For my boys I built microATX cubes that have every bit as much performance as these high end laptops, for about 1/4th the price -- and they are easily and cheaply upgradeable down the road. When they go to a friend's house for a LANparty they just grab the cube by its handle and throw their keyboard/mouse into a bag. Monitors are not a problem -- most people have monitors leftover in their basement/attic from when they upgraded to LCD, so they just connect to the surplus monitor, plug into their network and off they go.
This is extremely inconvenient and assumes that "most people have monitors leftover," which isn't my experience. In addition, try bringing a rig like that on a plane. It's much easier to disconnect a laptop from a dock, stick in a big, and go.
I say "probably never" not because I'm a troll, but rather because you have to consider the nature of financial applications: they're difficult to write and require innumerable persnickety design detail to get right. These days Quicken has the "network effect" of many users, meaning that most banks offer downloads for Quicken. That's brutally hard to overcome, as the OO.org people know. In terms of taxes, one can now file online in the US if you're using the 1040EZ, I believe, and maybe even the regular 1040. So web apps may make that point moot. Even if they don't, tax information has to be updated every year. Who among developers wants this thankless job with no pay?
Financial apps are also not of major interest to developers - not only they require the attention to detail noted above, but attention to boring detail. Most developers are interested in development, not the nuts and bolts of small business accounting or something similar. As a result, I think it will be a very long time, if ever, before Linux "catches up." Of course, if more people were writing these apps instead of waiting for others to write them or writing about why others haven't written them, the choices would be much better.
The open source people are pragmatists. They actually do, for the most part, rely on self interest to get the job done. IBM doesn't really care about the politics behind free software; they just care that it does the job at the lowest cost. There is nothing wrong with this.
I posted something similar here. Most OSS users aren't doing so primarily for the good of mankind; they're doing so because they need to get something done and incidentally can help others. The helping of others is a byproduct of their own needs, just as, in your example, IBM uses OSS only becaues it's convenient and in IBM's self-interest.
Phipps seems to misunderstand OSS on a variety of levels, as other posters have pointed out, but I'd focus on how he divides volunteerism from "directed self-interest." Most OSS projects are created out of "directed self-interest" in that someone needs to do something (run an OS on esoteric hardware, word processing, whatever) and then writes a program to do it. In return for making it OSS, the original author collects feedback from the community and may ultimately attract patches, other maintainers, etc. If he wants his program to become better, it's often in his "directed self-interest" to make it so.
The same applies to companies - Sun didn't make OO.org open-source out of the goodness of its heart; it did so to strike back at Microsoft.
There shouldn't be the firm line Phipps draws between volunteerism and "directed self-interest" - they're interelated. They always have been. They probably always will be.
Exactly. CEOs who take only a nominal "salary" still make vast quantities of money in other ways. Stock options and such are the most obvious.
A few years ago Apple's board bought Steve Jobs a jet that cost millions of dollars, and Apple continues to pay for its service, maintenance, pilots, etc.
Re:Nostalgia for the Sounds of the Early Computer
on
2.5" Drives On the Desktop
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Gone is the satisfying click-click-click feedback of the heavy tactile keyboards.
Desktop computing is in the eye of the beholder. For you and a lot of other/. readers, maximizing performance is important. For a lot of other people, silence and low operating costs are important. Grandma who only plays Yahoo games, writes e-mails and surfs the web doesn't need a 750GB drive or a 10K Raptor. For her, an inexpensive and quiet 40GB 5400 RPM drive might be just fine, particularly if it lowered her electricity by a few dollars a month.
In addition, heat and power consumption are becoming steadily bigger issues in enterprise computing. If one can make a RAID of quiet, low-power 2.5" hard drives for marginally more money and marginally lower speed than conventional drives, then the trade-off might be well worth it.
Not everyone has the same needs you do. If Grandma can't tell the difference between a 10K Raptor and a 5400 RPM laptop drive, except to know that one's noisier, then who cares? Hell, I was apprehensive about moving a laptop with a 5400 RPM 2.5" drive, but I've found that for my purposes it works fine. That is all.
There was actually a poll a few years back asking people what OS they used and another asking about browsers. I believe at one point the editors did break out the numbers and showed that something like a bit more than half of all hits came from Windows machines. Some observers said that they don't get a choice of OS from work. Others said that/. has, despite its origins, actually become a polytheistic site WRT to OSes.
The problem with this is that we're running out of areas that have decent education standards, easy access to raw supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, are stable yet have low wages/cost of living. India was fairly unusual in that they had decent universities/colleges(though not enough of them) churning out qualified graduates, a large labor pool, stability, and a cheap cost of living/wage range that encouraged importation of work.
You forgot a big factor: English speakers. India has a large number of English-speaking tech workers. The country as a whole has around a billion people and 100 - 200 million of them speak English well. The total population of Nigeria about 130 million.
Since Australia lost 0-2 to Brazil, it would appear technology isn't much of an advantage against those who really know the game. In/. terms, I'm reminded of how an IDE and high-level programming languages won't make you a coder.
You're misrepresenting the GP in your reply. For example, you say, "there are vastly more women and minorities in the workplace now than there were before affirmative action and forced equal access to education," which is true -- but you're forgetting to include the civil rights movement, which doesn't equate with affirmative action. Equality of opportunity is of paramount importance, and equality of opportunity is what the civil rights movement sought.
I think all people deserve an equal shot -- that doesn't mean I believe and minorities don't belong in the workplace -- but it also means I don't believe they do. Whoever is qualified belongs in whatever job he or she can land.
The GP probably isn't bothered by the gender split of the GNOME summer of code - he (or she) is probably bothered by the implicit assumptions that a) women are inferior and therefore need help to apply or get in and b) one's gender is more important than one's work or ability.
When work or ability define a person more than gender or race or tats or piercing or whatever, then I think we, as a society, will have made progress. Posts like yours are not progress.
Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background.
It's always nice to have some unsubstantiated flamebait in the story summary. How about reporting what's happening instead of inserting dubious sociological commentary?
The US has had nuclear weapons since 1945 and has never used them since WWII and probably never will unless someone else does first. Even 30 years from now, Iran will still not have sufficient capacity to credibly deter the US; and even more importantly, Iran is not a stable state.
It is a double standard: we can have nuclear weapons and they can't. That's part of the non-proliferation treaty. Remember that if Iran hadn't signed the non-proliferation treaty, the US and Europe would probably have no course of action against them.
That's a good point, but my understanding is that the new weapons are even smaller than 100 kilotons and designed to cause less radiation damage. Some are supposed to penetrate bunkers and other hardened targets better. If North Korea or Iran actually used nuclear weapons, the US wouldn't want to kill massive numbers of civilians -- it would want to prevent North Korea or Iran from using any additional nuclear weapons and it would want to neutralize their armed forces.
The current arsenal is poorly suited for those purposes. I'm not a physicist or engineer specializing in nuclear weapons, but I have read about the issue sufficiently to know that many of the serious comments in this thread misinterpret the article.
The targets are North Korea and Iran. I elaborated on the former somewhat in this comment. The US is probably building somewhat smaller bombs that could be used as an emergency strike on short notice against hardened targets within those two countries. One danger of current US strategy is that its bombs are too big - does North Korea *really* believe the US will use megaton warheads against them? Maybe, maybe not. On the other hand, they should believe that the US will target their missiles with smaller weapons that will produce less collateral damage. That includes potential targets like the bunkers in which the senior leaders of North Korea hide.
That the US already has a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to annihilate the planet; combined with Russia we have more than a enough weapons to make the planet fit only for spiders and bugs. The issue is a) whether the US will maintain that number and b) whether we have weapons appropriate for counterforce measures. The weapons we have now are actually over-, rather than under-powered. Do we raelly want to use hydrogen bombs against North Korea under any circumstances? The answer is no in the foreseeable future.
For example, one possible use for US nuclear weapons is a strike against hardened targets in North Korea. At the moment we don't really have appropriate bombs for that purpose. If North Korea started lobbing nuclear weapons, we'd want to take as many out on the ground as possible. The current arsenal is poorly suited for that purpose.
Also remember that the only way the US can credibly deter others from using nuclear weapons is to convince those others that the US is willing and able to strike back. Building new weapons is part of that plan.
For more on the aspect of prevention and counterforce, you could read The Wizards of Armageddon, which is about how such issues played out in the 50's - 80's. Building new nuclear weapons is business-as-usual rather than a radical departure.
Even if this were a danger, which it isn't, the server hosts/broadcasters would adapt by adopting a Bittorrent-style system to distribute the load. Even if they don't use something like Bittorrent, I imagine they're using Akami (sp? I mean the big provider of distributed hosting) or something like it.
Hell, pirated copies of the World Cup games are going to operate like this anyway. I'm sure The Pirate Bay has many busy days in front of it.
All that may be true, but one thing Craigslist has helped enormously is in real estate. It's now *vastly* easier to find an apartment in most major metropolitan cities. I was recently looking for one in Seattle and found five times as many ads on Craigslist as compared to the Seattle Times. On Monday there were many more still.
The problems you're describing have always been true about newspaper classifieds; the only difference is in scale. But the scale factor is transforming industries ranging from real estate to used cars. That's fundamentally a good thing, even if Craigslist has problems associated with it as well. But it does serve a useful function.
Hardly. Russia is ranked nineth by GDP (substract the World and the EU from the rankings and Russia's 11 goes to 9) and probably lower in terms of PPP. Although it's enjoyed robust growth recently due to high oil prices, its corrupt bureaucracy and lack of political transparency hamper important reforms. The judiciary is not independent. The population is falling due to a combination of emigration, low birth rates and high death rates. Putin recently called on Russians to have more children to increase the population; apparently he trying to reverse the centuries-old Russian habit of expending and exploiting its population like a natural resource.
Russia is actually a declining economic power, despite the aberation of growth that comes only because of high oil prices. China and India are the rising economic powers.
While we're on the topic of esoteric keyboards, I'll throw a shout-out to the Matias Tactile Pro, a keyboard with mechanical keyswitches I very much enjoy.
I'd agree with your comment, but I think open source will obviate the issue. One can pay subscription fees for services or choose open source software one can use forever.
"True" hackers -- although I'm not sure what a "true" hackcer is -- are probably distinguished by their curiosity more than anything else. Good schools help channel and focus that curiosity, thus augmenting what the student already brings to the table. Education can't "feed" anyone anything -- it can only point the person in the right direction. It also eliminates redundancy: it's easy to spend enormous amounts of time bashing one's head against problems that have already been solved.
Slashdot Mirror
Argh! My eyes...
This is extremely inconvenient and assumes that "most people have monitors leftover," which isn't my experience. In addition, try bringing a rig like that on a plane. It's much easier to disconnect a laptop from a dock, stick in a big, and go.
Financial apps are also not of major interest to developers - not only they require the attention to detail noted above, but attention to boring detail. Most developers are interested in development, not the nuts and bolts of small business accounting or something similar. As a result, I think it will be a very long time, if ever, before Linux "catches up." Of course, if more people were writing these apps instead of waiting for others to write them or writing about why others haven't written them, the choices would be much better.
I posted something similar here. Most OSS users aren't doing so primarily for the good of mankind; they're doing so because they need to get something done and incidentally can help others. The helping of others is a byproduct of their own needs, just as, in your example, IBM uses OSS only becaues it's convenient and in IBM's self-interest.
The same applies to companies - Sun didn't make OO.org open-source out of the goodness of its heart; it did so to strike back at Microsoft.
There shouldn't be the firm line Phipps draws between volunteerism and "directed self-interest" - they're interelated. They always have been. They probably always will be.
A few years ago Apple's board bought Steve Jobs a jet that cost millions of dollars, and Apple continues to pay for its service, maintenance, pilots, etc.
The clack lives on for specialty keyboard users: see the Matias Tactile Pro and the Unicomp Customizer.
In addition, heat and power consumption are becoming steadily bigger issues in enterprise computing. If one can make a RAID of quiet, low-power 2.5" hard drives for marginally more money and marginally lower speed than conventional drives, then the trade-off might be well worth it.
Not everyone has the same needs you do. If Grandma can't tell the difference between a 10K Raptor and a 5400 RPM laptop drive, except to know that one's noisier, then who cares? Hell, I was apprehensive about moving a laptop with a 5400 RPM 2.5" drive, but I've found that for my purposes it works fine. That is all.
There was actually a poll a few years back asking people what OS they used and another asking about browsers. I believe at one point the editors did break out the numbers and showed that something like a bit more than half of all hits came from Windows machines. Some observers said that they don't get a choice of OS from work. Others said that /. has, despite its origins, actually become a polytheistic site WRT to OSes.
UNIX Developers to SCO: We want you dead.
UNIX Developers to SCO: Lick our nuts.
UNIX Developers who are channeling Steve Ballmer to SCO: Go fuck yourself. (Throw chair)
You forgot a big factor: English speakers. India has a large number of English-speaking tech workers. The country as a whole has around a billion people and 100 - 200 million of them speak English well. The total population of Nigeria about 130 million.
Since Australia lost 0-2 to Brazil, it would appear technology isn't much of an advantage against those who really know the game. In /. terms, I'm reminded of how an IDE and high-level programming languages won't make you a coder.
I think all people deserve an equal shot -- that doesn't mean I believe and minorities don't belong in the workplace -- but it also means I don't believe they do. Whoever is qualified belongs in whatever job he or she can land.
The GP probably isn't bothered by the gender split of the GNOME summer of code - he (or she) is probably bothered by the implicit assumptions that a) women are inferior and therefore need help to apply or get in and b) one's gender is more important than one's work or ability.
When work or ability define a person more than gender or race or tats or piercing or whatever, then I think we, as a society, will have made progress. Posts like yours are not progress.
Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background.
It's always nice to have some unsubstantiated flamebait in the story summary. How about reporting what's happening instead of inserting dubious sociological commentary?
It is a double standard: we can have nuclear weapons and they can't. That's part of the non-proliferation treaty. Remember that if Iran hadn't signed the non-proliferation treaty, the US and Europe would probably have no course of action against them.
The current arsenal is poorly suited for those purposes. I'm not a physicist or engineer specializing in nuclear weapons, but I have read about the issue sufficiently to know that many of the serious comments in this thread misinterpret the article.
The targets are North Korea and Iran. I elaborated on the former somewhat in this comment. The US is probably building somewhat smaller bombs that could be used as an emergency strike on short notice against hardened targets within those two countries. One danger of current US strategy is that its bombs are too big - does North Korea *really* believe the US will use megaton warheads against them? Maybe, maybe not. On the other hand, they should believe that the US will target their missiles with smaller weapons that will produce less collateral damage. That includes potential targets like the bunkers in which the senior leaders of North Korea hide.
For example, one possible use for US nuclear weapons is a strike against hardened targets in North Korea. At the moment we don't really have appropriate bombs for that purpose. If North Korea started lobbing nuclear weapons, we'd want to take as many out on the ground as possible. The current arsenal is poorly suited for that purpose.
Also remember that the only way the US can credibly deter others from using nuclear weapons is to convince those others that the US is willing and able to strike back. Building new weapons is part of that plan.
For more on the aspect of prevention and counterforce, you could read The Wizards of Armageddon, which is about how such issues played out in the 50's - 80's. Building new nuclear weapons is business-as-usual rather than a radical departure.
Hell, pirated copies of the World Cup games are going to operate like this anyway. I'm sure The Pirate Bay has many busy days in front of it.
The problems you're describing have always been true about newspaper classifieds; the only difference is in scale. But the scale factor is transforming industries ranging from real estate to used cars. That's fundamentally a good thing, even if Craigslist has problems associated with it as well. But it does serve a useful function.
Russia is actually a declining economic power, despite the aberation of growth that comes only because of high oil prices. China and India are the rising economic powers.
While we're on the topic of esoteric keyboards, I'll throw a shout-out to the Matias Tactile Pro, a keyboard with mechanical keyswitches I very much enjoy.
... and it only runs on Windows, which makes it useless for those of us who don't us Microsoft operating systems.
I'd agree with your comment, but I think open source will obviate the issue. One can pay subscription fees for services or choose open source software one can use forever.
"True" hackers -- although I'm not sure what a "true" hackcer is -- are probably distinguished by their curiosity more than anything else. Good schools help channel and focus that curiosity, thus augmenting what the student already brings to the table. Education can't "feed" anyone anything -- it can only point the person in the right direction. It also eliminates redundancy: it's easy to spend enormous amounts of time bashing one's head against problems that have already been solved.