Well.. I read your reply! Seriously though, I agree with you. I go to West Chester University and the main school mail server is an Exchange Box and all the lab computers are Win95 boxes. Even with this there are still others fighting the good fight. Scheduling is done on IBM mainframe with a web front end. The Academic Computing Center uses Linux and BSD boxes for some things. There are a few Macs floating around as well. But check out the Computer Science department. The main web page is run off of an old DEC ULTRIX box. We also have a Sparc 10 Solaris box, two Linux boxes (one PIII, one PII), a BSD box, and many Sparc Classics running Linux or Solaris serving as X-Terminals to either the Linux boxes or the Sparc 10 box. WCU is a small little state school and spends a lot of money on MS software. Even so, I don't think they would switch to a total MS world. Both the ACC and the CS department would fight it forever. One of the few really good departments at WCU is the CS department (I know I'm biased but really it's true!). A big part of that is the wide exposure you get. Going through WCU I saw everything under the sun (excuse the pun). When I got out I had a resume that let me go anywhere in the IT world. I think that it would be a bad idea to give that up and I think that WCU would agree. So would a lot of other universities.
This battle has been raging for a long time but I think that it must be dealt with now before it gets worse. If an employer can not monitor phone coversations then they should not be able to monitor Internet activity unless there is a reason to do so (like missing money, accounts being taped, etc). Will this hurt the company? No. The fact is, if Joe Programmer can get all his work done while posting to/. several times day, it is not a problem. His work is getting done and his surfing is not creating a need for a new T1. The old ways still work fine for determining if a guy is goofing off. If he can't get his work done in a timely manner then he isn't suited for the job. If overall net usage spikes a tremendous amount (read: porn site running from his box) then you can easily tell he is abusing the system without these privacy destorying programs. A company can not be allowed to assume that all employees are guilty until provent innocent by some program. There must be trust for any successfull business relationship.
It is pretty sad to see SGI slowly fall down. I hope that they make it but it will be tough. At the very least I hope that their interesting technology survives. Although I wish they were not firing anybody, I hope that they are smart enough to keep R&D alive. Sometimes SGI seems to want to become Compaq (who isn't doing so well either) and make NT boxes their main thing. More recently they seemed to haved towards a pro linux stance. I hope that it is for real and sincere and not just a scared attempt at stabbing at anything that can help save them. How many of these layoffs are from up top? Not too many, I bet. You can understand a person leaving SGI for say...Microsoft. At least there your company is assimilating...I mean hiring people and not the opposite.
Every time I hear a rumor about Internet regulation, I have to laugh. How can a group of companies and governments regulate a world wide (excuse the pun) phenomenon? This is very similar to Internet Decency laws. Who is going to police the entire Internet? The Internet will always remain free in some way. There will always be illegal things on the net like warez, copyrighted MP3s, etc. It is impossible to prevent. The only way regulation could work is if every government in the entire world was on board. Once you have one little government that is not regulated, all the sites will move there. I just hope the governments and companies of the world are smart enough not to waste billions of dollars trying to do the impossible.
Linux for Windows Users?
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Linux Lite?
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Linux is approaching a crossroads when it comes to taking over the desktop. One extreme is the old path, the path of the smug Unix people. RTFM is the standard reply and clicking is for wimps. Linux and its community tends to be a bit better than that but still expects a lot from the average user. The fact is that most people in the desktop world would have major difficulties with running Linux. By "running", I mean to include setup, configuration, and general usage. To conquer the desktop Linux has to become easier to use. You shouldn't have to RTFM to setup a simple, safe, workstation. It should be as easy as... no, easier than Windows 9x. Or NT. Or the Mac. I know many of us have a nasty tendency to look down on a Win9x/NT/Mac user but they are the majority of the desktop crowd and they deserve a quality OS too. Without having to know what/etc does. Just like in the Win9x world the user should not have to know anything about the Registry. The old rule of thumb applies here: "It has to be so easy that your mother could use it." Compatibility is a big issue here. Look at the how Microsoft takes the lead away from other companies. Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the spreadsheet world until Excel proved that everything Lotus 1-2-3 could do, it could do. It had pretty good compatibility (could open and save in Lotus's format) and had the same general functionality. It even had special help for people transitioning. How about Mac? Win95 is so similar to MacOS, Apple sued Microsoft. NT uses the same look and feel as Win9x. NT supports Novel networking well enough. All of this is done so that a user has no reason not to switch. Granted, Microsoft usually does these things just barely good enough but their idea is a good one. We need to take a page from our most hated enemy and beat them at their own game. I have said this before but I think that it needs to be mentioned again. To win the desktop you need a perfect duplication of MacOS and Win9x/NT in look and feel. In a perfect world it would be so good that you could come in at night and install it on your boss's PC and all he notices is that things don't crash anymore. Then you would have him hooked!
Point taken. I was talking more about the small companies. 98% of US companies have under 100 employees. For these companies it is an expensive risk, albeit a worthwhile one. A goal of Linux should be to reduce the risk involved in switching to Linux. Providing full Windows compatibility and look and feel would go long way towards achieving that goal.
I used to run a consulting firm based in West Chester, PA. We had to pay (and thus charge for) sales tax for all work we did in PA. If we did work in Delaware (where there is no sales tax) we did not have to pay sales tax. QVC, also based in West Chester, PA, sells over the phone and on-line. They charge tax based on where the product is being shipped (which is not necessarily where it is being purchased, like when gifts are purchased). There are already laws for governing how taxes are changed for sales over the internet, I do not see the need for any more. If you selling something and you are not part of a business, then you should not pay taxes, ragardless of the medium used for selling. In the case of a business, you pay taxes based on where the service is done. When you are selling something, the location is where the object is being sent. I can't see the need for new taxes. In a surplus year with the highest taxes ever I think that taxes should be left alone. I don't think they shuld be lowered, just stay the same. We should start paying of the Natational Dept. Lowering those interest payments could really help things and lead to a safe lowering of taxes. If there is a new Internet Tax, I just hope that we know what it is being used for. I can't stand money being put into a big pile for all the little groups to fight over. How come my social security donations go to people collecting now? When my parents, the baby boomers, start cashing in like crazy, things will get really rough. Especially, if this surplus year is the exception that proves the rule. I want to know where my money goes. Taxes should be for specific things, government should be held as accountable with hwo they deal with their money as companies are. We the people are the stock holders of the United States of America and should demand an Annual Financial Report. If RedHat has to make one, so should the USA!
"I mean if a 13 year old (now 14) can use it as easily as i can what's preventing buisnesses from using it. " Well, how much time have you put into learning Linux? I know that I put in a ton of my free time in college with it. Now that I work, I understand a bit of a business's hesitation. Time is more important to a company than money and Linux may not cost any money but is does cost time. Making administration easier is a good thing. We have to lose the RTFM attitude that was handed to us by the Unix folks. Heck, I think that Linux could achieve a big victory if it duplicated the look and feel of NT down to the menu. "It's NT on the outside but Linux on the inside!" or "It's NT but it works!". Excel 5 killed off Lotus 1-2-3 because it had so much Lotus support, there was no reason not to switch. Right now the thought of retraining many workers is an expensive scare that IT people will want ot avoid. As for learning on their own...I hate to say this but life can suck for adults. Enjoy the free time to hack at Linux while you can. After 8-10 hours of work and trying to maintain some sort of a social life (can't meet people at school anymore), there is little time left over for learning a new OS. In a world where we have Macintosh for Dummies, switching to a new OS can be too much of risk for a company.
With PC prices below $500.00, why you just set up a Linux box that boots off a server. My old school, West Chester University did this to their old, slow, Sparc Classics. They all run off of either a Linux box or bigger Sun Solaris box. They run great now. Its even better than an X Terminal; it gives you the best of both worlds.
...a demotion but a welcome one. I think that Marc did not want the pressure of his postion. It required him to think too much like a businessman and less a like a geek who just wants to have fun with his millions. Marc had to think about what technology will leverage off of AOL's current situation and give AOL more power, money, market share, etc. Instead, Marc will get to go back to doing what he was doing with Netscape. He will find small interesting companies and have AOL buy into them. Paul Allen kind of took this path. Sometimes being at the top isn't as fun as getting there. This draws guys like Allen and Marc back to small companies with new technologies.
This doesn't bode ill for Mozilla but the AOL buyout did. I think that if this release doesn't generate some big press and/or other good things for AOL, it may become the last release. OpenSource has been the domain of the small (Linux vendors, RH before the IPO) and/or desperate (Netscape). AOL is neither small nor desperate. Also, they are about making money not technology. The technology is just a tool to make more money. AOL will only support Mozilla as long as it has to unless Mozilla does something for AOL.
Exactly. You can get away with lots memory bugs with certain optimizations on/off. Sometimes you can access memory that is not yours with out a crash occuring. When I ported MS VC stuff from Intel to Alpha, some bugs were shaken out.
"Mildly censoring the media is NOT the same as having an authoritarian or totalitarian government..."
Who decides what is "mild" and what is extreme? The role of government should not be to decide right and wrong; that is the role of parents.
"...should try living in a totalitarian state for a while, and experience the difference."
Should we just wait until we reach that point or work to prevent that from happening? Not all authoritarian or totalitarian governments happen overnight with military attacks. Some happen slowly and work within the government during their early phases. People turned a blind eye to Hitler until it was too late for millions of people. Many dangerous movements start small. We must be responsible citizens and protect our rights and freedoms because there are those that would take them away.
You hit the nail right on the head. This controversy has been swirling aroung for a long time now. I was just reading over at CNN that "...Americans work the longest hours in the industrialized world." The economy is good and kids have are spending more money then ever. At the same time the gap between parents and their children seems to be widening. Perhaps parents should come home from work and give the kids some more time instead of more money.
Actually, the people who will be most against tihs law will be the people selling those games/music/etc. to the minors. Kids ages 13-18 are spending more money then ever. The video game industry is on pace to make more money (revenue and profit) then the movie industry in the near future. The companies selling to minors will know that minors will not want some edited version of what they want. An unedited, but labled, version may make some kids want to buy it more (music labels had this affect) but may also make the main source of the kids' money, their parents, upset. Either way the industry doesn't want this bill.
I have to agree with you on this one. Political parties really seem to be a relic of the past. I wish that a canidate would just stand up and tell us how he stands on the issues and a little bit about himself. His "campaign" should really be a bit like an interview where Americans are the "employers". I also feel that lobbying and television adds should be limited. I am tired of seeing those with money able to assert so much control of the government. The vote of the poor man should count as much as the vote of the rich one. This can never be true when parties serve to pool rich people's money into a group of canidates that will do what those rich people want.
I believe Intel is working with (and invested in) Cygnus to help GCC with Merced compatibility and performance. Anyone else know of any official statements?
"Does Unisys actually make anything important these days?" Actually Unisys software and hardware are used many goverments and large financial institutions. I would call that important.
Actually, we are getting into storage area networks. That is one of the main targets of our RAID card. The main point of my post was that the burnallgifs.org site had not really researched Unisys. Many things that were on that site were just plain incorrect. I see nothing wrong with a company working within the system to protect its interests. I *DO* see a problem with the US patent law that allows it. Is it better to attack one company that is tacking advantage of it or to fix the problem from ever occuring? Do you think that Unisys is the only company to take advantage of patent law?
Yes, most people do not get direct compensation for their patents. Then again, I assume your friend at Intel was paid during the development process. I also assume he is paid today. Unisys often awards people that get patents with nice bonuses, raises, and new positions. Patent protection is good for Intel and Unisys and thus good for their employees. Both Intel and Unisys have a good amount of employee ownership through stock and stock option plans. If Unisys and Intel did not protect its interests they may not be able to afford as many developers.
Your link is broken but once fixed it revealed a ton of money for Unisys. They were profitable every quarter. Old OS? How old is Unix? If it was such a bad OS then why does Unisys still make 35% of its 7 billion dollar revenue from its Computer Systems Group?
If Unisys is asking for too much money, then don't use their format. What are you complaining about? You have alternatives. Use other graphics formats, use java for animation. You are charging $50,000 for your product for the same reason Unisys is charging for theirs. Both your company and Unisys put money into something and want to see a return on that investment. The high price is as simple as supply and demand. If nobody demanded GIF then Unisys would not charge as much.
Below is copy of an e-mail I sent to Don, the person who runs burnallgifs.org.
Don, I happen to work for Unisys and disagree with some of the comments on your site. Before I get into explaining them, I would like tell you a bit about myself. I am not your average Unisys guy. I a 22 year old May '99 graduate of West Chester University, who has been with Unisys since January '99. Before that I did financial software for three years. I am not some old Unisys lover who has been with company since Univac. First, Unisys is still a well known computer company. We have over 34,000 employees in over 100 countries, our stock is up and if you want a server that never crashes you have to go to us or IBM. That is fact is well known. Our clients are States (PA recently made news with Unisys) and Countries (we recently made a multi-billion dollar deal with Spain). If the problem is "a flaw in the US patent system" then what did Unisys do that was so wrong? If a company invests its time and money into something that then it should be able to charge for it. This is one way in which programmers actually get paid for their work and can thus earn a living doing what they love. I just can't see a problem with that. As for the license fee, it is obvious that vendors still have a choice and can use other formats should they not want to pay. What is the problem? Imagine if you didn't get paid for the work you do. Next, the MCP article is almost a year old, meaning it proves nothing. From your remarks, it seems that you do not even know what MCP is. You are wrong about Unisys not "inventing anything since long before the web." My own group is in the process of getting a patent. It involves off loading I/O (TCP/IP, Raid) processing from a host system on to an intelligent adapter. Our cellular multiprocessing (CMP) architecture is a completely new and innovative invention. Actually, we invent things pretty often around here. Your next quote comes from Giga Information Group, not Unisys. It was only re-published with Giga's permission (did you obtain it?). The environment they talk about is Microsoft Windows Terminal Server with Citrix WinFrame. Neither of these are Unisys products. In fact, there is a lot of Unisys development done to address the weaknesses in Microsoft Windows NT to try to make it more like our main frames. Unisys is not "counting on the legal department as the main revenue source." Our Services group brings in over half our seven billion dollar revenue. Our Computer Systems group brings in the rest. If you are going to attack something, please learn a bit more about it first. Otherwise your argument falls flat on its face.
There is nothing like the smell of easy money to awaken that money starved capitalist in all of us. I find it very interesting to see all the "free software" people complaining about this. These were the same people worrying about RH becoming too corporate and being bad for Linux. Personally I just want an OS that is powerful, customizable, easy-to-use, and has lots of applications that are the same. RH's IPO will go a long way to making that a reality by putting money behind it. Once people start investing in something that start caring about its success. The investors will push for RH Linux to be better than the other distros and better than other operating systems. They will push for better apps and more companies will want to get involved. Where is something bad happening here? I have to agree with ETrade. In fact, I think that a big problem with the market is that there are too many people trading that do not know what they are doing. Almost all.com stocks fly up in value regardless of the company's stats. Amazon loses more and more money but people keep investing. I don't want people getting in on an IPO that are not experienced traders. Will they handle the volatility? The chance that they could lose all that money? Besides, just because you can not get in on the IPO does not mean you can not make money off of it. Getting a standard account is easy, even without experience. I have made money on the market and I have never been in on an IPO. Finally, I think that anti-corporate thing needs to go. Granted, there are companies that do very bad things (like abuse their power) but this does not mean that corporations are all bad. Who made the parts in your computer? If it wasn't for a corporation we would not have any of the things we love today. I love programming and have written free code and code to be purchased. I need to make a living and I think that it is great that I can put food on the table by doing what I love. That is what America is all about. I know that this is an unpopular view but business and software advancement often go together. Everyone needs to get paid and if the choice is write free software and starve or write corporate code and eat, I think that most people will sign up at corporate coders 'r us. This doesn't mean give up free software but everything has a place. Even/. is going corporate. Unisys pays me to write corporate code and gives me access to resources that I could never afford on my own. Meanwhile I write free code in my spare time. The two can co-exist. I may end up working on Linux code for MIPS to be used on an intelligent i/o board. This will advance the Linux for MIPS work and Linux as embedded system. All from a big, old, nasty, corporation.
I am 22 and working at Unisys. They have been through a very bad period of layoffs and forced retirements that only ended about a year and a half ago. The ones who were left had been there for decades. Part of Unisys' recovery plan has been to increase the number of new hires coming right from college to 40%. They still have a long way to go and in my group I am the only one not married and there is only one other programmer without kids and a nice Unisys Ten Year Award. The main reason for this push has been to invigorate the company with new ideas. There is also the more financial reason that younger programmers are less expensive. The key to survival for older programmers is to prove that you are worth the extra cost, that you have all the things the young guys do and more (and many of them do). This isn't just the programming field, though. In any field a person is expected to move up the success ladder. People who switch careers, start late, or just didn't go where the rest of the world expected them to suffer. It's a grim reminder of how important your college major is. It's also a shame becase I have a learned a tremendous amount from my elders at Unisys. These men and women are the hard core programmers. They suffered through the early days of punch cards, baud modems, no GUIs (although to some that is a gift in disguise), no IDEs, and systems that about half as powerful as your watch. Give some respect to these "old masters" because without them there wouldn't be any of the things we take for granted today.
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Well.. I read your reply!
Seriously though, I agree with you. I go to West Chester University and the main school mail server is an Exchange Box and all the lab computers are Win95 boxes. Even with this there are still others fighting the good fight.
Scheduling is done on IBM mainframe with a web front end.
The Academic Computing Center uses Linux and BSD boxes for some things.
There are a few Macs floating around as well.
But check out the Computer Science department. The main web page is run off of an old DEC ULTRIX box. We also have a Sparc 10 Solaris box, two Linux boxes (one PIII, one PII), a BSD box, and many Sparc Classics running Linux or Solaris serving as X-Terminals to either the Linux boxes or the Sparc 10 box.
WCU is a small little state school and spends a lot of money on MS software. Even so, I don't think they would switch to a total MS world. Both the ACC and the CS department would fight it forever. One of the few really good departments at WCU is the CS department (I know I'm biased but really it's true!). A big part of that is the wide exposure you get. Going through WCU I saw everything under the sun (excuse the pun). When I got out I had a resume that let me go anywhere in the IT world. I think that it would be a bad idea to give that up and I think that WCU would agree. So would a lot of other universities.
This battle has been raging for a long time but I think that it must be dealt with now before it gets worse. If an employer can not monitor phone coversations then they should not be able to monitor Internet activity unless there is a reason to do so (like missing money, accounts being taped, etc). /. several times day, it is not a problem. His work is getting done and his surfing is not creating a need for a new T1. The old ways still work fine for determining if a guy is goofing off. If he can't get his work done in a timely manner then he isn't suited for the job. If overall net usage spikes a tremendous amount (read: porn site running from his box) then you can easily tell he is abusing the system without these privacy destorying programs.
Will this hurt the company? No. The fact is, if Joe Programmer can get all his work done while posting to
A company can not be allowed to assume that all employees are guilty until provent innocent by some program. There must be trust for any successfull business relationship.
It is pretty sad to see SGI slowly fall down. I hope that they make it but it will be tough. At the very least I hope that their interesting technology survives.
Although I wish they were not firing anybody, I hope that they are smart enough to keep R&D alive. Sometimes SGI seems to want to become Compaq (who isn't doing so well either) and make NT boxes their main thing. More recently they seemed to haved towards a pro linux stance. I hope that it is for real and sincere and not just a scared attempt at stabbing at anything that can help save them.
How many of these layoffs are from up top? Not too many, I bet. You can understand a person leaving SGI for say...Microsoft. At least there your company is assimilating...I mean hiring people and not the opposite.
Every time I hear a rumor about Internet regulation, I have to laugh. How can a group of companies and governments regulate a world wide (excuse the pun) phenomenon? This is very similar to Internet Decency laws. Who is going to police the entire Internet? The Internet will always remain free in some way. There will always be illegal things on the net like warez, copyrighted MP3s, etc. It is impossible to prevent.
The only way regulation could work is if every government in the entire world was on board. Once you have one little government that is not regulated, all the sites will move there. I just hope the governments and companies of the world are smart enough not to waste billions of dollars trying to do the impossible.
Linux is approaching a crossroads when it comes to taking over the desktop. One extreme is the old path, the path of the smug Unix people. RTFM is the standard reply and clicking is for wimps. Linux and its community tends to be a bit better than that but still expects a lot from the average user. The fact is that most people in the desktop world would have major difficulties with running Linux. By "running", I mean to include setup, configuration, and general usage. To conquer the desktop Linux has to become easier to use. You shouldn't have to RTFM to setup a simple, safe, workstation. It should be as easy as... no, easier than Windows 9x. Or NT. Or the Mac. I know many of us have a nasty tendency to look down on a Win9x/NT/Mac user but they are the majority of the desktop crowd and they deserve a quality OS too. Without having to know what /etc does. Just like in the Win9x world the user should not have to know anything about the Registry. The old rule of thumb applies here: "It has to be so easy that your mother could use it."
Compatibility is a big issue here. Look at the how Microsoft takes the lead away from other companies. Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the spreadsheet world until Excel proved that everything Lotus 1-2-3 could do, it could do. It had pretty good compatibility (could open and save in Lotus's format) and had the same general functionality. It even had special help for people transitioning. How about Mac? Win95 is so similar to MacOS, Apple sued Microsoft. NT uses the same look and feel as Win9x. NT supports Novel networking well enough. All of this is done so that a user has no reason not to switch. Granted, Microsoft usually does these things just barely good enough but their idea is a good one. We need to take a page from our most hated enemy and beat them at their own game.
I have said this before but I think that it needs to be mentioned again. To win the desktop you need a perfect duplication of MacOS and Win9x/NT in look and feel. In a perfect world it would be so good that you could come in at night and install it on your boss's PC and all he notices is that things don't crash anymore. Then you would have him hooked!
Point taken. I was talking more about the small companies. 98% of US companies have under 100 employees. For these companies it is an expensive risk, albeit a worthwhile one. A goal of Linux should be to reduce the risk involved in switching to Linux. Providing full Windows compatibility and look and feel would go long way towards achieving that goal.
I used to run a consulting firm based in West Chester, PA. We had to pay (and thus charge for) sales tax for all work we did in PA. If we did work in Delaware (where there is no sales tax) we did not have to pay sales tax. QVC, also based in West Chester, PA, sells over the phone and on-line. They charge tax based on where the product is being shipped (which is not necessarily where it is being purchased, like when gifts are purchased). There are already laws for governing how taxes are changed for sales over the internet, I do not see the need for any more. If you selling something and you are not part of a business, then you should not pay taxes, ragardless of the medium used for selling. In the case of a business, you pay taxes based on where the service is done. When you are selling something, the location is where the object is being sent.
I can't see the need for new taxes. In a surplus year with the highest taxes ever I think that taxes should be left alone. I don't think they shuld be lowered, just stay the same. We should start paying of the Natational Dept. Lowering those interest payments could really help things and lead to a safe lowering of taxes.
If there is a new Internet Tax, I just hope that we know what it is being used for. I can't stand money being put into a big pile for all the little groups to fight over. How come my social security donations go to people collecting now? When my parents, the baby boomers, start cashing in like crazy, things will get really rough. Especially, if this surplus year is the exception that proves the rule. I want to know where my money goes. Taxes should be for specific things, government should be held as accountable with hwo they deal with their money as companies are. We the people are the stock holders of the United States of America and should demand an Annual Financial Report. If RedHat has to make one, so should the USA!
"I mean if a 13 year old (now 14) can use it as easily as i can what's preventing buisnesses from using it. "
Well, how much time have you put into learning Linux? I know that I put in a ton of my free time in college with it. Now that I work, I understand a bit of a business's hesitation. Time is more important to a company than money and Linux may not cost any money but is does cost time. Making administration easier is a good thing. We have to lose the RTFM attitude that was handed to us by the Unix folks. Heck, I think that Linux could achieve a big victory if it duplicated the look and feel of NT down to the menu. "It's NT on the outside but Linux on the inside!" or "It's NT but it works!". Excel 5 killed off Lotus 1-2-3 because it had so much Lotus support, there was no reason not to switch. Right now the thought of retraining many workers is an expensive scare that IT people will want ot avoid. As for learning on their own...I hate to say this but life can suck for adults. Enjoy the free time to hack at Linux while you can. After 8-10 hours of work and trying to maintain some sort of a social life (can't meet people at school anymore), there is little time left over for learning a new OS. In a world where we have Macintosh for Dummies, switching to a new OS can be too much of risk for a company.
With PC prices below $500.00, why you just set up a Linux box that boots off a server. My old school, West Chester University did this to their old, slow, Sparc Classics. They all run off of either a Linux box or bigger Sun Solaris box. They run great now. Its even better than an X Terminal; it gives you the best of both worlds.
...a demotion but a welcome one. I think that Marc did not want the pressure of his postion. It required him to think too much like a businessman and less a like a geek who just wants to have fun with his millions. Marc had to think about what technology will leverage off of AOL's current situation and give AOL more power, money, market share, etc. Instead, Marc will get to go back to doing what he was doing with Netscape. He will find small interesting companies and have AOL buy into them. Paul Allen kind of took this path. Sometimes being at the top isn't as fun as getting there. This draws guys like Allen and Marc back to small companies with new technologies.
This doesn't bode ill for Mozilla but the AOL buyout did. I think that if this release doesn't generate some big press and/or other good things for AOL, it may become the last release. OpenSource has been the domain of the small (Linux vendors, RH before the IPO) and/or desperate (Netscape). AOL is neither small nor desperate. Also, they are about making money not technology. The technology is just a tool to make more money. AOL will only support Mozilla as long as it has to unless Mozilla does something for AOL.
Exactly. You can get away with lots memory bugs with certain optimizations on/off. Sometimes you can access memory that is not yours with out a crash occuring. When I ported MS VC stuff from Intel to Alpha, some bugs were shaken out.
Who decides what is "mild" and what is extreme? The role of government should not be to decide right and wrong; that is the role of parents.
Should we just wait until we reach that point or work to prevent that from happening? Not all authoritarian or totalitarian governments happen overnight with military attacks. Some happen slowly and work within the government during their early phases. People turned a blind eye to Hitler until it was too late for millions of people. Many dangerous movements start small. We must be responsible citizens and protect our rights and freedoms because there are those that would take them away.
You hit the nail right on the head. This controversy has been swirling aroung for a long time now. I was just reading over at CNN that "...Americans work the longest hours in the industrialized world." The economy is good and kids have are spending more money then ever. At the same time the gap between parents and their children seems to be widening. Perhaps parents should come home from work and give the kids some more time instead of more money.
Actually, the people who will be most against tihs law will be the people selling those games/music/etc. to the minors. Kids ages 13-18 are spending more money then ever. The video game industry is on pace to make more money (revenue and profit) then the movie industry in the near future. The companies selling to minors will know that minors will not want some edited version of what they want. An unedited, but labled, version may make some kids want to buy it more (music labels had this affect) but may also make the main source of the kids' money, their parents, upset. Either way the industry doesn't want this bill.
I have to agree with you on this one. Political parties really seem to be a relic of the past. I wish that a canidate would just stand up and tell us how he stands on the issues and a little bit about himself. His "campaign" should really be a bit like an interview where Americans are the "employers". I also feel that lobbying and television adds should be limited. I am tired of seeing those with money able to assert so much control of the government. The vote of the poor man should count as much as the vote of the rich one. This can never be true when parties serve to pool rich people's money into a group of canidates that will do what those rich people want.
I believe Intel is working with (and invested in) Cygnus to help GCC with Merced compatibility and performance. Anyone else know of any official statements?
"Does Unisys actually make anything important these days?"
Actually Unisys software and hardware are used many goverments and large financial institutions. I would call that important.
Actually, we are getting into storage area networks. That is one of the main targets of our RAID card. The main point of my post was that the burnallgifs.org site had not really researched Unisys. Many things that were on that site were just plain incorrect. I see nothing wrong with a company working within the system to protect its interests. I *DO* see a problem with the US patent law that allows it. Is it better to attack one company that is tacking advantage of it or to fix the problem from ever occuring? Do you think that Unisys is the only company to take advantage of patent law?
Yes, most people do not get direct compensation for their patents. Then again, I assume your friend at Intel was paid during the development process. I also assume he is paid today. Unisys often awards people that get patents with nice bonuses, raises, and new positions. Patent protection is good for Intel and Unisys and thus good for their employees. Both Intel and Unisys have a good amount of employee ownership through stock and stock option plans. If Unisys and Intel did not protect its interests they may not be able to afford as many developers.
Your link is broken but once fixed it revealed a ton of money for Unisys. They were profitable every quarter. Old OS? How old is Unix? If it was such a bad OS then why does Unisys still make 35% of its 7 billion dollar revenue from its Computer Systems Group?
If Unisys is asking for too much money, then don't use their format. What are you complaining about? You have alternatives. Use other graphics formats, use java for animation. You are charging $50,000 for your product for the same reason Unisys is charging for theirs. Both your company and Unisys put money into something and want to see a return on that investment. The high price is as simple as supply and demand. If nobody demanded GIF then Unisys would not charge as much.
Below is copy of an e-mail I sent to Don, the person who runs burnallgifs.org.
Don,
I happen to work for Unisys and disagree with some of the comments on your site. Before I get into explaining them, I would like tell you a bit about myself. I am not your average Unisys guy. I a 22 year old May '99 graduate of West Chester University, who has been with Unisys since January '99. Before that I did financial software for three years. I am not some old Unisys lover who has been with company since Univac.
First, Unisys is still a well known computer company. We have over 34,000 employees in over 100 countries, our stock is up and if you want a server that never crashes you have to go to us or IBM. That is fact is well known. Our clients are States (PA recently made news with Unisys) and Countries (we recently made a multi-billion dollar deal with Spain).
If the problem is "a flaw in the US patent system" then what did Unisys do that was so wrong? If a company invests its time and money into something that then it should be able to charge for it. This is one way in which programmers actually get paid for their work and can thus earn a living doing what they love. I just can't see a problem with that. As for the license fee, it is obvious that vendors still have a choice and can use other formats should they not want to pay. What is the problem? Imagine if you didn't get paid for the work you do.
Next, the MCP article is almost a year old, meaning it proves nothing. From your remarks, it seems that you do not even know what MCP is.
You are wrong about Unisys not "inventing anything since long before the web." My own group is in the process of getting a patent. It involves off loading I/O (TCP/IP, Raid) processing from a host system on to an intelligent adapter. Our cellular multiprocessing (CMP) architecture is a completely new and innovative invention. Actually, we invent things pretty often around here.
Your next quote comes from Giga Information Group, not Unisys. It was only re-published with Giga's permission (did you obtain it?). The environment they talk about is Microsoft Windows Terminal Server with Citrix WinFrame. Neither of these are Unisys products. In fact, there is a lot of Unisys development done to address the weaknesses in Microsoft Windows NT to try to make it more like our main frames.
Unisys is not "counting on the legal department as the main revenue source." Our Services group brings in over half our seven billion dollar revenue. Our Computer Systems group brings in the rest.
If you are going to attack something, please learn a bit more about it first. Otherwise your argument falls flat on its face.
There is nothing like the smell of easy money to awaken that money starved capitalist in all of us. I find it very interesting to see all the "free software" people complaining about this. These were the same people worrying about RH becoming too corporate and being bad for Linux. Personally I just want an OS that is powerful, customizable, easy-to-use, and has lots of applications that are the same. RH's IPO will go a long way to making that a reality by putting money behind it. Once people start investing in something that start caring about its success. The investors will push for RH Linux to be better than the other distros and better than other operating systems. They will push for better apps and more companies will want to get involved. Where is something bad happening here? .com stocks fly up in value regardless of the company's stats. Amazon loses more and more money but people keep investing. I don't want people getting in on an IPO that are not experienced traders. Will they handle the volatility? The chance that they could lose all that money? /. is going corporate. Unisys pays me to write corporate code and gives me access to resources that I could never afford on my own. Meanwhile I write free code in my spare time. The two can co-exist. I may end up working on Linux code for MIPS to be used on an intelligent i/o board. This will advance the Linux for MIPS work and Linux as embedded system. All from a big, old, nasty, corporation.
I have to agree with ETrade. In fact, I think that a big problem with the market is that there are too many people trading that do not know what they are doing. Almost all
Besides, just because you can not get in on the IPO does not mean you can not make money off of it. Getting a standard account is easy, even without experience. I have made money on the market and I have never been in on an IPO.
Finally, I think that anti-corporate thing needs to go. Granted, there are companies that do very bad things (like abuse their power) but this does not mean that corporations are all bad. Who made the parts in your computer? If it wasn't for a corporation we would not have any of the things we love today. I love programming and have written free code and code to be purchased. I need to make a living and I think that it is great that I can put food on the table by doing what I love. That is what America is all about. I know that this is an unpopular view but business and software advancement often go together. Everyone needs to get paid and if the choice is write free software and starve or write corporate code and eat, I think that most people will sign up at corporate coders 'r us. This doesn't mean give up free software but everything has a place. Even
I am 22 and working at Unisys. They have been through a very bad period of layoffs and forced retirements that only ended about a year and a half ago. The ones who were left had been there for decades. Part of Unisys' recovery plan has been to increase the number of new hires coming right from college to 40%. They still have a long way to go and in my group I am the only one not married and there is only one other programmer without kids and a nice Unisys Ten Year Award.
The main reason for this push has been to invigorate the company with new ideas. There is also the more financial reason that younger programmers are less expensive. The key to survival for older programmers is to prove that you are worth the extra cost, that you have all the things the young guys do and more (and many of them do).
This isn't just the programming field, though. In any field a person is expected to move up the success ladder. People who switch careers, start late, or just didn't go where the rest of the world expected them to suffer. It's a grim reminder of how important your college major is.
It's also a shame becase I have a learned a tremendous amount from my elders at Unisys. These men and women are the hard core programmers. They suffered through the early days of punch cards, baud modems, no GUIs (although to some that is a gift in disguise), no IDEs, and systems that about half as powerful as your watch.
Give some respect to these "old masters" because without them there wouldn't be any of the things we take for granted today.