"The Inquirer's article is interesting, but the underlying forces have little to do with open source, and have been building for years."...
"What happens when your company hits the limits of its growth? The dilemma MS faces is its own success. They own 95% of the desktop world. Almost everyone who _can_ use Windows and Office _does_ use it. They won't get continuing double-digit increases in revenue and profit from their core business, because they've saturated their market."
Good point, but you are only partially right. MS has saturated the US market for sure. The world market is just starting up in many places, and if MS could count on similar success in China, Brazil, India and so on they would be able to run their ponzi scheme a lot longer. The existence of Open Source, finally has presented a barrier through which they will not pass unchanged. Had Open Source been more prevalent back in the OS/2 vs Windows days I'm not sure we would still have a Microsoft any more. As it is, thanks to their war chest, they still have an opportunity to mutate themselves into something else.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them do a merger with someone like Dell to get into hardware and with one of the remaining big consulting companies to try and become a body-shop powerhouse. That is, of course if the government will allow them to do it. They will lose to Sony and friends if they keep pounding on the consumer electronics door. With margins like they are used to they just don't have a chance. Really, with the exception of the dirty tricks they pulled to create the Windows and Office monopolies Microsoft's history reads like a comedy of errors.
Basically Microsoft needs to once again go head to head with IBM. If they can't manage to do so they will simply start to evaporate. I'm not too sure they will be able to change fast enough to make a difference. That $40B will go fast.
"Wasn't there a story recently about how these guys were acting like the progressive bunch and telling their users that they own, as property, the objects they create in the game?"
Yes, that's true. Similar to you owning your content when you build a web page and host it at an ISP. At issue here primarily was server resources though. In SL each 512x512 meter (I think thats right) chunk of land is managed by a separate PC (I'm not sure if they use blade servers or what). Which means that a single user could in theory tie up a whole lot of server resources with their content. These changes don't affect ownership of objects, but they do limit how many of those objects can be "rezed" (online) and how much server space they can take up. It is still possible to have objects in your inventory that are not taking up server space however. You just have to budget how much you have on display at any given time.
I think they said that the changes would represent a decrease in space for something like 5 percent of the users. For some of those I think they are even making exceptions. The need was to have a system that could grow without allowing people who "gamed" the system to accumulate an unlimited amount of server resource, which would negatively impact the other 95 percent of us. If someone is really talented and can turn their skills into sales of online content, there is no reason they can't then buy extra server space. The changes really only affect what you get "by default".
In my case I actually had to go around and buy additional land with virtual dollars to come up to the amount I am allowed, I'm way under on objects. I don't think the typical user would be impacted by this.
The other good news about this change is that for people that are not into building at all they can get an ID for a one-time $10 fee. For some people who just want an online chat situation this is an extremely good deal.
Not sure what you meant by "retail game". It is not boxed and sold in stores if that is what you meant. You have to download it. You don't pay for the software, but for using the service.
The changes they made had negative effects on very few people (although they are quite vocal about it). Basically the changes allow them to scale up their server hardware in a more sensible fashion by allowing people to optionally spend real dollars to buy more in-game real estate.
The old system was inflationary and allowed old users, particularly those who spend 24 hours a day online to tie up all the system resources. While some of these folk are very talented and produced some good builds, others just produced large inefficient builds that slowed things down for everyone. Bigger is not necessarily better.
It's not possible to get an economy right the first time, and those of us around for the beta were told that there would be several changes, if not continual changes to the economy. Any player who was caught by surprise on this must have been in game so much they forgot to read their e-mail.
I bet what the article MEANT to say was that they took the wraps off the fact that they are using this process. The secret being not the process but their use of it. Especially since they credit a university researcher with the concept back in 1992.
The consumers DID revolt. Thats why most people are today running PCs. Furthermore people will eventually revolt against high priced HP, Dell, etc. products in favor of just as good off-brands. Go into Radio Shack and look at the selection of telephones and imagine that being the PC industry of the future.
One thing Apple has to offer (for now anyway) is the fact that they make (or at least have made to their specifications) the entire package, from hardware to OS to many of the basic applications, including (as with iPod, and iTunes) significant peripherals and online content. Nobody else can make that claim for now, be it Microsoft, Dell, HP, nobody. As a result, Apple can get away with charging a premium price for every item in their product line.
As a fan of Apple, I HOPE they have an exit strategy however, because I don't think the party will last much longer. With everyone copying Apples' successful marketing efforts and then chopping large percentages off the cost Apple is in the position of having to hit a home run every time they step up to the plate (or almost) and I am concerned that as the cost of computer components approach zero, and with many software costs already at zero they will not be able to compete.
If no US companies get a clue soon I would not be surprised if we end up buying computers of the future from companies like Sony, Panasonic or Gold Star at $75 a pop and throwing them away whenever they don't match our color scheme. In that world, companies like Apple and Microsoft have no place, companies like Intel become more like Texas Instruments, only something you know about if you break the seals on your computer and look at the components with a magnifying glass.
After having paid top dollar for three incrementally newer Palm Pilots in a row I finally figured out that the "trouble with this picture" was me. When I saw the iPod I knew that one of these days I'd have one, but not for more than about $100. I'm still waiting. I think a lot of other people will too. At some point I think it would be worth Apples consideration to just flood the market with iPods at their cost plus a small percentage. If you could buy the whole thing for $75 then nobody would complain about it not having replaceable batteries.
I think the really interesting technologies will come from out of nowhere.
Too many people kept waiting for AI to produce "thinking computers" and they are still waiting.
Too many people think nano-technology to work wonders and they are still trying to make simple gears do something useful.
Too many people think that Microsoft invented computing and don't realize that most of what we have today is simply re-hashing of things from the 60's, but in smaller cases.
Too many people think that Howard Dean invented the Internet (3 years ago they thought it was Al Gore) and don't realize that most of his policies were borrowed from Pat Buchanan.
We basically suffer from short term memory, short attention span and hero-worship that expects someone to come along and magically fix things without disruption to our lives. Fortunately there are some real thinkers who are not constrained by these stumbling blocks and are off doing real work. I expect them to come up with things that we haven't even considered, and then Microsoft or Howard Dean, or the like will take credit for it (and get away with it for the most part).
Am I a cynic? Yeah, but only based on past experience.
LOTR and The Hobbit are the only fantasy books I've ever read, although I read a lot of straight SCI-FI. I think the key is that they were written and popular before computing or the term geek caught on. They are not only classics of their genre but just plain classics.
Actually I think you CAN make money off of this, since in-world money can be converted to cash. I haven't informed myself of he details of this yet, since I have been pretty lazy about accumulating in-world money anyway.
The more interesting part of the changes I think is the lowered entry barrier for casual users:
"Starting a Second Life no longer means committing to a monthly charge - new Residents can get started with a one-time fee of just $9.95. With no recurring bills, it's a perfect option for those who want to be a part of Second Life's community without being tied-down. This basic access includes a small Linden Dollar grant and on-going cash infusions any week when you're in-world, but no automatic land allotment. Prospective Residents still have a 7-day trial to make up their minds. If you're looking for a more rewarding option, a $9.95 monthly membership fee will get you a larger weekly Linden Dollar grant (whether your in-world or not) and sizeable plot of land before any land fees kick-in."
If you are not interesting in the rat-race aspects at all, the one time fee (I think) serves as an age-verification as much as anything else and allows you to come in and socialize without owning much of anything.
This change, to me makes an important distinction between SL as a "game" and SL as a "Virtual Place" where you can (if you chose) play online games. The ultimate idea is to be a place where a variety of games and activities can be developed, by users as well as he company, rather than a static environment where everyone wins or loses based on a fixed set of rules.
Not only that, but the CMS format was put in place while the developers were still "learning the ropes". They admitted that they had no experience with the product and were inflicting their learning curve on the Linux Gazette reader base. I ask you, would they have done the same thing with Linux Journal?....
"We at Linux Journal support environmentalism. We thought about using re-cycled paper to print future editions, but we really don't know much about any of this, so as an experiment this months edition has been printed directly on used socks that we found in the dumpster. Please let us know what you think."
The LEAST they could have done was to run the experiment in parallel and leave the existing format for Linux Gazette alone until some results were in.
The current system using Drupal sucks. Response has been almost totally negative and the response from the editors has continue to be "Thanks for your suggestions, we are looking into it". I have heard that Drupal is a pretty good system, but based on what I've seen at the SSC site, I don't think I would use it. Basically the current CMS is Alpha code at best and should not have been forced on unsuspecting users.
Yeah, doesn't this pretty much prove that most of America's CEOs have absolutely no imagination?
Step one: Offload manufacturing, then programming, then support over seas and lay everyone off.
Step two: Look around and realize that there is not much point in being in charge of a company of one with everything being done elsewhere, better come up with a new product idea fast.
Step three: Read headline in last months business journal that say online music really taking off fast.
Step four: WOW, I'm gettin' into THAT. I bet nobody else has thought of this! Hire the son of the CEO that lives next door to run the whole thing from his bedroom.
Well, I guess thats it. I'm the only entity in the known universe that doesn't have their own online music service.
I thought there was hope for a while, but then when 7-11 was closely followed by Jiffy Lube into the online music business I began to wonder. Next thing you know, like the domino effect each unit in my townhouse community hopped on board the bandwagon.
I'd set up a server too, except there is no longer any music that isn't tied up by exclusive agreements of one kind or another.
And besides, if it were not for me, there wouldn't be any customers^H.
All I was pointing out was that the original comparison between a Readers Digest book on cars and an end-user in-depth discussion of modems is not appropriate.
Regarding the other issues you raised:
Everything I have read indicates that modem use is giving way to either DSL or Cable modem for accessing the internet. I have not read the book either, but if the section on modems includes DSL and Cable modems that would be an odd conglomeration.
The point made by the review was that there was sparse coverage on some areas and overkill on others. Most end-users don't need to know the details of how a modem works these days since almost all modems use the same command set, operate at the same speeds and are detected automatically by the operating system. Much more time is spent in setting up (and fixing) the myriad of network settings for DNS, DHCP, gateway, etc.
Keep in mind that modems came to the fore in advance of the internet. I was using modems for years to access Prodigy, Genie, and local BBS systems. Back then you really needed to know how your modem worked to get best results. Now most of them are truly plug-and-play, and rarely are modems used today for anything that does not involve networking, specifically TCP/IP. For the 5 years or so before I got DSL at home I was using a device that went between my external modem and one or more PCs. The PCs were networked using TCP/IP and knew nothing of the modem which established the internet connection on demand. I'm pretty sure that if modems didn't already exist and someone were to "invent" dial-up networking today it would simply look like todays DSL routers with little more than a web interface to set ID, Password, and phone number.
Ownership is important, but words convey meaning... Definitions:
gazette: A newspaper; a printed sheet published periodically; esp., the official journal published by the British government, and containing legal and state notices.
journal: A daily register of the ship's course and distance, the winds, weather, incidents of the voyage, etc. (c) (Legislature) The record of daily proceedings, kept by the clerk. (d) A newspaper published daily; by extension, a weekly newspaper or any periodical publication, giving an account of passing events, the proceedings and memoirs of societies, etc.; a periodical; a magazine.
If SSC wanted to run a Content Management System (CMS) I think that is a great idea. But Linux Gazette has always been in a magazine format. Static pages. In fact there is Debian package that allows you to grab back issues to download onto your laptop if you like.
But a CMS is not a magazine, or a gazette. In fact it would have made MUCH more sense for SSC to convert Linux Journal into an CMS format than what they did.
The other thing that is bothersome about this (once you dig a little deeper) is that the decision to convert to a CMS format and the selection process for the software to be used happened almost over night. The CMS was put in place with obvious bugs an omissions and it was clearly still in the R&D phase (still is in fact) with many features not quite working as they would like yet. Why would you throw out a perfectly working format and put something in its place that was so clearly still under heavy development?
Regardless of who ends up owning the words "Linux Gazette" the SSC handling of this thing is at best "ham handed", and hardly what you would expect from an established publishing company.
I have been a regular reader of Linux Journal and Linux Gazette. I plan to suspend my purchasing of the former until the fate of the latter becomes more clear. Frankly, most CMS format publications suck. Slashdot is on of the few exceptions. SSC should have done the CMS experiment on the side and left the Linux Gazette format alone at least until the new thing had established itself. To say that the Linux Gazette has forked is not quite analogous to what has happened. If someone took KWORD and gutted the program and turned it into an astrology program I don't think you would call that a fork, I think you would call it a dumb idea. I think what SSC did was dumb, and the community needs to see that it is in their best interest to set it right again.
"There's nothing wrong with socialism and communism either, as long as you speak "in theory." While you can find something wrong with anything if you look with a critical eye, I don't think OSS is at all close to perfect or optimal:
RMS pounces on anyone who does not both kiss his ass (his demand is that his contribution be acknowledged, see the GNU/Linux vs Linux/GNU vs Linux arguments) *and* sponsor his own personal choice method for open source (ie, use the license he prefers)."
I think the rebuttal article did a fairly good job of countering the 5 issues, but an argument already having been made has never stopped me before...
I get particularly tired of people's need to compare open source with some sort of political movement, ANY of them. RMS may have socialist views personally, but there are many capitalists in the open source movement as well. There are also large numbers of Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians, meat eaters, vegetarians, doctors and Christian Scientists.
Open source probably would not exist in a tightly control economy. The government would eventually choose an "official" operating system and demand that everyone use it or have their computers confiscated.
And finally I like to remind people that open source existed before it had a name. Computers used in universities and research environments for as long as there has been computing were largely programmed and tinkered with by people at those institutions. Even IBM computers where I went to school had modified operating systems. Source code was readily available from IBM and there were publications used for exchanging those modifications as well as the likelihood that some of them would show up in future versions of the OS. Until Microsoft came along in fact operating systems were secondary to the hardware that they supported. While IBM wasn't thrilled if you ran a non-IBM OS on their equipment they would much rather have that happen than to have you run non-IBM hardware.
Given all of that, it is really not the Open Source movement that is odd, it is in fact Microsoft that is worthy of study for it produces almost no physical products and has continued to charge premium prices for software that has long ago left the R&D stage. I don't think that historians will marvel at the emergence of Open Source in our time, I think they will marvel that a single company was able to so effectively suppress that which comes fairly naturally to people: the desire to explore and understand for such a long period of time. I think that period is nearing its end however. For those who grew up in the "Microsoft age" its ending must surely seem odd.
Bingo! Not only is US law the only thing that will allow this initiative to succeed, but existence of such laws will scare the heck out of Brazil, China, India Russia for starters. At minimum there will be the need to have a special computer "fixed" for each country to allow that country complete control over it. I can just imagine the price of PCs going up again to $2000 for a base system to cover the cost of keeping all the national versions straight. Imagine the line at the airport for inspecting your laptop to keep those evil foreign models out!
I'm more inclined to think that like Windows users now, users of these "special" PCs will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. If generic PCs are outlawed then every user in the USA will find themselves at that same disadvantage. Once CPU production from design to final fabrication is being done in several other countries we in the USA are going to be scrambling to compete on the world market. Something tells me that we will see the light of reason before it is too late. The end-point is a generic PC from hardware all the way out to end user applications, anyone not participating in that market will get left behind. A few companies like Phoenix may get sacrificed on the Microsoft alter before then however. If I were an investor in that company I'd be looking for a new board of directors.
Re:hey, that's me!
on
Who Is An ISP?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
He MAY have meant that his woody box allows HIM to access the internet, just as mine does. Also most ISPs now accept multiple users per houshold and will even supply a router to help you do that if you wish. Some people use a Linux box to do the NAT function as well. Nothing wrong with that.
I don't see that much difference in name brands used at Walmart, Sears or any of the others. They all get most of their inventory (particularly clothes) from overseas. While I agree that there may be some problems with this I don't see how Walmart is any guiltier than anyone else.
In particular, with respect to laptops I don't think anyone makes them here. HP, Dell and all the others are just import agents who at most get their logo stamped on the machines over here... although it's more likely even that happens overseas...I think the systems come IN THE BOX and ready to go, unless you request a memory upgrade or something.
Now, given that there is really no such thing as a Dell or HP laptop, would you rather pay $2000 or $700 for it? Now the article didn't actually mention the price (said they didn't know) but they used current $799 machines as a guess of what the price might be. Problem is that those systems have already gone through a middle-man of some sort. I'd be more inclined to think that the target price will be $500 and a price point like that might convince some people to make a laptop their first computer. We'll see.
Slashdot Mirror
"The Inquirer's article is interesting, but the underlying forces have little to do with open source, and have been building for years." ...
"What happens when your company hits the limits of its growth? The dilemma MS faces is its own success. They own 95% of the desktop world. Almost everyone who _can_ use Windows and Office _does_ use it. They won't get continuing double-digit increases in revenue and profit from their core business, because they've saturated their market."
Good point, but you are only partially right. MS has saturated the US market for sure. The world market is just starting up in many places, and if MS could count on similar success in China, Brazil, India and so on they would be able to run their ponzi scheme a lot longer. The existence of Open Source, finally has presented a barrier through which they will not pass unchanged. Had Open Source been more prevalent back in the OS/2 vs Windows days I'm not sure we would still have a Microsoft any more. As it is, thanks to their war chest, they still have an opportunity to mutate themselves into something else.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them do a merger with someone like Dell to get into hardware and with one of the remaining big consulting companies to try and become a body-shop powerhouse. That is, of course if the government will allow them to do it. They will lose to Sony and friends if they keep pounding on the consumer electronics door. With margins like they are used to they just don't have a chance. Really, with the exception of the dirty tricks they pulled to create the Windows and Office monopolies Microsoft's history reads like a comedy of errors.
Basically Microsoft needs to once again go head to head with IBM. If they can't manage to do so they will simply start to evaporate. I'm not too sure they will be able to change fast enough to make a difference. That $40B will go fast.
"Wasn't there a story recently about how these guys were acting like the progressive bunch and telling their users that they own, as property, the objects they create in the game?"
Yes, that's true. Similar to you owning your content when you build a web page and host it at an ISP. At issue here primarily was server resources though. In SL each 512x512 meter (I think thats right) chunk of land is managed by a separate PC (I'm not sure if they use blade servers or what). Which means that a single user could in theory tie up a whole lot of server resources with their content. These changes don't affect ownership of objects, but they do limit how many of those objects can be "rezed" (online) and how much server space they can take up. It is still possible to have objects in your inventory that are not taking up server space however. You just have to budget how much you have on display at any given time.
I think they said that the changes would represent a decrease in space for something like 5 percent of the users. For some of those I think they are even making exceptions. The need was to have a system that could grow without allowing people who "gamed" the system to accumulate an unlimited amount of server resource, which would negatively impact the other 95 percent of us. If someone is really talented and can turn their skills into sales of online content, there is no reason they can't then buy extra server space. The changes really only affect what you get "by default".
In my case I actually had to go around and buy additional land with virtual dollars to come up to the amount I am allowed, I'm way under on objects. I don't think the typical user would be impacted by this.
The other good news about this change is that for people that are not into building at all they can get an ID for a one-time $10 fee. For some people who just want an online chat situation this is an extremely good deal.
Not sure what you meant by "retail game". It is not boxed and sold in stores if that is what you meant. You have to download it. You don't pay for the software, but for using the service.
The changes they made had negative effects on very few people (although they are quite vocal about it). Basically the changes allow them to scale up their server hardware in a more sensible fashion by allowing people to optionally spend real dollars to buy more in-game real estate.
The old system was inflationary and allowed old users, particularly those who spend 24 hours a day online to tie up all the system resources. While some of these folk are very talented and produced some good builds, others just produced large inefficient builds that slowed things down for everyone. Bigger is not necessarily better.
It's not possible to get an economy right the first time, and those of us around for the beta were told that there would be several changes, if not continual changes to the economy. Any player who was caught by surprise on this must have been in game so much they forgot to read their e-mail.
"I don't suppose anybody can think of an appopriate 'geek' web site?"
No, I avoid them like the plague.
I bet what the article MEANT to say was that they took the wraps off the fact that they are using this process. The secret being not the process but their use of it. Especially since they credit a university researcher with the concept back in 1992.
The consumers DID revolt. Thats why most people are today running PCs. Furthermore people will eventually revolt against high priced HP, Dell, etc. products in favor of just as good off-brands. Go into Radio Shack and look at the selection of telephones and imagine that being the PC industry of the future.
One thing Apple has to offer (for now anyway) is the fact that they make (or at least have made to their specifications) the entire package, from hardware to OS to many of the basic applications, including (as with iPod, and iTunes) significant peripherals and online content. Nobody else can make that claim for now, be it Microsoft, Dell, HP, nobody. As a result, Apple can get away with charging a premium price for every item in their product line.
As a fan of Apple, I HOPE they have an exit strategy however, because I don't think the party will last much longer. With everyone copying Apples' successful marketing efforts and then chopping large percentages off the cost Apple is in the position of having to hit a home run every time they step up to the plate (or almost) and I am concerned that as the cost of computer components approach zero, and with many software costs already at zero they will not be able to compete.
If no US companies get a clue soon I would not be surprised if we end up buying computers of the future from companies like Sony, Panasonic or Gold Star at $75 a pop and throwing them away whenever they don't match our color scheme. In that world, companies like Apple and Microsoft have no place, companies like Intel become more like Texas Instruments, only something you know about if you break the seals on your computer and look at the components with a magnifying glass.
After having paid top dollar for three incrementally newer Palm Pilots in a row I finally figured out that the "trouble with this picture" was me. When I saw the iPod I knew that one of these days I'd have one, but not for more than about $100. I'm still waiting. I think a lot of other people will too. At some point I think it would be worth Apples consideration to just flood the market with iPods at their cost plus a small percentage. If you could buy the whole thing for $75 then nobody would complain about it not having replaceable batteries.
I always wondered what WMA stood for.
I think the really interesting technologies will come from out of nowhere.
Too many people kept waiting for AI to produce "thinking computers" and they are still waiting.
Too many people think nano-technology to work wonders and they are still trying to make simple gears do something useful.
Too many people think that Microsoft invented computing and don't realize that most of what we have today is simply re-hashing of things from the 60's, but in smaller cases.
Too many people think that Howard Dean invented the Internet (3 years ago they thought it was Al Gore) and don't realize that most of his policies were borrowed from Pat Buchanan.
We basically suffer from short term memory, short attention span and hero-worship that expects someone to come along and magically fix things without disruption to our lives. Fortunately there are some real thinkers who are not constrained by these stumbling blocks and are off doing real work. I expect them to come up with things that we haven't even considered, and then Microsoft or Howard Dean, or the like will take credit for it (and get away with it for the most part).
Am I a cynic? Yeah, but only based on past experience.
I hope Steve Case is rolling over in his heated indoor swimming pool!
LOTR and The Hobbit are the only fantasy books I've ever read, although I read a lot of straight SCI-FI. I think the key is that they were written and popular before computing or the term geek caught on. They are not only classics of their genre but just plain classics.
Actually I think you CAN make money off of this, since in-world money can be converted to cash. I haven't informed myself of he details of this yet, since I have been pretty lazy about accumulating in-world money anyway.
The more interesting part of the changes I think is the lowered entry barrier for casual users:
"Starting a Second Life no longer means committing to a monthly charge - new Residents can get started with a one-time fee of just $9.95. With no recurring bills, it's a perfect option for those who want to be a part of Second Life's community without being tied-down. This basic access includes a small Linden Dollar grant and on-going cash infusions any week when you're in-world, but no automatic land allotment. Prospective Residents still have a 7-day trial to make up their minds. If you're looking for a more rewarding option, a $9.95 monthly membership fee will get you a larger weekly Linden Dollar grant (whether your in-world or not) and sizeable plot of land before any land fees kick-in."
If you are not interesting in the rat-race aspects at all, the one time fee (I think) serves as an age-verification as much as anything else and allows you to come in and socialize without owning much of anything.
This change, to me makes an important distinction between SL as a "game" and SL as a "Virtual Place" where you can (if you chose) play online games. The ultimate idea is to be a place where a variety of games and activities can be developed, by users as well as he company, rather than a static environment where everyone wins or loses based on a fixed set of rules.
Not only that, but the CMS format was put in place while the developers were still "learning the ropes". They admitted that they had no experience with the product and were inflicting their learning curve on the Linux Gazette reader base. I ask you, would they have done the same thing with Linux Journal? ....
"We at Linux Journal support environmentalism. We thought about using re-cycled paper to print future editions, but we really don't know much about any of this, so as an experiment this months edition has been printed directly on used socks that we found in the dumpster. Please let us know what you think."
The LEAST they could have done was to run the experiment in parallel and leave the existing format for Linux Gazette alone until some results were in.
The current system using Drupal sucks. Response has been almost totally negative and the response from the editors has continue to be "Thanks for your suggestions, we are looking into it". I have heard that Drupal is a pretty good system, but based on what I've seen at the SSC site, I don't think I would use it. Basically the current CMS is Alpha code at best and should not have been forced on unsuspecting users.
Hey, that has a nice ring to it.
It will drive people to look for open source solutions even faster than they are now. Nice move Redmond.
You forgot:
* Device operated from keyboard using easy to learn Reverse Polish Notation
Yeah, doesn't this pretty much prove that most of America's CEOs have absolutely no imagination?
Step one: Offload manufacturing, then programming, then support over seas and lay everyone off.
Step two: Look around and realize that there is not much point in being in charge of a company of one with everything being done elsewhere, better come up with a new product idea fast.
Step three: Read headline in last months business journal that say online music really taking off fast.
Step four: WOW, I'm gettin' into THAT. I bet nobody else has thought of this! Hire the son of the CEO that lives next door to run the whole thing from his bedroom.
Step five... wait for it..... Profit!
Well, I guess thats it. I'm the only entity in the known universe that doesn't have their own online music service.
I thought there was hope for a while, but then when 7-11 was closely followed by Jiffy Lube into the online music business I began to wonder. Next thing you know, like the domino effect each unit in my townhouse community hopped on board the bandwagon.
I'd set up a server too, except there is no longer any music that isn't tied up by exclusive agreements of one kind or another.
And besides, if it were not for me, there wouldn't be any customers^H.
All I was pointing out was that the original comparison between a Readers Digest book on cars and an end-user in-depth discussion of modems is not appropriate.
Regarding the other issues you raised:
Everything I have read indicates that modem use is giving way to either DSL or Cable modem for accessing the internet. I have not read the book either, but if the section on modems includes DSL and Cable modems that would be an odd conglomeration.
The point made by the review was that there was sparse coverage on some areas and overkill on others. Most end-users don't need to know the details of how a modem works these days since almost all modems use the same command set, operate at the same speeds and are detected automatically by the operating system. Much more time is spent in setting up (and fixing) the myriad of network settings for DNS, DHCP, gateway, etc.
Keep in mind that modems came to the fore in advance of the internet. I was using modems for years to access Prodigy, Genie, and local BBS systems. Back then you really needed to know how your modem worked to get best results. Now most of them are truly plug-and-play, and rarely are modems used today for anything that does not involve networking, specifically TCP/IP. For the 5 years or so before I got DSL at home I was using a device that went between my external modem and one or more PCs. The PCs were networked using TCP/IP and knew nothing of the modem which established the internet connection on demand. I'm pretty sure that if modems didn't already exist and someone were to "invent" dial-up networking today it would simply look like todays DSL routers with little more than a web interface to set ID, Password, and phone number.
I think the point might have been that modem usage is in such sharp decline that the information is fairly irrelevent. The same is not true of cars.
Ownership is important, but words convey meaning...
Definitions:
gazette: A newspaper; a printed sheet published periodically; esp., the official journal published by the British government, and containing legal and state notices.
journal: A daily register of the ship's course and distance, the winds, weather, incidents of the voyage, etc. (c) (Legislature) The record of daily proceedings, kept by the clerk. (d) A newspaper published daily; by extension, a weekly newspaper or any periodical publication, giving an account of passing events, the proceedings and memoirs of societies, etc.; a periodical; a magazine.
If SSC wanted to run a Content Management System (CMS) I think that is a great idea. But Linux Gazette has always been in a magazine format. Static pages. In fact there is Debian package that allows you to grab back issues to download onto your laptop if you like.
But a CMS is not a magazine, or a gazette. In fact it would have made MUCH more sense for SSC to convert Linux Journal into an CMS format than what they did.
The other thing that is bothersome about this (once you dig a little deeper) is that the decision to convert to a CMS format and the selection process for the software to be used happened almost over night. The CMS was put in place with obvious bugs an omissions and it was clearly still in the R&D phase (still is in fact) with many features not quite working as they would like yet. Why would you throw out a perfectly working format and put something in its place that was so clearly still under heavy development?
Regardless of who ends up owning the words "Linux Gazette" the SSC handling of this thing is at best "ham handed", and hardly what you would expect from an established publishing company.
I have been a regular reader of Linux Journal and Linux Gazette. I plan to suspend my purchasing of the former until the fate of the latter becomes more clear. Frankly, most CMS format publications suck. Slashdot is on of the few exceptions. SSC should have done the CMS experiment on the side and left the Linux Gazette format alone at least until the new thing had established itself. To say that the Linux Gazette has forked is not quite analogous to what has happened. If someone took KWORD and gutted the program and turned it into an astrology program I don't think you would call that a fork, I think you would call it a dumb idea. I think what SSC did was dumb, and the community needs to see that it is in their best interest to set it right again.
This article as well as most of the replies are udderly ridiculous.
"There's nothing wrong with socialism and communism either, as long as you speak "in theory." While you can find something wrong with anything if you look with a critical eye, I don't think OSS is at all close to perfect or optimal:
RMS pounces on anyone who does not both kiss his ass (his demand is that his contribution be acknowledged, see the GNU/Linux vs Linux/GNU vs Linux arguments) *and* sponsor his own personal choice method for open source (ie, use the license he prefers)."
I think the rebuttal article did a fairly good job of countering the 5 issues, but an argument already having been made has never stopped me before...
I get particularly tired of people's need to compare open source with some sort of political movement, ANY of them. RMS may have socialist views personally, but there are many capitalists in the open source movement as well. There are also large numbers of Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians, meat eaters, vegetarians, doctors and Christian Scientists.
Open source probably would not exist in a tightly control economy. The government would eventually choose an "official" operating system and demand that everyone use it or have their computers confiscated.
And finally I like to remind people that open source existed before it had a name. Computers used in universities and research environments for as long as there has been computing were largely programmed and tinkered with by people at those institutions. Even IBM computers where I went to school had modified operating systems. Source code was readily available from IBM and there were publications used for exchanging those modifications as well as the likelihood that some of them would show up in future versions of the OS. Until Microsoft came along in fact operating systems were secondary to the hardware that they supported. While IBM wasn't thrilled if you ran a non-IBM OS on their equipment they would much rather have that happen than to have you run non-IBM hardware.
Given all of that, it is really not the Open Source movement that is odd, it is in fact Microsoft that is worthy of study for it produces almost no physical products and has continued to charge premium prices for software that has long ago left the R&D stage. I don't think that historians will marvel at the emergence of Open Source in our time, I think they will marvel that a single company was able to so effectively suppress that which comes fairly naturally to people: the desire to explore and understand for such a long period of time. I think that period is nearing its end however. For those who grew up in the "Microsoft age" its ending must surely seem odd.
"Don't confuse a petty or shallow act with one that was deliberately planned with an intended effect."
You mean he was trying to make people laugh at him and think of him as a bufoon?
Bingo! Not only is US law the only thing that will allow this initiative to succeed, but existence of such laws will scare the heck out of Brazil, China, India Russia for starters. At minimum there will be the need to have a special computer "fixed" for each country to allow that country complete control over it. I can just imagine the price of PCs going up again to $2000 for a base system to cover the cost of keeping all the national versions straight. Imagine the line at the airport for inspecting your laptop to keep those evil foreign models out!
I'm more inclined to think that like Windows users now, users of these "special" PCs will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. If generic PCs are outlawed then every user in the USA will find themselves at that same disadvantage. Once CPU production from design to final fabrication is being done in several other countries we in the USA are going to be scrambling to compete on the world market. Something tells me that we will see the light of reason before it is too late. The end-point is a generic PC from hardware all the way out to end user applications, anyone not participating in that market will get left behind. A few companies like Phoenix may get sacrificed on the Microsoft alter before then however. If I were an investor in that company I'd be looking for a new board of directors.
He MAY have meant that his woody box allows HIM to access the internet, just as mine does. Also most ISPs now accept multiple users per houshold and will even supply a router to help you do that if you wish. Some people use a Linux box to do the NAT function as well. Nothing wrong with that.
I don't see that much difference in name brands used at Walmart, Sears or any of the others. They all get most of their inventory (particularly clothes) from overseas. While I agree that there may be some problems with this I don't see how Walmart is any guiltier than anyone else.
In particular, with respect to laptops I don't think anyone makes them here. HP, Dell and all the others are just import agents who at most get their logo stamped on the machines over here... although it's more likely even that happens overseas...I think the systems come IN THE BOX and ready to go, unless you request a memory upgrade or something.
Now, given that there is really no such thing as a Dell or HP laptop, would you rather pay $2000 or $700 for it? Now the article didn't actually mention the price (said they didn't know) but they used current $799 machines as a guess of what the price might be. Problem is that those systems have already gone through a middle-man of some sort. I'd be more inclined to think that the target price will be $500 and a price point like that might convince some people to make a laptop their first computer. We'll see.