The power needed to properly run a GUI and all of its applications gave birth to the fat client. The server power needed to handle a large number of machines running GUIs hasn't been financially attainable for companies of all sizes until recent years. The history and progression of computing technology has been the driving force behind the major swing from thin client to fat.
But now we are in a new era where there is logical justification for a hybrid scenario where only some applications are on a "thin" basis. I don't think anyone should take this as a sign that the days of fat clients are immediately numbered. I don't think you can make that justification until true broadband is virtually ubiquitous even in extreme rural areas. I think we can all agree that is a long ways off.
In fact, I just recently saw some photos of those two hanging out at some social function, chatting and getting along fine.
There is a reason why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been successful businessmen and continued to stay relevant in the corporate world--they have business sense. Degrading into feces throwing primates isn't the norm for such types (Larry Ellison being an exception).
Obviously ESR and Alan Cox don't fit in this category. But I don't think either really aspire to, so it's no surprise.
Since this is the year 2007, I don't see Vista being far out of the ballpark,
Since there are a very large number of desktops and laptops still being (successfully) used that won't even hold more than 1GB of RAM, I'd say the fact that 1GB of RAM will not provide good performance is beyond out of the ballpark. It's stupid.
As far as I know, Vista is the only OS in existence that won't run that great with 1GB of RAM. So is Vista so much more advanced that it needs that much RAM? Since all the new play pretty features seem to be ripoffs of OSX which runs just fine on 1GB of RAM, I'd say no.
I think you and quite a few people here are missing at least part of the point Linus made in this exercise. Linus knows code and how to write it with clarity and quality in mind. If you read what Linus wrote, you will see one of the things he says is:
The code is actually _cleaner_ after my patches, and the end result is more capable.
I'm willing to bet his "cleaner" claim is true. If they don't like the behavior changes, fine. They can undo those. But if his patches clean up the code, I don't see what's bad about that. I hope someone outside the argument checks out the patches and validates this.
If the GNOME developers reject the patches sans behavior changes even after independent folks validate the cleanup, then there is something else going on. I suspect this is an effort for Linus to highlight what he perceives as GNOME developers being unwilling to listen to others. This kind of behavior is NOT good for OSS. If indeed that is what Linus is after.
SAP is right now aggressively marketing to mid-sized businesses with pricing quite competitive. I know this because I've taken a few sales calls from them.
DRM isn't necessarily evil; it's the unfair enforcement of such DRM that is
The very intention and implementation of DRM is unfair. DRM is a fancy way of saying "We're going to do our best to force you to abide by copyright laws even while potentially interfering on your rights because we care more about our rights and/or think our rights are more important."
You cannot conceivably enforce DRM without infringing on the rights of consumers. Period. This is because the process of copyright infringement--copying the content you've purchased and giving it or selling it to someone else--is not defined by the copying of the content which fair use allows you to do for yourself, but rather the handing over of the copied content to others. DRM will never ever be able to stop that. But it can make it more difficult at the expense of fair use.
You joke, but there is more to this than you think. With data and voice converging along with ever increasing smaller and more powerful chips, projects like SETI and other distributed computing initiatives will be VERY interested in those unused CPU cycles. An open platform makes it much more possible for them to use. Of course, this will drain battery power faster, but I'd volunteer my battery power if it meant I had to plug in my phone every night instead of every other night.
I wouldn't call it a bribe, I'd call it buying scientific mercenaries. The problem with mercenaries is that their motivations revolve around the pay. When that happens, objectivity is completely impossible. Period. Removing objectivity from science kills the spirit of science itself. Can you really call it science at that point?
Make no mistake--Microsoft doesn't care about the everyday home user. They care about their money. As far as I can tell, Vista was one big attempt to create the mother of all vendor lock-in media platforms complete with beefy integrated-to-the-core DRM all wrapped up in a pretty visual interface.
Exactly what about that leads you to believe they genuinely care about their end users?
As I said, there may be solutions that I haven't found. I understand that what I'm talking about is most likely Thunderbird + extensionA + extensionB + extensionC . . . I don't have a problem with that. I just want them to exist and they MUST before you can consider Thunderbird a potential corporate email solution replacement for Outlook. Otherwise, it's just another alternative client.
I'm in the planning stages of implementing Zimbra as well. It seems to be rock solid. Even better, I've been told that version 5.0 will be fully supported on Ubuntu Server. By the time I'm ready to really implement it, I think version 5 will be out.
Let's be perfectly honest about Thunderbird. It's pretty good, but it has a LONG way to go before it is "ready" to be an Outlook replacement. I say "ready" because while it can be used as such right now in some ways, it is little things that make in insufficient in my opinion. You know, little things like being able to generate a new mail filter based on an email. Calendaring is obvious. The way that the browser hangs sometimes when a new message is downloading. Of course, Firefox does this too when downloading a file. Also, having to open address book in a new window is annoying.
I'm sure there are others, but that's all I can think of right now. Maybe some of these have solutions now and I just don't know about them.
I've been around quite a few what I would consider hard core environmentalists and I've never gotten that impression. In fact, some of them seemed to be apprehensive about ethanol because of how they view the impact some of the corn production in the US has on the Mississippi delta--i.e. the dead zone.
Maybe I've been around some of the more logical and open minded environmentalists, but my recollection is that they seemed to think solar and wind hold the biggest promises with ethanol being good if the major issues can be worked out.
Since we have no way of knowing his financial situation, I think your assertion is a tad bit invalid. There could be quite a few circumstances in his life where having to fork out the 25K is either too high of a burden to shoulder or a complete and totally impossibility. The older you get and the more mistakes you make opens the opportunity for money to become an extremely complicated issue.
Things aren't as simple as you would like to think. First, there is a reason they are called "Amendments" in the first place. The founders of the United States were smart enough to recognize that there is no such thing as perfection and they included the ability for the founding principles of the nation to be changed when warranted. As another poster has mentioned, I doubt the founding fathers would have included nuclear missiles in that. Besides, the definitive chapter hasn't been written on how "well regulated militia" and "right of the people" relate to bearing arms. Many people argue it is meant that individuals are guaranteed the right. But it is clearly arguable that the founding fathers didn't intend on every Joe having their own personal arsenal.
Freedom of speech is another area where the boundaries have been pushed in ways the founding fathers likely never could have foreseen. In areas where the speech is clearly illegal in other areas (such as child pornography), I don't see how you can argue that the illegal speech is protected. Clearly it is a slippery slope, but I think everyone can agree that a blanket "all speech should be protected and free" is neither practical nor what the founding fathers intended. Or, alternatively, if they knew then what we know now would they word it the way they did.
Regardless of these instances, there is little argument that there are power grabs happening all over the place with the common person being on the losing end. It is a long and hard road for us to recover the lost ground, but it can be done.
I would think any sufficiently intelligent civilization would first develop automated systems to scan for candidate planets. We're working on that now.
Working with a list of candidate planets (as ours surely would be), an alien civilization could be much more efficient in their searching for other forms of intelligent life.
1. something that pollutes. 2. any substance, as certain chemicals or waste products, that renders the air, soil, water, or other natural resource harmful or unsuitable for a specific purpose.
... unsuitabe for a specific purpose . . . what, like breathing?
I'd put the blame on both Microsoft and SAP. Microsoft for making such a shoddy browser with IE6 and SAP for building around it.
The problem is that even if SAP got the fix in place by now, I'd wager it wouldn't be massively deployed if the admins running it value their job. Testing updates in ERP software is (or should be) mandatory regardless of how minor they may be.
a. If human-induced global warming is not correct, CO2 can hardly be classified as a pollutant.
Hmmmm. You should have been there to instruct the Apollo 13 crew they had nothing to worry about with CO2 poisoning then. You could have saved them a lot of time and worry.
It's simple. If they claim the fruits of his labor after the fact, he gets to turn in the overtime he worked. Period. End of story. They can't have it both ways. "You weren't authorized to work on that, so you don't get paid. Here, give it to us since you did work on it . .." Uhhh . . . I don't think so.
Legal and common speech definitions do not specifically mean the same thing. Theft as a legal word does not mean the same thing as how you might use it in a sentence. While you might believe and the dictionary definition might imply, infringing a copyright is not covered with the legal definition of steal(*). As far as I know, the **AA usage of "steal" in this context has been limited to public discourse and not legal filings. This isn't an accident. It would take all of two seconds for a competent lawyer to flag this accusation in a lawsuit as probable grounds for dismissal.
Disclaimer: IANAL
(*) I seem to have a vague recollection of efforts to change the law to make copyright infringement theft. I don't remember the specifics and am too lazy at the moment to Google it and peruse through results.
Aerogel. It's been covered on/. before. You can read about it here.
There are companies marketing it now. You can buy it in cut sections. It would be perfect for lining the outside of an IDF. One thing though--it will hold in heat equally as well as keep it out. You might have to have an AC unit of some kind.
Downloading content made available by the rights holder isn't illegal AFAIK. By uploading said content to be distributed via bittorrent, they are allowing people to download it. I don't think they can legitimately argue copyright infringement at that point.
Check out MP2. Our maintenance guys use it to schedule and track maintenance of everything in the plant. They swear by it. I believe you could use it for server maintenance, but I haven't tried it.
I don't know much about it, but I found one site that discusses it here.
Slashdot Mirror
The power needed to properly run a GUI and all of its applications gave birth to the fat client. The server power needed to handle a large number of machines running GUIs hasn't been financially attainable for companies of all sizes until recent years. The history and progression of computing technology has been the driving force behind the major swing from thin client to fat.
But now we are in a new era where there is logical justification for a hybrid scenario where only some applications are on a "thin" basis. I don't think anyone should take this as a sign that the days of fat clients are immediately numbered. I don't think you can make that justification until true broadband is virtually ubiquitous even in extreme rural areas. I think we can all agree that is a long ways off.
In fact, I just recently saw some photos of those two hanging out at some social function, chatting and getting along fine.
There is a reason why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been successful businessmen and continued to stay relevant in the corporate world--they have business sense. Degrading into feces throwing primates isn't the norm for such types (Larry Ellison being an exception).
Obviously ESR and Alan Cox don't fit in this category. But I don't think either really aspire to, so it's no surprise.
Since this is the year 2007, I don't see Vista being far out of the ballpark,
Since there are a very large number of desktops and laptops still being (successfully) used that won't even hold more than 1GB of RAM, I'd say the fact that 1GB of RAM will not provide good performance is beyond out of the ballpark. It's stupid.
As far as I know, Vista is the only OS in existence that won't run that great with 1GB of RAM. So is Vista so much more advanced that it needs that much RAM? Since all the new play pretty features seem to be ripoffs of OSX which runs just fine on 1GB of RAM, I'd say no.
I think you and quite a few people here are missing at least part of the point Linus made in this exercise. Linus knows code and how to write it with clarity and quality in mind. If you read what Linus wrote, you will see one of the things he says is:
The code is actually _cleaner_ after my patches, and the end result is more capable.
I'm willing to bet his "cleaner" claim is true. If they don't like the behavior changes, fine. They can undo those. But if his patches clean up the code, I don't see what's bad about that. I hope someone outside the argument checks out the patches and validates this.
If the GNOME developers reject the patches sans behavior changes even after independent folks validate the cleanup, then there is something else going on. I suspect this is an effort for Linus to highlight what he perceives as GNOME developers being unwilling to listen to others. This kind of behavior is NOT good for OSS. If indeed that is what Linus is after.
SAP is right now aggressively marketing to mid-sized businesses with pricing quite competitive. I know this because I've taken a few sales calls from them.
DRM isn't necessarily evil; it's the unfair enforcement of such DRM that is
The very intention and implementation of DRM is unfair. DRM is a fancy way of saying "We're going to do our best to force you to abide by copyright laws even while potentially interfering on your rights because we care more about our rights and/or think our rights are more important."
You cannot conceivably enforce DRM without infringing on the rights of consumers. Period. This is because the process of copyright infringement--copying the content you've purchased and giving it or selling it to someone else--is not defined by the copying of the content which fair use allows you to do for yourself, but rather the handing over of the copied content to others. DRM will never ever be able to stop that. But it can make it more difficult at the expense of fair use.
You joke, but there is more to this than you think. With data and voice converging along with ever increasing smaller and more powerful chips, projects like SETI and other distributed computing initiatives will be VERY interested in those unused CPU cycles. An open platform makes it much more possible for them to use. Of course, this will drain battery power faster, but I'd volunteer my battery power if it meant I had to plug in my phone every night instead of every other night.
I wouldn't call it a bribe, I'd call it buying scientific mercenaries. The problem with mercenaries is that their motivations revolve around the pay. When that happens, objectivity is completely impossible. Period. Removing objectivity from science kills the spirit of science itself. Can you really call it science at that point?
Make no mistake--Microsoft doesn't care about the everyday home user. They care about their money. As far as I can tell, Vista was one big attempt to create the mother of all vendor lock-in media platforms complete with beefy integrated-to-the-core DRM all wrapped up in a pretty visual interface.
Exactly what about that leads you to believe they genuinely care about their end users?
As I said, there may be solutions that I haven't found. I understand that what I'm talking about is most likely Thunderbird + extensionA + extensionB + extensionC . . . I don't have a problem with that. I just want them to exist and they MUST before you can consider Thunderbird a potential corporate email solution replacement for Outlook. Otherwise, it's just another alternative client.
I'm in the planning stages of implementing Zimbra as well. It seems to be rock solid. Even better, I've been told that version 5.0 will be fully supported on Ubuntu Server. By the time I'm ready to really implement it, I think version 5 will be out.
Let's be perfectly honest about Thunderbird. It's pretty good, but it has a LONG way to go before it is "ready" to be an Outlook replacement. I say "ready" because while it can be used as such right now in some ways, it is little things that make in insufficient in my opinion. You know, little things like being able to generate a new mail filter based on an email. Calendaring is obvious. The way that the browser hangs sometimes when a new message is downloading. Of course, Firefox does this too when downloading a file. Also, having to open address book in a new window is annoying.
I'm sure there are others, but that's all I can think of right now. Maybe some of these have solutions now and I just don't know about them.
I've been around quite a few what I would consider hard core environmentalists and I've never gotten that impression. In fact, some of them seemed to be apprehensive about ethanol because of how they view the impact some of the corn production in the US has on the Mississippi delta--i.e. the dead zone.
Maybe I've been around some of the more logical and open minded environmentalists, but my recollection is that they seemed to think solar and wind hold the biggest promises with ethanol being good if the major issues can be worked out.
Ummm, try doing a search for "Other Issues" on that page and you'll find what he is talking about. It's clearly there.
Since we have no way of knowing his financial situation, I think your assertion is a tad bit invalid. There could be quite a few circumstances in his life where having to fork out the 25K is either too high of a burden to shoulder or a complete and totally impossibility. The older you get and the more mistakes you make opens the opportunity for money to become an extremely complicated issue.
Things aren't as simple as you would like to think. First, there is a reason they are called "Amendments" in the first place. The founders of the United States were smart enough to recognize that there is no such thing as perfection and they included the ability for the founding principles of the nation to be changed when warranted. As another poster has mentioned, I doubt the founding fathers would have included nuclear missiles in that. Besides, the definitive chapter hasn't been written on how "well regulated militia" and "right of the people" relate to bearing arms. Many people argue it is meant that individuals are guaranteed the right. But it is clearly arguable that the founding fathers didn't intend on every Joe having their own personal arsenal.
Freedom of speech is another area where the boundaries have been pushed in ways the founding fathers likely never could have foreseen. In areas where the speech is clearly illegal in other areas (such as child pornography), I don't see how you can argue that the illegal speech is protected. Clearly it is a slippery slope, but I think everyone can agree that a blanket "all speech should be protected and free" is neither practical nor what the founding fathers intended. Or, alternatively, if they knew then what we know now would they word it the way they did.
Regardless of these instances, there is little argument that there are power grabs happening all over the place with the common person being on the losing end. It is a long and hard road for us to recover the lost ground, but it can be done.
I would think any sufficiently intelligent civilization would first develop automated systems to scan for candidate planets. We're working on that now.
Working with a list of candidate planets (as ours surely would be), an alien civilization could be much more efficient in their searching for other forms of intelligent life.
If you can't read, there's no point in arguing with you either.
... unsuitabe for a specific purpose . . . what, like breathing?
pollutant:
1. something that pollutes.
2. any substance, as certain chemicals or waste products, that renders the air, soil, water, or other natural resource harmful or unsuitable for a specific purpose.
I'd put the blame on both Microsoft and SAP. Microsoft for making such a shoddy browser with IE6 and SAP for building around it.
The problem is that even if SAP got the fix in place by now, I'd wager it wouldn't be massively deployed if the admins running it value their job. Testing updates in ERP software is (or should be) mandatory regardless of how minor they may be.
a. If human-induced global warming is not correct, CO2 can hardly be classified as a pollutant.
Hmmmm. You should have been there to instruct the Apollo 13 crew they had nothing to worry about with CO2 poisoning then. You could have saved them a lot of time and worry.
It's simple. If they claim the fruits of his labor after the fact, he gets to turn in the overtime he worked. Period. End of story. They can't have it both ways. "You weren't authorized to work on that, so you don't get paid. Here, give it to us since you did work on it . . ." Uhhh . . . I don't think so.
If they do try to claim it using that logic, he should apply for all the overtime he spent working on it.
Legal and common speech definitions do not specifically mean the same thing. Theft as a legal word does not mean the same thing as how you might use it in a sentence. While you might believe and the dictionary definition might imply, infringing a copyright is not covered with the legal definition of steal(*). As far as I know, the **AA usage of "steal" in this context has been limited to public discourse and not legal filings. This isn't an accident. It would take all of two seconds for a competent lawyer to flag this accusation in a lawsuit as probable grounds for dismissal.
Disclaimer: IANAL
(*) I seem to have a vague recollection of efforts to change the law to make copyright infringement theft. I don't remember the specifics and am too lazy at the moment to Google it and peruse through results.
Aerogel. It's been covered on /. before. You can read about it here.
There are companies marketing it now. You can buy it in cut sections. It would be perfect for lining the outside of an IDF. One thing though--it will hold in heat equally as well as keep it out. You might have to have an AC unit of some kind.
Downloading content made available by the rights holder isn't illegal AFAIK. By uploading said content to be distributed via bittorrent, they are allowing people to download it. I don't think they can legitimately argue copyright infringement at that point.
Check out MP2. Our maintenance guys use it to schedule and track maintenance of everything in the plant. They swear by it. I believe you could use it for server maintenance, but I haven't tried it.
I don't know much about it, but I found one site that discusses it here.