Umm... 'day one' for me means the day it was released to public, and yes, that would be the post to the minix list, which google now shows me was 8/25/91 and I recall as being a very hot weekend in LA, which is why I was in my computer room, in air-conditioning, reading my e-mail.
I've had a box - many times more than just one, in fact - in my life running Linux since that day. Okay, well, maybe the Monday after 'day one', since I had to steal more RAM for my box from one at work, before it *really* was a running Linux box... but yeah. You get the point.
Yggdrasil was my first 'real' linux distro, and man was it fancy. You could *boot* a working Linux system from it, from the CD and floppy drive. In 1991. Or, maybe Yggdrasil was '92, I forget... but I'm sure google knows the details.
I once booted 86 PC's in one afternoon with a single Yggdrasil CD set, at the Title Insurance Company where I was doing work, just so that I could have the pleasure of having 86 Unix boxes, finally, under my control at one time.
For me, at the time a budding Unix hacker (my first account was on a completely loaded, empty MIPS box, woohoo! First Unix developer workstation was a Magnum pizzabox, woohoo!), this was pure fun. 86 Unix boxes, where once there was only a lowly fleet of DOS machines running... shudder... PROGRESS software...
Ah, Linux. How good you have been to me. Thanks, Linus!
I'd say that they're just trying to up the ante, and frankly the digital media creation software industry could really use the higher standards.
As a player in this market (I work for a company which makes hardware synthesizers) I want nothing more than for the companies like EMagic, Steinberg, and the like to have to step back from the plate a second, take another good close look at what they're doing now, with the new OS choices in front of them, and then really excel.
I see that happening, frankly. Soundtrack, while it may be a simple application, certainly raises the bar when it comes to easy-to-use yet powerful digital media content creation tools. You can't say that about Logic or Nuendo.
Sorry, but no. There are *thousands* of reasons we can't do with Windows what we can do with Linux.
Those thousands of reasons are called "lines of code". The code for Microsoft Windows will never be available - and for this reason alone, we can never do with Windows what we can do with TRON. Or Linux.
I'm a hardware manufacturer.
I want to run a decent operating system on hardware CPU xxx_yyy. CPU xxx_yyy is pretty important to me: as a hardware manufacturer, for hardware manufacturer reasons.
I can: a) see if Microsoft Windows CE supports it, and if not either give up and use the CPU they want me to use or pay thousands for them to support my xxx_yyy CPU, or b) port Linux to it myself freely in a couple of days.
No comparison. We can not do with Windows today what we have been able to do with TRON for 20 years.
And, FYI, you've got TRON running in your home, somewhere, if you're an average American consumer with credit cards that you use. Every American uses TRON, somehow, at least 2 or 3 times a day.
You can't compare the two, but you can compare the result.
Microsoft wants PC technology in everything, and this is clear with their Embedded PC ("flavour of the month name") OS'es, TabletPC's, MS' "home of the future", Pocket Computing rubbish.
TRON was supposed to go the other way around: embedded computers in everything, talking to each other using common languages/protocols/API's from the beginning, based on open specifications.
Actually, the reason TRON failed was because Gates and his American computer technology cronies have been working against it for years.
It was Gates who screwed MSX - and MSX was supposed to be a good test of the TRON technology system - it was Gates and the US Defense industry who has kept the American embedded markets from using TRON systems in the 80's and 90's, and it is Gates who now tries to get a Microsoft operating system to do what TRON has been doing for years: run in every device imaginable, communicate freely with all other devices.
TRON would have been here, properly, as E-TRON: the worlds largest computing system, by 1995/96.
Unfortunately, it has been a looong battle for the TRON guys.
I've been following Mr. Sakamura for years, and I agree: his is the soft-spoken, intelligent view which is missing from the OSS PR front. I wouldn't say its missing from OSS at all - in fact, clearly not - but the PR front in Linux-land is definitely dominated by arrogant pricks.
I'm one of them. I've been a Linux user since Linux announced it on minix, and I've put Linux to use in countless businesses and organizations I have consulted for, through the 90's and still yet into the 21st Century.
I've used a similar argument to Mr. Sakamura's - that Microsoft is free to do what they want, even if it is socially destructive - and it works.
So, the answer to your question of "why can't we..." is "we are". And should.
... but underestimating the effect which TRON has had on the industry is also silly. TRON was designed to run *everywhere* - circa 70's era technology - and has.
The JAVA guys found big inspiration in TRON as a project, and in fact there is reason to believe that Sun held the TRON project up as an example of 'embedded processing' done right in the early days of the JAVA project.
To underestimate how much this would've been worth, had it not been for a little slack licensing, is to discount the story here.
Projects like this ARE worth lots, and lots, and lots of money.
And while TRON may not be the mega-system it was supposed to be (actually, it was supposed to be the worlds biggest computing system), all of this is still feasible with Linux.
Pretty much any Japanese electronic musical instrument maker has used TRON. Yamaha keyboards run it, or derivatives of it, I've been told. That will change now though, with Yamaha's recent announcement that they'll be using Linux.
I've followed TRON since I was a kid hacker in the early 80's, and have watched its use in the industry with eager anticipation of the day it becomes more widely known about in the tech sector.
When Linux came into existence (I've been a Linux user since *day one* of its existence), I decided I need not stay current with TRON, which is a shame because I think a lot of the goals of TRON (E-TRON, actually, its supposed to be called) are achievable right now with Linux in the embedded world.
If ever there was proof needed of just how destructive Microsoft has been for the computer industry, it is the fact that hardly anyone in the Western Tech sector (sillicon valley) knows about TRON and what this project was supposed to achieve... and, actually, still is capable of achieving... The project is based around shared source, completely open amongst competing hardware manufacturers.
Embedded kernels running in every electronic device known to man, capable of talking to each other discretely and without human interaction, to create a sort of 'Boewulf cluster' of embedded systems capable of sharing loads and processing power.
TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.
That is a very interesting idea. I wonder what sort of propulsion would be required once the effectiveness of the balloon 'runs out' in order to get it above the gravity well?
Seems to me if you can float your material into space, then you can float a *lot* of material into space...
4) Those who are not aware of the problems, but would do something about it were they aware of it.
That you didn't see this group only means you belong in the group of people whose head is vaguely associated with more assinine features of your body and therefore are unable to see that there may actually be a *reason* for bringing such problems to light in the world.
If we don't talk about these problems, they don't go away.
Microsoft is a company who *does not deserve* its current position, on the basis that through its inactions, self-serving deployment of technology, and erroneous decisions, it has allowed such crimes against society as mass computer-hijacking for kiddie porn propagation.
I won't be complaining about the fact that they are 'authenticating' anything.
I'll be complaining about the fact that they've decided to impose their own arbitrary ideals on the nature of 'secure' literature on the world.
And then I will be pointing out to them - as lucidly as possible - that any method designed to enforce such 'literate ideals' as Acrobat presents with their 'encrypted documents', is destined to degrade the actual quality of literate thought among the human race.
Some of us think outside the box. The fact is, you can paint your box whatever color you want: it is still a box.
I, personally, would like to make my annoyance at this situation known.
Who do we contact at Adobe? How do we make a serious stink about this? Are the board members of this company contactable somehow? I'd go to the effort of writing a decent letter explaining to them their stupidity and callousness, if I knew where to send it.
(and SCO does not have the political might that AT&T had in the AT&T/Berkeley case).
To get the case sealed, all SCO would have to do is provide evidence that the code in use might in some way endanger one of their clients - lets just say that the DoD is on their client list - and invoke the Homeland Security Secrecy Act (or whatever it is called) to get the courts to seal the details...
... right up there with Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Property.
Probably in that order, in fact.
Real, essential human rights, like "the right to shit", "the right to eat", "the right to drink", "the right to breathe", and lets not forget... "the right to fuck"... have all long since be added to with your Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Puberty^H^H^H^H^H^HProperty.
I see no, particular reason - other than flaming users of the term 'whore' - why any group of people, sufficiently organized enough to call themselves a country, shouldn't be commended for actually *adding* to a human right which, fundamentally, is 100% human.
Lets just say they used good FLASH, and no swap (eCOS needs no swap).
The FLASH is probably only for uploading new program code to run the instruments onboard - I doubt they're using it for realtime storage, since that'd best be done downstairs. Since typical FLASH systems can withstand 10,000 or so re-writes before things go bitty, and presumably these guys used good stuff, I'd say thats enough for a lot of program updates.
... a fairly decent diatribe on why SHIFT keys are bad, bad, bad, but I can't remember enough words to find it with google.
Anyone know of a good designers style diatribe against the idea of SHIFT and modal interfaces and such? I think "Design of Everyday Things" had a chapter on it, but I for sure remember reading something, while researching keyboard designs, which really struck home on why SHIFT/ALT/CTRL/WIN/CMD/APPLE keys have been terrible concepts to inflict on the computer user...
You should get on music-bar@ampfea.org and try to rally those guys a little bit about getting behind your project.
It's a great idea, and frankly I think you should definitely *NOT* let it expire... just get more people involved. I fell asleep watching your playlist last night, and it was very, very welcome!
I run ampfea.org, a collective of thousands of musicians which, for the last 6 years, has been providing online archives and storage for individual artist mp3's.
We're moving to bittorrent. That sorts out the entire problem.
... are something we should all be a lot more familiar with.
It's about time that the Alien Invasion genre got a serious kick in the ass. People are so naive about what happens during Alien Invasions, and how to deal with them.
Providing a suitable analog in a video game reality will prepare the species for its ultimate test.
I praise Sega for their initiative in this matter, and would like to invite them to Recklinghausen to see how the Germans will deal with the situation as well. There can never be enough serious studies of the effects of Alien Invasion, in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... 'day one' for me means the day it was released to public, and yes, that would be the post to the minix list, which google now shows me was 8/25/91 and I recall as being a very hot weekend in LA, which is why I was in my computer room, in air-conditioning, reading my e-mail.
... but yeah. You get the point.
... shudder ... PROGRESS software ...
I've had a box - many times more than just one, in fact - in my life running Linux since that day. Okay, well, maybe the Monday after 'day one', since I had to steal more RAM for my box from one at work, before it *really* was a running Linux box
Yggdrasil was my first 'real' linux distro, and man was it fancy. You could *boot* a working Linux system from it, from the CD and floppy drive. In 1991. Or, maybe Yggdrasil was '92, I forget... but I'm sure google knows the details.
I once booted 86 PC's in one afternoon with a single Yggdrasil CD set, at the Title Insurance Company where I was doing work, just so that I could have the pleasure of having 86 Unix boxes, finally, under my control at one time.
For me, at the time a budding Unix hacker (my first account was on a completely loaded, empty MIPS box, woohoo! First Unix developer workstation was a Magnum pizzabox, woohoo!), this was pure fun. 86 Unix boxes, where once there was only a lowly fleet of DOS machines running
Ah, Linux. How good you have been to me. Thanks, Linus!
I'd say that they're just trying to up the ante, and frankly the digital media creation software industry could really use the higher standards.
As a player in this market (I work for a company which makes hardware synthesizers) I want nothing more than for the companies like EMagic, Steinberg, and the like to have to step back from the plate a second, take another good close look at what they're doing now, with the new OS choices in front of them, and then really excel.
I see that happening, frankly. Soundtrack, while it may be a simple application, certainly raises the bar when it comes to easy-to-use yet powerful digital media content creation tools. You can't say that about Logic or Nuendo.
Yet.
Sorry, but no. There are *thousands* of reasons we can't do with Windows what we can do with Linux.
Those thousands of reasons are called "lines of code". The code for Microsoft Windows will never be available - and for this reason alone, we can never do with Windows what we can do with TRON. Or Linux.
I'm a hardware manufacturer.
I want to run a decent operating system on hardware CPU xxx_yyy. CPU xxx_yyy is pretty important to me: as a hardware manufacturer, for hardware manufacturer reasons.
I can: a) see if Microsoft Windows CE supports it, and if not either give up and use the CPU they want me to use or pay thousands for them to support my xxx_yyy CPU, or b) port Linux to it myself freely in a couple of days.
No comparison. We can not do with Windows today what we have been able to do with TRON for 20 years.
And, FYI, you've got TRON running in your home, somewhere, if you're an average American consumer with credit cards that you use. Every American uses TRON, somehow, at least 2 or 3 times a day.
Without even knowing it.
I hate Jolt. Give me a Dr. Pepper and I'll forget that you even exist. :)
Seriously though, its true: I've still got my minix mailbox archives, which includes that very post from that fateful day.
What a great afternoon for me that has turned out to be!
You can't compare the two, but you can compare the result.
Microsoft wants PC technology in everything, and this is clear with their Embedded PC ("flavour of the month name") OS'es, TabletPC's, MS' "home of the future", Pocket Computing rubbish.
TRON was supposed to go the other way around: embedded computers in everything, talking to each other using common languages/protocols/API's from the beginning, based on open specifications.
Actually, the reason TRON failed was because Gates and his American computer technology cronies have been working against it for years.
It was Gates who screwed MSX - and MSX was supposed to be a good test of the TRON technology system - it was Gates and the US Defense industry who has kept the American embedded markets from using TRON systems in the 80's and 90's, and it is Gates who now tries to get a Microsoft operating system to do what TRON has been doing for years: run in every device imaginable, communicate freely with all other devices.
TRON would have been here, properly, as E-TRON: the worlds largest computing system, by 1995/96.
Unfortunately, it has been a looong battle for the TRON guys.
I've been following Mr. Sakamura for years, and I agree: his is the soft-spoken, intelligent view which is missing from the OSS PR front. I wouldn't say its missing from OSS at all - in fact, clearly not - but the PR front in Linux-land is definitely dominated by arrogant pricks.
I'm one of them. I've been a Linux user since Linux announced it on minix, and I've put Linux to use in countless businesses and organizations I have consulted for, through the 90's and still yet into the 21st Century.
I've used a similar argument to Mr. Sakamura's - that Microsoft is free to do what they want, even if it is socially destructive - and it works.
So, the answer to your question of "why can't we..." is "we are". And should.
... but underestimating the effect which TRON has had on the industry is also silly. TRON was designed to run *everywhere* - circa 70's era technology - and has.
The JAVA guys found big inspiration in TRON as a project, and in fact there is reason to believe that Sun held the TRON project up as an example of 'embedded processing' done right in the early days of the JAVA project.
To underestimate how much this would've been worth, had it not been for a little slack licensing, is to discount the story here.
Projects like this ARE worth lots, and lots, and lots of money.
And while TRON may not be the mega-system it was supposed to be (actually, it was supposed to be the worlds biggest computing system), all of this is still feasible with Linux.
Pretty much any Japanese electronic musical instrument maker has used TRON. Yamaha keyboards run it, or derivatives of it, I've been told. That will change now though, with Yamaha's recent announcement that they'll be using Linux.
I've followed TRON since I was a kid hacker in the early 80's, and have watched its use in the industry with eager anticipation of the day it becomes more widely known about in the tech sector.
When Linux came into existence (I've been a Linux user since *day one* of its existence), I decided I need not stay current with TRON, which is a shame because I think a lot of the goals of TRON (E-TRON, actually, its supposed to be called) are achievable right now with Linux in the embedded world.
If ever there was proof needed of just how destructive Microsoft has been for the computer industry, it is the fact that hardly anyone in the Western Tech sector (sillicon valley) knows about TRON and what this project was supposed to achieve... and, actually, still is capable of achieving... The project is based around shared source, completely open amongst competing hardware manufacturers.
Embedded kernels running in every electronic device known to man, capable of talking to each other discretely and without human interaction, to create a sort of 'Boewulf cluster' of embedded systems capable of sharing loads and processing power.
TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.
We have the engine for this built already at ampfea.org... its just a matter for artists to start using it...
Start listening to new-music ...
That is a very interesting idea. I wonder what sort of propulsion would be required once the effectiveness of the balloon 'runs out' in order to get it above the gravity well?
Seems to me if you can float your material into space, then you can float a *lot* of material into space...
4) Those who are not aware of the problems, but would do something about it were they aware of it.
That you didn't see this group only means you belong in the group of people whose head is vaguely associated with more assinine features of your body and therefore are unable to see that there may actually be a *reason* for bringing such problems to light in the world.
If we don't talk about these problems, they don't go away.
Microsoft is a company who *does not deserve* its current position, on the basis that through its inactions, self-serving deployment of technology, and erroneous decisions, it has allowed such crimes against society as mass computer-hijacking for kiddie porn propagation.
I won't be complaining about the fact that they are 'authenticating' anything.
I'll be complaining about the fact that they've decided to impose their own arbitrary ideals on the nature of 'secure' literature on the world.
And then I will be pointing out to them - as lucidly as possible - that any method designed to enforce such 'literate ideals' as Acrobat presents with their 'encrypted documents', is destined to degrade the actual quality of literate thought among the human race.
Some of us think outside the box. The fact is, you can paint your box whatever color you want: it is still a box.
I, personally, would like to make my annoyance at this situation known.
Who do we contact at Adobe? How do we make a serious stink about this? Are the board members of this company contactable somehow? I'd go to the effort of writing a decent letter explaining to them their stupidity and callousness, if I knew where to send it.
(and SCO does not have the political might that AT&T had in the AT&T/Berkeley case).
...
To get the case sealed, all SCO would have to do is provide evidence that the code in use might in some way endanger one of their clients - lets just say that the DoD is on their client list - and invoke the Homeland Security Secrecy Act (or whatever it is called) to get the courts to seal the details
It need no be said that this is good for my industry too.
... right up there with Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Property.
... "the right to fuck" ... have all long since be added to with your Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Puberty^H^H^H^H^H^HProperty.
Probably in that order, in fact.
Real, essential human rights, like "the right to shit", "the right to eat", "the right to drink", "the right to breathe", and lets not forget
I see no, particular reason - other than flaming users of the term 'whore' - why any group of people, sufficiently organized enough to call themselves a country, shouldn't be commended for actually *adding* to a human right which, fundamentally, is 100% human.
Geeze. D'uh?!
And we all know how important skin is to living.
Lets just say they used good FLASH, and no swap (eCOS needs no swap).
The FLASH is probably only for uploading new program code to run the instruments onboard - I doubt they're using it for realtime storage, since that'd best be done downstairs. Since typical FLASH systems can withstand 10,000 or so re-writes before things go bitty, and presumably these guys used good stuff, I'd say thats enough for a lot of program updates.
I want to know where you're getting Zero-G from!!!
... a fairly decent diatribe on why SHIFT keys are bad, bad, bad, but I can't remember enough words to find it with google.
Anyone know of a good designers style diatribe against the idea of SHIFT and modal interfaces and such? I think "Design of Everyday Things" had a chapter on it, but I for sure remember reading something, while researching keyboard designs, which really struck home on why SHIFT/ALT/CTRL/WIN/CMD/APPLE keys have been terrible concepts to inflict on the computer user...
You should get on music-bar@ampfea.org and try to rally those guys a little bit about getting behind your project.
... just get more people involved. I fell asleep watching your playlist last night, and it was very, very welcome!
It's a great idea, and frankly I think you should definitely *NOT* let it expire
I run ampfea.org, a collective of thousands of musicians which, for the last 6 years, has been providing online archives and storage for individual artist mp3's.
We're moving to bittorrent. That sorts out the entire problem.
... are something we should all be a lot more familiar with.
It's about time that the Alien Invasion genre got a serious kick in the ass. People are so naive about what happens during Alien Invasions, and how to deal with them.
Providing a suitable analog in a video game reality will prepare the species for its ultimate test.
I praise Sega for their initiative in this matter, and would like to invite them to Recklinghausen to see how the Germans will deal with the situation as well. There can never be enough serious studies of the effects of Alien Invasion, in my opinion.
You rock. Lets make babies.
Oh, wait you're probably a dude. Never mind.
This is *exactly* what I've needed for the last 13 minutes. I'm so frickin' bored - so much bandwidth, nothing worth watching... until now!!!
Thanks. Feel free to plug away.