So from the radio interview, they explain one of their breakins into an expensive car dealership. The weak point is as usual the employees who let them video tape the place and let one of them into the data center just because he managed to get (through dumpster diving) the business card of their support company.
Interesting thought, if that were the case, how long do you think would pass between the simulator thinking they're going to press Ctrl-C and the program actually terminating? I'm guessing billions of years in our time. Of course it could have decided to do this billions of years ago, but in any case, chances are it wouldn't happen before we all died anyway.
Nope it's Linux. It's happened to some of my customers as well. Obviously it doesn't happen to everyone, but it does happen. I've also had customers on AIX and Solaris that choke up, but they do under much higher usage and much more rarely. If all you do is server web pages, you might get 5 nines, but start dealing with systems that really pound the memory subsystem and you'll see linux start to choke. This was on RHEL3 (was still under support by the way) but it happened under RHEL4 as well. No idea how RHEL5 fares nowadays.
I don't know how big these customers are, but Linux is not as stable as people seem to think. I used to work for one of these software companies, and Linux was just for small customers (go above 1000 concurrent users and you're toast). Weird problems start to crop up. Usually RedHat will respond with oh just update to the latest version of xyz. But when you're talking about medical software you can't just upgrade things on a whim. Has RedHat's cluster software even gotten anywhere yet? That was another pain the ass to deal with.
As a Wikipedia, this is great news. The GFDL is too cumbersome. They need to do it right though. They need to freeze Wikipedia, make a dump, make that dump permanently available under the GFDL, and then open up Wikipedia with the new license. Legally they probably don't have to, but this should help others who want to fork based on the license change.
I don't use my real name, and I switch nicknames for different sites. This way I can't be stalked online for any reason. Sure in this specific case it might be a positive, but one can imagine many other negatives due to your online identity being revealed.
The only reason why I still use my MBNA (now Bank of America) credit card is due to their ShopSafe functionality similar to the one you mention. I don't know why more CC companies don't do this. I have two Citi CCs and neither is eligible for this functionality. It just boggles my mind as I'd be more likely to use them (and probably ditch the MBNA one).
I admit I didn't read the 7 page story, but does it:
1. Let you back up your books so when you lose the $400 device you don't also lose your entire library?
2. Will it let you read the e-books on other e-readers or are you stuck to their device?
3. Is there any DRM that makes you reliant on the wireless network (i.e. if you're stuck for a year in Alaska with no connection can you still read your books)?
That's true, but the prize is just icing to most (all?) of these groups. Many will spend much more than the prize to get it, and everyone involved knows this and still goes through with it. Sometimes it's enough to do it to advance the technology. You can consider it a prize that millions of people will make use of what you produced. Also don't underestimate the fun factor. It's a big drive for what people do. It's a cliche but money isn't everything. Also, research groups could be working on this, while getting paid to do that research by another party.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who went to their site to buy it, and couldn't even find a link to click on!!! I kid you not, all I saw was the psychedelic colors, tried clicking on things (or rather hovering) and couldn't even get a link.
They should really find some more competent people to create their site and host it (it would have paid for itself). And by the way there should be one site, not a new site for every album they make. I wasn't even sure if it was legitimate site due to the poor design and not being their main site.
I don't know about the statistics, but if you look at how much of the World has Internet access and how big the non-English versions are, you'd have to be fairly ignorant to say that Wikipedia has peaked. The most you can say is that it has plateaued. There are billions of people out that that could become Wikipedia editors and add content either in their language, or in English about their corner of the World. It will just take time for them to get to a point where they have Internet access and they discover Wikipedia. The discovery part is not going to be too difficult judging by how prevalent Wikipedia entries are in search results. The Internet part will take longer but it will happen as market forces demand it.
How do you change the default JPEG quality from the measly 85 (to say >90)? As a photographer this is the most annoying setting that I end up having to change all the time.
I just bought a track for $0.99, and it was pretty painless. The file was an MP3 encoded at 256Kbps, which is fine for me. I don't like the one-click deal though, and there is no way to buy albums unless you're using OS X or Windows. If they'd fix those it would be golden. In the MP3 file metadata they include in the Comments field something along the lines of: "Amazon.com Song ID: 123456789" probably to have some minimalistic tracking of who shares their songs.
So have they finally acknowledged that Firefox is a memory hog instead of just blaming users for not understanding features?
I can't believe how much memory Firefox uses just from the start. The memory buffers use up 3/4 of my memory with an empty, just launched, instance of Firefox. Where does all that go? Sure buffers can be cleared if needed, but I'd rather have that memory free (which I'm guessing can be allocated more easily than buffered memory, but maybe I'm wrong). Either way, I'd like to know why it spent time allocating buffer memory without even a single page loaded.
Exactly how would that fix the issue that the article argues, mainly that Linus is not focussed on the desktop and thus does not accept as many patches having to do with desktop performance? You could argue that Linus does not do that, but the reason for the fork is not technical as you are implying.
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I'd like to get me a Tesla, it's got a certain tug :)
I can just see those kinds of phones being popular.
So from the radio interview, they explain one of their breakins into an expensive car dealership. The weak point is as usual the employees who let them video tape the place and let one of them into the data center just because he managed to get (through dumpster diving) the business card of their support company.
Interesting thought, if that were the case, how long do you think would pass between the simulator thinking they're going to press Ctrl-C and the program actually terminating? I'm guessing billions of years in our time. Of course it could have decided to do this billions of years ago, but in any case, chances are it wouldn't happen before we all died anyway.
Wikimedia already has another project for this sort of thing. It's called Wikibooks.
Nope it's Linux. It's happened to some of my customers as well. Obviously it doesn't happen to everyone, but it does happen. I've also had customers on AIX and Solaris that choke up, but they do under much higher usage and much more rarely. If all you do is server web pages, you might get 5 nines, but start dealing with systems that really pound the memory subsystem and you'll see linux start to choke. This was on RHEL3 (was still under support by the way) but it happened under RHEL4 as well. No idea how RHEL5 fares nowadays.
Don't even joke about that. No it's big iron, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, etc.
I don't know how big these customers are, but Linux is not as stable as people seem to think. I used to work for one of these software companies, and Linux was just for small customers (go above 1000 concurrent users and you're toast). Weird problems start to crop up. Usually RedHat will respond with oh just update to the latest version of xyz. But when you're talking about medical software you can't just upgrade things on a whim. Has RedHat's cluster software even gotten anywhere yet? That was another pain the ass to deal with.
As a Wikipedia, this is great news. The GFDL is too cumbersome. They need to do it right though. They need to freeze Wikipedia, make a dump, make that dump permanently available under the GFDL, and then open up Wikipedia with the new license. Legally they probably don't have to, but this should help others who want to fork based on the license change.
I don't use my real name, and I switch nicknames for different sites. This way I can't be stalked online for any reason. Sure in this specific case it might be a positive, but one can imagine many other negatives due to your online identity being revealed.
The only reason why I still use my MBNA (now Bank of America) credit card is due to their ShopSafe functionality similar to the one you mention. I don't know why more CC companies don't do this. I have two Citi CCs and neither is eligible for this functionality. It just boggles my mind as I'd be more likely to use them (and probably ditch the MBNA one).
I admit I didn't read the 7 page story, but does it:
1. Let you back up your books so when you lose the $400 device you don't also lose your entire library?
2. Will it let you read the e-books on other e-readers or are you stuck to their device?
3. Is there any DRM that makes you reliant on the wireless network (i.e. if you're stuck for a year in Alaska with no connection can you still read your books)?
That's true, but the prize is just icing to most (all?) of these groups. Many will spend much more than the prize to get it, and everyone involved knows this and still goes through with it. Sometimes it's enough to do it to advance the technology. You can consider it a prize that millions of people will make use of what you produced. Also don't underestimate the fun factor. It's a big drive for what people do. It's a cliche but money isn't everything. Also, research groups could be working on this, while getting paid to do that research by another party.
For whatever you want to fault it, doesn't OOXML have at least a couple of rough non-MS implementations (Novell, Corel, Thinkfree)?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who went to their site to buy it, and couldn't even find a link to click on!!! I kid you not, all I saw was the psychedelic colors, tried clicking on things (or rather hovering) and couldn't even get a link. They should really find some more competent people to create their site and host it (it would have paid for itself). And by the way there should be one site, not a new site for every album they make. I wasn't even sure if it was legitimate site due to the poor design and not being their main site.
I don't know about the statistics, but if you look at how much of the World has Internet access and how big the non-English versions are, you'd have to be fairly ignorant to say that Wikipedia has peaked. The most you can say is that it has plateaued. There are billions of people out that that could become Wikipedia editors and add content either in their language, or in English about their corner of the World. It will just take time for them to get to a point where they have Internet access and they discover Wikipedia. The discovery part is not going to be too difficult judging by how prevalent Wikipedia entries are in search results. The Internet part will take longer but it will happen as market forces demand it.
Any chance you're going to publish some recent (anonymous) statistics on Slashdot users (e.g. percent OS/browser usage, how many total visits, etc.)?
Did you know that the Antarctic ozone hole has shrunk by 30 for the year ending 2007? If this trend continues... AAY!
How do you change the default JPEG quality from the measly 85 (to say >90)? As a photographer this is the most annoying setting that I end up having to change all the time.
Well, he could just donate the money to the guy helping the gorillas if he wins it, he doesn't have to piss it away.
I just bought a track for $0.99, and it was pretty painless. The file was an MP3 encoded at 256Kbps, which is fine for me. I don't like the one-click deal though, and there is no way to buy albums unless you're using OS X or Windows. If they'd fix those it would be golden. In the MP3 file metadata they include in the Comments field something along the lines of: "Amazon.com Song ID: 123456789" probably to have some minimalistic tracking of who shares their songs.
So have they finally acknowledged that Firefox is a memory hog instead of just blaming users for not understanding features? I can't believe how much memory Firefox uses just from the start. The memory buffers use up 3/4 of my memory with an empty, just launched, instance of Firefox. Where does all that go? Sure buffers can be cleared if needed, but I'd rather have that memory free (which I'm guessing can be allocated more easily than buffered memory, but maybe I'm wrong). Either way, I'd like to know why it spent time allocating buffer memory without even a single page loaded.
How do they do backups (especially online ones) and restores?
The operator was heard saying: "What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest. How do you feel?"
Exactly how would that fix the issue that the article argues, mainly that Linus is not focussed on the desktop and thus does not accept as many patches having to do with desktop performance? You could argue that Linus does not do that, but the reason for the fork is not technical as you are implying.