The conduct issue aside, the other question of how Linux survives without Linus is certainly important.
Over the years, he has set up a highly hierarchical power structure based on trust and loyalty with him at the top. Sort of dictatorial.
That is not necessarily a bad thing as long as he manages it with the right goals in mind, and he seems to have done that fairly well.
(It was often said the best leadership is a benevolent monarchy.)
I think this speaks to strong focused goals and the ability to exclude trying to manage things that are not part of his focus.
This would include trying to manage culture as part of the development community. He said as much in his letter.
When the single leader tries to manage culture, it will invariably go wrong somewhere.There are too many opinions and to much incompatibility to succeed in this alone. Some amount of exclusion is almost inevitable. But avoiding managing it can also lead to some level of chaos and the culture we see now.
Going forward, we probably should consider two paths for Linux development without Linus.
The first is to maintain the hierarchical structure by putting someone else in that place. It could work for a while, if you can find someone who is properly focused like Linus was. If you find someone focused on software first and culture second (or not at all) you probably will end up with a quality OS and similar environment.
If you end up with someone who is not quite as well focused as Linus and who does end up trying to manage culture, then it is highly likely the quality of the software will go down.
The other option is to change the leadership structure completely to something more community based and/or democratic. This could be able to handle both software quality and culture, but will very likely lower efficiency. Many distributions have done this with varying degrees of success.
Managing culture is hard enough under any circumstances. There will always be differences in opinion, incompatibility and preferences, and usually some conflict about what the priorities should be. If there is a single leader, then there will be a single point for focusing conflict. If there is a broader community and some democracy, then at least the blame for certain priorities can be spread out and excused with "majority rules". It is more about defusing incompatibility than curing it. A single person simply cannot do that by the design of the hierarchy, even if they have the support of the majority. And we don't really know if Linus had that.
Start gathering a few popular science books on subjects directly on and also near to your goal. Some people reject popular science books as too light weight, but it does have value. This exposes you to the variety of subjects in and around your interest. You might not have been aware of some aspects of your topic and you are introduced to them here without too much effort. You also learn to associate detailed technical topics to the wider areas where they are used.
Read the whole book. Books are better than random google searches and videos because they will guide you into areas you might not have considered relevant. Broadening your base knowledge will allow you to make a more informed decision about your favorite topics. Once you have a broader and more informed understanding of the topics and areas involved, you are better able to identify your interests, or even switch interests.
That is when you start going into a more detailed dive into your target topic. Follow through and read the whole thing. Again, pick one or more text books or deeper science books. The purpose again is to guide you into areas you might not have considered before.
This time, you will hit lots of technical subjects that you might not know. That is when you go searching for online information, wikipedia, online course videos, Youtube content or other textbooks. For these, you will only need to cover enough to support your primary interest, and you will have a fairly good idea how much that is.
You are not going to go professional with this, but it will be more than enough to keep your interest up and curiosity satisfied.
Are the pulses from pulsars visible from all directions, or just from the plane of rotation?
If you move far enough, will some disappear and others appear?
No, "Sick" is not easy to define in humans. In fact it's even harder than it is on computers. Plenty of people get misdiagnosed and held when they don't need to. Plenty of people miss getting diagnosed and go out and spread it around. There are also plenty of cases of political manipulations for nationalistic purposes. (China deported a lot of foreign nationals during the swine flu scare when there was no evidence of flu.)
But all that does not mean that quarantine is not a good practice. It is usually the best practice available given the knowledge at hand. Don't confuse principle with implementation. If you don't like the implementation, then go fix that. But it would be a mistake to think that poor implementation invalidates the whole principle.
It's quarantine. If a person gets sick with a contagious disease, it may not be their fault and you probably don't want to punish them. But for public safety, you do need to contain them until they are no longer dangerous to others.
The same applies to sick computers. If it is spewing viruses and malware then stop it, whether the person who owns it was doing it intentionally or not. You can forward all traffic to a local ISP web sight that informs them of the problem and directs them to appropriate ISP approved scanning software or other solutions available within the quarantine zone. If the user does not trust the ISP, fine. They can go clean their machine themselves.
Whether you trust the ISP/Government to have the right motive is a separate issue. But quarantine is an established procedure for humans, and it's not that different here.
If you are comparing AOL to the internet and modern ISPs, then you are completely correct.
The thing with AOL is that it was around *before* the internet and those other ISPs. AOL came around in the age of the BBS.
Everything was dial-up. Mail was tossed and copied around node to node. It was almost all local due to phone charges. What AOL did was make a national BBS, and put in local dial-up access points in most local calling areas. It was bigger than any other BBS of the time. It offered mail to any other AOL user, and mail bridges to most other networks (like compuserv). They had a GUI when everyone else was text based. You can't call them stupid for being the biggest provider in their market. Their problem was that the market changed.
When the internet finally did grow up, AOL was already big. The problem is that the internet changed the online equation. Access became commodity. AOL had to rely on content. (That's why the TW deal). But eventually, the internet had more content too. So AOL is a leftover giant.
I guess we could just expect them to rollover and die because they are outdated. But it's funny how many people don't want to do that, regardless of how outdated they are.
Hell yes.
Whenever we do anything on this large a scale, it's always completely by accident and totally without a plan and with no facts at all. How could anyone suggest that we actually start applying a few facts and a plan to something we are already doing?
Maybe what we need is more like what Copernicus did to the standard model. He suggested that we are not the center of all things. And ever since then, we've been moving farther and farther away from the center.
We know that there are particles that do not have electric charge and therefore do not interact with electrically charged matter in notable ways.
Theories on dark matter suggest that there is a lot more of it than "regular" matter.
"Regular" matter, as we call it, is identified by and works with the electrical forces, including electromagnetic waves (light).
So my suggestion is that there may be a lot of matter out there that does not interact with electric force. That matter operates under some different mechanics, somewhere between gravity and the weak force. It pools and flows of it's own in a way that we cannot observe.
Meanwhile, we are living on small clumps of unusual matter that is bound by electrical forces (molecules) and can only observe other matter that is also bound by electrical forces (light). It is we who are unusual, the minority and who are isolated from the universe, isolated because we can ONLY observe using electromagnetic forces.
We are little clumps of electric force scum floating through the ebb and flow of the rest of the matter in the universe and we cannot see it or understand it.
I think I'd have to agree with you there. I can certainly understand why some people might be dissatisfied with the situation.
Seriously, the US used to have a moral high ground on these sort of issues, but those days are gone. It's all "pot, kettle, black." now.
Some famous guy once said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and "You see the mote in your brother's eye, but you do not see the beam in your own eye. When you cast the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to cast the mote from your brother's eye." and a few other often ignored things. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from this guy? Like clean our own house before we try to clean everyone elses? I don't hate the US. I just want it to be better than it is. Recognition is the first step to redemption (followed closely by positive action).
I never said they were not within their rights to choose what to include and what not to include. I actually agree that thy should include as much relevant information as possible.
What I said was that they should not try to excuse their position by calling themselves neutral when they are not. There is nothing neutral about deciding what will stay and what will go based on social, moral or religious acceptability. Stand up. Own your position. Say "Hell yes, we decide what goes in, not some rag heads!". End the wishy-washy excuses.
People all around the world of all religions and beliefs need to learn that not everyone in the world will bend your views all of the time.
I'm pretty sure that should apply to you and me as well.
Just an observation, but do the admins at Wikipedia allow casual profanity in articles? I haven't seen any. I doubt that they take that lightly. It's probably scrubbed out pretty carefully.
Why would profanity be actively cleansed? Because the admins believe it is not appropriate? Because a large enough group of people using Wikipedia believe it is inappropriate? Who is the judge?
Profanity in language is just as much a subjective measure of acceptability as these pictures. Some people don't care about profanity and use it as casually as any other word. They get all uppety when someone tells them not to use it in public or something. I've certainly met people like this.
So ultimately, Wikipedia can't really claim thay are neutral if they choose one form of censorship due to one measure of public acceptibility but not another. It does not really matter what that other is or where it is from.
But it probably feels easier for them to swallow the hypocracy if they can call one "religion" and the other "social", as if that makes a difference. People are people and it should not matter that much when it comes down to it: offensive material is offensive to someone. If Wikipedia only censors what is offensive to them and not what is not, they are not neutral.
Calls for reform usually only end up with even more onerous legislation.
Calls for reform usually take the form of:
I should be allowed to abuse and take adavantage of others.
Others should not be allowed to abuse or take advantage of me.
The only thing that changes is who "I" and "me" refer to. Of course, that can change the type of reform quite a bit. Ultimately, the one with the money gets their reform. If we get rid of money as a factor, then the "new currency" would be something else I don't have. It's never going to be something that I already easily have and the agressive businesses don't.
Well, you kind of have to feel sorry for Hormel a little.
They had some product out there with a bizzare name. Then the Monty Python skit comes along and satirizes it. That's not so bad really.
But that leads to other people using the name for a different meaning, a meaning garnered from the Monty Python skit rather than the original product. Then the new meaning drowns out their original poduct and takes their name away. Now that hurts.
They didn't cause any of this, and for the most part it was not an intentional attack on them either. They really did not have much recourse at each step because the satire and redefinition were legitimate legal uses. It's all just a sad twist of fate.
Aw well. They can always do what all the SPAMmers do: rename their product and sell it to someone else who does not know any better.
I'm in Boston. Our company is getting a business 20 put in right now (it's not live yet). We also had the option for a 35. These are business class lines and I don't know what the price is.
So other speeds are available, but probably at rates most home users would not want to pay. Pricing is all relative in these sorts of things. They charge what they can get away with.
This is what Sony really wants to know. The tech problems are only a side effect and a distraction. They can be fixed.
What Sony desparately needs to know right now is whether BD+ is going to hold or fold. They are watching those torrents very closely.
BD+ was one of their main selling point to the studios. If it fails it can't be fixed, and they could lose studio support. That would be crippling to their format.
Don't call it until you can see it on your monitor. All else is rhetoric.
If you want them to count all that time, then you have to also. You can't just walk in and tell them you worked extra hours and expect to get paid for it.
Now you are on a time clock. You must account for *all* time worked. You clock in. You clock out. They watch that clock as closely as you do. You lose time when you leave early or take a long lunch.
I've done the clock. I prefer salary. I may not get overtime, but being off the *%$#&^%$* clock is just nice.
Though maybe it's a side effect of iD's business of selling engines? If customers are demanding direct3d for whatever reason, they may very well get it.
Microsoft has been known to bend a few ears in the direction of their proprietary API over open API.
Here is a brief background on what was done with Direct3D 10: Game Dev article on Direct3D 10 for an overview of the whats and whys. Pay attention to the second section: About Direct3D 10.
The API may not depend on the underlying driver capabilities, but the implementation certainly does. MS would have had to support two completely different implementations to make it run on XP. That would have been expensive as well as difficult. It's understandable that they chose not to. While there may have been some conniving against the customers as many have supposed, I would say the primary motive for not supporting XP was simply cost and effort. They were expecting Vista to take off quickly. It is Vista's slow uptake that is hampering DX10 moreso than the lack of support in XP. (At least from MS point of view. They planed well enough. The rest of the world just didn't cooperate.;-) )
My own experience concerning games and D3D is this: Some games take over the screen and don't give up. I can't alt-tab out. Or maybe the game locks up and I can't get back to the desktop and I can't kill it other than reboot. Such cases are sometimes laziness on the programmers part to make the game share and cooperate on the display hardware or save state to allow the OS to come back in. In D3D 10, the game cannot own the screen in this manner. The OS is always capable of taking the desktop back and preserving the game virtually in the background. It's the difference between can share and will share. D3D9 games can share if they want to. Some do, some don't. D3D 10 games will share no matter what.
There is a lot more going onin DX10 than games. The whole driver-OS interface was changed. Those changes were necessary to put the 3D hardware into sharable mode.
Now multiple applications and games can share the 3D hardware. In DX9/WinXP and earlier only one App at a time could use the 3D hardware. It needed to be done, and it could only be done with the cooperation of the OS. This cannot be put back into XP because this sort of control and separation could not be done in XP.
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Over the years, he has set up a highly hierarchical power structure based on trust and loyalty with him at the top. Sort of dictatorial. That is not necessarily a bad thing as long as he manages it with the right goals in mind, and he seems to have done that fairly well.
(It was often said the best leadership is a benevolent monarchy.)
I think this speaks to strong focused goals and the ability to exclude trying to manage things that are not part of his focus. This would include trying to manage culture as part of the development community. He said as much in his letter. When the single leader tries to manage culture, it will invariably go wrong somewhere.There are too many opinions and to much incompatibility to succeed in this alone. Some amount of exclusion is almost inevitable. But avoiding managing it can also lead to some level of chaos and the culture we see now.
Going forward, we probably should consider two paths for Linux development without Linus.
The first is to maintain the hierarchical structure by putting someone else in that place. It could work for a while, if you can find someone who is properly focused like Linus was. If you find someone focused on software first and culture second (or not at all) you probably will end up with a quality OS and similar environment. If you end up with someone who is not quite as well focused as Linus and who does end up trying to manage culture, then it is highly likely the quality of the software will go down.
The other option is to change the leadership structure completely to something more community based and/or democratic. This could be able to handle both software quality and culture, but will very likely lower efficiency. Many distributions have done this with varying degrees of success.
Managing culture is hard enough under any circumstances. There will always be differences in opinion, incompatibility and preferences, and usually some conflict about what the priorities should be. If there is a single leader, then there will be a single point for focusing conflict. If there is a broader community and some democracy, then at least the blame for certain priorities can be spread out and excused with "majority rules". It is more about defusing incompatibility than curing it. A single person simply cannot do that by the design of the hierarchy, even if they have the support of the majority. And we don't really know if Linus had that.
We're talking about humans here, so ... The Expanse.
Start gathering a few popular science books on subjects directly on and also near to your goal. Some people reject popular science books as too light weight, but it does have value. This exposes you to the variety of subjects in and around your interest. You might not have been aware of some aspects of your topic and you are introduced to them here without too much effort. You also learn to associate detailed technical topics to the wider areas where they are used.
Read the whole book. Books are better than random google searches and videos because they will guide you into areas you might not have considered relevant. Broadening your base knowledge will allow you to make a more informed decision about your favorite topics. Once you have a broader and more informed understanding of the topics and areas involved, you are better able to identify your interests, or even switch interests.
That is when you start going into a more detailed dive into your target topic. Follow through and read the whole thing. Again, pick one or more text books or deeper science books. The purpose again is to guide you into areas you might not have considered before.
This time, you will hit lots of technical subjects that you might not know. That is when you go searching for online information, wikipedia, online course videos, Youtube content or other textbooks. For these, you will only need to cover enough to support your primary interest, and you will have a fairly good idea how much that is.
You are not going to go professional with this, but it will be more than enough to keep your interest up and curiosity satisfied.
Are the pulses from pulsars visible from all directions, or just from the plane of rotation? If you move far enough, will some disappear and others appear?
But all that does not mean that quarantine is not a good practice. It is usually the best practice available given the knowledge at hand. Don't confuse principle with implementation. If you don't like the implementation, then go fix that. But it would be a mistake to think that poor implementation invalidates the whole principle.
It's quarantine. If a person gets sick with a contagious disease, it may not be their fault and you probably don't want to punish them. But for public safety, you do need to contain them until they are no longer dangerous to others.
The same applies to sick computers. If it is spewing viruses and malware then stop it, whether the person who owns it was doing it intentionally or not. You can forward all traffic to a local ISP web sight that informs them of the problem and directs them to appropriate ISP approved scanning software or other solutions available within the quarantine zone. If the user does not trust the ISP, fine. They can go clean their machine themselves.
Whether you trust the ISP/Government to have the right motive is a separate issue. But quarantine is an established procedure for humans, and it's not that different here.
The thing with AOL is that it was around *before* the internet and those other ISPs. AOL came around in the age of the BBS.
Everything was dial-up. Mail was tossed and copied around node to node. It was almost all local due to phone charges. What AOL did was make a national BBS, and put in local dial-up access points in most local calling areas. It was bigger than any other BBS of the time. It offered mail to any other AOL user, and mail bridges to most other networks (like compuserv). They had a GUI when everyone else was text based. You can't call them stupid for being the biggest provider in their market. Their problem was that the market changed.
When the internet finally did grow up, AOL was already big. The problem is that the internet changed the online equation. Access became commodity. AOL had to rely on content. (That's why the TW deal). But eventually, the internet had more content too. So AOL is a leftover giant.
I guess we could just expect them to rollover and die because they are outdated. But it's funny how many people don't want to do that, regardless of how outdated they are.
Hell yes.
Whenever we do anything on this large a scale, it's always completely by accident and totally without a plan and with no facts at all. How could anyone suggest that we actually start applying a few facts and a plan to something we are already doing?
We know that there are particles that do not have electric charge and therefore do not interact with electrically charged matter in notable ways.
Theories on dark matter suggest that there is a lot more of it than "regular" matter.
"Regular" matter, as we call it, is identified by and works with the electrical forces, including electromagnetic waves (light).
So my suggestion is that there may be a lot of matter out there that does not interact with electric force. That matter operates under some different mechanics, somewhere between gravity and the weak force. It pools and flows of it's own in a way that we cannot observe.
Meanwhile, we are living on small clumps of unusual matter that is bound by electrical forces (molecules) and can only observe other matter that is also bound by electrical forces (light). It is we who are unusual, the minority and who are isolated from the universe, isolated because we can ONLY observe using electromagnetic forces.
We are little clumps of electric force scum floating through the ebb and flow of the rest of the matter in the universe and we cannot see it or understand it.
I'm rather curious to see what happens when the penalty for stealing potential money outweighs the penalty for stealing real money.
I think I'd have to agree with you there. I can certainly understand why some people might be dissatisfied with the situation.
Seriously, the US used to have a moral high ground on these sort of issues, but those days are gone. It's all "pot, kettle, black." now.
Some famous guy once said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and "You see the mote in your brother's eye, but you do not see the beam in your own eye. When you cast the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to cast the mote from your brother's eye." and a few other often ignored things. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from this guy? Like clean our own house before we try to clean everyone elses? I don't hate the US. I just want it to be better than it is. Recognition is the first step to redemption (followed closely by positive action).
I didn't think so.
What I said was that they should not try to excuse their position by calling themselves neutral when they are not. There is nothing neutral about deciding what will stay and what will go based on social, moral or religious acceptability. Stand up. Own your position. Say "Hell yes, we decide what goes in, not some rag heads!". End the wishy-washy excuses.
Just an observation, but do the admins at Wikipedia allow casual profanity in articles? I haven't seen any. I doubt that they take that lightly. It's probably scrubbed out pretty carefully.
Why would profanity be actively cleansed? Because the admins believe it is not appropriate? Because a large enough group of people using Wikipedia believe it is inappropriate? Who is the judge?
Profanity in language is just as much a subjective measure of acceptability as these pictures. Some people don't care about profanity and use it as casually as any other word. They get all uppety when someone tells them not to use it in public or something. I've certainly met people like this.
So ultimately, Wikipedia can't really claim thay are neutral if they choose one form of censorship due to one measure of public acceptibility but not another. It does not really matter what that other is or where it is from.
But it probably feels easier for them to swallow the hypocracy if they can call one "religion" and the other "social", as if that makes a difference. People are people and it should not matter that much when it comes down to it: offensive material is offensive to someone. If Wikipedia only censors what is offensive to them and not what is not, they are not neutral.
I was just hoping it would pair me up with someone else who could help releave the stress associated with this frustration.
Calls for reform usually take the form of:
- I should be allowed to abuse and take adavantage of others.
- Others should not be allowed to abuse or take advantage of me.
The only thing that changes is who "I" and "me" refer to. Of course, that can change the type of reform quite a bit. Ultimately, the one with the money gets their reform. If we get rid of money as a factor, then the "new currency" would be something else I don't have. It's never going to be something that I already easily have and the agressive businesses don't.They had some product out there with a bizzare name. Then the Monty Python skit comes along and satirizes it. That's not so bad really.
But that leads to other people using the name for a different meaning, a meaning garnered from the Monty Python skit rather than the original product. Then the new meaning drowns out their original poduct and takes their name away. Now that hurts.
They didn't cause any of this, and for the most part it was not an intentional attack on them either. They really did not have much recourse at each step because the satire and redefinition were legitimate legal uses. It's all just a sad twist of fate.
Aw well. They can always do what all the SPAMmers do: rename their product and sell it to someone else who does not know any better.
So other speeds are available, but probably at rates most home users would not want to pay. Pricing is all relative in these sorts of things. They charge what they can get away with.
and he didn't fix it.
What Sony desparately needs to know right now is whether BD+ is going to hold or fold. They are watching those torrents very closely.
BD+ was one of their main selling point to the studios. If it fails it can't be fixed, and they could lose studio support. That would be crippling to their format.
Don't call it until you can see it on your monitor. All else is rhetoric.
Now you are on a time clock. You must account for *all* time worked. You clock in. You clock out. They watch that clock as closely as you do. You lose time when you leave early or take a long lunch.
I've done the clock. I prefer salary. I may not get overtime, but being off the *%$#&^%$* clock is just nice.
Microsoft has been known to bend a few ears in the direction of their proprietary API over open API.
The API may not depend on the underlying driver capabilities, but the implementation certainly does. MS would have had to support two completely different implementations to make it run on XP. That would have been expensive as well as difficult. It's understandable that they chose not to. While there may have been some conniving against the customers as many have supposed, I would say the primary motive for not supporting XP was simply cost and effort. They were expecting Vista to take off quickly. It is Vista's slow uptake that is hampering DX10 moreso than the lack of support in XP. (At least from MS point of view. They planed well enough. The rest of the world just didn't cooperate. ;-) )
My own experience concerning games and D3D is this: Some games take over the screen and don't give up. I can't alt-tab out. Or maybe the game locks up and I can't get back to the desktop and I can't kill it other than reboot. Such cases are sometimes laziness on the programmers part to make the game share and cooperate on the display hardware or save state to allow the OS to come back in. In D3D 10, the game cannot own the screen in this manner. The OS is always capable of taking the desktop back and preserving the game virtually in the background. It's the difference between can share and will share. D3D9 games can share if they want to. Some do, some don't. D3D 10 games will share no matter what.
Now multiple applications and games can share the 3D hardware. In DX9/WinXP and earlier only one App at a time could use the 3D hardware. It needed to be done, and it could only be done with the cooperation of the OS. This cannot be put back into XP because this sort of control and separation could not be done in XP.
I can see it now:
public MyLicense extends BSD implements Attribution;
or
public NPL extends GPL implements OwnerTakeback;