Re:Wow (the risk of over-commercialization)
on
Red Hat IPO Details
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· Score: 1
I would think that the risk of a community backlash would be obvious to anyone who regularly reads Slashdot comments. I'll bet RH would hate to "forget" that risk only to later be presented with pages of slashdot "backlash" example comments that predate the IPO.
I've ran Slackware and, sometimes, Debian for almost 4 years. I still run Slackware on my desktop machine -- but I will probably switch to Red Hat sometime this year. (disclaimer: I do have a server that has been running RH for about a week.)
RH, as a company, are bringing a lot of good to the Linux world, three examples of which are noted above. Their distribution is unencumbered by licensing exceptions -- we can all go make our own distributions based on RH.
I think all this RH bashing boils down mostly to vague concerns, paranoia, and, in some cases, maybe even a little resentment, about Red Hat's phenomenal success.
I challenge those of you who are so critical of RH to describe a business plan that would allow a company to bring as much good to the Linux world as RH while remaining pure to your ideals. Please show your work, including a practical definition of your ideals. If you feel no such plan is possible, just check the conscientious objector/socialist box.;)
Even if they keep it open they can do a great deal of damage by implementing MS Windows-specific functions. That would fragment Perl and introduce much confusion into even the usage of the term, "Perl". Would even the GPL protect against this kind of "embrace and extend" strategy? I think not.
Re:what the heck? ... nontechnical?
on
35mm Handbook
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· Score: 1
Have you ever tried to take a nice, solid, properly exposed photograph of a computer screen? Let me assure you, as someone with hundreds of kodachrome slides of my early computer art, it can get kinda technical!;)
The article, while pointing out that IBM's software take was in the range of 14% of total revenue, didn't mention that a huge percentage of IBM's software sales are in the licensing of software for 390 mainframes, AS/400's, RS/6000's, and SP2's. They have *very* little to lose in pulling the desktop and small server software rug from under Micros~1.
How relevant will the results of the research be to the rapidly changing, chaotic rules of cyberspace? I can only hope that it will provide insights in time to make use of them rather than point out patterns and trends that are obvious by the time they are published.
While it might be a little premature to say the open source magic is working in this case, I doubt it can hurt.
Leave Freecell too! (do they even bundle freecell in win9x?) It was in my NT 3.1 beta all those years ago and I loved it. It was the only thing I liked about NT -- until I turned the CD's into coasters.
Re:AI? I don't think so... maybe it is, maybe not
on
NASA and AI Testing
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· Score: 1
An "expert system" could accomplish the tasks of their agent, as could a genuinely "intelligent" agent. The real answer as to whether it is AI or not has to do with the design of the code.
The similarities between the discoveries of modern science and the beliefs of Eastern mysticism might be explained as follows.
Even if you believe, as I do, that careful science is the most reliable approach to rooting out subtle truths, you still might not think it to be the most efficient. Intelligent and careful observation, something that people have been capable of from the beginnings of our species, will find a reasonable theory most of the time -- and sometimes quickly. In those cases where the belief is both wrong and important, a reality check will soon stimulate a new theory.
People are resourceful seekers of truth and will use whatever evidence available to them in their quest. It hardly seems surprising that widely ranging methods will frequently converge on similar models of reality, especially where there is at least minimal feedback.
Their news section claims that they handled 20,000 registrations in July, 1998. Their news items date back to January, 1998. What's the deal between them "going live" yesterday, and having spent a year and a half handling registrations?
Re:Am I missing something? (I'm missing it too :)
on
Linux is Not Red Hat
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· Score: 1
For support reasons, a first release of a product "specific" to the dominant distribution makes sense to me. They have some serious cost considerations and have to work within their limited resources.
Only if the product were deliberately crippled to work *only* on RH would this resemble MS tactics. As it is, it may work just fine with any distribution that the user is willing to support himself.
And, lacking evidence to the contrary, I wouldn't assume that RH had anything to do with this "exclusive" arrangement. I, for one, have not noticed any such anti-social pattern in RH's behavior.
Well, how many alternatives are there for dual 620 MHz PIII performance (to run NT -- ugh) at any reasonable price? I think the price penalty for production machines competitive with this overcooled baby is higher than you may think!
Agreed. "Bootlegging" is more accurate. However, the hypemeisters prefer the misleading term, "piracy", perhaps because of the connotations of violence.
"We don't want to be barred from using a pipe just because someone else owns it." -Prodigy spokesman Marc Jacobson.
While the details of such a case are complex and take into account government-enforced monopoly, I just hate it that a _spokesman_ for anything feels the climate of the country allows him to make such a statement without caveat.
Re:Ok, it's official. linuxhq has been /.'ed.
on
The Two LinuxHQs?
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· Score: 1
From my 10Mbps link, I was stuck at 76% of 13K for about 7 minutes. After 7 minutes, I got the page. With transfers that slow, they'll get a process table overflow before the day is out unless they have a *really* big process table.
...with deleted blocks of text in them that the authors thought better of. Unfortunately for them, a keyword filter will not honor the MS Word format and will not care that the offending text was "deleted". Perhaps a more efficient and less embarassing solution to this particular problem would be to just ban MS Word document files.
I can't get a cable modem, ADSL, or even ISDN here. We have enough fiber running through this town to light up a hockey rink and I'm still stuck with a 33.6 modem. The next time I move, I'm going to carefully research the connectivity options first!
Recently, media usage of the word "hacker" -- in the traditional sense -- has started to appear. I've seen several articles about Alan Cox, Linus, etc, where hacker was used correctly. This trend can only grow with the expansion of open source software. I think we should continue to use the term hacker just like we always have and see how far the open source wave will take us and our terminology.
To give Corel the benefit of the doubt...
on
Corel Linux FAQ
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· Score: 1
The charge of bundling only makes sense when applied to a monopoly. A company like Corel has no leverage to use bundling coercively like Micros~1 routinely does.
As for them not opening their application source code, maybe their claim to not owning all the IP in those products is honest. Is there some evidence to the contrary?
2 terabits per (second?) is uh, cool... but is there going to be switching technology that will let such a channel be shared in the next decade? If it can only be used in gigabit-sized frames, it's not nearly as useful. Does anybody know what the current state of the art is in switching and routing latency?
Meanwhile, we can all hope aliens will drop by with an "indistinguisable from magic" solution to the last mile problem.;)
In addition to the obvious potential problems with the DOJ, there will be some people who see investments in an up-and-coming competitor as MS hedging their bets.
A company that relies on a compatibility-based monopoly should be *very* careful to avoid undermining confidence in the permanence of said monopoly!
(a) to state that it will take 100-120 years to make the process feasible implies that the process works and is well-understood, and...
(b) that the whole point of research is to learn something new, which may well result in a dramatically shorter time to reach a usable technology, and...
(c) that the potential reward is so huge that the expected value of a real success would be very high even with a very low probability of a quick success.
Slashdot Mirror
I would think that the risk of a community backlash would be obvious to anyone who regularly reads Slashdot comments. I'll bet RH would hate to "forget" that risk only to later be presented with pages of slashdot "backlash" example comments that predate the IPO.
I've ran Slackware and, sometimes, Debian for almost 4 years. I still run Slackware on my desktop machine -- but I will probably switch to Red Hat sometime this year. (disclaimer: I do have a server that has been running RH for about a week.)
;)
RH, as a company, are bringing a lot of good to the Linux world, three examples of which are noted above. Their distribution is unencumbered by licensing exceptions -- we can all go make our own distributions based on RH.
I think all this RH bashing boils down mostly to vague concerns, paranoia, and, in some cases, maybe even a little resentment, about Red Hat's phenomenal success.
I challenge those of you who are so critical of RH to describe a business plan that would allow a company to bring as much good to the Linux world as RH while remaining pure to your ideals. Please show your work, including a practical definition of your ideals. If you feel no such plan is possible, just check the conscientious objector/socialist box.
Even if they keep it open they can do a great deal of damage by implementing MS Windows-specific functions. That would fragment Perl and introduce much confusion into even the usage of the term, "Perl". Would even the GPL protect against this kind of "embrace and extend" strategy? I think not.
Have you ever tried to take a nice, solid, properly exposed photograph of a computer screen? Let me assure you, as someone with hundreds of kodachrome slides of my early computer art, it can get kinda technical! ;)
The article, while pointing out that IBM's software take was in the range of 14% of total revenue, didn't mention that a huge percentage of IBM's software sales are in the licensing of software for 390 mainframes, AS/400's, RS/6000's, and SP2's. They have *very* little to lose in pulling the desktop and small server software rug from under Micros~1.
All I can say is "You go, IBMer's!"
Not to mention the fact that, buried near the bottom of the article, there is a pre-announcement of the upcoming release of Back Orifice 2000.
Do they have a beta program?
How relevant will the results of the research be to the rapidly changing, chaotic rules of cyberspace? I can only hope that it will provide insights in time to make use of them rather than point out patterns and trends that are obvious by the time they are published.
While it might be a little premature to say the open source magic is working in this case, I doubt it can hurt.
Leave Freecell too! (do they even bundle freecell in win9x?) It was in my NT 3.1 beta all those years ago and I loved it. It was the only thing I liked about NT -- until I turned the CD's into coasters.
An "expert system" could accomplish the tasks of their agent, as could a genuinely "intelligent" agent. The real answer as to whether it is AI or not has to do with the design of the code.
The similarities between the discoveries of modern science and the beliefs of Eastern mysticism might be explained as follows.
Even if you believe, as I do, that careful science is the most reliable approach to rooting out subtle truths, you still might not think it to be the most efficient. Intelligent and careful observation, something that people have been capable of from the beginnings of our species, will find a reasonable theory most of the time -- and sometimes quickly. In those cases where the belief is both wrong and important, a reality check will soon stimulate a new theory.
People are resourceful seekers of truth and will use whatever evidence available to them in their quest. It hardly seems surprising that widely ranging methods will frequently converge on similar models of reality, especially where there is at least minimal feedback.
Their news section claims that they handled 20,000 registrations in July, 1998. Their news items date back to January, 1998. What's the deal between them "going live" yesterday, and having spent a year and a half handling registrations?
For support reasons, a first release of a product "specific" to the dominant distribution makes sense to me. They have some serious cost considerations and have to work within their limited resources.
Only if the product were deliberately crippled to work *only* on RH would this resemble MS tactics. As it is, it may work just fine with any distribution that the user is willing to support himself.
And, lacking evidence to the contrary, I wouldn't assume that RH had anything to do with this "exclusive" arrangement. I, for one, have not noticed any such anti-social pattern in RH's behavior.
Well, how many alternatives are there for dual 620 MHz PIII performance (to run NT -- ugh) at any reasonable price? I think the price penalty for production machines competitive with this overcooled baby is higher than you may think!
Agreed. "Bootlegging" is more accurate. However, the hypemeisters prefer the misleading term, "piracy", perhaps because of the connotations of violence.
Exactly. In out haste to flex our new-found power lets not take away other people's fundamental freedoms.
"We don't want to be barred from using a pipe just because someone else owns it." -Prodigy spokesman Marc Jacobson.
While the details of such a case are complex and take into account government-enforced monopoly, I just hate it that a _spokesman_ for anything feels the climate of the country allows him to make such a statement without caveat.
From my 10Mbps link, I was stuck at 76% of 13K for about 7 minutes. After 7 minutes, I got the page. With transfers that slow, they'll get a process table overflow before the day is out unless they have a *really* big process table.
...with deleted blocks of text in them that the authors thought better of. Unfortunately for them, a keyword filter will not honor the MS Word format and will not care that the offending text was "deleted". Perhaps a more efficient and less embarassing solution to this particular problem would be to just ban MS Word document files.
I can't get a cable modem, ADSL, or even ISDN here. We have enough fiber running through this town to light up a hockey rink and I'm still stuck with a 33.6 modem. The next time I move, I'm going to carefully research the connectivity options first!
Just wait til you see what Sony is gonna charge for the first generation SexBot!
Maybe you should to go ahead and volunteer now for their beta-testing program.
Recently, media usage of the word "hacker" -- in the traditional sense -- has started to appear. I've seen several articles about Alan Cox, Linus, etc, where hacker was used correctly. This trend can only grow with the expansion of open source software. I think we should continue to use the term hacker just like we always have and see how far the open source wave will take us and our terminology.
The charge of bundling only makes sense when applied to a monopoly. A company like Corel has no leverage to use bundling coercively like Micros~1 routinely does.
As for them not opening their application source code, maybe their claim to not owning all the IP in those products is honest. Is there some evidence to the contrary?
2 terabits per (second?) is uh, cool... but is there going to be switching technology that will let such a channel be shared in the next decade? If it can only be used in gigabit-sized frames, it's not nearly as useful. Does anybody know what the current state of the art is in switching and routing latency?
;)
Meanwhile, we can all hope aliens will drop by with an "indistinguisable from magic" solution to the last mile problem.
In addition to the obvious potential problems with the DOJ, there will be some people who see investments in an up-and-coming competitor as MS hedging their bets.
A company that relies on a compatibility-based monopoly should be *very* careful to avoid undermining confidence in the permanence of said monopoly!
might point out that:
(a) to state that it will take 100-120 years to make the process feasible implies that the process works and is well-understood, and...
(b) that the whole point of research is to learn something new, which may well result in a dramatically shorter time to reach a usable technology, and...
(c) that the potential reward is so huge that the expected value of a real success would be very high even with a very low probability of a quick success.