Perhaps you didn't live through Windows NT which helped make the BSOD famous specifically by trusting shitty video (etc...) drivers. You REALLY don't want to be going there.
Well, they should bugger off then. There are at least five other platforms with closed drivers I can think of off the top of my head, three of them mobile. Linux is the only GPLed platform, and that is it's competitive advantage. If that even means forgoing nVidia drivers then so be it.
The nVidia guys should stop being freeloaders on a GPL platform. There are BSD kernels out there, not to mention windows mobile (if you want an actual existing mobile platform). Linux is popular amongst the people doing actual FOSS development for a reason, and that reason is the GPL.
Hey, wha... what? They've got a bunch of coders just waiting to help them, and yet they want to sit in their proprietary gheto... and not only that, they want to force the kernel developers to forgo developing better ways of doing things just so they can keep on with their brittle and consumer-unfriendly way of doing things. I suppose change IS scarey, even if it's for the better.
Intel 3D is "good enough" now for most purposes including less demanding games. I'd like a stronger graphics solution, but closed drivers is why I didn't buy an NVidia or AMD graphics solution for my last rig. Back in the day I bought a laptop with an ATI chipset because it WAS open (a high end Toshiba Tecra). It survived for six years with no worries about drivers being EOLed. Closed drivers suck... Ubuntu kinda made it work, but not for real geeks - brittle and inflexible, and increasingly not worth the effort. Closed drivers have made Linux a second class citizen on the desktop IMHO, but that doesn't have to be the case anymore. It's a shame for those trapped at the higher end though.
Regarding NASA - I doubt that very much. Yes, bureaucracy develops when the creativity that spawns a project leaves and things go into "holding mode" eg. I read what Richard Feynmann had to say Re: his involvement in the whole O-ring fiasco. Creativity CANNOT exist in a bureaucracy unless it's finding ways of getting around the bureaucracy. NASAs early days achieved an awful lot though. I haven't read anything by someone who was at NASA during those days, but I did read Richard Feynmann's experience on the Manhattan Project (also government funded) and that certainly seemed to involve plenty of freewheeling creative fun achieving the "impossible".
I think bureaucratic interference is proportional to how much the bean counters think they understand of what's going on. I also think big companies often don't see R&D as their job anymore... they mostly just buy out the startups and university IP. As a consequence much of the R&D that happens, especially in I.T, does so on a beans-on-toast budget while the big companies are simply bureaucracies sitting on their intellectual property enforced monopolies.
What does Xerox Parc (company funded), the european autodidact scientific pioneers of old (self funded or funded by weathy patrons) and NASA (government funded) have in common? They are environments that let smart people "play" with few constraints. If you're looking for advancement that's how you get it.
Citizens have rights. Even if they're idiots. Even if they're dangerous. Otherwise, if someone wants to see you abandoned in some god-forsaken hole they just point and say "he's an idiot", or more likely "he's dangerous". This is the reason there is process and there are institutions, and why we should all be anxious that they're almost completely eroded in some cases.
I grew up in country Australia, and when there were plenty of grasshoppers the yolks would become a deeper orange. Years later I ate my first battery egg... pale yellow yolk, WTF? Certainly tasted different too. I suppose you could put it all down to freshness though I really don't think so. I've heard European egg producers feed their hens paprika to simulate "country orange". Grass fed beef tastes different to grain fed, and that certainly has nothing to do with freshness. If animals can suffer lacks of nutrients I'm sure they could also have an abundance of certain nutrients too, and I can't imagine plants would be so different.
I'd more or less second this... they can be your fallback position if you come up against time constraints or problems rolling out FOSS stuff, and in this case you can just take your time until you're ready.
I'll second that it isn't difficult especially with some of the Asterisk distros available such as Elastix, but it IS time consuming. You may want a hired gun to help you set it up perhaps.
This is mad for a site purporting to be a site for nerds. Does anybody else here do their own I.T anymore? It's not easy, but it aint rocket science either. I thought nerds were supposed to enjoy getting their hands dirty. Or perhaps too many are behind the ramparts at the big cloud vendors to be consistent.
There may indeed be time constraints, but that simply means you evaluate your FOSS products and outsource support and setup if/when required. Often the company standing behind the product can do this for you, or even do it in the cloud if that's really your bag. In any case you're backing a product that's as safe as any, supports open and cooperative values (in this age of secrecy and paranoia) and gives you CONTROL because when the sh*t hits the fan noone cares as much as you do.
For those who want a FOSS cloud experience at home get someone to install FusionDirectory or GOsa for you. These are GUI's that tie everything together into an LDAP based infrastructure that you can use to deploy and manage clients+servers+services+end user software. This stuff IS a black art that you should probably pay someone else to do for you, though if there are any actual nerds left here it's worth some tinkering... but certainly requires skillz. My preference is FusionDirectory BTW.
These services can be LDAP managed btw :
SOGo, DNS, DHCP, Squid, Asterisk, OPSI, FAI, Zabbix, Kolab, Samba, rsyslog, Zabbix, FAI, OPSI (and much more stuff I haven't looked at yet).
I've managed most of those with LDAP and Fusion Directory and plan on implementing the rest. The management stuff is very nice, but needs real help to make it easier for newbies and/or people who don't want to spend weeks/months learning how to set it up. This job requires high powered nerds... go to #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (IRC) to help out.
Why the bitterness?:) Yes, your seaside community is now a concrete jungle but it just means you need to pull up stumps and move on - the skyscrapers aren't going away. I've spoken in other posts here about creatives retreating again to the fringes (which used to be the entire Internet) and setting up new communities or reviving old ones. Personally I've discovered Diaspora... it's fresh and alive with creative people - I'd forgotten what that looks like. I'm back on IRC after 10 years(!)... there are projects I'm contributing to there, and it's FUN to bounce off people rather than resist the constant drone of shills trying to convince me to outsource being a technology tinkerer.
The creatives are around and strong, just not here so much. They always retreat to the fringes because creativity is like a nuclear reaction - if it gets diluted past a certain critical mass it mostly stops happening. The places I've discovered it online lately have been Diaspora - panned here yesterday because it isn't popular (precisely why it's successful in certain respects), and IRC where I've been interacting with people working on projects I make some small contributions to. The 3D printing community also has a heartbeat and springs out of bed in the morning.
When the shills and the me-too's get tired of mostly talking to themselves Slashdot might get a second life... I would never have thought I'd be back on IRC again either.
It's the switch between dominance of creative contributors/producers thinning to mostly passive consumer masses - something always dies in that translation even though it IS more profitable. A large porportion of creatives generate a living atmosphere. It's like being at a party with a few musicians and guitars being passed around - alive, something that hangs on the air and has breath... a feeling of "something special is happening here". Then there are parties with successful carreer people and the $15,000 sound system... the artist frozen in plastic on the CD tray. Even a live gig isn't quite alive. Sure, the artist can bounce off the crowd, but I know the kind of company the artist will keep when they're off the clock.
The only places I've had this feeling recently online is Diaspora - ironically panned here yesterday for not being "popular" enough, and crusty old IRC where I've recently started interacting with projects I'm making small contributions to.
I'm on Diaspora, and I'm glad it's there. The people are certainly much more eclectic and there are less of them - both plusses in my book.:-P Facebook didn't take off because it was open to everyone initially. It took me a while to score an invite. Still, it doesn't need to be a raging success. It just needs to host interesting creative communities, and to Be There if/when Facebook et. al. have a Chernobyl.
Frankly, when the masses arrive small communities can lose their charm... loss AND gain. Let the people with money on the line do the hairpulling. It's the same with FOSS in general - suits my purposes, and annoys me less. Let the people with insecurities jump through hoops for the stuff with the market share and/or hipster cred... as the years go by the heartbeat in FOSS gets stronger and there's less and less need for anything else IMHO.
Settle down there pardner! This is a war of ideas, not people. The extremes of this debate want to see a "good guys vs bad guys" battle, but the world isn't like that - every individual has good, evil and shades of grey in them, not to mention ideas of all stripes. People can change their minds (if they aren't killed).
The panicroom America has built for itself is a bad bad idea that's just waiting for someone to lock you all in. Perhaps it has already happened, and noone has realised it yet.
The first rule of bureaucracy is that those who actually try to do their job get marginalised, and those that support the bureauocracy even at the expense of the job they're meant to be doing get promoted. The security establishment is a bureaucracy. The persecution of journalists, human rights lawyers and other activists who pose no valid security threat is a manifestation of bureaucratic self protection... and the wider society will certainly see repression when there is a truly broad based grassroots movement against a "surveilance society".
The Assange/Manning thing is a message to those within the bureacracy - you'd better bloody well support the bureaucracy or you're f*cked. There must be a lot of conflicted individuals who can see what's happening right now, but who are trapped inside. We should have sympathy for them. Whistleblowing about this stuff is very dangerous
Unfortunately for Australia we send soldiers to every ill-conceived war to support the global power of the day, and in generally in parts of the world that have nothing to do with us. We've done it for the US, and the British before WWII. As a result we've been at war for perhaps 2/3rds of the time since our founding*. By this measure this actually makes us a significantly more warlike nation than the USA.
The theory behind our military assistance is we can call on the global power of the day to help defend us in times of need. Unfortunately that doesn't work so well. During WWII Britain tried to stop Australian forces from moving from Europe and North Africa back to defend Australia when invasion seemed imminient - consequently the Kokoda Track campaign in New Guinea had to be fought with Australian militias until regular army units could get back. Despite a hard fought victory McArthur disparaged Australian efforts and sidelined Australian forces during the rest of the war - lets say his assessment of Kokoda contrasted significantly to the intelligence he was receiving and subsequent scholarship. McArthur was great at self promotion at the expense of allies, but we were used to that from the British.
I found an interview with a biographer of Prime Minister of Sweden Dr Brian Palmer here (the interview is about 1/3rd the way through). It seems like there is no proof of a Rove/Assange connection, but Karl Rove does have a Swedish background, his only foreign client being the Swedish Moderate Party, and has spend much time in Sweden though there's no evidence that he has spend all of that time with the Moderate Party, though he has spent time with think tanks with ideological connections to them. It is also mentioned that one of the partners in the law firm representing one of the girls in the Assange case assisted in the CIA Extraordinary Rendition and torture from Sweden to Egypt.
Naive? You act like you live in a country that hasn't jailed a potential presidential nominee under Bush's watch on extremely dubious grounds. Watch that video to get a feel for how many other prosecutions have been politically persued and you'll start understanding how corrupted your judiciary was under Bush and continues to be under Obama. Karl Rove, the guy primarily responsible for this politicisation is working for the president of Sweden which is JUST ONE of the many reasons so many are dubious about the prosecution of Assange.
People laughed at Bush. In my country (Australia) people laughed at Joh Bjelke-Petersen until he went from state to federal politics. Luckily he was outmaneuvered in a snap election, then prosecuted... and it was exposed how utterly corrupted the judiciary and virtually every department of government had been. His only mistake had been to stay in state politics long enough for the rest of the country to know how corrupt he was. People had laughted, but we in Australia could have conceivably become a dictatorship. That sounds extreme, but the state police were regularly used to monitor, beat and arrest political opposition, political boundaries were redrawn to bais elections etc... This was in AUSTRALIA... and yet people in other states laughed at the bumbling buffoon and felt smug and superior until their democracy was threatened. That was 30 years ago and has been more or less forgotten.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't aware of the actual issues, and aren't a troll or shill.
Free Software people are certainly anti copyright, at least copyright in it's current form. Given the fact that they haven't managed to have copyright law reformed they've instead hacked copyright law with their license to simulate what life would be like if copyright didn't exist. It has been an effective strategy, and has also made it possible to have people cooperate across the world on all kinds of projects. Given that their hack of copyright law relies on people respecting their license it's obvious why they're angry... they're defending their copyright-free sandpit.
By the way your use of "FOSS" above is incorrect... FOSS = Free and Open Source Software, which is shorthand for two separate movements ie. Free Software movement and Open Source Software movement... I don't believe the OSS guys would have a problem with this kind of thing.
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Perhaps you didn't live through Windows NT which helped make the BSOD famous specifically by trusting shitty video (etc...) drivers. You REALLY don't want to be going there.
Well, they should bugger off then. There are at least five other platforms with closed drivers I can think of off the top of my head, three of them mobile. Linux is the only GPLed platform, and that is it's competitive advantage. If that even means forgoing nVidia drivers then so be it.
eh? Erm, no.
signed
- Linux user since '96
The nVidia guys should stop being freeloaders on a GPL platform. There are BSD kernels out there, not to mention windows mobile (if you want an actual existing mobile platform). Linux is popular amongst the people doing actual FOSS development for a reason, and that reason is the GPL.
Hey, wha... what? They've got a bunch of coders just waiting to help them, and yet they want to sit in their proprietary gheto... and not only that, they want to force the kernel developers to forgo developing better ways of doing things just so they can keep on with their brittle and consumer-unfriendly way of doing things. I suppose change IS scarey, even if it's for the better.
...or didn't pay for... specifically because of the closed drivers. :P
Intel 3D is "good enough" now for most purposes including less demanding games. I'd like a stronger graphics solution, but closed drivers is why I didn't buy an NVidia or AMD graphics solution for my last rig. Back in the day I bought a laptop with an ATI chipset because it WAS open (a high end Toshiba Tecra). It survived for six years with no worries about drivers being EOLed. Closed drivers suck... Ubuntu kinda made it work, but not for real geeks - brittle and inflexible, and increasingly not worth the effort. Closed drivers have made Linux a second class citizen on the desktop IMHO, but that doesn't have to be the case anymore. It's a shame for those trapped at the higher end though.
Regarding NASA - I doubt that very much. Yes, bureaucracy develops when the creativity that spawns a project leaves and things go into "holding mode" eg. I read what Richard Feynmann had to say Re: his involvement in the whole O-ring fiasco. Creativity CANNOT exist in a bureaucracy unless it's finding ways of getting around the bureaucracy. NASAs early days achieved an awful lot though. I haven't read anything by someone who was at NASA during those days, but I did read Richard Feynmann's experience on the Manhattan Project (also government funded) and that certainly seemed to involve plenty of freewheeling creative fun achieving the "impossible".
I think bureaucratic interference is proportional to how much the bean counters think they understand of what's going on. I also think big companies often don't see R&D as their job anymore... they mostly just buy out the startups and university IP. As a consequence much of the R&D that happens, especially in I.T, does so on a beans-on-toast budget while the big companies are simply bureaucracies sitting on their intellectual property enforced monopolies.
What does Xerox Parc (company funded), the european autodidact scientific pioneers of old (self funded or funded by weathy patrons) and NASA (government funded) have in common? They are environments that let smart people "play" with few constraints. If you're looking for advancement that's how you get it.
Citizens have rights. Even if they're idiots. Even if they're dangerous. Otherwise, if someone wants to see you abandoned in some god-forsaken hole they just point and say "he's an idiot", or more likely "he's dangerous". This is the reason there is process and there are institutions, and why we should all be anxious that they're almost completely eroded in some cases.
Northern or southern pike? I don't think the politicians need it though... they already smell fishy enough.
I grew up in country Australia, and when there were plenty of grasshoppers the yolks would become a deeper orange. Years later I ate my first battery egg... pale yellow yolk, WTF? Certainly tasted different too. I suppose you could put it all down to freshness though I really don't think so. I've heard European egg producers feed their hens paprika to simulate "country orange". Grass fed beef tastes different to grain fed, and that certainly has nothing to do with freshness. If animals can suffer lacks of nutrients I'm sure they could also have an abundance of certain nutrients too, and I can't imagine plants would be so different.
I'd more or less second this... they can be your fallback position if you come up against time constraints or problems rolling out FOSS stuff, and in this case you can just take your time until you're ready.
I'll second that it isn't difficult especially with some of the Asterisk distros available such as Elastix, but it IS time consuming. You may want a hired gun to help you set it up perhaps.
This is mad for a site purporting to be a site for nerds. Does anybody else here do their own I.T anymore? It's not easy, but it aint rocket science either. I thought nerds were supposed to enjoy getting their hands dirty. Or perhaps too many are behind the ramparts at the big cloud vendors to be consistent.
There may indeed be time constraints, but that simply means you evaluate your FOSS products and outsource support and setup if/when required. Often the company standing behind the product can do this for you, or even do it in the cloud if that's really your bag. In any case you're backing a product that's as safe as any, supports open and cooperative values (in this age of secrecy and paranoia) and gives you CONTROL because when the sh*t hits the fan noone cares as much as you do.
For those who want a FOSS cloud experience at home get someone to install FusionDirectory or GOsa for you. These are GUI's that tie everything together into an LDAP based infrastructure that you can use to deploy and manage clients+servers+services+end user software. This stuff IS a black art that you should probably pay someone else to do for you, though if there are any actual nerds left here it's worth some tinkering... but certainly requires skillz. My preference is FusionDirectory BTW.
These services can be LDAP managed btw :
SOGo, DNS, DHCP, Squid, Asterisk, OPSI, FAI, Zabbix, Kolab, Samba, rsyslog, Zabbix, FAI, OPSI (and much more stuff I haven't looked at yet).
I've managed most of those with LDAP and Fusion Directory and plan on implementing the rest. The management stuff is very nice, but needs real help to make it easier for newbies and/or people who don't want to spend weeks/months learning how to set it up. This job requires high powered nerds... go to #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (IRC) to help out.
Why the bitterness? :) Yes, your seaside community is now a concrete jungle but it just means you need to pull up stumps and move on - the skyscrapers aren't going away. I've spoken in other posts here about creatives retreating again to the fringes (which used to be the entire Internet) and setting up new communities or reviving old ones. Personally I've discovered Diaspora... it's fresh and alive with creative people - I'd forgotten what that looks like. I'm back on IRC after 10 years(!)... there are projects I'm contributing to there, and it's FUN to bounce off people rather than resist the constant drone of shills trying to convince me to outsource being a technology tinkerer.
The creatives are around and strong, just not here so much. They always retreat to the fringes because creativity is like a nuclear reaction - if it gets diluted past a certain critical mass it mostly stops happening. The places I've discovered it online lately have been Diaspora - panned here yesterday because it isn't popular (precisely why it's successful in certain respects), and IRC where I've been interacting with people working on projects I make some small contributions to. The 3D printing community also has a heartbeat and springs out of bed in the morning.
When the shills and the me-too's get tired of mostly talking to themselves Slashdot might get a second life... I would never have thought I'd be back on IRC again either.
It's the switch between dominance of creative contributors/producers thinning to mostly passive consumer masses - something always dies in that translation even though it IS more profitable. A large porportion of creatives generate a living atmosphere. It's like being at a party with a few musicians and guitars being passed around - alive, something that hangs on the air and has breath... a feeling of "something special is happening here". Then there are parties with successful carreer people and the $15,000 sound system... the artist frozen in plastic on the CD tray. Even a live gig isn't quite alive. Sure, the artist can bounce off the crowd, but I know the kind of company the artist will keep when they're off the clock.
The only places I've had this feeling recently online is Diaspora - ironically panned here yesterday for not being "popular" enough, and crusty old IRC where I've recently started interacting with projects I'm making small contributions to.
I'm on Diaspora, and I'm glad it's there. The people are certainly much more eclectic and there are less of them - both plusses in my book. :-P Facebook didn't take off because it was open to everyone initially. It took me a while to score an invite. Still, it doesn't need to be a raging success. It just needs to host interesting creative communities, and to Be There if/when Facebook et. al. have a Chernobyl.
Frankly, when the masses arrive small communities can lose their charm... loss AND gain. Let the people with money on the line do the hairpulling. It's the same with FOSS in general - suits my purposes, and annoys me less. Let the people with insecurities jump through hoops for the stuff with the market share and/or hipster cred... as the years go by the heartbeat in FOSS gets stronger and there's less and less need for anything else IMHO.
Settle down there pardner! This is a war of ideas, not people. The extremes of this debate want to see a "good guys vs bad guys" battle, but the world isn't like that - every individual has good, evil and shades of grey in them, not to mention ideas of all stripes. People can change their minds (if they aren't killed).
The panicroom America has built for itself is a bad bad idea that's just waiting for someone to lock you all in. Perhaps it has already happened, and noone has realised it yet.
The first rule of bureaucracy is that those who actually try to do their job get marginalised, and those that support the bureauocracy even at the expense of the job they're meant to be doing get promoted. The security establishment is a bureaucracy. The persecution of journalists, human rights lawyers and other activists who pose no valid security threat is a manifestation of bureaucratic self protection... and the wider society will certainly see repression when there is a truly broad based grassroots movement against a "surveilance society".
The Assange/Manning thing is a message to those within the bureacracy - you'd better bloody well support the bureaucracy or you're f*cked. There must be a lot of conflicted individuals who can see what's happening right now, but who are trapped inside. We should have sympathy for them. Whistleblowing about this stuff is very dangerous
Unfortunately for Australia we send soldiers to every ill-conceived war to support the global power of the day, and in generally in parts of the world that have nothing to do with us. We've done it for the US, and the British before WWII. As a result we've been at war for perhaps 2/3rds of the time since our founding*. By this measure this actually makes us a significantly more warlike nation than the USA.
The theory behind our military assistance is we can call on the global power of the day to help defend us in times of need. Unfortunately that doesn't work so well. During WWII Britain tried to stop Australian forces from moving from Europe and North Africa back to defend Australia when invasion seemed imminient - consequently the Kokoda Track campaign in New Guinea had to be fought with Australian militias until regular army units could get back. Despite a hard fought victory McArthur disparaged Australian efforts and sidelined Australian forces during the rest of the war - lets say his assessment of Kokoda contrasted significantly to the intelligence he was receiving and subsequent scholarship. McArthur was great at self promotion at the expense of allies, but we were used to that from the British.
I found an interview with a biographer of Prime Minister of Sweden Dr Brian Palmer here (the interview is about 1/3rd the way through). It seems like there is no proof of a Rove/Assange connection, but Karl Rove does have a Swedish background, his only foreign client being the Swedish Moderate Party, and has spend much time in Sweden though there's no evidence that he has spend all of that time with the Moderate Party, though he has spent time with think tanks with ideological connections to them. It is also mentioned that one of the partners in the law firm representing one of the girls in the Assange case assisted in the CIA Extraordinary Rendition and torture from Sweden to Egypt.
Naive? You act like you live in a country that hasn't jailed a potential presidential nominee under Bush's watch on extremely dubious grounds. Watch that video to get a feel for how many other prosecutions have been politically persued and you'll start understanding how corrupted your judiciary was under Bush and continues to be under Obama. Karl Rove, the guy primarily responsible for this politicisation is working for the president of Sweden which is JUST ONE of the many reasons so many are dubious about the prosecution of Assange.
People laughed at Bush. In my country (Australia) people laughed at Joh Bjelke-Petersen until he went from state to federal politics. Luckily he was outmaneuvered in a snap election, then prosecuted... and it was exposed how utterly corrupted the judiciary and virtually every department of government had been. His only mistake had been to stay in state politics long enough for the rest of the country to know how corrupt he was. People had laughted, but we in Australia could have conceivably become a dictatorship. That sounds extreme, but the state police were regularly used to monitor, beat and arrest political opposition, political boundaries were redrawn to bais elections etc... This was in AUSTRALIA... and yet people in other states laughed at the bumbling buffoon and felt smug and superior until their democracy was threatened. That was 30 years ago and has been more or less forgotten.
Your judiciary is quite corrupt, make no mistake.
Have it your way.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't aware of the actual issues, and aren't a troll or shill.
Free Software people are certainly anti copyright, at least copyright in it's current form. Given the fact that they haven't managed to have copyright law reformed they've instead hacked copyright law with their license to simulate what life would be like if copyright didn't exist. It has been an effective strategy, and has also made it possible to have people cooperate across the world on all kinds of projects. Given that their hack of copyright law relies on people respecting their license it's obvious why they're angry... they're defending their copyright-free sandpit.
By the way your use of "FOSS" above is incorrect... FOSS = Free and Open Source Software, which is shorthand for two separate movements ie. Free Software movement and Open Source Software movement... I don't believe the OSS guys would have a problem with this kind of thing.