To the extent that every single physical and energetic part of a network is taxed from the start, from the wire to the hubs and routers and even to the energy that powers it up and modulates across the wires and chips, you have to realize that what they are proposing now is a tax on the flow of information.
What else are they talking about? Clearly they are not talking about taxing the flow of electric current, otherwise they would tax your extension cord by length for every year you have it hanging in the garage. But you take that same copper wire in a different form factor and with a certain number of twists per foot, those same electrons modulated in a particular way, and now you have something new you can tax. That is a very interesting transition.
There is a peculiar kind of mind at work here. It's almost exactly the same mind working in the shadowy deeps at SCO, and in Redmond, and in government agencies across the country. It is a business mind only superficially. More specifically, it is the mind bent on control.
I am not a revolutionary. I probably should be and when I was younger I might have been but these days I don't have time for it. But I can sense when someone is making a move on me and the things I hold to be important, and this is one of those times. The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise and I stop configuring the firewall and I sit back and I think.
We are in for a rough ride, I'm afraid. The authorities have arrived. Between the RIAA and the FBI and the bean counters and Microsoft it is getting uncomfortable to be where we are, doing what we are doing, in the way we are doing it and have done it for decades. We are not domesticated enough, not cowed. They cannot control this, any of it, and it worries them endlessly. There is no business model for cattle that won't stay in their pen. But there are plenty of professionals who can round up your cattle for you, for a fee. And then to the factory.
Do the cows in the feedlot know where they are headed? They have had an easy life, haven't they. Grown fat and complacent. Did the jump-over-the-fence thing once, got hit with a prod, gave it up after that. The grass wasn't really all that much better on the other side anyway. Do the cattle ever stop to wonder about that day? And about the fence? About why it was so important to stay behind the fence?
Here we are grazing the tall green grass, belly deep and well pleased, and the herders have noticed we're out. Feel the first shock of the prod...hear the order to move out...what are you going to do......damned firewall. What is wrong with this VPN? Tunnel interfaces are all screwed up. I'm too tired to figure this out. 14 fscking hours and no VPN and no time to think. I don't know what to do. Someone, tell me what to do.
OK, this is very funny. IP addys for every bullet. But listen gang, the ISPs have been tight fisted with IP addresses for so long that most of you young-uns don't even remember the day when anyone with a router could count on a Class-C or even B to themselves. Those days are LONG gone; now you get DSL and you pay for ONE frigging static IP address, and if you want anything like a big chunk of a Class-C you have to pay serious cash. Monthly. And upgrade? You want more? Well all the IPs on either side of your teeny tiny block were sold to other shmoes already, so if you want more you get a whole new block. So you better get more than you think you will need...ever...or else everytime you run over your public IP space you will need to reconfig your entire public facing Internet presence to a new block.
But you know what, that's not really a technology limit, that's a BUSINESS MODEL.
Watch this. When they finally go over to IPv6 and later install your new DSL, know what the knee-biting bastards will do? First, they will charge you MORE for a basic DSL with dynamic IP because now it is the new-fangled IPv6 (new=$$$). Then they will assign you a SINGLE IP addy from their store of 128 trillion. And they will assign IP addresses this way in SEQUENCE to all subscribers so that as soon as you get yours you are boxed in by other subscribers just getting theirs. You know they will, it will be a strategic decision to completely undermine the freedom you SHOULD have when there are about 1 billion IP addresses for every human alive on earth.
The only way around this would be to issue IP blocks to physical locations on the earth, so no matter where you are you have all the IP addresses reservered for that square meter of dirt, and if you have a large home/office/company then you have a big block indeed. ISPs would be forced to backbone their entire geographic area, including the whole planet if they are big enough.
As a business model it sucks big wind. But I like it as an end user.
Wire the planet. Freedom to connect! No more IP address space tyranny!!
As I watch this unfold, I am suddenly aware of how far this case is starting to reach. Is everything really derived of everything else? Do fleas have littler fleas that bite them, and so on ad infinitum?
Then where does it end? Can there ever be a clear break between what is watercooler theorizing about what might work and what is eventually compiled?
Because if my random thoughts at the bar&grill on a Saturday afternoon are indeed open-source until I compile them Monday morning and then they are derived from the source, including any SCO source code I looked at the day before, then what if I got my ideas from reading/. posts about code and THEN compiled them? Would the compiled code be derived from/. or SCO? Would I need a/. license to shrinkwrap the end product just because I read it on/.? If not, then what makes SCO so special? Because they are group of people in a "company" and/. is a group of people in a "community"? Where does that really take you?
I don't think there are many legal minds who would buy into the idea that nothing can belong to more than people (as opposed to companies who hire people) BUT that does not mean they are correct. Teachers, for example, would strongly disagree as they are in the business of open-source that we call learning by discussion.
Even if the laws remain the same, I sense the damage is done. We've long wondered what would be the long-term impact of the OSS movement, and much has been written and said. But do we really "know" where it will end? What hath we wrought?
But you know what...I always had my own reasons and when I made my decision it was thoughtfully, personally, and irrevocably. And it wasn't just because of what someone else did, or I thought they did. When my nerves get frayed then I start to assume that something else about the job is bugging me too. Maybe the orgainization has no future, maybe I have no future within it, maybe others are being abused and I don't like it, maybe I'm underutilized. You gotta go with your instincts, and when your instincts say "go!" you gotta run
Sure jobs can be crappy. If you think about it, that is part of the definition of "work" (ie, not many people get paid to do their hobby.) So you show up every morning expecting crap, and there it is in a big steaming pile. Especially in the technology industry where it is such a Wild West show. Right now, my current company is shrinking though we have probably reached the bottom. We added a new account. Too many people have left so now I work some ungodly hours juggling probably too many chainsaws until my very soul becomes weary...but the "work" is not impossible and I can do some interesting hacks now and again. Money for my hobby at that point. Obviously I have enough discretionary time to surf/. ! I am generally respected by management. They have been tough but polite. I feel like I know what is going on, and what is required to get this flying heap off the runway.
Am I about to leave? No way. Could I be made to leave? Hmm....I suppose. But I don't sense that kind of pressure coming on. My instincts say "tough it out a while."
Someone will say I am working for a winner company right now and to stay the course. That is probably correct. That could also change. I will read the signs and move when I need to. But if I do it will be, as always, for my own reasons.
I was thinking the same thing, and will add this thought to your own:
People place too much importance on appearances. There is no place for daring-do anymore in education, or indeed in anything. Everyone wants a job and will do anything to keep their noses clean while they are at it. I imagine the RIAA simply smiled and said to the kid's dad that a future in corporate accounting is a terrible thing to waste.
If you visit the ChewPlastic site and look at the first entries you will notice that it was supposed to be all about free speech and the flow of ideas. Sounds good enough. But we can see how much force there was behind that so far. I don't want to second guess anyone here. I'm a dad, and where my kids (still very young) are concerned I would do whatever I had to do to spare them suffering. But where their ideals and sense of purpose are concerned I would rather they take their lumps in defense, and I would be there bucking them up the whole way. It would become a life lesson, whatever the stakes, and they would emerge blazing with purpose and self confidence. The RIAA would have created one very mad, very dedicate, very energetic enemy. And I would be twice proud.
If you teach your children to cave in to random assaults like this one from the RIAA then you have not prepared them for the world, is my thinking. And, you have let evil run loose besides to clobber the next hapless victim. There is no future in that for any of us. But in the collective we can defend what is good about living.
This country was founded on the notion of individual freedom and the individual's responsibility to fight for it. If now exercising that responsibility is not compatible with a long and profitable career in accounting, or brokering, or whatever then so be it. At least these days you are not likely to die at the end of a bayonette for standing your ground. There will be other opportunities to sell-out later, if you decide that this is your calling. But if it is not, then the future you have saved will be your own.
People are pointing out that RIAA is only going after an easy meal in this case. And, that they won't go after Yahoo or Google (or MSN or AOL) because those beasts have teeth and claws of their own.
But...think who the RIAA are really after. They are not after file sharing geeks regardless of the network. They are after geeks that build file sharing networks in the first place. They want to kill off the *next* napster before it is even born, by getting the message out to would-be developers that the RIAA actually *prefer* to track down and eat little people like them, and clearly have developed the staff and techniques (and moles?) to do so.
It really is horrendous and a blatant play to quash innovation in a field that is not only the next phase of the growth of the Internet, but also one that will erode the distribution Mafias of several big industrys besides the RIAA. What may be at stake here is the very concept of market control through scarcity.
Retrofit it as a floating nation/state/casino/whorehouse, then steam it around the planet. The worlds largest traveling party, off shore bank and criminal retreat. Fly in lounge lizards, escaping dictators and rich socialites right onto the flight deck in helicopters. Never go to port so nobody gets arrested; justice of the high seas. Captain hangs anyone who doesn't pay their gambling debts. Service it with freighters and fuel tenders. When it gets too old to float, sink it (along with the ex-dictators who can't go ashore) and start all over.
Someone will do it. Saddam and his kids could pay cash and invite all their cronies.
Ah ha. So the issue is not dumping the bucket (removing tailgate) but establishing a stable shape (the bubble). That would explain why adding a camper shell made a difference. All those blokes pulling off their tailgate thought they we getting by cheaply:)
My compact pickup truck started getting much better gas mileage when I put on a camper shell. Many other people just pull off the tailgate. OK, the bucket on the back of a pickup is an obvious issue when driving fast, but in the long run even driving with your windows open all the time will cost you.
Some of this (all of it?) is borrowed from optimal foraging studies in nature; companies forage for customers, and want the most/best customers with the least effort and risk. Any animal that forages with something more than blind luck employs some kind of an optimization strategy. While is it true that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, it is not always true that the grass is of such superior quality as to justify the trouble/expense/risk of getting through the fence. Same applies to stalking predators.
We are not called "consumers" for nothing. We devour things, use them up. But we expend effort in doing so, and wish to minimize that at every turn. We've all been there; you want cheaper gas, but are you willing to sit in line, idling your engine and getting no where, to get it? Someone obviously is willing to do that because otherwise there would not be a line, but their situation (maybe they have no money and are not in a hurry) is different from your own (you got places to be.)
How do animals do this? It is the subject of a lot of study since some of the strategies would appear to require a good deal of instinct in the guise of intelligence. And the strategies can become so critical and sensitive to minor changes in input that the strategies can finally drive speciation itself. How you forage can actually shape who you are and what you look like, and even drive you into so tight a corner that you are vulnerable to extinction (take pandas for example.)
What was interesting about this article was that the author came to much the same conclusion; pricing will drive what companies do and even how they function. Eventually, pricing strategies may create new companies that can exploit/forage across new resources or simply exploit old resources more completely. That is certainly a form of commercial speciation, with all the attendant risks and opportunities.
Commerce used to be a generalized affair, a product of human imagination and under our (inexact) control. What happens when commerce becomes like an organism in its own right, with its own strategies for survival, where we are but the engine that drives it? And for that matter, do we then become the food source for commerce in turn?
Trout eat their own offspring, which seems counter-Darwinian. The study of why they do that is fascinating and terrifying at the same time; they eat their young because the young can get at food resources under stones and in the reeds that the adults cannot. When the adult eats the fingerlings, they are efficiently foraging for grubs under stones that normally they would never reach. The young are like an extended feeding organ of the adults, and the advantage of eating them is just enough to outweigh the loss of life.
Perhaps commerce, the child of our own genius, is looking at us hungrily. We work creatively to buy things and our work nourishes what used to be our child but is now our master. Unknown to us, we are in the end serving and not being served. Unless in "being served" one means served up with fries and a regular drink.
OK, actually that was my first thought when I wrote the subject as "round two", and nothing about what I wrote under the subject precluded just what you suspect.
So then we're left wondering; would M$ "trade" support for Office on Mac to get at Aquaish goodness? Seems unlikely. But I suppose that if Apple's patents really do give them a lock (of sorts) on a particular GUI approach we currently call "Aqua" then maybe M$ would have to bend a little to stay hip.
I don't know, that's a pile of ifs. Are GUIs really that important anymore? Seems not to me in this age of price gouging. But maybe as Apple turns up the heat on computers-as-pretty-Internet-appliances maybe they are about to run away from the pack, and there are some companies with less than stellar design credentials (M$ being just one) that are getting a little nervous.
Can Apple actually patent the notion of "insanely great" by first setting the standard of what is perfection, and then patenting the elements of style?!? That would be a hoot.
The article reminds us all that Apple once "lost" the UI battle by relying on copyright. These days, if you want to hold claim you need more powerful stuff, and they are now weilding the patent hammer.
So that begs the question; what do they intend to do now with their shiny new patents? Go after someone? Defend themselves against copyright attacks? They seeing something coming down the tracks that the rest of us have missed?
This is looking like a much more tough stance from a company that has sort of allowed themselves to be swept under the rug for 20 years. And I'm not sure it is about market share or even royalties. Maybe more about patent/IP swapping...but swapping with whom? Who has something that Apple wants for trade?
No attached LCD is kinda neat
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Barebones Notebook
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I've got on my desk here an old Toshiba that someone sat on, broke the LCD all to hell. It was sitting around and I needed a linux server...yadda yadda...so I plug in an external LCD. Now it has a display, a nice big one, but the busted one is in the way all the time while I type and use the track pad (lid is open you see) and that busted LCD is just butt ugly besides.
Scene 2: I remove the busted LCD, sew the laptop back up, fire it up on the external monitor and then I notice something; this is groovy. Sure it needs an external monitor, but I just created a fairly cool portable desktop computer out of a piece of junk. Keyboard and track pad built in. And still easy to take else where I need it, like home (where I have another monitor I can use) or a presentation, and even has a nifty built in 2 hour UPS. And it's real quite.
So would I actually buy something like that? Maybe not right away...but if the price was right I might. I'm telling you, sitting here looking at it, it looks cooler than you might imagine.
...maybe Bill G is hoping that having Windows and Linux both "open" in the same chaotic marketplace (Asia) will quickly lead to enough "contamination" in Linux distros to "open" the door to generalized lawsuits.
We all know that there is really nothing new in code. Part of what makes an open application clean in the sense of free from copyright issues is not the absence of certain ideas or particular implementations of them, but the absence of a means for those ideas to have been lifted entirely from proprietary versions of the same ideas. Microsoft has always protected their code and this is actually a Good Thing for "clean room" OOS developers coming up with the same solutions as M$ codemonkeys.
Now, if Microsoft could point to Asia and say "our crown jewels made their way into Linux because of our ill-advised opening of Windows in Asia wink wink" do you think a sympathetic judge somewhere might be bri...er...convinced to slap an injunction on the further distribution of OOS software developed after the date of Windows source release to China? And even if they (M$ and the Chinese) aren't actually thinking along those lines right now, do you think they (M$) will hesitate a New York minute to take such action if the opportunity presents itself?
So you see my Prince, perhaps the binaries are not the issue. We all know what the issue is for M$, don't we.
I have a Newton 2100. Use it all the time though the backlight fried out recently. Let me tell you something about technology that maybe you haven't thought about for a while.
Nothing important has happened in the computer technology arena, other than the adoption of the Internet by the casual consumer, since 1984 when Apple introduced the world to the "graphic user interface" (and PnP networking) in a huge way. You think I'm wrong? Then let's make a list of all the "new" stuff people get a stiffy over:
Fast processors.
Better monitors.
A dozen incarnations of MS Office.
Graphics acceleration and more bits per pixel.
Bigger hard drives.
Denser memory chips.
Consumer Un*x (Linux).
Just more and faster of the stuff that we had from the beginning. Anyone who wants to argue that any of the above is somehow "new" probably was in diapers 20 years ago. OK, cooling technology in consumer machines is new. Didn't have that on the desktop in 1984; only monster mainframes had built-in air conditioning. I don't see this being progress, however. LCDs are new (even though I had one on my Apple IIc, I kid you not). OK then, consumer Internet at the desktop and LCDs are new.
Tending now to the topic, if someone wants to use technology from even 20 years ago to do things that you can do today on "better" (but not new) technology, then I say good for them. They can probably avoid a lot of the current hassles (pending DRM, odious EULA, virus-o-the-week, constant hardware upgrades, constant cost) that those on the bleeding edge of the faux-new have to contend with.
As I said, I use a Newton. Nobody has improved on what the Newton did at the time it was cancelled. This is because 1) nobody other than Apple and maybe IBM actually improves anything because that involves risk and delayed profits, and 2) nobody could improve on it if they tried, including Apple and IBM. There just was no room to do so. It was and is just about perfect. If it has fallen behind the times then what of it; that is what software development is for. You stop developing, it falls behind. Windows still sports DOS at the core; does anyone use DOS anymore? Other than you I mean? Of course not because DOS kept on growing and eventually add a really nice command shell called Windows. Is Windows new? Hardly. Is DOS new? Certainly not. What is new this year from Microsoft, anything? Nothing other than the licensing scheme-o-the-week.
The Newton itself was new in concept, a keyboard-less information organizer, and like many new things it was ahead of its time. Apple itself will tell you the Newton's time still has not come. And when it does, it will probably look more like a phone because a phone is what people understand.
And I still say that the only thing that is really new in 20 years is the Internet to the home. I've seen a lot of technology come and go, and even now I still am shocked and amazed at what is made possible by the Internet:
15 years ago I would be tapping out this message on my Mac SE into my private Hermes BBS, which visitors would connect to via a pair of new 2400 baud modems. Cost me a fortune to run it, and I reached maybe 100 users total in several years.
Gol darnit, now that is progress!
Now that I'm all jazzed again maybe I'll contact that guy I got email from a while back who was selling replacement backlights for the Newton, that way I can turn the lights down and still jot notes about tomorrow's tasks and watch GoGo! dance naughty. Some things are still beautiful even after all the years.
It seems like the deeper you have to go to get something to work the more immaculate you are. Like everyone is hovering somewhere above laying down silicon, the further away from tracings and transistors the less holy.
In this regard machine language programmers spank assembly coders, who spank compiler builders, who spank those who use compiled lanagues, who in turn spank scripters, who would spank spreadsheet macro writers if those people ever came to the party. Of course everyone is aiming at getting particular patterns of electrical potentials established across specific etched wires and via arrays of transistor gates. But some of us are closer to God and everyone knows it.
I figure it is just like any other religion. Closest to God are the self-flagellators, ascetics and grazers, those who abuse the flesh and the mind in order to get to the bare naked truth of God. They would dream in machine code but speak not a word anyone could understand, just mumble. Then the mendicant monks and wild holy men, clinging at the gates of the city, begging alms, pitifully beseeching to God; assemblers. Less mentally scattered beggers with pens would write very terse, almost insane ramblings about how the world is actually made, their searing visions what we would call compilers. Those who would actually take those insane ramblings and teach them as a path to truth? They use languages that rely on the compilers and most people would call them preachers and spiritual leaders and merely pity the others, if not fear them.
I take my religion easily. I don't preach, and I am not a missionary; nobody is gonna be saved by me anytime soon. I conduct the rare bit of working sorcery, often for personal gain but not always, and my relationship with God (or Goddess as the case may be) is functional and laid-back (obviously). And I'm a scripter. I code to please myself as well as the higher powers. Mostly myself. If it works, groovy God is happy too. Hey I got other things to do besides obssess about Truth and my navel, OK?
It's those Nancy boys writing spreadsheet macros that are wasting their time. Rookies.;-)
Your whole company will switch when you buy a new computer for some new big-wig next year. It just takes one new machine in the wrong hands to start an avalanche when the High Mufti of Pencil Twiddling can't read a document he just got from the Most Exhalted Potentiate of Obfuscation because the latest PHB got himself a new Dell with all the latest M$ abortions installed. The very next memo to the IT department will be titled "Modernizing Corporate IT to Improve File Sharing Going Forward".
We've all seen it. Kiss your long range strategic IT planning goodbye.
I looked at "A Hole in SSL" and for some reason I could not free myself from reading that as a prOn reference, like the title to some cheap dirty movie.
I choose my words with considerable care. Cellular nuclei moving from mature adult mammalian somatic cells into unfertilized egg cells that have no nuclei of their own is not natural, it is in fact impossible without medical science and a lot of failures in the process, and your pseudo religious nonsense about the manifest destiny of humanity doesn't make it less so.
As for what nature "intends", nature intends (in a Darwinian kind of way) for us to reproduce with variation as it is the invention of novelty and not the promulgation of one genetic line that moves us forward. If our way was some other then we might be aphids and be born already pregnant with clones. For us, sexual union is good, birth is a new expression of chance, and death is part of life. The stuff in between is simply what you make of it.
There is a difference between fantasy and reality, regarding which we seem to have finally lost our grip. And in case you hadn't been paying attention, it is the reality of what we do that becomes history and shapes the future.
Many of you will recall that replicants had 4 years to live. It was built-in and they knew it and hated it.
I hate it when life immitates art, because some of our art is strange and the really good stuff is damn creepy. Dolly was cloned from a mature sheep, and the theory goes that she basically picked up where her...parent?...left off on the aging timeline. But that's not going to stop many wanna-be immortalists. So when some 80 y.o. geezer elects to have himself cloned the "new" baby will have the genetic signiture of an octagenarian, and probably 10 years to live a life of pain and senility.
This stuff sucks, people. You don't have to be a flaiming Bible thumper or a neoLuddite to be freaking out about Dolly. I think about how giddy everyone is about their personal fsckig immortality and my skin crawls.
Eat well, exercise, love someone with all your heart, have a good time. Have lots of great sex and leave a few really smart, well-adjusted children. Then go off and FUCKING DIE! OK? Just die and leave this earth to the next generation, born in the usual way with their own chance to live their own life their way, as nature had intended. Please!
Keep in mind, the Internet/WWW is very much like a Medieval "Commons", meaning that the users both enjoy it and maintain it for the good of each and all. At least, that is how it started out and many of us Olde Tymers would like to see it stay that way.
With that in mind, when someone would crap in the Commons, ruining it for others in some way, they would be pilloried. That is put on public display (often in stocks) for the purpose of public ridicule. No courts, no judge, no FSCKING lawyers. And the punishment worked as intended; you screw with the public good and the public good screws you back, and they enjoy it while they are doing it and feel a little better about things afterward.
M$ has thus been pilloried by Opera. Maybe it is rough justice, crude and perhaps ineffective, but where the Commons is violated it is the only kind of justice that matters.
AMD said several months ago they are getting out of the megahertz race and focusing on application of technology, meaning doing more with the die space instead of doing faster. Intel is now taking back leadership by...being sure to have a slower chip than AMD that does still MORE with the die space.
The speed race is over. You will continue to hear about who has the fastest, but it will be more "gee whiz" stuff than "I need that" because you just won't need it. Before long you won't be able to even FIND a retail desktop computer that runs over 2Ghz, and when you open the hood it will have ONE chip in it, right in the center of the logic board. In the end probably everything sold as a desktop system will have power consumption below that of today's laptop computers, power supplies the size of a deck of cards, no fan, 1.8 inch HDD, wireless input on all I/O (including the monitor) and the whole thing will fit in a pocket and run for an hour on a built-in backup UPS battery, thus finally bluring the distinction between what is a portable computer and what is not.
Think iPod on steroids, and yes you will use your "portable desktop Pee Cee" to listen to MP3s most of the time, using a wireless headset.
That's just the way it is going folk, because with all the price pressure that is where the profit will be. Besides, all that sounds tre kewl to me!
Give it...what? Two years? Now that the race has turned to "less is more" it might not even take that long. And to the winner go the spoils.
God, having recently been photographed in the microwave part of the spectrum, has held a press conference. Her spokesangel says "The Almighty resents this intrusion on Her privacy and just wishes some respite from the snapping of paparazzi hounding Her all day and night, never a moment's peace. She will now retire to a private part of the universe for some escape from the tabloids, thank you. But really, She is most upset about those faked pictures of Her wearing a beard. Have you no decency at all?"
God was last seen as a filmy blotch, one millionth of a degree warmer than the next blotch, in the general vicinity of the constellation Sagittarius. She was wearing a floral kimono and sandals from Gucci.
[darkhumor style=kurtvonnegut] It turns out some researchers called it God at first but that doesn't look as well in print outside of sacred texts. You know, "God is everywhere, but unevenly distributed and is repulsive, not that anyone would notice or at least they have not. Only we did notice so we're L337 and we're forming our own religion. We hereby declare all other religions apostate and anathema on the strength of our observations."
We pagans know all about Dark Energy. Heck, we're obsessed with it. Only I'm a little surprised that it's not more than 75% of the known universe. I bet a lot of the Cold dark Matter will turn out to be wanna-be Dark Energy too, just tettering on the edge of going over for the last few billion years.
The idea that only 4% of the Universe is "normal" really lines up with the notion many witches and Zen masters subscribe to, where 96% of Everything is utter nonsense. But you can still have loads of fun with the other 4% if you lay your hands on a good spell book. Just don't forget to close your sacred circle, and properly call the gates, and sanctify your athame first. Bless us but you don't want to upset the balance of entropy and cause any of that loitering Cold Dark Matter to get any fancy ideas. [/darkhumor]
OK, let's think about this a moment. The current generation of networks and servers already hinges largely on Unix and Unix-like things (GNU/Linux). Linux is free, and many point out that Linux is mostly replacing Unix boxen at the moment.
Ipso facto, GNU/Linux will probably be a big part of the "next-generation" platform, whatever the foosh that actually refers to in practice.
But I guess what is interesting here is that they are broadcasting this "truth" and not, oh for example, signing up on some zany M$ initiative-of-the-week.
Someone actually pointed out in an earlier post (since modded into oblivion I can assume) that Asia pirates all their software so la-de-da. Which misses the point that Asia pirating software was always a good thing for the proprietary products. India is so awash in black market copies of Windows that they are practically addicts now, and still M$ gives them buckets of cash "donations" as soon as someone over there mumbles "Linux rulez" in his sleep.
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To the extent that every single physical and energetic part of a network is taxed from the start, from the wire to the hubs and routers and even to the energy that powers it up and modulates across the wires and chips, you have to realize that what they are proposing now is a tax on the flow of information.
...damned firewall. What is wrong with this VPN? Tunnel interfaces are all screwed up. I'm too tired to figure this out. 14 fscking hours and no VPN and no time to think. I don't know what to do. Someone, tell me what to do.
What else are they talking about? Clearly they are not talking about taxing the flow of electric current, otherwise they would tax your extension cord by length for every year you have it hanging in the garage. But you take that same copper wire in a different form factor and with a certain number of twists per foot, those same electrons modulated in a particular way, and now you have something new you can tax. That is a very interesting transition.
There is a peculiar kind of mind at work here. It's almost exactly the same mind working in the shadowy deeps at SCO, and in Redmond, and in government agencies across the country. It is a business mind only superficially. More specifically, it is the mind bent on control.
I am not a revolutionary. I probably should be and when I was younger I might have been but these days I don't have time for it. But I can sense when someone is making a move on me and the things I hold to be important, and this is one of those times. The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise and I stop configuring the firewall and I sit back and I think.
We are in for a rough ride, I'm afraid. The authorities have arrived. Between the RIAA and the FBI and the bean counters and Microsoft it is getting uncomfortable to be where we are, doing what we are doing, in the way we are doing it and have done it for decades. We are not domesticated enough, not cowed. They cannot control this, any of it, and it worries them endlessly. There is no business model for cattle that won't stay in their pen. But there are plenty of professionals who can round up your cattle for you, for a fee. And then to the factory.
Do the cows in the feedlot know where they are headed? They have had an easy life, haven't they. Grown fat and complacent. Did the jump-over-the-fence thing once, got hit with a prod, gave it up after that. The grass wasn't really all that much better on the other side anyway. Do the cattle ever stop to wonder about that day? And about the fence? About why it was so important to stay behind the fence?
Here we are grazing the tall green grass, belly deep and well pleased, and the herders have noticed we're out. Feel the first shock of the prod...hear the order to move out...what are you going to do...
OK, this is very funny. IP addys for every bullet. But listen gang, the ISPs have been tight fisted with IP addresses for so long that most of you young-uns don't even remember the day when anyone with a router could count on a Class-C or even B to themselves. Those days are LONG gone; now you get DSL and you pay for ONE frigging static IP address, and if you want anything like a big chunk of a Class-C you have to pay serious cash. Monthly. And upgrade? You want more? Well all the IPs on either side of your teeny tiny block were sold to other shmoes already, so if you want more you get a whole new block. So you better get more than you think you will need...ever...or else everytime you run over your public IP space you will need to reconfig your entire public facing Internet presence to a new block.
But you know what, that's not really a technology limit, that's a BUSINESS MODEL.
Watch this. When they finally go over to IPv6 and later install your new DSL, know what the knee-biting bastards will do? First, they will charge you MORE for a basic DSL with dynamic IP because now it is the new-fangled IPv6 (new=$$$). Then they will assign you a SINGLE IP addy from their store of 128 trillion. And they will assign IP addresses this way in SEQUENCE to all subscribers so that as soon as you get yours you are boxed in by other subscribers just getting theirs. You know they will, it will be a strategic decision to completely undermine the freedom you SHOULD have when there are about 1 billion IP addresses for every human alive on earth.
The only way around this would be to issue IP blocks to physical locations on the earth, so no matter where you are you have all the IP addresses reservered for that square meter of dirt, and if you have a large home/office/company then you have a big block indeed. ISPs would be forced to backbone their entire geographic area, including the whole planet if they are big enough.
As a business model it sucks big wind. But I like it as an end user.
Wire the planet. Freedom to connect! No more IP address space tyranny!!
A general comment:
/. posts about code and THEN compiled them? Would the compiled code be derived from /. or SCO? Would I need a /. license to shrinkwrap the end product just because I read it on /.? If not, then what makes SCO so special? Because they are group of people in a "company" and /. is a group of people in a "community"? Where does that really take you?
As I watch this unfold, I am suddenly aware of how far this case is starting to reach. Is everything really derived of everything else? Do fleas have littler fleas that bite them, and so on ad infinitum?
Then where does it end? Can there ever be a clear break between what is watercooler theorizing about what might work and what is eventually compiled?
Because if my random thoughts at the bar&grill on a Saturday afternoon are indeed open-source until I compile them Monday morning and then they are derived from the source, including any SCO source code I looked at the day before, then what if I got my ideas from reading
I don't think there are many legal minds who would buy into the idea that nothing can belong to more than people (as opposed to companies who hire people) BUT that does not mean they are correct. Teachers, for example, would strongly disagree as they are in the business of open-source that we call learning by discussion.
Even if the laws remain the same, I sense the damage is done. We've long wondered what would be the long-term impact of the OSS movement, and much has been written and said. But do we really "know" where it will end? What hath we wrought?
But you know what...I always had my own reasons and when I made my decision it was thoughtfully, personally, and irrevocably. And it wasn't just because of what someone else did, or I thought they did. When my nerves get frayed then I start to assume that something else about the job is bugging me too. Maybe the orgainization has no future, maybe I have no future within it, maybe others are being abused and I don't like it, maybe I'm underutilized. You gotta go with your instincts, and when your instincts say "go!" you gotta run
/. ! I am generally respected by management. They have been tough but polite. I feel like I know what is going on, and what is required to get this flying heap off the runway.
Sure jobs can be crappy. If you think about it, that is part of the definition of "work" (ie, not many people get paid to do their hobby.) So you show up every morning expecting crap, and there it is in a big steaming pile. Especially in the technology industry where it is such a Wild West show. Right now, my current company is shrinking though we have probably reached the bottom. We added a new account. Too many people have left so now I work some ungodly hours juggling probably too many chainsaws until my very soul becomes weary...but the "work" is not impossible and I can do some interesting hacks now and again. Money for my hobby at that point. Obviously I have enough discretionary time to surf
Am I about to leave? No way. Could I be made to leave? Hmm....I suppose. But I don't sense that kind of pressure coming on. My instincts say "tough it out a while."
Someone will say I am working for a winner company right now and to stay the course. That is probably correct. That could also change. I will read the signs and move when I need to. But if I do it will be, as always, for my own reasons.
I was thinking the same thing, and will add this thought to your own:
People place too much importance on appearances. There is no place for daring-do anymore in education, or indeed in anything. Everyone wants a job and will do anything to keep their noses clean while they are at it. I imagine the RIAA simply smiled and said to the kid's dad that a future in corporate accounting is a terrible thing to waste.
If you visit the ChewPlastic site and look at the first entries you will notice that it was supposed to be all about free speech and the flow of ideas. Sounds good enough. But we can see how much force there was behind that so far. I don't want to second guess anyone here. I'm a dad, and where my kids (still very young) are concerned I would do whatever I had to do to spare them suffering. But where their ideals and sense of purpose are concerned I would rather they take their lumps in defense, and I would be there bucking them up the whole way. It would become a life lesson, whatever the stakes, and they would emerge blazing with purpose and self confidence. The RIAA would have created one very mad, very dedicate, very energetic enemy. And I would be twice proud.
If you teach your children to cave in to random assaults like this one from the RIAA then you have not prepared them for the world, is my thinking. And, you have let evil run loose besides to clobber the next hapless victim. There is no future in that for any of us. But in the collective we can defend what is good about living.
This country was founded on the notion of individual freedom and the individual's responsibility to fight for it. If now exercising that responsibility is not compatible with a long and profitable career in accounting, or brokering, or whatever then so be it. At least these days you are not likely to die at the end of a bayonette for standing your ground. There will be other opportunities to sell-out later, if you decide that this is your calling. But if it is not, then the future you have saved will be your own.
People are pointing out that RIAA is only going after an easy meal in this case. And, that they won't go after Yahoo or Google (or MSN or AOL) because those beasts have teeth and claws of their own.
But...think who the RIAA are really after. They are not after file sharing geeks regardless of the network. They are after geeks that build file sharing networks in the first place. They want to kill off the *next* napster before it is even born, by getting the message out to would-be developers that the RIAA actually *prefer* to track down and eat little people like them, and clearly have developed the staff and techniques (and moles?) to do so.
It really is horrendous and a blatant play to quash innovation in a field that is not only the next phase of the growth of the Internet, but also one that will erode the distribution Mafias of several big industrys besides the RIAA. What may be at stake here is the very concept of market control through scarcity.
Retrofit it as a floating nation/state/casino/whorehouse, then steam it around the planet. The worlds largest traveling party, off shore bank and criminal retreat. Fly in lounge lizards, escaping dictators and rich socialites right onto the flight deck in helicopters. Never go to port so nobody gets arrested; justice of the high seas. Captain hangs anyone who doesn't pay their gambling debts. Service it with freighters and fuel tenders. When it gets too old to float, sink it (along with the ex-dictators who can't go ashore) and start all over.
Someone will do it. Saddam and his kids could pay cash and invite all their cronies.
Ah ha. So the issue is not dumping the bucket (removing tailgate) but establishing a stable shape (the bubble). That would explain why adding a camper shell made a difference. All those blokes pulling off their tailgate thought they we getting by cheaply :)
My compact pickup truck started getting much better gas mileage when I put on a camper shell. Many other people just pull off the tailgate. OK, the bucket on the back of a pickup is an obvious issue when driving fast, but in the long run even driving with your windows open all the time will cost you.
Some of this (all of it?) is borrowed from optimal foraging studies in nature; companies forage for customers, and want the most/best customers with the least effort and risk. Any animal that forages with something more than blind luck employs some kind of an optimization strategy. While is it true that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, it is not always true that the grass is of such superior quality as to justify the trouble/expense/risk of getting through the fence. Same applies to stalking predators.
We are not called "consumers" for nothing. We devour things, use them up. But we expend effort in doing so, and wish to minimize that at every turn. We've all been there; you want cheaper gas, but are you willing to sit in line, idling your engine and getting no where, to get it? Someone obviously is willing to do that because otherwise there would not be a line, but their situation (maybe they have no money and are not in a hurry) is different from your own (you got places to be.)
How do animals do this? It is the subject of a lot of study since some of the strategies would appear to require a good deal of instinct in the guise of intelligence. And the strategies can become so critical and sensitive to minor changes in input that the strategies can finally drive speciation itself. How you forage can actually shape who you are and what you look like, and even drive you into so tight a corner that you are vulnerable to extinction (take pandas for example.)
What was interesting about this article was that the author came to much the same conclusion; pricing will drive what companies do and even how they function. Eventually, pricing strategies may create new companies that can exploit/forage across new resources or simply exploit old resources more completely. That is certainly a form of commercial speciation, with all the attendant risks and opportunities.
Commerce used to be a generalized affair, a product of human imagination and under our (inexact) control. What happens when commerce becomes like an organism in its own right, with its own strategies for survival, where we are but the engine that drives it? And for that matter, do we then become the food source for commerce in turn?
Trout eat their own offspring, which seems counter-Darwinian. The study of why they do that is fascinating and terrifying at the same time; they eat their young because the young can get at food resources under stones and in the reeds that the adults cannot. When the adult eats the fingerlings, they are efficiently foraging for grubs under stones that normally they would never reach. The young are like an extended feeding organ of the adults, and the advantage of eating them is just enough to outweigh the loss of life.
Perhaps commerce, the child of our own genius, is looking at us hungrily. We work creatively to buy things and our work nourishes what used to be our child but is now our master. Unknown to us, we are in the end serving and not being served. Unless in "being served" one means served up with fries and a regular drink.
OK, actually that was my first thought when I wrote the subject as "round two", and nothing about what I wrote under the subject precluded just what you suspect.
So then we're left wondering; would M$ "trade" support for Office on Mac to get at Aquaish goodness? Seems unlikely. But I suppose that if Apple's patents really do give them a lock (of sorts) on a particular GUI approach we currently call "Aqua" then maybe M$ would have to bend a little to stay hip.
I don't know, that's a pile of ifs. Are GUIs really that important anymore? Seems not to me in this age of price gouging. But maybe as Apple turns up the heat on computers-as-pretty-Internet-appliances maybe they are about to run away from the pack, and there are some companies with less than stellar design credentials (M$ being just one) that are getting a little nervous.
Can Apple actually patent the notion of "insanely great" by first setting the standard of what is perfection, and then patenting the elements of style?!? That would be a hoot.
The article reminds us all that Apple once "lost" the UI battle by relying on copyright. These days, if you want to hold claim you need more powerful stuff, and they are now weilding the patent hammer.
So that begs the question; what do they intend to do now with their shiny new patents? Go after someone? Defend themselves against copyright attacks? They seeing something coming down the tracks that the rest of us have missed?
This is looking like a much more tough stance from a company that has sort of allowed themselves to be swept under the rug for 20 years. And I'm not sure it is about market share or even royalties. Maybe more about patent/IP swapping...but swapping with whom? Who has something that Apple wants for trade?
I've got on my desk here an old Toshiba that someone sat on, broke the LCD all to hell. It was sitting around and I needed a linux server...yadda yadda...so I plug in an external LCD. Now it has a display, a nice big one, but the busted one is in the way all the time while I type and use the track pad (lid is open you see) and that busted LCD is just butt ugly besides.
Scene 2: I remove the busted LCD, sew the laptop back up, fire it up on the external monitor and then I notice something; this is groovy. Sure it needs an external monitor, but I just created a fairly cool portable desktop computer out of a piece of junk. Keyboard and track pad built in. And still easy to take else where I need it, like home (where I have another monitor I can use) or a presentation, and even has a nifty built in 2 hour UPS. And it's real quite.
So would I actually buy something like that? Maybe not right away...but if the price was right I might. I'm telling you, sitting here looking at it, it looks cooler than you might imagine.
...maybe Bill G is hoping that having Windows and Linux both "open" in the same chaotic marketplace (Asia) will quickly lead to enough "contamination" in Linux distros to "open" the door to generalized lawsuits.
We all know that there is really nothing new in code. Part of what makes an open application clean in the sense of free from copyright issues is not the absence of certain ideas or particular implementations of them, but the absence of a means for those ideas to have been lifted entirely from proprietary versions of the same ideas. Microsoft has always protected their code and this is actually a Good Thing for "clean room" OOS developers coming up with the same solutions as M$ codemonkeys.
Now, if Microsoft could point to Asia and say "our crown jewels made their way into Linux because of our ill-advised opening of Windows in Asia wink wink" do you think a sympathetic judge somewhere might be bri...er...convinced to slap an injunction on the further distribution of OOS software developed after the date of Windows source release to China? And even if they (M$ and the Chinese) aren't actually thinking along those lines right now, do you think they (M$) will hesitate a New York minute to take such action if the opportunity presents itself?
So you see my Prince, perhaps the binaries are not the issue. We all know what the issue is for M$, don't we.
Signed,
Nicolo Machiaveli
Nothing important has happened in the computer technology arena, other than the adoption of the Internet by the casual consumer, since 1984 when Apple introduced the world to the "graphic user interface" (and PnP networking) in a huge way. You think I'm wrong? Then let's make a list of all the "new" stuff people get a stiffy over:
- Fast processors.
- Better monitors.
- A dozen incarnations of MS Office.
- Graphics acceleration and more bits per pixel.
- Bigger hard drives.
- Denser memory chips.
- Consumer Un*x (Linux).
Just more and faster of the stuff that we had from the beginning. Anyone who wants to argue that any of the above is somehow "new" probably was in diapers 20 years ago. OK, cooling technology in consumer machines is new. Didn't have that on the desktop in 1984; only monster mainframes had built-in air conditioning. I don't see this being progress, however. LCDs are new (even though I had one on my Apple IIc, I kid you not). OK then, consumer Internet at the desktop and LCDs are new.Tending now to the topic, if someone wants to use technology from even 20 years ago to do things that you can do today on "better" (but not new) technology, then I say good for them. They can probably avoid a lot of the current hassles (pending DRM, odious EULA, virus-o-the-week, constant hardware upgrades, constant cost) that those on the bleeding edge of the faux-new have to contend with.
As I said, I use a Newton. Nobody has improved on what the Newton did at the time it was cancelled. This is because 1) nobody other than Apple and maybe IBM actually improves anything because that involves risk and delayed profits, and 2) nobody could improve on it if they tried, including Apple and IBM. There just was no room to do so. It was and is just about perfect. If it has fallen behind the times then what of it; that is what software development is for. You stop developing, it falls behind. Windows still sports DOS at the core; does anyone use DOS anymore? Other than you I mean? Of course not because DOS kept on growing and eventually add a really nice command shell called Windows. Is Windows new? Hardly. Is DOS new? Certainly not. What is new this year from Microsoft, anything? Nothing other than the licensing scheme-o-the-week.
The Newton itself was new in concept, a keyboard-less information organizer, and like many new things it was ahead of its time. Apple itself will tell you the Newton's time still has not come. And when it does, it will probably look more like a phone because a phone is what people understand.
And I still say that the only thing that is really new in 20 years is the Internet to the home. I've seen a lot of technology come and go, and even now I still am shocked and amazed at what is made possible by the Internet:
15 years ago I would be tapping out this message on my Mac SE into my private Hermes BBS, which visitors would connect to via a pair of new 2400 baud modems. Cost me a fortune to run it, and I reached maybe 100 users total in several years.
Gol darnit, now that is progress!
Now that I'm all jazzed again maybe I'll contact that guy I got email from a while back who was selling replacement backlights for the Newton, that way I can turn the lights down and still jot notes about tomorrow's tasks and watch GoGo! dance naughty. Some things are still beautiful even after all the years.
It seems like the deeper you have to go to get something to work the more immaculate you are. Like everyone is hovering somewhere above laying down silicon, the further away from tracings and transistors the less holy.
;-)
In this regard machine language programmers spank assembly coders, who spank compiler builders, who spank those who use compiled lanagues, who in turn spank scripters, who would spank spreadsheet macro writers if those people ever came to the party. Of course everyone is aiming at getting particular patterns of electrical potentials established across specific etched wires and via arrays of transistor gates. But some of us are closer to God and everyone knows it.
I figure it is just like any other religion. Closest to God are the self-flagellators, ascetics and grazers, those who abuse the flesh and the mind in order to get to the bare naked truth of God. They would dream in machine code but speak not a word anyone could understand, just mumble. Then the mendicant monks and wild holy men, clinging at the gates of the city, begging alms, pitifully beseeching to God; assemblers. Less mentally scattered beggers with pens would write very terse, almost insane ramblings about how the world is actually made, their searing visions what we would call compilers. Those who would actually take those insane ramblings and teach them as a path to truth? They use languages that rely on the compilers and most people would call them preachers and spiritual leaders and merely pity the others, if not fear them.
I take my religion easily. I don't preach, and I am not a missionary; nobody is gonna be saved by me anytime soon. I conduct the rare bit of working sorcery, often for personal gain but not always, and my relationship with God (or Goddess as the case may be) is functional and laid-back (obviously). And I'm a scripter. I code to please myself as well as the higher powers. Mostly myself. If it works, groovy God is happy too. Hey I got other things to do besides obssess about Truth and my navel, OK?
It's those Nancy boys writing spreadsheet macros that are wasting their time. Rookies.
Your whole company will switch when you buy a new computer for some new big-wig next year. It just takes one new machine in the wrong hands to start an avalanche when the High Mufti of Pencil Twiddling can't read a document he just got from the Most Exhalted Potentiate of Obfuscation because the latest PHB got himself a new Dell with all the latest M$ abortions installed. The very next memo to the IT department will be titled "Modernizing Corporate IT to Improve File Sharing Going Forward".
We've all seen it. Kiss your long range strategic IT planning goodbye.
I looked at "A Hole in SSL" and for some reason I could not free myself from reading that as a prOn reference, like the title to some cheap dirty movie.
I guess it's been a long week.
I choose my words with considerable care. Cellular nuclei moving from mature adult mammalian somatic cells into unfertilized egg cells that have no nuclei of their own is not natural, it is in fact impossible without medical science and a lot of failures in the process, and your pseudo religious nonsense about the manifest destiny of humanity doesn't make it less so.
As for what nature "intends", nature intends (in a Darwinian kind of way) for us to reproduce with variation as it is the invention of novelty and not the promulgation of one genetic line that moves us forward. If our way was some other then we might be aphids and be born already pregnant with clones. For us, sexual union is good, birth is a new expression of chance, and death is part of life. The stuff in between is simply what you make of it.
There is a difference between fantasy and reality, regarding which we seem to have finally lost our grip. And in case you hadn't been paying attention, it is the reality of what we do that becomes history and shapes the future.
Many of you will recall that replicants had 4 years to live. It was built-in and they knew it and hated it.
I hate it when life immitates art, because some of our art is strange and the really good stuff is damn creepy. Dolly was cloned from a mature sheep, and the theory goes that she basically picked up where her...parent?...left off on the aging timeline. But that's not going to stop many wanna-be immortalists. So when some 80 y.o. geezer elects to have himself cloned the "new" baby will have the genetic signiture of an octagenarian, and probably 10 years to live a life of pain and senility.
This stuff sucks, people. You don't have to be a flaiming Bible thumper or a neoLuddite to be freaking out about Dolly. I think about how giddy everyone is about their personal fsckig immortality and my skin crawls.
Eat well, exercise, love someone with all your heart, have a good time. Have lots of great sex and leave a few really smart, well-adjusted children. Then go off and FUCKING DIE! OK? Just die and leave this earth to the next generation, born in the usual way with their own chance to live their own life their way, as nature had intended. Please!
Keep in mind, the Internet/WWW is very much like a Medieval "Commons", meaning that the users both enjoy it and maintain it for the good of each and all. At least, that is how it started out and many of us Olde Tymers would like to see it stay that way.
With that in mind, when someone would crap in the Commons, ruining it for others in some way, they would be pilloried. That is put on public display (often in stocks) for the purpose of public ridicule. No courts, no judge, no FSCKING lawyers. And the punishment worked as intended; you screw with the public good and the public good screws you back, and they enjoy it while they are doing it and feel a little better about things afterward.
M$ has thus been pilloried by Opera. Maybe it is rough justice, crude and perhaps ineffective, but where the Commons is violated it is the only kind of justice that matters.
Now let's all go pay our software fees for Opera.
AMD said several months ago they are getting out of the megahertz race and focusing on application of technology, meaning doing more with the die space instead of doing faster. Intel is now taking back leadership by...being sure to have a slower chip than AMD that does still MORE with the die space.
The speed race is over. You will continue to hear about who has the fastest, but it will be more "gee whiz" stuff than "I need that" because you just won't need it. Before long you won't be able to even FIND a retail desktop computer that runs over 2Ghz, and when you open the hood it will have ONE chip in it, right in the center of the logic board. In the end probably everything sold as a desktop system will have power consumption below that of today's laptop computers, power supplies the size of a deck of cards, no fan, 1.8 inch HDD, wireless input on all I/O (including the monitor) and the whole thing will fit in a pocket and run for an hour on a built-in backup UPS battery, thus finally bluring the distinction between what is a portable computer and what is not.
Think iPod on steroids, and yes you will use your "portable desktop Pee Cee" to listen to MP3s most of the time, using a wireless headset.
That's just the way it is going folk, because with all the price pressure that is where the profit will be. Besides, all that sounds tre kewl to me!
Give it...what? Two years? Now that the race has turned to "less is more" it might not even take that long. And to the winner go the spoils.
In Other News:
God, having recently been photographed in the microwave part of the spectrum, has held a press conference. Her spokesangel says "The Almighty resents this intrusion on Her privacy and just wishes some respite from the snapping of paparazzi hounding Her all day and night, never a moment's peace. She will now retire to a private part of the universe for some escape from the tabloids, thank you. But really, She is most upset about those faked pictures of Her wearing a beard. Have you no decency at all?"
God was last seen as a filmy blotch, one millionth of a degree warmer than the next blotch, in the general vicinity of the constellation Sagittarius. She was wearing a floral kimono and sandals from Gucci.
[darkhumor style=kurtvonnegut]
It turns out some researchers called it God at first but that doesn't look as well in print outside of sacred texts. You know, "God is everywhere, but unevenly distributed and is repulsive, not that anyone would notice or at least they have not. Only we did notice so we're L337 and we're forming our own religion. We hereby declare all other religions apostate and anathema on the strength of our observations."
We pagans know all about Dark Energy. Heck, we're obsessed with it. Only I'm a little surprised that it's not more than 75% of the known universe. I bet a lot of the Cold dark Matter will turn out to be wanna-be Dark Energy too, just tettering on the edge of going over for the last few billion years.
The idea that only 4% of the Universe is "normal" really lines up with the notion many witches and Zen masters subscribe to, where 96% of Everything is utter nonsense. But you can still have loads of fun with the other 4% if you lay your hands on a good spell book. Just don't forget to close your sacred circle, and properly call the gates, and sanctify your athame first. Bless us but you don't want to upset the balance of entropy and cause any of that loitering Cold Dark Matter to get any fancy ideas.
[/darkhumor]
OK, let's think about this a moment. The current generation of networks and servers already hinges largely on Unix and Unix-like things (GNU/Linux). Linux is free, and many point out that Linux is mostly replacing Unix boxen at the moment.
Ipso facto, GNU/Linux will probably be a big part of the "next-generation" platform, whatever the foosh that actually refers to in practice.
But I guess what is interesting here is that they are broadcasting this "truth" and not, oh for example, signing up on some zany M$ initiative-of-the-week.
Someone actually pointed out in an earlier post (since modded into oblivion I can assume) that Asia pirates all their software so la-de-da. Which misses the point that Asia pirating software was always a good thing for the proprietary products. India is so awash in black market copies of Windows that they are practically addicts now, and still M$ gives them buckets of cash "donations" as soon as someone over there mumbles "Linux rulez" in his sleep.