Villanueva outlined several needs which can only be addressed by Open Source software.
But the most important need is not to have the source code, but to have access to our own data!
For that to happen, the bill could ask only for open format documents.
That way, we wouldn't have to fight the market machine of M$ (already a lost war, it seems), and still let the door open to local developers (like me!)
It's common practice; if somebody on a big entity (a company, organization, government, etc) wants something, he writes the requirements so specific that rules out any other option.
So, if a paper says "i want something with this and that properties", it's easy to read "i want THAT and no other"
I would love if such a law could be passed, but it's not the ideal one. For me the ideal one would ask only for open format documents.
M$ would have no defense against such a requirement, and it would let any locally developed software to cleanly integrate with wathever is bought, even if it was from M$
If our goverment went open source, SuSE (german) and Conectiva (brazilian) would have at least as much chance as RedHat. Both have far better international support and documentation in spanish.
Personally, I'd use Gentoo to wrap up my own distro to fit the specs, instead of using shrink-wrapped boxes.
Of course, our political people like shiny things, like the shrink-wrap.... but nothing shines like green paper to them
The argument now using by M$ proponents is "Open Source software isn't free, you have to buy support. Those who would profit are behind the proposal. It's all about economic interests"
Of course, but what he doesn't mention is that open source makes FAR MORE of that money to stay here in Peru, instead of going to M$.
And also that since it's easier for small companies to provide support and delopment, it would be great for the biggest part of our economy, the small industry.
But, we (the little guys) don't have half a million on our backpockets to buy our way in.
yes it might be healthy, but it most probably would be stupid in the end (if it were accepted, not likely)
What SHOULD be mandated is to use only open formats for data!
That was pointed as an advantage of open source, but in fact there's nothing that prevent a user to use corectly a closed source application and refuse to get locked on it.
For anyone, it's a good advice; for public administration should be a requirement.
I like e-smith, now called something like SME, but you still can download the CD from e-smith.org. It's really easy to use and admin. You can also buy support from them if you want.
I've been using Linux for several years on x86 small servers (no more than 20 clients, mixed win/mac), but i never had a good opportunity to test any JFS, only ext2 (its rock solid, of course).
Some months ago, I installed Yellow Dog Linux on my iMac. After a couple of weeks of trying around, I converted the system to ext3. No trouble at all, but i didn't feel any difference. Replacing KDE2 with 3 clearly made it far slower and the hard disk was getting heavvy punishment.
Later, i decided to erase it and replace with Gentoo linux (it's nicer for programming and trying different things). as a first choice, i used ext3. And i kept crashing during the long compile sessions! again and again it wold crash, around the same point. I'm not experienced reading the kernel panic messages, but it certainly felt like a FS problem. tried ext2, it was a little different, but still unstable.
Clean it, and begin again; this time using XFS. solid. not a single crash. ever. months running, compiling, streaming, getting low on RAM, never a single hiccup.
And KDE3 with Liquid feels far smoother than ever. I don't know if it's because XFS vs. ext3 or Gentoo vs. Yellow Dog, but i'm really really happy with it!
It seems to me that ext2/3 need a little more tuning for heavy proceses on non-Intel systems. No doubt it's 'unbreackable' on x86, but still not tested enough cross plattform-wise.
XFS, on the other hand, was developed precisely for POWER servers, and it clearly delivers.
First: I'm peruvian, programmer by trade, mostly on Mac systems. And on the last few years i've integrated a lot of Linux servers on my recommendations.
A big point in the presidential campain of the current president was a 'modernizing the schools' project. In practice that only means get a big donation of PCs on the schools and some software to run on it. Ah, also make sure there's a phone line somewhere to get online (yes, mostly with POTS modems)
So, it's not surprising that M$ wants to be the one providing the software. Get the kids tinking windows==pc==computer, and internet==IE
not only that, but the local IT industry will have to be 'compatible' with whatever is everywhere, so that's who will pay: any company that wants to do anything with this will have to have M$ systems.
It was absolutely improbable to get the Free Software law approved. Nobody (I mean NOBODY) in the goverment would try to get rid of existing software. It just won't work. The first time they get a.doc file, they'll boot windows and forget about freedom, virus threats, spycode, etc.
what would be possible (but still difficult) and much more important would be to require all documents in an open format. the Villanueva proposal mentions that, but briefly.
I can't imagine a government-paid sysadmin saying to M$ (or any big software company) "I want your software but only if it's Open Source". But I can imagine saying "I want your software but only if it uses open format documents".
And M$ could reply "no problem, use RTF" and hope they'll forget and use.doc (so that we would be still locked)
Software's so bad because it's still handcrafted, and the interchangable parts don't. Cars sucked too when when they were done the same way.
I've heard this argument lots of times... but cars aren't so standarized either. Can you take a Mazda suspension bridghe and put it into a BMW? If you argue that you can swap components between two cars of the same brand and model, you're confusing design and production.
In the car industry, the design teams reconsider almost every aspect of a new model, only sometimes reusing a motor or direction system. That's a lot like building an application and reusing just some libraries (like QT, or STL)
The production line, where cars are built, all identical is like the CD pressing and packaging process. If i want to reinstall a system from the CD, it doesn't matter if I use my original CD, or yours, if it's the same version, they're identical.
The "spooky action at a distance" is a weird consequense of the heisenberg uncertainity principle. It 'appears' to be an interaction, but in fact it's just the result of the coherency between two 'entangled' wavefunctions.
the 'yes' part is that to receive a teleportation, you have to have one of the entagled particles, and a measured quantity.
the 'no' part is that since the measured quantity is transmitted classicaly, there's no FTL transfer of anything.
Have you noticed the big diference between an ad and the small print:
ad: "This is the solution to All Problems on Earth!"
EULA: "The product may or may not work at all, that's not our problem"
I think it should be illegal to run those kind of advertisings. If the ad says it's "Unbreakable", it better be! or your money back (including some other costs) at least.
If something like that could be enforced, the field would be a lot more level to all players.
I've found that usually sales rep answer from the top of their heads. Probably back then Oracle didn't have a stated policy about Linux, so she said what made sense to her.
Also, those were different times; most of the (low) Linux penetration on busisnes was because of the price and/or opennes, not good reasons to use Oracle, eh?
For me, that's the main thing that i fear of "fork and forget", a non-migrating socket would easily double the network traffic on a cluster... but i've never been able to found any word of progress on this area.
And what about other forms of IPC communication? is there a (performance) contrainidication on their use on mosix clusters?
Remember, I barely knew how to play bridge, I wouldn't try to reimplement the inference engine that chose which cards to play. That code had lots of years of debugging and real world exposure in there.
All the analisys was to separate the core (untouchable) from the UI and IO and re-creating the environment it needed to work
A few years ago, I found myself at a similar situation; I had to port a Bridge game from DOS to Mac. I had the full source code, but it was so old I couldn't make it compile. Even worse, I had never played Bridge!
I started playing with the executable, and learned the cards game (very boring! never played it again).
Then I wrote some utilites using.BAT files, the 'Find' command from DOS, and QBasic. Those utilities allowed me to type any function or global variable (there were lots of globals!!) and it would tell me in what file was defined, declared, and what functions used it (with a tree of callers)
It took me a couple of days to write the utilities, and proved really lifesaving
after that, I used paper. If there was a long function with lots of nested loops and goto's (it was C, but looked like bad basic); I would print it and tape the paper to the wall. Then just spend hours looking at it, pencil at hand, drawing arrows and notes over the code
Very slowly, I separated the engine from the UI and IO code.
Then I just wrote a new application on the mac, that called the old engine code. Of course the game gained a lot of mouse manipulability, sound effects and even a video intro (without QuickTime, of course)
In short, first craft your tools, then use them. Spend lots of time just looking at the code. Slowly the hate will melt into pity for it, then your job will be to liberate it!
Internet is the infrastructure. IP, TCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, RFCs, routers, long distance links, etc. almost every one a really open standard.
GIF, Flash, Internet Explorer... all web things, just one of many services built on top of the Internet. Of course, being the most visible one, it's plaged with commercialization.
Slashdot Mirror
RIGHT!!!!
For that to happen, the bill could ask only for open format documents.
That way, we wouldn't have to fight the market machine of M$ (already a lost war, it seems), and still let the door open to local developers (like me!)
It's common practice; if somebody on a big entity (a company, organization, government, etc) wants something, he writes the requirements so specific that rules out any other option.
So, if a paper says "i want something with this and that properties", it's easy to read "i want THAT and no other"
I would love if such a law could be passed, but it's not the ideal one. For me the ideal one would ask only for open format documents.
M$ would have no defense against such a requirement, and it would let any locally developed software to cleanly integrate with wathever is bought, even if it was from M$
If our goverment went open source, SuSE (german) and Conectiva (brazilian) would have at least as much chance as RedHat. Both have far better international support and documentation in spanish.
Personally, I'd use Gentoo to wrap up my own distro to fit the specs, instead of using shrink-wrapped boxes.
Of course, our political people like shiny things, like the shrink-wrap.... but nothing shines like green paper to them
The argument now using by M$ proponents is "Open Source software isn't free, you have to buy support. Those who would profit are behind the proposal. It's all about economic interests"
Of course, but what he doesn't mention is that open source makes FAR MORE of that money to stay here in Peru, instead of going to M$.
And also that since it's easier for small companies to provide support and delopment, it would be great for the biggest part of our economy, the small industry.
But, we (the little guys) don't have half a million on our backpockets to buy our way in.
yes it might be healthy, but it most probably would be stupid in the end (if it were accepted, not likely)
What SHOULD be mandated is to use only open formats for data!
That was pointed as an advantage of open source, but in fact there's nothing that prevent a user to use corectly a closed source application and refuse to get locked on it.
For anyone, it's a good advice; for public administration should be a requirement.
It's in spanish, obviously!
When is Developer's Day??
I like e-smith, now called something like SME, but you still can download the CD from e-smith.org. It's really easy to use and admin. You can also buy support from them if you want.
I've been using Linux for several years on x86 small servers (no more than 20 clients, mixed win/mac), but i never had a good opportunity to test any JFS, only ext2 (its rock solid, of course).
Some months ago, I installed Yellow Dog Linux on my iMac. After a couple of weeks of trying around, I converted the system to ext3. No trouble at all, but i didn't feel any difference. Replacing KDE2 with 3 clearly made it far slower and the hard disk was getting heavvy punishment.
Later, i decided to erase it and replace with Gentoo linux (it's nicer for programming and trying different things). as a first choice, i used ext3. And i kept crashing during the long compile sessions! again and again it wold crash, around the same point. I'm not experienced reading the kernel panic messages, but it certainly felt like a FS problem. tried ext2, it was a little different, but still unstable.
Clean it, and begin again; this time using XFS. solid. not a single crash. ever. months running, compiling, streaming, getting low on RAM, never a single hiccup.
And KDE3 with Liquid feels far smoother than ever. I don't know if it's because XFS vs. ext3 or Gentoo vs. Yellow Dog, but i'm really really happy with it!
It seems to me that ext2/3 need a little more tuning for heavy proceses on non-Intel systems. No doubt it's 'unbreackable' on x86, but still not tested enough cross plattform-wise.
XFS, on the other hand, was developed precisely for POWER servers, and it clearly delivers.
How do you count qubits?
I'm pretty sure that there's no direct equivalence formula between qubits and bits...
First: I'm peruvian, programmer by trade, mostly on Mac systems. And on the last few years i've integrated a lot of Linux servers on my recommendations.
.doc file, they'll boot windows and forget about freedom, virus threats, spycode, etc.
.doc (so that we would be still locked)
A big point in the presidential campain of the current president was a 'modernizing the schools' project. In practice that only means get a big donation of PCs on the schools and some software to run on it. Ah, also make sure there's a phone line somewhere to get online (yes, mostly with POTS modems)
So, it's not surprising that M$ wants to be the one providing the software. Get the kids tinking windows==pc==computer, and internet==IE
not only that, but the local IT industry will have to be 'compatible' with whatever is everywhere, so that's who will pay: any company that wants to do anything with this will have to have M$ systems.
It was absolutely improbable to get the Free Software law approved. Nobody (I mean NOBODY) in the goverment would try to get rid of existing software. It just won't work. The first time they get a
what would be possible (but still difficult) and much more important would be to require all documents in an open format. the Villanueva proposal mentions that, but briefly.
I can't imagine a government-paid sysadmin saying to M$ (or any big software company) "I want your software but only if it's Open Source". But I can imagine saying "I want your software but only if it uses open format documents".
And M$ could reply "no problem, use RTF" and hope they'll forget and use
I've heard this argument lots of times... but cars aren't so standarized either. Can you take a Mazda suspension bridghe and put it into a BMW? If you argue that you can swap components between two cars of the same brand and model, you're confusing design and production.
In the car industry, the design teams reconsider almost every aspect of a new model, only sometimes reusing a motor or direction system. That's a lot like building an application and reusing just some libraries (like QT, or STL)
The production line, where cars are built, all identical is like the CD pressing and packaging process. If i want to reinstall a system from the CD, it doesn't matter if I use my original CD, or yours, if it's the same version, they're identical.
The "spooky action at a distance" is a weird consequense of the heisenberg uncertainity principle. It 'appears' to be an interaction, but in fact it's just the result of the coherency between two 'entangled' wavefunctions.
the 'yes' part is that to receive a teleportation, you have to have one of the entagled particles, and a measured quantity.
the 'no' part is that since the measured quantity is transmitted classicaly, there's no FTL transfer of anything.
Have you noticed the big diference between an ad and the small print:
ad: "This is the solution to All Problems on Earth!"
EULA: "The product may or may not work at all, that's not our problem"
I think it should be illegal to run those kind of advertisings. If the ad says it's "Unbreakable", it better be! or your money back (including some other costs) at least.
If something like that could be enforced, the field would be a lot more level to all players.
what surprises (and saddens) me is that such a non-content hate-driven commentary is at score:4 (insightful)
can i ask where is the 'Insight'?
i have no love for Zimbabwe government, and really think their actions are a shame to all humanity, but this kind of comments only make things worse.
I've found that usually sales rep answer from the top of their heads. Probably back then Oracle didn't have a stated policy about Linux, so she said what made sense to her.
Also, those were different times; most of the (low) Linux penetration on busisnes was because of the price and/or opennes, not good reasons to use Oracle, eh?
For me, that's the main thing that i fear of "fork and forget", a non-migrating socket would easily double the network traffic on a cluster... but i've never been able to found any word of progress on this area.
And what about other forms of IPC communication? is there a (performance) contrainidication on their use on mosix clusters?
located in Peru, (almost) no time zone difference!
Don't make me laugh! Have a long, humble look at Europe/Asia and come back later to appologise
That's so true!!!
Of course, it's a bad article, written only for getting slashdot attention.
But it has a good point: We don't need an Office clone, we need a better office system (not a application, not a suite, but a system).
It was a mess, but it worked.
Remember, I barely knew how to play bridge, I wouldn't try to reimplement the inference engine that chose which cards to play. That code had lots of years of debugging and real world exposure in there.
All the analisys was to separate the core (untouchable) from the UI and IO and re-creating the environment it needed to work
A few years ago, I found myself at a similar situation; I had to port a Bridge game from DOS to Mac. I had the full source code, but it was so old I couldn't make it compile. Even worse, I had never played Bridge!
.BAT files, the 'Find' command from DOS, and QBasic. Those utilities allowed me to type any function or global variable (there were lots of globals!!) and it would tell me in what file was defined, declared, and what functions used it (with a tree of callers)
I started playing with the executable, and learned the cards game (very boring! never played it again).
Then I wrote some utilites using
It took me a couple of days to write the utilities, and proved really lifesaving
after that, I used paper. If there was a long function with lots of nested loops and goto's (it was C, but looked like bad basic); I would print it and tape the paper to the wall. Then just spend hours looking at it, pencil at hand, drawing arrows and notes over the code
Very slowly, I separated the engine from the UI and IO code.
Then I just wrote a new application on the mac, that called the old engine code. Of course the game gained a lot of mouse manipulability, sound effects and even a video intro (without QuickTime, of course)
In short, first craft your tools, then use them. Spend lots of time just looking at the code. Slowly the hate will melt into pity for it, then your job will be to liberate it!
You're confusing 'Internet' with 'web'
Internet is the infrastructure. IP, TCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, RFCs, routers, long distance links, etc. almost every one a really open standard.
GIF, Flash, Internet Explorer... all web things, just one of many services built on top of the Internet. Of course, being the most visible one, it's plaged with commercialization.