I think it can be summed up that Open Source faces challenges when the developers are working on code "for other people" not themselves. Two of the most successful Open Source projects are GNU (excuse me, Free Software) and the Linux Kernel. I think you can categorize both of these as situations where the developer is classified as a user of the end product. It is in their interest to make the best product possible because it actually helps their own cause.
The case of the SchoolTool was that it was being developed by developers who didn't have a vested interest in making it work or at least faced no consequence if the tool didn't work.
Not to open another can of worms but I think this can extend to other situations such as Desktop Environments. A lot of talk about making stuff "Grandma Friendly" or similar mantra removes the developer even further from an interest in the user experience rather than add the focus people are hoping for.
Uhm, just connect the webserver to the tracker and blam, it is a seeder. I don't see how this is any different. This is exactly what Bittorrent was designed to do.
One big problem with BitTorrent is the opposite of normal client/server file sharing: if a file isn't popular, it downloads slower.
It shouldn't. If the server can supply 100k/sec in normal circumstances, under bittorrent it will still supply (seed) 100k/sec irrespective of how many leechers/seeders there are. It won't be worse than any normal client-server download scenario given the same connection.
-Eyston
ps. of course things suck when the distributer is on DSL/Cable, but how is that worse than a normal client/server relationship when the server is on DSL? The problem isn't bittorrent.
Generally a good article, although it is funny to see 'script kiddie' and 'lamer' used in NYTimes.
When talking about how some of the more upscale virus writers post their exploits or e-mail them to virus companies, it would have rang more true if they made some mention of OSS. The NYtimes presented the case of how really they are just trying to trick someone else into running the malicious code (which I'm sure is true a lot of the times). This is the conclusion anyone would come to when only thinking about propreitary code where the situation is they would rather you NOT find the vulnerabilities in their software. They want to keep living with their head under the sand. In OSS, finding the vulnerabilities and being responsible about it is encouraged behavior. So the same act from two different points of view have vastly different reactions.
Of course this has little impact on e-mail attachment type 'exploits'.
The Athlon64 isn't that pricey of a machine. The Athlon 64 3200+ comes in at about a 50-75 dollar premium over an Athlon XP 3200+. Pair that with a good motherboard and it is still at your 400 dollar mark.
If you are worried about not needing 64bits, it doesn't really matter as the A64 is an all around much better 32-bit chip than A-XP.
I really think the problem is the audience not the content. 2D animation in Japan is considered okay for adults. You can take those same movies and play them in the United States (and some are). Critics will love the movie, but audiences still see it as kid stuff. 3D doesn't have that baggage.
No, this does not signal that Itanium is doomed. Have a look at www.spec.org and look at the CPU2000 scores. Itanium is starting to kick some serious tail.
However Itanium is not a desktop chip-- its too big. 64-bit x86 will be a consumer product for desktops.
Itanium is dead if Intel makes a 64bit Xeon. Itanium might have done well in competition with the Opteron because the Opteron is from AMD, not Intel. When the Itanium goes up against a 64bit Xeon, both from Intel, as long as Intel doesn't cripple it in some regard to make Itanium look better (which would be stupid considering Opteron exists) the Xeon will win. Itanium will be relegated to smaller and smaller markets that will just make it harder and harder for Intel to validate it's existance.
Disney, meanwhile, decided to scrap all 2D animation recently. They did this because, apparently, they think Pixar's success is because they work in 3D.
To a large degree, they are right. You may love Pixar's movies, but look at Ice Age, which is at best a mediocre movie with mediocre animation. Disney's 2D animation is about as good as it gets, yet it couldn't compete with even a sub-par 3D movie. Disney has made some good 2D films targetted at a more adult nature, but they just don't do well. Emperors New Groove is probably one of my favorite animated films, but without that 3D edge it just doesn't generate mass appeal. To the US audience, 2D is a cartoon but 3D is acceptable for mass appeal.
Given the general efforts by freedesktop.org and the like to improve interoperability between the two largest free desktops, isn't the so-called desktop war is really a mute point?
It's about Qt and GTK. Having two toolkits is pretty retarded and counter productive. Making them look identical is a solution that fixes a lot of the previous years problems, but will do little for all the upcoming problems as the toolkits expand to provide much more for the Desktop Environment.
I guess Freedesktop.org is working in this area, but what will end up happening if Freedesktop.org is 100% successful is you have GTK and QT who do 50% of things identically(interopability), and 50% of things different and people will still want them to merge because it makes even less sense for having two of them.
There are a lot of great projects on each side. Mono/GTK# is awesome. QT Project is awesome. Developing GUI on Linux is going to become stupidly easy, but toolkit will still end up being a concern... which is dumb.
I know Linux is about choice, but choice in implementation is preferrable to choice in standards.
VIA is still a bitch when it comes to Linux support, although that has little to do with the CPU (C3) as much as with the rest of the system.
It doesn't matter much if you are just using it as a gateway I suppose, but if you care about CPU power I would have to assume using it as a desktop was at least mildly important, in which case VIA is far from friendly.
I think Fedora is an answer to the whining of people who run Debian but say even unstable is too behind the times (gnome, xfree, etc).
All the flaming of Redhat for switching to a model that resembles a commercial Debian has been amusing. They take away boxed CD's that you could buy for XX dollars (which tons of slashdotters would flame anyways, 'who would pay for what you can get for free', as seen by SuSE 9 threads) and replace it with a leading edge distro that focuses on quick updates that would be impossible to accomplish with a boxed distrobution method (call it debian unstable). They will then take what they learn from Fedora and incorporate it into Redhat Enterprise line of software (think of it as analogous to debian stable).
Of course that asks why use Redhat instead of just Debian? For personal use it really comes down to flavor, but for Enterprise use it is an easy question.
There is no reason why a Mini-ITX machine would cost twice as much as a PC. The motherboard/cpu will be the same price, if not cheaper, as a normal computer, you will just get less raw performance. All the other components can be the same. So the premium you pay for Mini-ITX isn't cost but speed.
$2000 versus $1000 is FUD.
I find it funny you slam Mini-ITX for 'logistical problems with cooling' when it dissipates much less heat than any standard PC. The new AMD/Intel chips are approaching 100 Watts; that is a much more logistical problem for cooling.
All the RIAA knows is that you downloaded a song. That in itself is not illegal. What if you own that song but it is on a copy-protected CD and you want to be able to play it on your MP3 player? Is that also illegal? Under Fair Use I would think not, but IANAL.
Sure, but will Wi-Fi still even be available at that certain chain of cafes? Will a large enough portion of paying customers keep Starbuck's network financially viable?
I'm not sure how many people make use of Starbuck's WiFi, but isn't a cheap $100 dollars DSL line good enough for a dozen people to share while browsing the web and sending e-mail? A WiFi station is a few hundred dollar one-time investment. Not sure why WiFi hotspot has to be that expensive.
A bonus is that most people who want to make use of WiFi are going to be more of your upper class customers. If implemented cheaply, and I think it can be done reasonably cheap, a small increase in business should fund them.
But go one step further. Why was the South agrarian? Why didn't they develop industry as the North did?
They did try to develop industry. It was decided that blacks weren't capable of performing in factories. You also had a lot of immigrants avoid the South, the same immigrants who fueled the North's industries. Why didn't they go to the South? Simple answer: they didn't want to compete with Blacks. This is quite evident in the Irish mentality. Slavery completely crippled the South's attempts at industrialization. This lead to the 'us vs. them' mentality.
You might say that every country needs an agrarian base for food and supplies. This is true, but if you look at the numbers, the South wasn't like a wheat basket. They had an advantage in some food production, but it wasn't overwhelming. All their agrarian nature was due to Cotton which was fueled by slave labor. It wasn't the small subsistence farmers against the North, but instead the large slave owning Cotton producers.
The war was fought over securing and maintaining the Union. The war started due to slavery. Thats an oversimplification, but any reason you want to site to why the South succeeded from the North (economic, representation, etc) has a root in slavery. The 50+ years up until the war were a string of compromises (Clay inparticular) trying to keep the Union together over the divide slavery created.
So sure, the North wasn't on the battlefield to free the slaves, but slavery played an integral role in getting them there.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it can be summed up that Open Source faces challenges when the developers are working on code "for other people" not themselves. Two of the most successful Open Source projects are GNU (excuse me, Free Software) and the Linux Kernel. I think you can categorize both of these as situations where the developer is classified as a user of the end product. It is in their interest to make the best product possible because it actually helps their own cause.
The case of the SchoolTool was that it was being developed by developers who didn't have a vested interest in making it work or at least faced no consequence if the tool didn't work.
Not to open another can of worms but I think this can extend to other situations such as Desktop Environments. A lot of talk about making stuff "Grandma Friendly" or similar mantra removes the developer even further from an interest in the user experience rather than add the focus people are hoping for.
-Eyst
Uhm, just connect the webserver to the tracker and blam, it is a seeder. I don't see how this is any different. This is exactly what Bittorrent was designed to do.
-Eyston
One big problem with BitTorrent is the opposite of normal client/server file sharing: if a file isn't popular, it downloads slower.
It shouldn't. If the server can supply 100k/sec in normal circumstances, under bittorrent it will still supply (seed) 100k/sec irrespective of how many leechers/seeders there are. It won't be worse than any normal client-server download scenario given the same connection.
-Eyston
ps. of course things suck when the distributer is on DSL/Cable, but how is that worse than a normal client/server relationship when the server is on DSL? The problem isn't bittorrent.
Generally a good article, although it is funny to see 'script kiddie' and 'lamer' used in NYTimes.
When talking about how some of the more upscale virus writers post their exploits or e-mail them to virus companies, it would have rang more true if they made some mention of OSS. The NYtimes presented the case of how really they are just trying to trick someone else into running the malicious code (which I'm sure is true a lot of the times). This is the conclusion anyone would come to when only thinking about propreitary code where the situation is they would rather you NOT find the vulnerabilities in their software. They want to keep living with their head under the sand. In OSS, finding the vulnerabilities and being responsible about it is encouraged behavior. So the same act from two different points of view have vastly different reactions.
Of course this has little impact on e-mail attachment type 'exploits'.
-Eyston
The Athlon64 isn't that pricey of a machine. The Athlon 64 3200+ comes in at about a 50-75 dollar premium over an Athlon XP 3200+. Pair that with a good motherboard and it is still at your 400 dollar mark.
If you are worried about not needing 64bits, it doesn't really matter as the A64 is an all around much better 32-bit chip than A-XP.
-Eyston
I really think the problem is the audience not the content. 2D animation in Japan is considered okay for adults. You can take those same movies and play them in the United States (and some are). Critics will love the movie, but audiences still see it as kid stuff. 3D doesn't have that baggage.
-Eyston
No, this does not signal that Itanium is doomed. Have a look at www.spec.org and look at the CPU2000 scores. Itanium is starting to kick some serious tail.
However Itanium is not a desktop chip-- its too big. 64-bit x86 will be a consumer product for desktops.
Itanium is dead if Intel makes a 64bit Xeon. Itanium might have done well in competition with the Opteron because the Opteron is from AMD, not Intel. When the Itanium goes up against a 64bit Xeon, both from Intel, as long as Intel doesn't cripple it in some regard to make Itanium look better (which would be stupid considering Opteron exists) the Xeon will win. Itanium will be relegated to smaller and smaller markets that will just make it harder and harder for Intel to validate it's existance.
-Eyston
Disney, meanwhile, decided to scrap all 2D animation recently. They did this because, apparently, they think Pixar's success is because they work in 3D.
To a large degree, they are right. You may love Pixar's movies, but look at Ice Age, which is at best a mediocre movie with mediocre animation. Disney's 2D animation is about as good as it gets, yet it couldn't compete with even a sub-par 3D movie. Disney has made some good 2D films targetted at a more adult nature, but they just don't do well. Emperors New Groove is probably one of my favorite animated films, but without that 3D edge it just doesn't generate mass appeal. To the US audience, 2D is a cartoon but 3D is acceptable for mass appeal.
-Eyston
Given the general efforts by freedesktop.org and the like to improve interoperability between the two largest free desktops, isn't the so-called desktop war is really a mute point?
It's about Qt and GTK. Having two toolkits is pretty retarded and counter productive. Making them look identical is a solution that fixes a lot of the previous years problems, but will do little for all the upcoming problems as the toolkits expand to provide much more for the Desktop Environment.
I guess Freedesktop.org is working in this area, but what will end up happening if Freedesktop.org is 100% successful is you have GTK and QT who do 50% of things identically(interopability), and 50% of things different and people will still want them to merge because it makes even less sense for having two of them.
There are a lot of great projects on each side. Mono/GTK# is awesome. QT Project is awesome. Developing GUI on Linux is going to become stupidly easy, but toolkit will still end up being a concern... which is dumb.
I know Linux is about choice, but choice in implementation is preferrable to choice in standards.
-Eyston
I do know one way in which WMA is superior to both MP3 and AAC. There's support for lossless compression in WMA.
You can shove FLAC into an mp4 container instead of AAC.
Of course that doesn't mean everything will play it (just as everything won't play lossless WMA).
-Eyston
VIA is still a bitch when it comes to Linux support, although that has little to do with the CPU (C3) as much as with the rest of the system.
It doesn't matter much if you are just using it as a gateway I suppose, but if you care about CPU power I would have to assume using it as a desktop was at least mildly important, in which case VIA is far from friendly.
-Eyston
I'm sure MobileBurn is ecstatic to be labeled as the next bluetooth
-Eyston
Just because devices are shipping with bluetooth support does mean anyone will actually use it (hello powerbook).
-Eyston
...promote terrorism!
Seriously though, is there any reprecussion if some stranger comes up, enters your WAP, and downloads kiddie porn or *gasp* illegal mp3's?
-Eyston
I think Fedora is an answer to the whining of people who run Debian but say even unstable is too behind the times (gnome, xfree, etc).
All the flaming of Redhat for switching to a model that resembles a commercial Debian has been amusing. They take away boxed CD's that you could buy for XX dollars (which tons of slashdotters would flame anyways, 'who would pay for what you can get for free', as seen by SuSE 9 threads) and replace it with a leading edge distro that focuses on quick updates that would be impossible to accomplish with a boxed distrobution method (call it debian unstable). They will then take what they learn from Fedora and incorporate it into Redhat Enterprise line of software (think of it as analogous to debian stable).
Of course that asks why use Redhat instead of just Debian? For personal use it really comes down to flavor, but for Enterprise use it is an easy question.
-Eyston
Are they trying to pack more megatons of destructive force into each warhead?
No, they are making sure 50 year old bombs still work.
-Eyston
There is no reason why a Mini-ITX machine would cost twice as much as a PC. The motherboard/cpu will be the same price, if not cheaper, as a normal computer, you will just get less raw performance. All the other components can be the same. So the premium you pay for Mini-ITX isn't cost but speed.
$2000 versus $1000 is FUD.
I find it funny you slam Mini-ITX for 'logistical problems with cooling' when it dissipates much less heat than any standard PC. The new AMD/Intel chips are approaching 100 Watts; that is a much more logistical problem for cooling.
-Eyston
Use VideoLAN and have it multicast.
-Eyston
Why would you link to a secondary site talking about the companies announcement and not the actual announcement?
http://www.lippert-at.com/miniitx.html
-Eyston
That is a lot of writing just to lobby your opinion that x86 sucks.
-Eyston
All the RIAA knows is that you downloaded a song. That in itself is not illegal. What if you own that song but it is on a copy-protected CD and you want to be able to play it on your MP3 player? Is that also illegal? Under Fair Use I would think not, but IANAL.
-Eyston
"It is simply wrong, indeed, dangerous, to name anything after a living personage, especially a politician."
Unless CGI is involved, I highly doubt Reagan will use this as leverage to rise to power again.
-Eyston
Sure, but will Wi-Fi still even be available at that certain chain of cafes? Will a large enough portion of paying customers keep Starbuck's network financially viable?
I'm not sure how many people make use of Starbuck's WiFi, but isn't a cheap $100 dollars DSL line good enough for a dozen people to share while browsing the web and sending e-mail? A WiFi station is a few hundred dollar one-time investment. Not sure why WiFi hotspot has to be that expensive.
A bonus is that most people who want to make use of WiFi are going to be more of your upper class customers. If implemented cheaply, and I think it can be done reasonably cheap, a small increase in business should fund them.
-Eyston
This is true.
But go one step further. Why was the South agrarian? Why didn't they develop industry as the North did?
They did try to develop industry. It was decided that blacks weren't capable of performing in factories. You also had a lot of immigrants avoid the South, the same immigrants who fueled the North's industries. Why didn't they go to the South? Simple answer: they didn't want to compete with Blacks. This is quite evident in the Irish mentality. Slavery completely crippled the South's attempts at industrialization. This lead to the 'us vs. them' mentality.
You might say that every country needs an agrarian base for food and supplies. This is true, but if you look at the numbers, the South wasn't like a wheat basket. They had an advantage in some food production, but it wasn't overwhelming. All their agrarian nature was due to Cotton which was fueled by slave labor. It wasn't the small subsistence farmers against the North, but instead the large slave owning Cotton producers.
-Eyston
Slavery was not what the war was fought over.
The war was fought over securing and maintaining the Union. The war started due to slavery. Thats an oversimplification, but any reason you want to site to why the South succeeded from the North (economic, representation, etc) has a root in slavery. The 50+ years up until the war were a string of compromises (Clay inparticular) trying to keep the Union together over the divide slavery created.
So sure, the North wasn't on the battlefield to free the slaves, but slavery played an integral role in getting them there.
-Eyston