It does appear that the main driving force competing against Windows and associated applications is from other countries eager to save money. Once they show how it can be done, maybe the beancounters in American companies will follow their lead and take the linux plunge.
According to SCO, if you have a TiVo which uses Linux, you now owe them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use. heee heeee heeee heeee. Probably the funniest thing I've read in weeks. No way, no how can any of this happen. Thank you slashdot for making my week. Bye SCO.
Yeah! Stan Lee and Jack Kirby got it right 40 years ago in their X-Men comic book. Long before the possibility of genetically altered people Stan and Jack wrote about how such people would be reviled and discriminated against and even made outcast.
It's bizarre that it would be the most educated people would be making the first effort to outcast GM people in our 21st century world.
Our ISP got a solution a couple of weeks ago. It's a company called Postini which filters spam. It turned my email from a worthless trough of spam (60 to 80 junk mail daily) to the 10 or 12 messages I want to see every day.
so I don't mind seeing a story that I might've missed. The people that complain about duplicate stories need to read the stories that interest them instead of worrying about repeat posts. Especially stories that are newsworthy or have 'legs', they can run them all week for all I care.
My experiences mirrored many who worked in both worlds, except I got out of IT. I too got tired of the cubicle life, working from dawn to dusk, getting high blood pressure, overweight and stressed. After 8 years in the IT world and seeing my life totally stressed and out-of-control I finally got out after my last layoff.
I am now in a factory job, in a UAW plant, my weight and blood pressure under control with no stress. I make less money, but now I enjoy my free time including my bike riding again. The one thing I do remember about my IT time was that I did have some money, but I couldn't enjoy it since I spent all my time working and my free time stressed out thinking about work.
It's a shame that the technology that is empowering the country is also hurting the knowledge workers that drive it.
Seeing video being able to go to HDs in decent quality has upped my standard as to whats acceptable for my MP3 Jukebox. Before with the high cost of harddrives, most of my saved songs were ripped with 128. But once I hooked my second PC to my stereo, to act as my sole method of listening to recorded music, I was disappointed by the quality of some songs at 128. So now, with cheaper HD prices, I will have to re-rip my collection at 160 or 192 or maybe even 256.
For example, the success of MP3 has created a demand for component sized quiet PC boxes that can output to a TV using a remote control instead of a mouse. I believe some manufacturer will come to the market with this black or chrome box this year (or at least I hope they do.)
Because right now all the talk I hear is people creating their own boxes, or hacking old boxes or using laptops for such a device. The hunger is there for such a consumer box. It's one of those undercurrents that the people in the boardrooms are missing.
Such as P2P. It will still be strong and people will still want it cheap, and if RIAA shutsdown others, more will take their place.
I believe Linux will get bigger, maybe not in the US, but in the rest of the world which is seeking cheaper solutions for office and consumer PCs.
The sad thing is that media companies and manufacturers are always spending huge bucks trying to find what it is that people want. Why don't they just look around or ask them?
The advantage of the internet, its immediacy, is its greatest shortcoming. Homepages, email, and message postings evaporate faster than newspaper pulp in this electronic world. At least with newspapers and other artifacts, there is an effort to save them. But as servers close down or move, homepages change and email is deleted, everything we create here will disappear.
So what is needed is some museum or library of the internet. It should save both in hardcopy and on servers, samples of first homepages and other content of the net deemed important. It will be a huge undertaking, but so were real museums and libraries.
New Zeitgeist, new world-view needed for 'it'
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
I agree. Watching it in action on ABC, I didn't have a word for it, except it looked 21st Century and needs a new vocabulary. That may explain why they call it 'it'. It certainly isn't a scooter, it's not a bike, it's not skates, it's not a motorcycle. But just as when the automobile came out, it is way beyond what it looks like and will have social ramifications.
For whatever it is, I think everyone, or at least a lot of people will want one. I sure do. It looks fun, it looks practical, and it looks like something people will use 8 or 9 months a year in most parts of the country. It seems to be an extention of the persons body and is able to handle water in the street and it looks so sturdy I may want to test it in snow!
It's an ironic situation that the people (myself included) who are cheering any success Linux has with IBM, also cheered the past day the micro-computer came home to hopefully free us from the tyranny and centralized power of the main-frames from IBM, and the blue suits, the corporate mentality, and the whole IBM philosophy.
It's incredible that Microsoft has fowled up things so badly that it causes us to cheer the success of our former adversary.
Long live IBM and Linux!!
Damn. This old hippie can't believe he just said that.
I think there is some confusion by the guy seeking the books or stories with first references to ideas of invention.
Just because they thought of the idea first, doesn't mean that the scientists or engineers who implemented that idea, ever read or were influenced by the writer.
I think what the student is attempting to research is based on faulty logic.
... buying a second hand laptop from ebay for about $150 and downloading all your music to it. It has the advantage of being dedicated solely to the one task, and you can use your favorite player software for the job and you got a big screen for you playlists. Then just plug the headphone outlets into your home stereo.
I agree with you tweakt about the expense.
Having all my music library on my main desktop harddrive, at first I thought was a great idea. Except...even with almost a gigahertz processor, I still get interrupts and burping on the music when doing multi-tasking or gaming or even just browsing the net. I don't know whether these new network devices would solve the problem. I think my solution is better.
Or perhaps the new Archos portable jukeboxes with 6 gig or 20 gig hds. But at $300 and their tiny playlist screen, I don't they are a home stereo system solution.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons as buttons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons as buttons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
And not only that! But does the work, changes and 'improvements' being done in the 2.2 tree ever get incorporated in future versions of 2.4.XX or 2.5.XX? And if so does that degrade the stability of earlier versions of 2.4 and 2.5?
I wish I was a moderator today so I can Mod your post way up.
What you said is true too. Although, I would love Linux or OSX to rule the desktop, software development will continue to follow the dollar, and that is in Windows based apps.
Yes!!! Yours is about the only sensible post in this topic today.
It's a product, not a religion.
on
Torvalds Tells All
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh Please!
This is not a religion. It's a product. An invention. Just as people didn't pray to Henry Ford when the model T came out, we don't need to get all 'Brave New World' over Linux.
He already gave you the rights to keep the open source model alive for Linux, the GPL. Even if he retired to a desert island tomorrow, Linux will live on.
What more do you want? If you want Linux to be better, then improve it yourself. That's what the GPL is for.
Even though Slashdot is mainly a forum of technology, linux, PCs, networks, internet, etc it is a forum.
And I am curious to know what other slashdotters think of the war.
As to my opinion, the response of the civilized world is correct.
Let's see. The terrorists tried to bomb the British subway system, they tried to destroy the Eiffel Tower. They blew up apartment buildings in Russia, killing hundreds. They blew up an American Embassy in Africa, killing hundreds of Africans.
I agree. I see the troubles we have with our Antartic research posts and notice there is no real effort to 'colonize' Antartica. Also, even as brave as mountain climbers are in scaling Everest and K-2, they don't stay in the 'death zone' too long.
So I don't see any Mars Colony soon, since the conditions are worst than Antartica and our mountain summits. Also, since there seems to be nothing of value on Mars, there is no reason to do it, unlike the pioneers who colonized the Americas.
It is unfortunate that Mars is nothing like what the early Science Fiction writers had fantasized, a sparce but liveable planet. It's too dead and unhabitable for our current technology. Long Live Earth!
I remember over the last month or two reports of major switchovers from Windows to Linux because of the licensing thing.
So I tried a Google search on 'Linux installations corporate' and found a good list. Also, if you do a search here in 'older stuff' I'm sure you can find many posts, since anytime even when a medium size company switches over, someone reports it.
But this was a good reference which contained a list of case studies of businesses that switched to linux.
'The Warmth' lacking in digital audio is more than an illusion. Early critics of CD Audio said that the sampling rates of CDs was too low to adaquately pick up the whole sound field. Also, the arbitrary cut-off of 20,000 at the high end cause many people to believe that high end sounds often sound artificial.
So I agree that current standards for digital sound recording on DVD-Audio may solve the problem with 24 bit sampling rate and 96,000 hertz at the high end.
Slashdot Mirror
It does appear that the main driving force competing against Windows and associated applications is from other countries eager to save money. Once they show how it can be done, maybe the beancounters in American companies will follow their lead and take the linux plunge.
According to SCO, if you have a TiVo which uses Linux, you now owe them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use.
heee heeee heeee heeee. Probably the funniest thing I've read in weeks. No way, no how can any of this happen. Thank you slashdot for making my week. Bye SCO.
It's bizarre that it would be the most educated people would be making the first effort to outcast GM people in our 21st century world.
Our ISP got a solution a couple of weeks ago. It's a company called Postini which filters spam. It turned my email from a worthless trough of spam (60 to 80 junk mail daily) to the 10 or 12 messages I want to see every day.
so I don't mind seeing a story that I might've missed. The people that complain about duplicate stories need to read the stories that interest them instead of worrying about repeat posts. Especially stories that are newsworthy or have 'legs', they can run them all week for all I care.
My experiences mirrored many who worked in both worlds, except I got out of IT. I too got tired of the cubicle life, working from dawn to dusk, getting high blood pressure, overweight and stressed. After 8 years in the IT world and seeing my life totally stressed and out-of-control I finally got out after my last layoff.
I am now in a factory job, in a UAW plant, my weight and blood pressure under control with no stress. I make less money, but now I enjoy my free time including my bike riding again. The one thing I do remember about my IT time was that I did have some money, but I couldn't enjoy it since I spent all my time working and my free time stressed out thinking about work.
It's a shame that the technology that is empowering the country is also hurting the knowledge workers that drive it.
Seeing video being able to go to HDs in decent quality has upped my standard as to whats acceptable for my MP3 Jukebox. Before with the high cost of harddrives, most of my saved songs were ripped with 128. But once I hooked my second PC to my stereo, to act as my sole method of listening to recorded music, I was disappointed by the quality of some songs at 128. So now, with cheaper HD prices, I will have to re-rip my collection at 160 or 192 or maybe even 256.
I too think he is missing consumer demand.
For example, the success of MP3 has created a demand for component sized quiet PC boxes that can output to a TV using a remote control instead of a mouse. I believe some manufacturer will come to the market with this black or chrome box this year (or at least I hope they do.)
Because right now all the talk I hear is people creating their own boxes, or hacking old boxes or using laptops for such a device. The hunger is there for such a consumer box. It's one of those undercurrents that the people in the boardrooms are missing.
Such as P2P. It will still be strong and people will still want it cheap, and if RIAA shutsdown others, more will take their place.
I believe Linux will get bigger, maybe not in the US, but in the rest of the world which is seeking cheaper solutions for office and consumer PCs.
The sad thing is that media companies and manufacturers are always spending huge bucks trying to find what it is that people want. Why don't they just look around or ask them?
The advantage of the internet, its immediacy, is its greatest shortcoming. Homepages, email, and message postings evaporate faster than newspaper pulp in this electronic world. At least with newspapers and other artifacts, there is an effort to save them. But as servers close down or move, homepages change and email is deleted, everything we create here will disappear.
So what is needed is some museum or library of the internet. It should save both in hardcopy and on servers, samples of first homepages and other content of the net deemed important. It will be a huge undertaking, but so were real museums and libraries.
I agree. Watching it in action on ABC, I didn't have a word for it, except it looked 21st Century and needs a new vocabulary. That may explain why they call it 'it'. It certainly isn't a scooter, it's not a bike, it's not skates, it's not a motorcycle. But just as when the automobile came out, it is way beyond what it looks like and will have social ramifications.
For whatever it is, I think everyone, or at least a lot of people will want one. I sure do. It looks fun, it looks practical, and it looks like something people will use 8 or 9 months a year in most parts of the country. It seems to be an extention of the persons body and is able to handle water in the street and it looks so sturdy I may want to test it in snow!
AT&T still there just like in the movie 2001.
Remember the famous videophone scene with the girls birthday, demonstrating bandwidth and video capabilities from space?
It's good to see if the newcomers can't handle the load that the old reliable is still there.
I hope they and the former Bells don't abuse their almost monopoly positions.
It's an ironic situation that the people (myself included) who are cheering any success Linux has with IBM, also cheered the past day the micro-computer came home to hopefully free us from the tyranny and centralized power of the main-frames from IBM, and the blue suits, the corporate mentality, and the whole IBM philosophy.
It's incredible that Microsoft has fowled up things so badly that it causes us to cheer the success of our former adversary.
Long live IBM and Linux!!
Damn. This old hippie can't believe he just said that.
I think there is some confusion by the guy seeking the books or stories with first references to ideas of invention.
Just because they thought of the idea first, doesn't mean that the scientists or engineers who implemented that idea, ever read or were influenced by the writer.
I think what the student is attempting to research is based on faulty logic.
... buying a second hand laptop from ebay for about $150 and downloading all your music to it. It has the advantage of being dedicated solely to the one task, and you can use your favorite player software for the job and you got a big screen for you playlists. Then just plug the headphone outlets into your home stereo.
I agree with you tweakt about the expense.
Having all my music library on my main desktop harddrive, at first I thought was a great idea. Except...even with almost a gigahertz processor, I still get interrupts and burping on the music when doing multi-tasking or gaming or even just browsing the net. I don't know whether these new network devices would solve the problem. I think my solution is better.
Or perhaps the new Archos portable jukeboxes with 6 gig or 20 gig hds. But at $300 and their tiny playlist screen, I don't they are a home stereo system solution.
I agree. Enterprise is about the only show I look forward to every week. As for the score, it fits the series fine.
As for Andromeda... ehhh! It's OK. It's just that it takes place so far in the future, it's difficult to identify with the characters.
What I like about Enterprise, is that I feel the crew are tomorrow's astronauts. They seem real.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons as buttons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons as buttons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
And not only that! But does the work, changes and 'improvements' being done in the 2.2 tree ever get incorporated in future versions of 2.4.XX or 2.5.XX? And if so does that degrade the stability of earlier versions of 2.4 and 2.5?
LOL! Funniest Post I read all day!
I wish I was a moderator today so I can Mod your post way up.
What you said is true too. Although, I would love Linux or OSX to rule the desktop, software development will continue to follow the dollar, and that is in Windows based apps.
Yes!!! Yours is about the only sensible post in this topic today.
Oh Please!
This is not a religion. It's a product. An invention. Just as people didn't pray to Henry Ford when the model T came out, we don't need to get all 'Brave New World' over Linux.
He already gave you the rights to keep the open source model alive for Linux, the GPL. Even if he retired to a desert island tomorrow, Linux will live on.
What more do you want? If you want Linux to be better, then improve it yourself. That's what the GPL is for.
I agree with Aiee.
Even though Slashdot is mainly a forum of technology, linux, PCs, networks, internet, etc it is a forum.
And I am curious to know what other slashdotters think of the war.
As to my opinion, the response of the civilized world is correct.
Let's see. The terrorists tried to bomb the British subway system, they tried to destroy the Eiffel Tower. They blew up apartment buildings in Russia, killing hundreds. They blew up an American Embassy in Africa, killing hundreds of Africans.
And that was all before September 11th.
So I don't see any Mars Colony soon, since the conditions are worst than Antartica and our mountain summits. Also, since there seems to be nothing of value on Mars, there is no reason to do it, unlike the pioneers who colonized the Americas.
It is unfortunate that Mars is nothing like what the early Science Fiction writers had fantasized, a sparce but liveable planet. It's too dead and unhabitable for our current technology. Long Live Earth!
So I tried a Google search on 'Linux installations corporate' and found a good list. Also, if you do a search here in 'older stuff' I'm sure you can find many posts, since anytime even when a medium size company switches over, someone reports it.
But this was a good reference which contained a list of case studies of businesses that switched to linux.
http://www.bynari.com/collateral/case_studies.html
Linas.org also provided an incredible study of Linux Enterprise Computing.
http://linas.org/linux/
So I agree that current standards for digital sound recording on DVD-Audio may solve the problem with 24 bit sampling rate and 96,000 hertz at the high end.