All the algorithms for learning/extracting backgrounds are available in publications/subscriptions/internet and have been for years. Sad that people would need a GPL codebase to implement them, lol...
...dual boot Vista Ultimate 32-bit/OpenSUSE dev box at the office, I've got SP1 installed and haven't had to touch my bootloader (which works just fine by the way) and Vista works fine as well (in other words it works the same as before;)...) I thought I was missing something so I read the actual article and it claims (unless I did miss something) that the problem occurs whether you use Bitlocker or not.
...wide area surveillance system (which included video analytics for loitering, wrong way traffic in a crowd, crowd panic analysis, smoke/fire detection by video, et cetera) I can point out that there are MANY companies, corporate research groups, and universities that have been doing things like this for several years (in some cases almost 10 years.)
This company is in for a rude awakening when they realize that (a)their price per camera is extraordinarily high (this one metric is the biggest decider in large installation proposals [along with whether or not you have to mount the cameras on poles or just hallways/buildings]) and (b)a false alert rate of 3 to 1 is TOTALLY unacceptable. The entire purpose of video analytics in a security environment is to reduce the workload on the monitoring staff (and hopefully put more of them out into the field) while being able to scale up your coverage. I assure you that a 3 to 1 false alert rate will result in zero customers in a year. Measuring the false alert rate is also highly subjective. Companies tend to use a given scenario repeatedly to measure their results when, of course, this has little to no bearing on reality. Things like the weather (moving shadows affect certain algorithms even when accounted for algorithmically, headlights, flashlights, camera flashes change things, wind, rain, snow, bugs, everything you can imagine, lol...) negate all of these measurements.
It is nice to see new blood in this space, but I hope they were smart enough to make their software offerings totally distinct from their hardware (many companies do not) so that they can integrate with other systems without to much work. That's the best way to make money in the video analytics market right now. The big boys (like SIEMENS) got into the game about 3 years ago and they'll squeeze you out every time unless you can offer something that helps them land a big deal.
...I'd be surprised. I mean, they certainly offer courses in university related to systems capable languages but they seem to focus very VERY (especially in graduate school) heavily on Java for algorithms, structures, discrete math work, et cetera. The software engineering courses tend to be in Java, et cetera, ad nauseum. Heck, we had a guy who received a PhD in Computer Vision who'd never coded in anything EXCEPT Java LOL!
In any case, having received my CSCI degree in the 1996 I had a strong *nix and VMS background which meant a fair bit of C with some C++ thrown in. When I graduated I went to work for a virtual reality company, and later worked on 3D game engines for game companies themselves. Nothing in university prepared me for that experience at all. I don't think you can blame schools for not producing coders who can work in the unique environment that is a game company. Heck, most of the issues with games today are resource (art) related anyhow. It's not hard finding five good coders if you've got a decent budget, but it IS hard to find the 50 quality artists who will produce the kinds of content and shaders necessary to please gamers today. Games are simply astounding amounts of work today.
...vulnerable to these sorts of attacks (which anyone with any common sense would already know), the fact that it is such an open process means a greater possibility of earlier detection, faster analysis and response, and the rapid repair of the process which made such a gaffe possible. In the closed source world most of these steps would take exponentially longer, and quite often the process would remain the same.
...including the blogger, if the same farce had taken place but the VP had said "Yes"? I bet the number would be, oh, roughly ZERO. LOL. Now, that is a stupid way to make a decision, but surely there was some process established long before this meeting for making this type of decision, I mean, they didn't seem to just come into the meeting and make all new rules. Unless the process was known prior to the meeting, there can't be any conspiracy about getting the Norway Standards guys to disagree (or seeding the other votes with 'yes' in order in order to push it up to the VP), and if the process was known before, why wasn't the process objected to? Why doesn't this guy talk about that?
It sounds very much like a lot of information is being left out in his account, although whatever is left out the decision making process sounds ludicrous.
It isn't necessarily cheaper, depending upon the coverage area you desire, plus if you want cheap, use rfid - that's really cheap. I think there were several points, the one I was addressing (or intending to) is the poster's assertion that it was easier to assess the situation with the motion sensors (and I disagree:).) You also give up a lot of capabilities when you use a motion sensor. Personally, I would use both in order to gain the advantages to be had from sensor 'fusion.'
The motion sensor doesn't tell you anything that video cannot. It's a redundancy. Now, if it was a pressure sensor that would be different... You could then do some things that are difficult for a video sensor to discern (like tailgaiting.)
...and identification purposes, and is also easy to search. The author is either unfamiliar with modern surveillance or chooses to ignore the realities of video analytics.
...a wide area surveillance group, I would like to suggest a few reasons why this occurred, especially given what we know of Boeing's attempt to provide a solution.
Wide Area Surveillance is, like any real world 'enterprise' solution, complex. That is not to say it is not achievable, it is just not something you decide to do on a whim;). There's a vast amount of 'learning through pain' which (of course) teaches you how to avoid stumbling blocks in the future. WAS is a fusion of architectural planning, mechanical engineering, network engineering, environmental engineering, and software engineering. It is also one of the more difficult management projects due to the fact that very few companies (almost none) have the in-house departments/divisions to handle all aspects of it; ergo, most companies do the more natural 'I am the lead contractor, you all can sub-contract to me for utilities, HVAC, network topology, integration software, camera systems, electromagnetic fences', et cetera.
This means that during the bidding process for these jobs, as with any $$$LARGE$$$ government contract, much of the sub-contracting can be political and very rarely results in a proffered solution that is 'best in breed' in all (or even most) areas.
This is all very normal. The real difficulty is in identifying which aspects of a WAS solution will kill your project. For example, the article claims that using off the shelf commercial software for dispatchers was a serious issue. I can tell you from experience, there's no way that this derailed the project. There are several companies (the one I used to work at is one for example) that specialize in integrating their 'command & control' (for lack of a more encompassing term) suites with 3rd party streaming video, network systems, hardware devices, et cetera. The relative cost of these systems varies from very low (with a fair amount of services work being entailed) to moderate (where you get far more C&C stuff than you plan to use but it's there if you need it in the future - but they fully integrate the things you do need off the bat.)
Usually the biggest problems are from poor planning at the start or 'mid course correction' by people who didn't make careful consideration of their options up front regarding the physical infrastructure required. A good example of this is 'pole placement.' One of the easiest, conceptually, methods of watching swathe of territory where there isn't supposed to be much activity is to use a high quality camera mounted (usually mounted on a Pan/Tilt/Zoom gimbal) on a tall pole. How tall? THAT is the question my friends. From a cost point of view you want to put them up as high as is feasible given the terrain and what the local survey should be. This means less poles, less cameras, and less overall costs to cover a wider area; HOWEVER, the higher you put that camera the more difficult the installation of the pole because I assure you that putting a camera 60 feet off the ground results in shaking, deflection, twisting, and all kinds of other frame stabilization nightmares. Usually what happens is that the project denotes the max camera heights, assigns what types of poles/towers will support the cameras, how they will be built in order to overcome problems like these and then 6 months later they change the camera heights (usually because they want to cut out a few poles and the neighboring cameras must take up the slack), bingo you're well thought out and budgeted pole no longer serves your needs.
It is at this point that the reader will think 'ok, then we need to redesign the poles right? No big deal...' Sadly this does not usually happen. The change request costs associated outweight the money saved on the pole changes but that doesn't mean they won't still use the wrong poles and save a hundred thousand on camera costs, they'll just try to hack some solution like putting a frame stabilizer black box on the back of the camera, because that should work, right?;)
Give game makers a reason to produce all their PC games on Linux and Windows (they won't ignore Windows just yet) and in 3 years there'll be nothing but Linux boxes as enthusiast machines and when the less technically apt members of the enthusiast's family come calling he/she will say nothing but Linux.
Now, how to do that is a huge condundrum. There are tons of different approaches like "take every good thing that DirectX does and learn from every stupid thing it did and beat them at their own game" or "revamp a WINE-like approach again", but those approaches and their similar ideas have shortcomings mostly related to attempting to imitate something from the Windows world.
I really think the only way to get all the games on Linux, for the first few years, would be for all the Linux based companies to get together with the Open Source development networks/alliances/groups and simply straight port all first party games. This is, of course, the brute force approach. The problem is that there are tons of smart, motivated people in Linux; however, they have an equal number of goals - some prefer the clustering aspects, some the file serving aspects, some the desktop, some .
Without games, there will always be Windows boxes. Perhaps the 'super WINE' approach would achieve the best results even if it would require long term maintenance and would be a weak spot.
Exactly, follow the links to IBM's own data and you'll find that nearly everything sold as software is from an aquired company. The 'software division' at IBM is exactly what I claimed it is, nothing but a licensing group. They're exacty the same as SIEMENS. They buy a company, re-brand and package, and sell it. They don't write their own products. The last software products of note from IBM were DB2, AIX, and OS2. I don't know much about DB2's history but AIX was built directly out of System V and OS2 was built by Micro$oft! LOL. Even the presentaiton manager was built by Micro$oft.
IBM even mentions that the the revenue numbers for software come virtually exclusively through services engagements, meaning in many cases the customer did not choose the software, they chose IBM and IBM's services chose the software. None of which is germane to my point, which is still valid, that IBM is entirely interested in Linux and open source purely from the point of view of services revenue. That's it.
They're not the good guys, they're not the bad guys, they're the same as every other publicly traded company.
No offense but somehow you've construed that I've said they're the same in all ways, they're not. IBM has done far worse things in its history than Microsoft has although this was long before Microsoft.
I've, here, only pointed out IBM's hypocrisy in constantly painting itself the "good guy" regarding "open source" and painting Micro$oft as the "bad guy." How you came to equate that with one or more of them being more/less ethical than the other I don't know.
BTW, reading up on IBM can lead you to some interesting results regarding ethics;). Does that make Micro$oft any better? Hell no, but yet again I re-iterate that all public companies care about only one single thing. The dollar...
"Where did I claim any different?" - You do realize this is a thread about IBM's hypocrisy about open source and being the "good guys", right? Oh, wait, you're one of those posters who doesn't get involved in a thread you just get in on something you're interested in and carry on a sub-thread. Ok.
"Yup, a type of UNIX. You said they weren't pushing *nix. If you want to interpret that as a strict regular expression then no, AIX and *nix would not work as a pattern match. However the more common usage of the term *nix (or more properly *NIX) is to mean any of the UNIX operating systems, of which AIX is one. And which IBM have been pushing for a long time, certainly longer than Linux."
I said they weren't pushing other Unixes because it would cost them money, you are either playing stupid or are attempting to split hairs. On one hand you want to pretend that AIX is not largely made from System V, and other the other hand you want to claim its UNIX when it suits you. In order to remove the possibility of you playing stupid, let's make this crystal clear for you as it was for everyone else "IBM's only interest in promoting Linux is that it doesn't cost IBM anything to base their service work on." So, back to the point of why I even mentioned this in the first place - are you suggesting that IBM's interest in Linux is based upon anything other than the costs it does or does not inherit from deploying Linux?
"I didn't make the claim that they wrote Sys V, I make the claim that they have put a lot of new development into AIX since it was branched. What do you mean by "as if it was their software"? Do you mean that they wrote they first line? No. Do you mean that the bulk of what's in AIX now is their code? Well yes, it is."
To use your favorite type of response - "Where did I claim that you said they wrote System V?" LOL. Of course they put development into it, that wasn't the point. You're the one who brought up AIX as an example of IBM developing operating systems, was the purpose of your doing so to attempt to discredit my assertion that IBM are poor at ISV work or that they didn't push "other" *nix OSes before Linux (which I have, hopefully, now made painfully clear was not mean to include any IBM operating system as this would obviously have been 'free' for them)?
Af for measuring what the bulk of AIX consists of, if you're talking the OS, not tools, how do you propose to measure that? Ignoring the fact that it is irrelevant given that IBM have spent 24+ years extending System V.
"What you said originally was"
Oh, well, that explains it. You were obviously confused into thinking that I was trying to make a point about IBM pushing an operating system that cost them no money to deploy or support versus operating systems that did (which would, by default, suggest operating systems they *do not* own themselves.) Sorry, I should have been clearer for your sake.
"Nope, wrong again, this is getting to be a habit for you."
LOL, very adult of you. You must be 14.
"And again, show me the post where I said otherwise. I didn't. I said they make lots of money and they make decent software. very different propositions. Plug your brain in before your next comment."
You always retreat into the same poor rhetoric. Does every statement someone makes to you have to be a direct refutation of your exact words. Here we are in a sub-thread of your making arguing, presumably that you believe IBM makes *BILLIONS* on software (presumably every year) and *BILLIONS* on services (you can adjust those figures if you believe they're wild generalizations of your actual usage of "billions".) You didn't say they made decent software until just above. You claimed that software sales bring them billions. I disagree.
So, unless you're still confused about my assertion about IBM's 'love' for Linux, we basically just disagree on your supposition that IBM makes billions on Software.
"Windows users are a herd that buy cheap equipment they know nothing about, whereas IBM purchasers" - Man are you naive or clueless. In many cases these are the same people. There are large corporations that use Windows not only for their desktop systems but to run other IBM products. I love how they make "well informed decisions" on one hand are are "a herd" on the other. Seriously, dump the fan club and join reality where they're both companies hawking anything they can for a dollar.
Regarding AIX, so you *are* or *are not* claiming that IBM wrote AIX themselves...? If you *are* saying that well, you're wrong, they built it on System V. If you *are not* saying that, well that goes to my original point on that subject.
Regarding my "assinine comment that IBM were not pushing UNIX before Linux" they weren't pushing Unix they were pushing AIX. You really need to make up your mind. You want on one hand to claim that IBM wrote AIX as if it was their software but at the same time you want to take my point that IBM didn't push other UNIX OSes which they would have had to pay other companies for until 'free' Linux came along and say that IBM was pushing Unix...? It's not assinine, it correct and you know it. IBM only push Linux because it costs IBM nothing and they rake in money. They don't "care" about Linux beyond the money it makes them. They don't "care" about open source beyond the money it makes them.
"STFU"? What are you 15 years old? LOL. Grow up kid. Some day when you get out of school and have some engineering experience you'll realize several things:
(1)Operating Systems are tools in a toolbox, nothing more, nothing less.
(2)Public companies are like nations - they don't have friends, they have interests.
I can empathize, but again I would like to point out that this type of thinking is a little naive in that you are anthromorphizing very large organizations who are dispassionate about everything except money.
LOL, AIX was built on System V, so you think that after 21 years of modifications even though everything was built upon System V and the kernel and OS are still Unix, that means IBM developed AIX by itself? I guess that means that if someone took Linux and worked on it for 20 years but it operated virtually identically even though bug fixes made the lines of code not identical, they built their own operating system.
IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Nobody said they didn't invent anything, they've done tons of great research and still contribute strongly to research. Nobody said they didn't do anything worthwhile, I simply asked what software they wrote do they currently make billions of dollars on? The answer? NONE.
They aren't a software company. They buy software companies. They don't innovate products, they embrace, extend, and charge you for support. Why do you think they aren't in the consumer level software business? Because they're terrible at it. Why are they in the services business? Because they're good at it.
Who cares what Micro$oft is doing.
All you IBM fanbois are the same. You think that because I belive that IBM is self serving and hypocritical when pointing the finger at other people that I'm a fan of Micro$oft. I'm not. I just call a shovel a shovel.
Perhaps you should define what *you* mean by open as 'Open XML' is an 'open standard.' OpenOffice supports it, office supports it, PalmOS, Gnumeric, it is being standardized by people from Apple, Novell, Intel, Micro$oft and others.
Open source being helpful to IBM's business model doesn't mean IBM likes 'open source' in any other way than a mechanism to generate revenue. Are you suggesting that the purpose of 'open source' is to generate revenue? It is in this way that I suggest that IBM only likes 'open source' because of the money it brings them. If they were embracing 'open source' for the philosophical purposes from which 'open source' came, websphere would be open source. Hell, even the stuff they bought from gluecode isn't open source it's 'free' with 30 days support and then you can pay for more support.
My point isn't to try to make Micro$oft look better, it's to point out the hypocrisy of IBM trying to make Micro$oft look like "the bad guys" when IBM are exactly the same. If IBM sold its services division tomorrow. You'd never hear 'open source' from IBM again. It's entirely related, as has been my point all along, to their own self interests in generating services revenue.
"Tell that to the enterprise sector that lays out billions each year for IBM Software" - This would be the enterprise sector that knows what it's doing, right? LOL. Using EJB where is shouldn't be. Using Windows where it shouldn't be. Using a variety of hammers for a variety of problems that shockingly all look like nails? By this type of reasoning the billions of dollars laid out each year for Microsoft Windows must be from informed users who know what they're doing, right?
As regards AIX, no offense, but AIX is based upon System V. Are you trying to suggest that IBM engineered something new with it?
I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
And what? I'm simply pointing out that they, IBM, like to pretend they're the good guys when they're just another public company. I like that their greedy self interest benefits open source, but they're full of when they try to assert they're trying to do anyone but themselves some good.
Slashdot Mirror
All the algorithms for learning/extracting backgrounds are available in publications/subscriptions/internet and have been for years. Sad that people would need a GPL codebase to implement them, lol...
...dual boot Vista Ultimate 32-bit/OpenSUSE dev box at the office, I've got SP1 installed and haven't had to touch my bootloader (which works just fine by the way) and Vista works fine as well (in other words it works the same as before ;)...) I thought I was missing something so I read the actual article and it claims (unless I did miss something) that the problem occurs whether you use Bitlocker or not.
...wide area surveillance system (which included video analytics for loitering, wrong way traffic in a crowd, crowd panic analysis, smoke/fire detection by video, et cetera) I can point out that there are MANY companies, corporate research groups, and universities that have been doing things like this for several years (in some cases almost 10 years.)
This company is in for a rude awakening when they realize that (a)their price per camera is extraordinarily high (this one metric is the biggest decider in large installation proposals [along with whether or not you have to mount the cameras on poles or just hallways/buildings]) and (b)a false alert rate of 3 to 1 is TOTALLY unacceptable. The entire purpose of video analytics in a security environment is to reduce the workload on the monitoring staff (and hopefully put more of them out into the field) while being able to scale up your coverage. I assure you that a 3 to 1 false alert rate will result in zero customers in a year. Measuring the false alert rate is also highly subjective. Companies tend to use a given scenario repeatedly to measure their results when, of course, this has little to no bearing on reality. Things like the weather (moving shadows affect certain algorithms even when accounted for algorithmically, headlights, flashlights, camera flashes change things, wind, rain, snow, bugs, everything you can imagine, lol...) negate all of these measurements.
It is nice to see new blood in this space, but I hope they were smart enough to make their software offerings totally distinct from their hardware (many companies do not) so that they can integrate with other systems without to much work. That's the best way to make money in the video analytics market right now. The big boys (like SIEMENS) got into the game about 3 years ago and they'll squeeze you out every time unless you can offer something that helps them land a big deal.
That's a laugh...
...I'd be surprised. I mean, they certainly offer courses in university related to systems capable languages but they seem to focus very VERY (especially in graduate school) heavily on Java for algorithms, structures, discrete math work, et cetera. The software engineering courses tend to be in Java, et cetera, ad nauseum. Heck, we had a guy who received a PhD in Computer Vision who'd never coded in anything EXCEPT Java LOL!
In any case, having received my CSCI degree in the 1996 I had a strong *nix and VMS background which meant a fair bit of C with some C++ thrown in. When I graduated I went to work for a virtual reality company, and later worked on 3D game engines for game companies themselves. Nothing in university prepared me for that experience at all. I don't think you can blame schools for not producing coders who can work in the unique environment that is a game company. Heck, most of the issues with games today are resource (art) related anyhow. It's not hard finding five good coders if you've got a decent budget, but it IS hard to find the 50 quality artists who will produce the kinds of content and shaders necessary to please gamers today. Games are simply astounding amounts of work today.
Fast, cheap, good - pick any two.
...vulnerable to these sorts of attacks (which anyone with any common sense would already know), the fact that it is such an open process means a greater possibility of earlier detection, faster analysis and response, and the rapid repair of the process which made such a gaffe possible. In the closed source world most of these steps would take exponentially longer, and quite often the process would remain the same.
...including the blogger, if the same farce had taken place but the VP had said "Yes"? I bet the number would be, oh, roughly ZERO. LOL. Now, that is a stupid way to make a decision, but surely there was some process established long before this meeting for making this type of decision, I mean, they didn't seem to just come into the meeting and make all new rules. Unless the process was known prior to the meeting, there can't be any conspiracy about getting the Norway Standards guys to disagree (or seeding the other votes with 'yes' in order in order to push it up to the VP), and if the process was known before, why wasn't the process objected to? Why doesn't this guy talk about that?
It sounds very much like a lot of information is being left out in his account, although whatever is left out the decision making process sounds ludicrous.
It isn't necessarily cheaper, depending upon the coverage area you desire, plus if you want cheap, use rfid - that's really cheap. I think there were several points, the one I was addressing (or intending to) is the poster's assertion that it was easier to assess the situation with the motion sensors (and I disagree :).) You also give up a lot of capabilities when you use a motion sensor. Personally, I would use both in order to gain the advantages to be had from sensor 'fusion.'
The motion sensor doesn't tell you anything that video cannot. It's a redundancy. Now, if it was a pressure sensor that would be different... You could then do some things that are difficult for a video sensor to discern (like tailgaiting.)
...and identification purposes, and is also easy to search. The author is either unfamiliar with modern surveillance or chooses to ignore the realities of video analytics.
Ewe, is that you? LOL. I already laughed all the way to the bank last year, thank you though :).
LOL... I doubt he'd stop anyhow, but I signed. What a tool that guy is.
I need one of those shirts that says "FAST|CHEAP|GOOD - Pick any two" ;)
...a wide area surveillance group, I would like to suggest a few reasons why this occurred, especially given what we know of Boeing's attempt to provide a solution.
;). There's a vast amount of 'learning through pain' which (of course) teaches you how to avoid stumbling blocks in the future. WAS is a fusion of architectural planning, mechanical engineering, network engineering, environmental engineering, and software engineering. It is also one of the more difficult management projects due to the fact that very few companies (almost none) have the in-house departments/divisions to handle all aspects of it; ergo, most companies do the more natural 'I am the lead contractor, you all can sub-contract to me for utilities, HVAC, network topology, integration software, camera systems, electromagnetic fences', et cetera.
;)
Wide Area Surveillance is, like any real world 'enterprise' solution, complex. That is not to say it is not achievable, it is just not something you decide to do on a whim
This means that during the bidding process for these jobs, as with any $$$LARGE$$$ government contract, much of the sub-contracting can be political and very rarely results in a proffered solution that is 'best in breed' in all (or even most) areas.
This is all very normal. The real difficulty is in identifying which aspects of a WAS solution will kill your project. For example, the article claims that using off the shelf commercial software for dispatchers was a serious issue. I can tell you from experience, there's no way that this derailed the project. There are several companies (the one I used to work at is one for example) that specialize in integrating their 'command & control' (for lack of a more encompassing term) suites with 3rd party streaming video, network systems, hardware devices, et cetera. The relative cost of these systems varies from very low (with a fair amount of services work being entailed) to moderate (where you get far more C&C stuff than you plan to use but it's there if you need it in the future - but they fully integrate the things you do need off the bat.)
Usually the biggest problems are from poor planning at the start or 'mid course correction' by people who didn't make careful consideration of their options up front regarding the physical infrastructure required. A good example of this is 'pole placement.' One of the easiest, conceptually, methods of watching swathe of territory where there isn't supposed to be much activity is to use a high quality camera mounted (usually mounted on a Pan/Tilt/Zoom gimbal) on a tall pole. How tall? THAT is the question my friends. From a cost point of view you want to put them up as high as is feasible given the terrain and what the local survey should be. This means less poles, less cameras, and less overall costs to cover a wider area; HOWEVER, the higher you put that camera the more difficult the installation of the pole because I assure you that putting a camera 60 feet off the ground results in shaking, deflection, twisting, and all kinds of other frame stabilization nightmares. Usually what happens is that the project denotes the max camera heights, assigns what types of poles/towers will support the cameras, how they will be built in order to overcome problems like these and then 6 months later they change the camera heights (usually because they want to cut out a few poles and the neighboring cameras must take up the slack), bingo you're well thought out and budgeted pole no longer serves your needs.
It is at this point that the reader will think 'ok, then we need to redesign the poles right? No big deal...' Sadly this does not usually happen. The change request costs associated outweight the money saved on the pole changes but that doesn't mean they won't still use the wrong poles and save a hundred thousand on camera costs, they'll just try to hack some solution like putting a frame stabilizer black box on the back of the camera, because that should work, right?
Give game makers a reason to produce all their PC games on Linux and Windows (they won't ignore Windows just yet) and in 3 years there'll be nothing but Linux boxes as enthusiast machines and when the less technically apt members of the enthusiast's family come calling he/she will say nothing but Linux.
Now, how to do that is a huge condundrum. There are tons of different approaches like "take every good thing that DirectX does and learn from every stupid thing it did and beat them at their own game" or "revamp a WINE-like approach again", but those approaches and their similar ideas have shortcomings mostly related to attempting to imitate something from the Windows world.
I really think the only way to get all the games on Linux, for the first few years, would be for all the Linux based companies to get together with the Open Source development networks/alliances/groups and simply straight port all first party games. This is, of course, the brute force approach. The problem is that there are tons of smart, motivated people in Linux; however, they have an equal number of goals - some prefer the clustering aspects, some the file serving aspects, some the desktop, some .
Without games, there will always be Windows boxes. Perhaps the 'super WINE' approach would achieve the best results even if it would require long term maintenance and would be a weak spot.
Exactly, follow the links to IBM's own data and you'll find that nearly everything sold as software is from an aquired company. The 'software division' at IBM is exactly what I claimed it is, nothing but a licensing group. They're exacty the same as SIEMENS. They buy a company, re-brand and package, and sell it. They don't write their own products. The last software products of note from IBM were DB2, AIX, and OS2. I don't know much about DB2's history but AIX was built directly out of System V and OS2 was built by Micro$oft! LOL. Even the presentaiton manager was built by Micro$oft.
IBM even mentions that the the revenue numbers for software come virtually exclusively through services engagements, meaning in many cases the customer did not choose the software, they chose IBM and IBM's services chose the software. None of which is germane to my point, which is still valid, that IBM is entirely interested in Linux and open source purely from the point of view of services revenue. That's it.
They're not the good guys, they're not the bad guys, they're the same as every other publicly traded company.
No offense but somehow you've construed that I've said they're the same in all ways, they're not. IBM has done far worse things in its history than Microsoft has although this was long before Microsoft.
;). Does that make Micro$oft any better? Hell no, but yet again I re-iterate that all public companies care about only one single thing. The dollar...
I've, here, only pointed out IBM's hypocrisy in constantly painting itself the "good guy" regarding "open source" and painting Micro$oft as the "bad guy." How you came to equate that with one or more of them being more/less ethical than the other I don't know.
BTW, reading up on IBM can lead you to some interesting results regarding ethics
"Where did I claim any different?" - You do realize this is a thread about IBM's hypocrisy about open source and being the "good guys", right? Oh, wait, you're one of those posters who doesn't get involved in a thread you just get in on something you're interested in and carry on a sub-thread. Ok.
:)
"Yup, a type of UNIX. You said they weren't pushing *nix. If you want to interpret that as a strict regular expression then no, AIX and *nix would not work as a pattern match. However the more common usage of the term *nix (or more properly *NIX) is to mean any of the UNIX operating systems, of which AIX is one. And which IBM have been pushing for a long time, certainly longer than Linux."
I said they weren't pushing other Unixes because it would cost them money, you are either playing stupid or are attempting to split hairs. On one hand you want to pretend that AIX is not largely made from System V, and other the other hand you want to claim its UNIX when it suits you. In order to remove the possibility of you playing stupid, let's make this crystal clear for you as it was for everyone else "IBM's only interest in promoting Linux is that it doesn't cost IBM anything to base their service work on." So, back to the point of why I even mentioned this in the first place - are you suggesting that IBM's interest in Linux is based upon anything other than the costs it does or does not inherit from deploying Linux?
"I didn't make the claim that they wrote Sys V, I make the claim that they have put a lot of new development into AIX since it was branched. What do you mean by "as if it was their software"? Do you mean that they wrote they first line? No. Do you mean that the bulk of what's in AIX now is their code? Well yes, it is."
To use your favorite type of response - "Where did I claim that you said they wrote System V?" LOL. Of course they put development into it, that wasn't the point. You're the one who brought up AIX as an example of IBM developing operating systems, was the purpose of your doing so to attempt to discredit my assertion that IBM are poor at ISV work or that they didn't push "other" *nix OSes before Linux (which I have, hopefully, now made painfully clear was not mean to include any IBM operating system as this would obviously have been 'free' for them)?
Af for measuring what the bulk of AIX consists of, if you're talking the OS, not tools, how do you propose to measure that? Ignoring the fact that it is irrelevant given that IBM have spent 24+ years extending System V.
"What you said originally was"
Oh, well, that explains it. You were obviously confused into thinking that I was trying to make a point about IBM pushing an operating system that cost them no money to deploy or support versus operating systems that did (which would, by default, suggest operating systems they *do not* own themselves.) Sorry, I should have been clearer for your sake.
"Nope, wrong again, this is getting to be a habit for you."
LOL, very adult of you. You must be 14.
"And again, show me the post where I said otherwise. I didn't. I said they make lots of money and they make decent software. very different propositions. Plug your brain in before your next comment."
You always retreat into the same poor rhetoric. Does every statement someone makes to you have to be a direct refutation of your exact words. Here we are in a sub-thread of your making arguing, presumably that you believe IBM makes *BILLIONS* on software (presumably every year) and *BILLIONS* on services (you can adjust those figures if you believe they're wild generalizations of your actual usage of "billions".) You didn't say they made decent software until just above. You claimed that software sales bring them billions. I disagree.
So, unless you're still confused about my assertion about IBM's 'love' for Linux, we basically just disagree on your supposition that IBM makes billions on Software.
I get the feeling You're 'never wrong'...
"Windows users are a herd that buy cheap equipment they know nothing about, whereas IBM purchasers" - Man are you naive or clueless. In many cases these are the same people. There are large corporations that use Windows not only for their desktop systems but to run other IBM products. I love how they make "well informed decisions" on one hand are are "a herd" on the other. Seriously, dump the fan club and join reality where they're both companies hawking anything they can for a dollar.
Regarding AIX, so you *are* or *are not* claiming that IBM wrote AIX themselves...? If you *are* saying that well, you're wrong, they built it on System V. If you *are not* saying that, well that goes to my original point on that subject.
Regarding my "assinine comment that IBM were not pushing UNIX before Linux" they weren't pushing Unix they were pushing AIX. You really need to make up your mind. You want on one hand to claim that IBM wrote AIX as if it was their software but at the same time you want to take my point that IBM didn't push other UNIX OSes which they would have had to pay other companies for until 'free' Linux came along and say that IBM was pushing Unix...? It's not assinine, it correct and you know it. IBM only push Linux because it costs IBM nothing and they rake in money. They don't "care" about Linux beyond the money it makes them. They don't "care" about open source beyond the money it makes them.
"STFU"? What are you 15 years old? LOL. Grow up kid. Some day when you get out of school and have some engineering experience you'll realize several things:
(1)Operating Systems are tools in a toolbox, nothing more, nothing less.
(2)Public companies are like nations - they don't have friends, they have interests.
I can empathize, but again I would like to point out that this type of thinking is a little naive in that you are anthromorphizing very large organizations who are dispassionate about everything except money.
I agree, I like that they support open source, long may it continue! My issue is with people buying the "we're good guys" routine.
LOL, AIX was built on System V, so you think that after 21 years of modifications even though everything was built upon System V and the kernel and OS are still Unix, that means IBM developed AIX by itself? I guess that means that if someone took Linux and worked on it for 20 years but it operated virtually identically even though bug fixes made the lines of code not identical, they built their own operating system.
IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Nobody said they didn't invent anything, they've done tons of great research and still contribute strongly to research. Nobody said they didn't do anything worthwhile, I simply asked what software they wrote do they currently make billions of dollars on? The answer? NONE.
They aren't a software company. They buy software companies. They don't innovate products, they embrace, extend, and charge you for support. Why do you think they aren't in the consumer level software business? Because they're terrible at it. Why are they in the services business? Because they're good at it.
Who cares what Micro$oft is doing.
All you IBM fanbois are the same. You think that because I belive that IBM is self serving and hypocritical when pointing the finger at other people that I'm a fan of Micro$oft. I'm not. I just call a shovel a shovel.
Perhaps you should define what *you* mean by open as 'Open XML' is an 'open standard.' OpenOffice supports it, office supports it, PalmOS, Gnumeric, it is being standardized by people from Apple, Novell, Intel, Micro$oft and others.
Open source being helpful to IBM's business model doesn't mean IBM likes 'open source' in any other way than a mechanism to generate revenue. Are you suggesting that the purpose of 'open source' is to generate revenue? It is in this way that I suggest that IBM only likes 'open source' because of the money it brings them. If they were embracing 'open source' for the philosophical purposes from which 'open source' came, websphere would be open source. Hell, even the stuff they bought from gluecode isn't open source it's 'free' with 30 days support and then you can pay for more support.
My point isn't to try to make Micro$oft look better, it's to point out the hypocrisy of IBM trying to make Micro$oft look like "the bad guys" when IBM are exactly the same. If IBM sold its services division tomorrow. You'd never hear 'open source' from IBM again. It's entirely related, as has been my point all along, to their own self interests in generating services revenue.
"Tell that to the enterprise sector that lays out billions each year for IBM Software" - This would be the enterprise sector that knows what it's doing, right? LOL. Using EJB where is shouldn't be. Using Windows where it shouldn't be. Using a variety of hammers for a variety of problems that shockingly all look like nails? By this type of reasoning the billions of dollars laid out each year for Microsoft Windows must be from informed users who know what they're doing, right?
As regards AIX, no offense, but AIX is based upon System V. Are you trying to suggest that IBM engineered something new with it?
I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
And what? I'm simply pointing out that they, IBM, like to pretend they're the good guys when they're just another public company. I like that their greedy self interest benefits open source, but they're full of when they try to assert they're trying to do anyone but themselves some good.