"It strikes me ironic that he's complaining about getting a pre-overclocked processor"
Personally, I'd be furious. There most definitely is a difference in price (otherwise why were the changes made in the first place?), and it's not just money he's concerned with.
If you're overclocking a processor, there's only so high you can go. With a 650 he's not going to clock it as high as a 700. It's probably already running hotter than it should. This guy wants reliability from this processor, NOT to be told someone's clocked it for him already.
This has happened to Compaq products recently here in the UK - although this hasn't been Compaq's fault. What's worrying is that dodgy kit was supplied by reputable authorised Compaq dealers. The kit appears to function at first, but then servers starting having crashes with unusual stop errors.
It appears these Athlons work when installed, although there must be hundreds of Athlon users taking a second look at their processors right now.
The front and back of each car should have infra-red ports. Front for transmitting and back for receiving. Then the Voice-over-IrDA should be used for 'Get out of my way', 'Stupid cow' or 'Dude, your foglights are really starting to **** me off'. This chain of insults, where nobody can actually talk back would cause everybody to drive faster to get out of range, and then I could get home quicker each evening.
Nobody complains about software not being open-source when Loki ports Civilisation, RT2 or Quake3 - why should games be different to graphics software?
Fact of life: not every little software house in the world can afford to give everything away. And if you really need the tool, you're going to pay for it. Some people think *EVERYTHING* about Linux *MUST* be free - news flash to those people - it actually costs somebody something to get it out there. For example, I'm paying for web-hosting to get SCREEM out to people who appreciate it, at no charge to the users.
In the case of Photogenics, it seems the UI is the attraction over the GIMP, and if somebody decides they need it - and they're willing to pay for it - are you going to make this Linux newbie feel unwelcome?
Mucho respect to Jordan Pollack. He has obviously spent a lot of time and thought responding to these questions - and the number of links!
The way he has answered these q's shows he has respect for the geek community, and in particular has done Slashdot a service by providing some quality content (not that we don't get it normally), but makes a better interview than some special guests in the past (recalling one nutter who refused to reply properly).
"At a risk of being called sexist, ageist and French, if you put multimedia, a leather skirt and lipstick on a grandmother and take her to a nightclub, she's still not going to get lucky." - Jean-Louis Gasse
All the portable mp3 players I've seen have been 32mb standard, usually with a 64mb upgrade doubling the cost of the unit. Where's the storage?
From all the stats I've seen (and I *KNOW* you guys are going to correct me) this only works out as storing 1 album. I'm not being pesimistic, I actually want one, but I'm not shelling out for something that's not going to play more music than an old cassette walkman. Cost versus functions.
Laptops are getting smaller, palmtops are getting cooler, it makes more sense to buy one of these and a cheap set of 'phones.
Now if most mp3 players were around 250mb, and the same price region... then they'd shift a few more, and we might be able to scrap the old cassette technology for good.
had his cd copy land on his desk this morning - raises doubts to the rumours of 'show-stopping bug code'. He immediately picked up the phone and started telling his friends how good it was.
there were pencils. Pencils introduced you to the concepts of hand-eye co-ordination when the PlayStation was being used by someone else. Pencils also introduced you to the concept of the 'delete' key.
Next you moved onto pens. Pens were an important lesson in your development. Pens showed you what would happen if you made a mistake and then submitted before previewing. They also made it possible to buy computer stuff from old-fashioned shops that still required a permanent signature.
To prepare yourselves for the next stage in your upbringing, you would have been introduced to Mr Mouse. Mr Mouse taught you that the GUI is your friend, and that words are not the only form of communication.
Now you are ready for the keyboard. Most people reach this stage of development around 5 years old (uber-geeks missed out the first two steps of development). You learn that the keyboard can do things faster than the pencil, pen and mouse. Vital lessons about Internet use are learned with the keyboard - it's quicker to type slashdot.org with your keyboard than it is to click in your history folder with the mouse.
The keyboard also encourages more important sociological ideals - the importance of home. Your home keys represent a starting point for your typing the way 'home' represents a reference and 'safe place' in your life.
So you see, when we have moved onto keyboards, we have reached the very top of the evolutional ladder of development and control - the very pinnacle of inteligent maturity. To try and develop new methods of control would only leads us back down a path that we have all walked in our lives.
Before I start (to avoid flames) may I just say I'm not one of those people who sits under the Microsoft sign. Neither am I one of those people who dogmatically says 'M$ sux, Linux rulez' without looking into both products for myself.
I work in an IT department - the IT department uses NT - therefore I am studying NT - they're paying, that suits me fine. (I'm also playing with Linux and BeOS when I get home). ATM I am currently between NT exams. I've just passed Server, and I'm taking Wks in April.
Now I'm asking myself WHY?!!!
Side one:
Why is because we use NT where I work. I have to use it everyday, I need to support it, and to keep my job, I need to try to understand it. We are not going W2K overnight anytime soon without a darned good reason.
Side two:
What's the point in me doing these exams if this qualification is redundant even before I've picked up the cram book? It's obvious M$ are rushing and pushing this product. If all MCSE's are now going to know W2K better than NT4, then of course they're going to use it! But aren't they FORCING an upgrade? Yeah - and it stinks.
Everyone here knows (outside of the betas) that W2K is the new boy in town. It's fresh out of the box and what I'd call completely unproven, yet M$ insist that this is the solution we should all be going for. The first SP isn't even out yet, and already security fixes have appeared the same month as the OS.
I won't waste time ranting - just summarise by saying that if I was paying for it, this little stunt would have stopped me cold dead from buying another M$ course. (Thanks Oprah)
I've noticed a few problems with the leap year here: CA's ArcServe decided to skip the 28th of February and go straight to the 29th a day early, messing all our backup schedules, that and a few wrist-watches miss-reporting the date makes today more scary that the 1st of January.
Perhaps the IT industry could have forwarned about the Leapyear2000 bug (for extra cash, of course).
It's amazing how IBM are turning around their image. In the beginning they were the big monkey in the sky, until their products were seen as too expensive for what they were.
Since they've adopted Linux (and made other changes), it seems they've gone from Big White Box makers to trendy gear for the web-generation - the kind of transformation Microsoft would love to have made about three years ago.
IBM have definitely changed their targets - they started the desktop PC revolution but have turned their backs on that in favour of mid-range servers . Now they're capitalising on the popularity of Linux to sell their stuff - and as long as they bring to it their old reputation of good quality hardware, good luck to them... as long as they don't try to Monopolise!
No, it's not time travel, although that is my hobby.
If you care to read my comment properly you'll see that the article I was referring to was A DIFFERENT ARTICLE about the SAME BLOOR RESEARCH REPORT.
It was from the Computer Weekly magazine website, and was published many, many months ago. The article in the main story may well be new, but it's old news.
I submitted this as a Slashdot story about a year ago, alongside a different computer journal article from people that actually got fresh news, rather than dead meat.
Possibly why the story was rejected then was because Bloor Research could have said *ANYTHING* about Linux - you have to pay to read the report. Other institutions (VNU Labs, Ziff Davis) have produced just as important research, made it freely available through various media formats, and are probably as reputable, if not MORE reputable, than Bloor Research.
It seems Bloor Research (who heard of them before today) have got more promotion from simply doing ANY report on Linux, than they have created for themselves in the past. Yup, they're just jumping on that old bandwagon.
The current Quicktime contains a really annoying 'register me' message. If it was open sourced, that would be the first thing to disappear.
Gradually the features that Apple tries to flog in the full version would be implemented into Quicktime 'clones', to the point that one day in the future they wouldn't even be compatible.
If all the qt codecs were public knowledge, a certain other company beginning with 'M' would suddenly support it in their Windows Media Player, once again eliminating competition that didn't come ready-installed.
Still, a Linux version of Quicktime is perfectly feasible. Only Apple will never open source it.
This suggestion sounds more like the Seti@Home project - mass distributed computing power used to scan for signals.
The problem with the Seti project is that nothing is ever found. Nobody knows what they're looking for, and nobody knows what would be done if something were found. With a search for the Mars Lander however, everyone knows what the object of the game is. There's millions of quid/bucks worth of serious hardware out of reach for even those at NASA. Imagine the elation in the techno community if we actually found it for them again!
If distributed.net don't take it up, how about a Mars@Home project? I know I'd be one of the first to download.
This is going to be a really great product, and several great products are going to come from this. I can already see how the web-pads can make my daily at-work life much easier.
However a couple of points that the formal talk (which I watched live in its entirety over the webcast) which I felt were missing:
1. Focus on x86 translation. Obviously the technology could be taken much further, but the whole talk focused on just x86 code. What about translating other code?
2. The differences between the two chips weren't made clear (the website helps). From the talk you were left wondering, 'Why would I want anything less than the 700mhz chip?'.
3. No mention whatsoever of desktop implementation. They made it perfectly clear that they were focusing on mobile products, but what do you call those machines Linus and Taylor were playing Quake on? Light laptops are great, but I still want a desktop machine with ultimate power!
4. Mobile Linux? Isn't Linux meant to be free? There was no mention of how or when we get to find out about the changes/improvements in this new version.
5. How do they propose these webpads get and stay connected all day? Are they preaching wireless lan technology?
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting my grubbly little mits on one of these machines. And now we all know why IBM chose this time to announce its adoption of Linux.
The operating system is free, but it's not open source. I think everyone here should be able to handle this concept.
So where's the fuss? It's a lot free-er than it was this morning, and you will be able to download the latest version when you want. Still not complaining?
Good. So Be isn't open source. That's the *operating system*, but who said you can't have open source software on Be? Who? NOBODY!
Open source is what you make it. Don't want to pay for a BeOS app? Write it. You did it with Linux, now you can do it with BeOS. Go ahead, knock yourselves out.
I liked the look of BeOS back at v4, when cover CD's were bootable. It booted really fast, and the GUI was not only attractive, but quick too.
Then v4.5 bootable CD demo was even better, although no games. At the Linux Expo in London I was severely tempted to buy 4.5 boxed set, the only thing stopping me was cost - so this is brilliant!
I just hope that Be doesn't continue to be passed over, or get the label of 'freebe'.
After several 'incidents' with our paid-for virtual hosting here in the UK, we have started moving several features and replicating downloads over to our unit in SourceForge. So far it's been more reliable than our paid-for webspace, and just as quick, even though it's coming across the water.
One downer is that there's no ftp uploading availability. Instead it allows rsync and scp file transfers. This is done for security benefits. I also need a secure logon to admin our project. Either way this has got the makings of a really impressive service.
This is not a replacement for Freshmeat. It's something different. It's gives a central point for project developers, and also somewhere users can go to discuss project features, bugs, etc with the project maintainers.
In the long-term, I guess VA Linux is going to put more back into the community with SourceForge, than they are with Linux.com.
It's really good news, especially when the feeling toward Red Hat was they were becoming Linux's Microsoft, it shows a bit of the traditional 'open source spirit' we should all encourage (even though they're charging for tech support).
However, as I work in a school (university, actually) and have family in various schools, I think I would be right in saying I expect the take-up of this offer to be very low.
UK schools are very backward towards IT. Recently the Internet has given bigger schools the incentive they need to upgrade and think more seriously about their IT needs, but old habits die hard.
Schools are strapped for cash. The smaller schools and junior schools send out newsletters to tell parents to collect hundreds of vouchers off of detergent packets, just to save up enough to get ONE computer. And even then it's something nobody else wants. Traditionally IT knowledge in schools is a joke. The students always know more than the teachers.
When I was 11, I found I had desperate teachers come crawling on hands and knees, taking me out of lessons, just to help them with something simple on one of the schools three computers. More recently, doing my A-levels, it was the students who implemented the networks (first Linux network in the building) and interest from a physics teacher! The careers department got a brand new (at the time) P133 with two CD-ROM drives, the computer studies department got six 486DX's, without CD drives, striped right down to the bare essentials, without even any cache on the motherboards!!!
Giving away the operating system free may help some schools, especially if Red Hat are sending out standard boxed sets that include manuals. However there's the cost of implementation that's just not an option with schools here.
So the OS is free? It's a shame there's no staff to install it.
Slashdot Mirror
"It strikes me ironic that he's complaining about getting a pre-overclocked processor"
Personally, I'd be furious. There most definitely is a difference in price (otherwise why were the changes made in the first place?), and it's not just money he's concerned with.
If you're overclocking a processor, there's only so high you can go. With a 650 he's not going to clock it as high as a 700. It's probably already running hotter than it should. This guy wants reliability from this processor, NOT to be told someone's clocked it for him already.
This has happened to Compaq products recently here in the UK - although this hasn't been Compaq's fault. What's worrying is that dodgy kit was supplied by reputable authorised Compaq dealers. The kit appears to function at first, but then servers starting having crashes with unusual stop errors.
It appears these Athlons work when installed, although there must be hundreds of Athlon users taking a second look at their processors right now.
The front and back of each car should have infra-red ports. Front for transmitting and back for receiving. Then the Voice-over-IrDA should be used for 'Get out of my way', 'Stupid cow' or 'Dude, your foglights are really starting to **** me off'. This chain of insults, where nobody can actually talk back would cause everybody to drive faster to get out of range, and then I could get home quicker each evening.
Nobody complains about software not being open-source when Loki ports Civilisation, RT2 or Quake3 - why should games be different to graphics software?
Fact of life: not every little software house in the world can afford to give everything away. And if you really need the tool, you're going to pay for it. Some people think *EVERYTHING* about Linux *MUST* be free - news flash to those people - it actually costs somebody something to get it out there. For example, I'm paying for web-hosting to get SCREEM out to people who appreciate it, at no charge to the users.
In the case of Photogenics, it seems the UI is the attraction over the GIMP, and if somebody decides they need it - and they're willing to pay for it - are you going to make this Linux newbie feel unwelcome?
if you want to see the movies on this site, try the following url instead of the link on the main page.
http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/movie s/
The spam that's the hardest to stop is the spam from your provider itself.
They might promise all the security in the world, but they'll still feel free to send you messages about their special offers.
I just know they're gonna', but I can't wait to see the MPAA's legal arguements on this one.
But we don't want to suggest they've got it in for free enterprise, do we?
Mucho respect to Jordan Pollack. He has obviously spent a lot of time and thought responding to these questions - and the number of links!
The way he has answered these q's shows he has respect for the geek community, and in particular has done Slashdot a service by providing some quality content (not that we don't get it normally), but makes a better interview than some special guests in the past (recalling one nutter who refused to reply properly).
"At a risk of being called sexist, ageist and French, if you put multimedia, a leather skirt and lipstick on a grandmother and take her to a nightclub, she's still not going to get lucky."
- Jean-Louis Gasse
NONE OF THEM.
All the portable mp3 players I've seen have been 32mb standard, usually with a 64mb upgrade doubling the cost of the unit. Where's the storage?
From all the stats I've seen (and I *KNOW* you guys are going to correct me) this only works out as storing 1 album. I'm not being pesimistic, I actually want one, but I'm not shelling out for something that's not going to play more music than an old cassette walkman. Cost versus functions.
Laptops are getting smaller, palmtops are getting cooler, it makes more sense to buy one of these and a cheap set of 'phones.
Now if most mp3 players were around 250mb, and the same price region... then they'd shift a few more, and we might be able to scrap the old cassette technology for good.
(dismounting my soapbox now)
had his cd copy land on his desk this morning - raises doubts to the rumours of 'show-stopping bug code'. He immediately picked up the phone and started telling his friends how good it was.
there were pencils. Pencils introduced you to the concepts of hand-eye co-ordination when the PlayStation was being used by someone else. Pencils also introduced you to the concept of the 'delete' key.
Next you moved onto pens. Pens were an important lesson in your development. Pens showed you what would happen if you made a mistake and then submitted before previewing. They also made it possible to buy computer stuff from old-fashioned shops that still required a permanent signature.
To prepare yourselves for the next stage in your upbringing, you would have been introduced to Mr Mouse. Mr Mouse taught you that the GUI is your friend, and that words are not the only form of communication.
Now you are ready for the keyboard. Most people reach this stage of development around 5 years old (uber-geeks missed out the first two steps of development). You learn that the keyboard can do things faster than the pencil, pen and mouse. Vital lessons about Internet use are learned with the keyboard - it's quicker to type slashdot.org with your keyboard than it is to click in your history folder with the mouse.
The keyboard also encourages more important sociological ideals - the importance of home. Your home keys represent a starting point for your typing the way 'home' represents a reference and 'safe place' in your life.
So you see, when we have moved onto keyboards, we have reached the very top of the evolutional ladder of development and control - the very pinnacle of inteligent maturity. To try and develop new methods of control would only leads us back down a path that we have all walked in our lives.
Why would I go back to handwriting? I haven't done it in years!
If I can't read it, how's a computer gonna manage?
Before I start (to avoid flames) may I just say I'm not one of those people who sits under the Microsoft sign. Neither am I one of those people who dogmatically says 'M$ sux, Linux rulez' without looking into both products for myself.
I work in an IT department - the IT department uses NT - therefore I am studying NT - they're paying, that suits me fine. (I'm also playing with Linux and BeOS when I get home). ATM I am currently between NT exams. I've just passed Server, and I'm taking Wks in April.
Now I'm asking myself WHY?!!!
Side one:
Why is because we use NT where I work. I have to use it everyday, I need to support it, and to keep my job, I need to try to understand it. We are not going W2K overnight anytime soon without a darned good reason.
Side two:
What's the point in me doing these exams if this qualification is redundant even before I've picked up the cram book? It's obvious M$ are rushing and pushing this product. If all MCSE's are now going to know W2K better than NT4, then of course they're going to use it! But aren't they FORCING an upgrade? Yeah - and it stinks.
Everyone here knows (outside of the betas) that W2K is the new boy in town. It's fresh out of the box and what I'd call completely unproven, yet M$ insist that this is the solution we should all be going for. The first SP isn't even out yet, and already security fixes have appeared the same month as the OS.
I won't waste time ranting - just summarise by saying that if I was paying for it, this little stunt would have stopped me cold dead from buying another M$ course. (Thanks Oprah)
I've noticed a few problems with the leap year here: CA's ArcServe decided to skip the 28th of February and go straight to the 29th a day early, messing all our backup schedules, that and a few wrist-watches miss-reporting the date makes today more scary that the 1st of January.
Perhaps the IT industry could have forwarned about the Leapyear2000 bug (for extra cash, of course).
It's amazing how IBM are turning around their image. In the beginning they were the big monkey in the sky, until their products were seen as too expensive for what they were.
Since they've adopted Linux (and made other changes), it seems they've gone from Big White Box makers to trendy gear for the web-generation - the kind of transformation Microsoft would love to have made about three years ago.
IBM have definitely changed their targets - they started the desktop PC revolution but have turned their backs on that in favour of mid-range servers . Now they're capitalising on the popularity of Linux to sell their stuff - and as long as they bring to it their old reputation of good quality hardware, good luck to them... as long as they don't try to Monopolise!
No, it's not time travel, although that is my hobby.
If you care to read my comment properly you'll see that the article I was referring to was A DIFFERENT ARTICLE about the SAME BLOOR RESEARCH REPORT.
It was from the Computer Weekly magazine website, and was published many, many months ago. The article in the main story may well be new, but it's old news.
I submitted this as a Slashdot story about a year ago, alongside a different computer journal article from people that actually got fresh news, rather than dead meat.
Possibly why the story was rejected then was because Bloor Research could have said *ANYTHING* about Linux - you have to pay to read the report. Other institutions (VNU Labs, Ziff Davis) have produced just as important research, made it freely available through various media formats, and are probably as reputable, if not MORE reputable, than Bloor Research.
It seems Bloor Research (who heard of them before today) have got more promotion from simply doing ANY report on Linux, than they have created for themselves in the past. Yup, they're just jumping on that old bandwagon.
Usenet doesn't have the eyecandy, or the moderated control of Slashdot. I'd rather be here in the safe confines of a page-based community.
The current Quicktime contains a really annoying 'register me' message. If it was open sourced, that would be the first thing to disappear.
Gradually the features that Apple tries to flog in the full version would be implemented into Quicktime 'clones', to the point that one day in the future they wouldn't even be compatible.
If all the qt codecs were public knowledge, a certain other company beginning with 'M' would suddenly support it in their Windows Media Player, once again eliminating competition that didn't come ready-installed.
Still, a Linux version of Quicktime is perfectly feasible. Only Apple will never open source it.
This suggestion sounds more like the Seti@Home project - mass distributed computing power used to scan for signals.
The problem with the Seti project is that nothing is ever found. Nobody knows what they're looking for, and nobody knows what would be done if something were found. With a search for the Mars Lander however, everyone knows what the object of the game is. There's millions of quid/bucks worth of serious hardware out of reach for even those at NASA. Imagine the elation in the techno community if we actually found it for them again!
If distributed.net don't take it up, how about a Mars@Home project? I know I'd be one of the first to download.
This is going to be a really great product, and several great products are going to come from this. I can already see how the web-pads can make my daily at-work life much easier.
However a couple of points that the formal talk (which I watched live in its entirety over the webcast) which I felt were missing:
1. Focus on x86 translation. Obviously the technology could be taken much further, but the whole talk focused on just x86 code. What about translating other code?
2. The differences between the two chips weren't made clear (the website helps). From the talk you were left wondering, 'Why would I want anything less than the 700mhz chip?'.
3. No mention whatsoever of desktop implementation. They made it perfectly clear that they were focusing on mobile products, but what do you call those machines Linus and Taylor were playing Quake on? Light laptops are great, but I still want a desktop machine with ultimate power!
4. Mobile Linux? Isn't Linux meant to be free? There was no mention of how or when we get to find out about the changes/improvements in this new version.
5. How do they propose these webpads get and stay connected all day? Are they preaching wireless lan technology?
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting my grubbly little mits on one of these machines. And now we all know why IBM chose this time to announce its adoption of Linux.
The operating system is free, but it's not open source. I think everyone here should be able to handle this concept.
So where's the fuss? It's a lot free-er than it was this morning, and you will be able to download the latest version when you want. Still not complaining?
Good. So Be isn't open source. That's the *operating system*, but who said you can't have open source software on Be? Who? NOBODY!
Open source is what you make it. Don't want to pay for a BeOS app? Write it. You did it with Linux, now you can do it with BeOS. Go ahead, knock yourselves out.
I liked the look of BeOS back at v4, when cover CD's were bootable. It booted really fast, and the GUI was not only attractive, but quick too.
Then v4.5 bootable CD demo was even better, although no games. At the Linux Expo in London I was severely tempted to buy 4.5 boxed set, the only thing stopping me was cost - so this is brilliant!
I just hope that Be doesn't continue to be passed over, or get the label of 'freebe'.
After several 'incidents' with our paid-for virtual hosting here in the UK, we have started moving several features and replicating downloads over to our unit in SourceForge. So far it's been more reliable than our paid-for webspace, and just as quick, even though it's coming across the water.
One downer is that there's no ftp uploading availability. Instead it allows rsync and scp file transfers. This is done for security benefits. I also need a secure logon to admin our project. Either way this has got the makings of a really impressive service.
This is not a replacement for Freshmeat. It's something different. It's gives a central point for project developers, and also somewhere users can go to discuss project features, bugs, etc with the project maintainers.
In the long-term, I guess VA Linux is going to put more back into the community with SourceForge, than they are with Linux.com.
I just hope it stays free!
It's really good news, especially when the feeling toward Red Hat was they were becoming Linux's Microsoft, it shows a bit of the traditional 'open source spirit' we should all encourage (even though they're charging for tech support).
However, as I work in a school (university, actually) and have family in various schools, I think I would be right in saying I expect the take-up of this offer to be very low.
UK schools are very backward towards IT. Recently the Internet has given bigger schools the incentive they need to upgrade and think more seriously about their IT needs, but old habits die hard.
Schools are strapped for cash. The smaller schools and junior schools send out newsletters to tell parents to collect hundreds of vouchers off of detergent packets, just to save up enough to get ONE computer. And even then it's something nobody else wants. Traditionally IT knowledge in schools is a joke. The students always know more than the teachers.
When I was 11, I found I had desperate teachers come crawling on hands and knees, taking me out of lessons, just to help them with something simple on one of the schools three computers. More recently, doing my A-levels, it was the students who implemented the networks (first Linux network in the building) and interest from a physics teacher! The careers department got a brand new (at the time) P133 with two CD-ROM drives, the computer studies department got six 486DX's, without CD drives, striped right down to the bare essentials, without even any cache on the motherboards!!!
Giving away the operating system free may help some schools, especially if Red Hat are sending out standard boxed sets that include manuals. However there's the cost of implementation that's just not an option with schools here.
So the OS is free? It's a shame there's no staff to install it.