone for practical purposes other than benchmarking.
when DHCP was revived for v4
Err, I meant v6.
For one, the protocol defined address specifically as 32-bit. Functions processing IPv4 generally use unsigned integers for the address. Functions to do a variable length address would take longer to process/route. The routing tables would likely be atrocious even if it theoretically could work.
In short, it only does better at backwards compatibility at the extremely superficial aspect of entering addresses textually looking more usual and making a more specific effort for an existing IP to map trivially to a new scheme. Existing IPv4 stacks would have had no easier time trying to talk to 192.168.2.250.2 than fd7e:691a:da42::1. Besides, having the high values magically become reserved on the host portion of existing networks would conflict with existing host addresses in use.
IPv6 can work but has been subject to three major pitfals:
-It looks scarily different. People treating addresses like phone-numbers and not doing DNS in a ubiquitous has exacerbated the problem.
-They completely omitted a strategy for v4-only to v6-only communication until this year. For a long time they didn't want to endorse anything with the letters 'NAT' in them and delayed a sane interop strategy hoping the problem would magically disappear so the 'evil' NAT wouldn't become a pillar of v6. I'm optimistic that the results of this year paves the way for meaningful progress.
-v6 and associated protocol largely chose to throw the baby out with the bathwater on many fronts. v6 for a long time declared DHCP dead, then when DHCP was revived for v4, they threw out the existing behavior and started from scratch, eliminating many option codes and changing client identifier behavior to be hard for existing DHCP admins to deal with. This has in some cases rendered workflows in IPv4 simply impossible and in many more exacerbates the first problem in that a *lot* of relearning and reworking is required to acheive the same results with IPv6 as in IPv4.
Considering a DVD with mp3s already can hold thousands (probably an *average* person's audio library would fit on one single-layer DVD).
Secondly, I thought optical media for MP3 storage would be great and so I got a headunit some years ago explicitly with MP3 DVD capability. The problem when compared to even USB flash is the seek time is noticeably slow. Even if you operationally did all sorts of tricks (e.g. prebuffer the beginning of the 'next' track), you won't hit all the cases of navigation and nothing mitigates the initial spin-up and index time.
Considering that USB flash is relatively inexpensive, focusing on home-written optical media would be a waste. BluRay may have a place as a player for publisher provided movies, but publishers will never sell a large audio collection in one chunk to warrant anything other than uncompressed CD on their end.
4) It needs to be open-source for this model to work. Some software isn't. =)
Not true. Adobe publishes their closed flash plugin via their own proprietary apt and yum repositories. The distros allow arbitrary vendors to hook into the single update management infrastructure with nothing more than the end user's permission.
I do not want to compile from source every time I want to install some app on an older or uncommon system.
And you generally didn't with debian even back in the 90s, Fedora since near its inception, Ubuntu for so long as it had existed, or modern SuSE. If you pick an 'uncommon system', that's your choice, a choice you can ignore but a good choice for someone who needs something 'uncommon' that a proprietary platform will not deliver.
WidgetFoo could just as well check for updates itself and not have a system tray app runnin for that. Example - Firefox - when it is running it checks for updates, but does not leave a system tray icom to do that when it's not running.
Still not much better. I don't want an app launch to suddenly be arbitrarily delayed while an update applies. Repository management with third-party repository support means one single process assures currency even when an application is not running, without being obtrusive.
Then maybe you should ask the out-of-business (or not) game or app developer to update its product to make it run on a Windows version that was released 8 years after they released the product?
There are some pieces that may require it, but a great deal of Windows libraries are intended to provide full backwards compatibility. Given that backwards compatibility, pessimistically forcing old library versions seems overkill. I have fired up ancient proprietary applications in linux without a whole lot of LD_PRELOAD or similar junk because even the latest and greatest libraries often maintain a stable ABI.
Yes, until an app somehow clashes with the political view of Debian creators.
I meant they got the mechanics right, not that their package selection is practical. The great thing is that for apt and yum, third parties supply their signing keys and location and the user is no longer beholden to the philosophy of Debian. Besides, Ubuntu exists now as a bit more pragmatic alternative to the more idealistic Debian and Fedora approach as a starting point.
The profiling/tracing issue is moot. Either way the ability to have robust tracing/profiling/debugging tools that can start from the beginning or attach to a process in progress and safely report as much as possible is great for production environments.
The quickest way to characterize any problem is with low level trace information. Trying to think through all the possible differences between a test and production environment *usually* can produce results eventually, but stack traces, syscalls, and more show the failure so precisely that a reproduction procedure is often trivial.
Dear god no.
I do not want to execute installshield or any similar crap/wizard for every little thing I install.
I do not want to have a system tray/task manager full of two dozen vendor's update checker processes, each individually bugging me about how I'm running WidgetFoo 1.8.1.20.1.3, and it is critically important that I execute WidgetFoo's custom one-off graphical update wizard with 3 or 4 pages to click through to get to 1.8.1.20.1.4. Then rinse and repeat once per app instead of knocking them out in one shot/dialog/icon/process.
I do not want each application to bundle their ancient ass directx library or ancient library from visual studio or any other similar crap.
Windows installs were not historically 'easy' due to any effort on MS's part (installshield and friends made an entire business out of covering for MS' lack of help, even as MSI matured into a usable solution). Linux (specifically Debian) really got this right first. Apple recognized that model and made it a great success on the iPhone, setting the tone for all of modern mobile devices. Debian did it right first and never gets the credit.
Only one I see is Fortune 500 rank, which is probably the sketchiest measure of all. Largely, how much revenue they recently moved without regard for customer base or profits.
If going by $ profit, they trail companies including IBM.
If going by profit margin, obviously by above they lose to everyone they lose to above.
If going by market cap, they lose to IBM and Apple at least.
Apple or IBM depending on your opinion probably fairly could claim it.
I don't know about employee count, reliable public numbers are more than one google away for the biggest companies and I'm too lazy to do more than that.
This is not a popularity contest, first off. It's about doing what you do well. So long as your share is 'sufficient', who cares about the rest.
Secondly, think about the technical reasons for Linux's leadership in the datacenters of the world. The sensibilities of Linux map well to most Datacenter concerns with its heritage of imitating Unix philosophy while at the same time adapting to new things. It has also found a place in the hearts of 'power users' who appreciate the flexibility. However, go onto the average desktop, and the open-endedness becomes a liability. Even if you do a good job of hiding the advanced flexibility under the hood, application developers have a hard time coping with the large landscape of possible configurations and paths whilst supporting users lacking the ability to navigate. In short, Linux started from a high-end philosophy and has had to work down, with a bit of awkwardness at the home desktop. MS has the opposite issue, they are taking philosophies built around the home desktop and trying to go up without compromising the home desktop. As a consequence, they cannot achieve equivalent flexibility and capability unless they alienate their base. I think on a technical level, Linux would have to sacrifice things that would make it no longer good at its core.
Finally, the desktop isn't about intrinsic quality, by and large, it's about being 'default'. Most of those desktop numbers are people who never change from default. As a consequence, there is an established economy around paying hardware vendors to allow crapware in. Every windows license on a pre-made desktop/laptop system is probably a net profit for the vendor due to the crapware it comes with. Windows when installed without agenda isn't nearly so horrible as Windows installed by either your corporate standards or your vendor. Datacenters are going to reinstall the servers any way you slice it to meet their own standards and manageability, so they have less attachment to on-disk software.
You may want to find a better source if true, that source doesn't explicitly mention networking. It does call applications 'clients', but that need not imply networking and may have more to do with comparing and contrasting X to Wayland.
If they do networking, are they learning anything about network utilization from the likes of NX? High-latency kills X thoroughly (*especially* Java GUI apps), it'd be nice if this is indeed a follow-on *and* obviates the need for something like NX to retrofit the mistakes of the past.
That's the single biggest move on B&N's part that has me firmly looking at the Kindle if I finally seriously try electronic reading instead of books. I don't need an iPad alike, I'd want something that stands a decent shot of an enjoyable reading experience even if it conflicts with non-reading uses.
I don't think E-ink displays can be cut any more easily than LCDs. Similarly, wishing to 'magic away' the controlling electronics doesn't seem a feasible request.
Ultimately, I doubt any of these technologies would be a convincing replica for backlit colored plastic if you are going for accuracy, though LCD might come closest by virtue of being the only one to be based on translucency rather than emission or reflection, though I don't think it would mimick it accurately anyway.
Amazon's interest in the technology involves replacing their current tech which can't do video either. Say what you will about Amazon, but their philosophy and strategy around Kindle is clear and consistent. Battery life and paper-like contrast and visibility are king. Barnes and Noble went LCD, but Amazon so far seems that they are sticking to E ink. The fact they haven't moved is either because there's some unspecified hit to battery life, the black and white contrast is degraded, or the price is too high for their price point.
I've heard it time and time again when some piece of software owned by a large company is open source or at least given away for free as a tool to sell other stuff or addons.
Inevitably, some business leader will see that the company 'moves', let's say, 10 million installations of product at 0 dollars. They will inevitably pull some number out of their ass as to how much they think that software is worth (say 100 dollars per install, though invariably they'll come up with a far more convoluted per-client,per-instance, per-core scheme). Then, they'll say 'if we had only charged 100 dollars like it is truly with, we would have made a billion dollars!'. They'll fight, debate, capture the imagination of someone actually empowered to make the call and poof, start trying to charge 100 bucks a pop for a formerly free product.
Suddenly, the rate of new installs drops to a trickle at best, leaving everyone wondering 'what happened?' when the answer should be obvious to anyone with a cursory understanding of basic economics.
Of course, it may be that Oracle fully realizes this is a long shot, but they somehow think that without this panning out, they see no point in Java really surviving anyway. As a technical observer, that seems like a horrible mistake on the level of cutting their legs off with respect to their commercial Java software, but who knows.
So long as hulu 'plus' doesn't have all of 'hulu' content, non starter.
If hulu plus is a strict superset and ad-free or much cheaper, then I'll think about it.
My preference is that netflix get all the content and I'll happily ignore hulu altogether.
Only X has a pretty solid seamless story. NX added better network performance and connection loss tolerance. I would say NX is the optimal approach. It is, however, not without it's warts (the one I can think of is the inability for remote apps to get into the systray when using NX as opposed to X.
Star Trek frequently was more space opera than science fiction, but they did have a significant amount of content that was science fiction. They beat to death exploring the concept of advanced species interacting with primitive species, the rights, sympathies, and responsibilities inherent in that scenario. They discussed what defines something as being alive versus a thing and how that line blurs with sophisticated AI. It's issues like this that would fairly fall into 'pure' science fiction.
The point of 'space opera' is that it is fiction that has science-y stuff in it. You could've replaced the spaceships with naval ships and cylons with any subjugated group of people and had largely the same show with a different aesthetic. Star Wars, Firefly, and Princess of Mars are examples of Space Opera. This is not meant as a derogatory categorization, just an explanation of what someone who would use 'pure' as a qualifier of science fiction would say about these works. I enjoyed all of them (though BSG had kinda lost me as it came to the end).
'Pure' Sci-fi is fiction intrinsically about issues raised by mankind's mastery and exploration of science. Asimov and Phillip K Dick generally fall more squarely into this category, and Star Trek can fall into this category more frequently than most things that would appear on Sci-Fi. I would say Frankenstein (the book, not any of the movies) would be 'pure' sci-fi that isn't particularly futuristic or steampunk, which is a good example of how sci-fi need not be about the future, space, or otherwise ubiquitous advanced technology, whereas 'space opera' pretty much requires these for the sake of aesthetics and lack of deep contemplation of issues rooted in science.
I would say it isn't fundamentally different than a slave uprising. It's a case of an upended power dynamic with consequences that look much the same.
The points of BSG that could be argued as being almost fiction about science were existential type things with the cylons (particularly the cylons that had thought they were human), but largely all of that went more into mysticism than science oriented, and wasn't at its core much different than finding out your ancestry is rooted in an enemy nation.