First, I'm very impressed with what Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical have done with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. It is my impression that the effect of Ubuntu has been to encourage everyone to fix a lot of configuration and other problems that were, in the aggregate, creating a barrier to beginning to use Linux.
There was a period of of years in which I would load new versions of Linux from several sources and be amazed at how much a new user was expected to know about configuration.
It doesn't matter if Ubuntu and Canonical did the work; Canonical's leadership caused the job to be done.
You said, "Isn't that what Shuttleworth is trying to assess?"
Assessing, being analytical, is what I think Mark Shuttleworth should do. Instead, he is doing very little assessing or analyzing. He is using a common word, tribalism, apparently to avoid taking an interest in all the steps of a complex social phenomenon.
He apparently hopes someone else will do the analyzing and theorizing about how to handle his problem.
In his article, he has made some useful comments. But calling anger a "playground squabble" shows the lack of depth in his thinking. When he says "playground squabble" he is implying that the people to whom he is talking are acting like children. That's an attempt to shame or intimidate; it's not analysis.
What is happening in actuality? My guess is that the anger comes from trying to work on a complicated project with too little coordination. People are blaming each other rather than the cause of the problem. They do that because they don't feel socially empowered to criticize the lack of true leadership.
Notice that Linux Torvalds gets different results. Although Mr. Torvalds sometimes lacks social elegance, he has provided true leadership, and that leadership has provided an atmosphere in which people work together. I am not saying Mr. Torvalds' leadership has been perfect. It has been amazingly good, however. Who would have thought the world would come together and create the kernel of a good computer operating system for everyone to use?
When we talked at OSCON 2008, Mr. Shuttleworth asked me what I thought about how to handle anger. I've done extensive analysis of anger, and I told him what I think. However, as I said in the former paragraph, I don't think anger is the correct fundamental diagnosis of his present problem. The "tribalism" he describes is in this case just a symptom of the lack of sufficient coordination, I'm guessing.
I gave Mr. Shuttleworth printed copies of a 27-page manual that can be downloaded from my web site that shows part of my ability to understand how sociology and technology interact. I have no evidence that he read it.
My understanding is that Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical has never made a profit. For example, see the November 2, 2008 article Canonical founder will wait for profits. Canonical's biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is the poor marketing and public relations. The article referenced in this Slashdot story is a good example of poor public relations. It says to the business community, "I don't know how to handle this situation well."
I think that, if Canonical had professional marketing and public relations, it would have no trouble making a profit. Numerous articles say, "You can't make a profit selling a desktop operating system", but I think that is not the problem.
In my opinion, Mr. Shuttleworth is facing a problem that, if solved, could be life-changing for him. If he is willing to encounter the difficulties of personal growth, Canonical will be a success, and his life will be enriched. If he is not willing, Canonical may never make a profit.
Mr. Shuttleworth was not prepared to deal with the occasional anger of the software contributors, for example. Running a complicated technological business requires an understanding of not only the technology, but also the immense social complications.
I talked with Mr. Shuttleworth. My impression is that he is not ready for the huge social challenges of running an extraordinarily complex software development effort.
Fraud Alert! My guess is that this story is a public relations piece by people who are trying to sell solar energy. Is a Slashdot editor paid to run P.R.?
Read the comment by "BillWoods" posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 14:19" to the story linked in this Slashdot story. Quote: "Using the same amortization factor that they use for solar, the most expensive nuclear project on their list would produce power for a capital cost of about 11 cents/kW-h, well below even the subsidized cost of solar."
The previous comment, by "Marcel F. Williams", posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 12:51" says, "The capital cost of nuclear reactors are going to fall dramatically once the US and other countries start to mass produce and ship centrally manufactured modular nuclear reactors. Its going to be extremely difficult for any other clean energy systems to economically compete against small nuclear reactors during the rest of this century for producing electricity and carbon neutral synfuels."
Wow! That was easy! Indicating the falsehood of the Slashdot story only required copying the comments in the linked story.
As someone else has said, it was the movie The China Syndrome that scared everyone about the Three Mile Island accident.
But nuclear radiation is off-topic.
Those who are concerned about the radiation from cell phone antennas should think about the 1,218,000,000,000,000 Watts of electromagnetic radiation the earth receives continuously from that big antenna in the sky, the Sun.
He means Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is claimed that it is "Up to 99% Accurate". "Up to" means "0% to".
Even if Dragon NaturallySpeaking is 99% accurate, that last 1% is a problem to correct. The software will never make a mistake in spelling. However, it will sometimes substitute similar words that change the meaning of what you intended to say, sometimes in subtle ways.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking has improved a lot since version 7. I don't know whether there were improvements in the recognition engine since version 8.
Sometimes Version 10 Standard is sold at Fry's with rebates that make the total cost $25. However, only the Preferred and more expensive versions allow you to dictate into a handheld recorder for later transcription.
Would Steve Jobs be abusive? Quote from Publishers Weekly: "Like other commentators, Deutschman portrays Jobs as both engaging and troubling, a natural charmer who is also an abusive, egomaniacal boss fond of meting out public humiliations."
There is always, in my experience, something sensible underlying what Dr. Steven Chu of the DOE says. However, in this case, and in many, many others, he did not make himself clear to the interviewer.
That's a social conflict, and he didn't handle it well.
It seems to me that the important issue is that many companies are using "open source" and "free" to get attention and web site hits, when they aren't really open source or free.
No, he isn't. He does not have the social ability to handle the enormous conflicts inside the U.S. Department of Energy. I sent him a long letter before he decided to take the job expressing that opinion.
202,704 crashes in the latest version in the last 14 days.
Those crashes do NOT include the crashes that also crash the crash reporter. Notice that almost all the crashes were observed only in Windows. That may partly reflect the fact that Windows users are much more common.
Stay relevant: See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the latest version, Firefox 3.6.6. Those are just the top 300. They don't include the crashes that don't invoke the crash reporter.
Often Slashdot discussions are degraded by people trying to make jokes.
Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the
memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the
last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.
Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows
unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness
in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that
whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major
problem in Windows.
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new
version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.
We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to
be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla
Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default
search engine.
The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.
Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.
There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.
That is entirely meaningless to the customer, since the customer only cares about the speed with which data is delivered over the internet, which is less that 2 Megabits per second, as the PC Magazine story said.
VERY good question. QWest in Portland, Oregon is currently advertising 40 Mbps. There is, however, very fine print saying "Connection speeds are based on sync rates."
Of course, QWest knows that most people won't understand that. QWest is saying that the advertised speeds are only the speed that the customer's modem synchronizes with QWest's equipment. The actual speed that QWest supplies data over the internet can be anything QWest likes, with those fixed synchronization speeds.
The same ads call the service "Fiber Optic Fast Internet". The fine print says, "Fiber optics exists only from the neighborhood terminal to the internet." That means NOT to your house or business.
The quotes are transcribed from an ad I have on my desk.
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft isn't dropping .NET..."
.NET for others to use. Are there any Microsoft products of importance that are programmed with .NET?
My understanding has been that Microsoft created
Thanks for the EXCELLENT comment.
Thanks for the excellent review.
Final analysis: Wait for version 4, when more of the problems will be fixed.
First, I'm very impressed with what Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical have done with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. It is my impression that the effect of Ubuntu has been to encourage everyone to fix a lot of configuration and other problems that were, in the aggregate, creating a barrier to beginning to use Linux.
There was a period of of years in which I would load new versions of Linux from several sources and be amazed at how much a new user was expected to know about configuration.
It doesn't matter if Ubuntu and Canonical did the work; Canonical's leadership caused the job to be done.
You said, "Isn't that what Shuttleworth is trying to assess?"
Assessing, being analytical, is what I think Mark Shuttleworth should do. Instead, he is doing very little assessing or analyzing. He is using a common word, tribalism, apparently to avoid taking an interest in all the steps of a complex social phenomenon.
He apparently hopes someone else will do the analyzing and theorizing about how to handle his problem.
In his article, he has made some useful comments. But calling anger a "playground squabble" shows the lack of depth in his thinking. When he says "playground squabble" he is implying that the people to whom he is talking are acting like children. That's an attempt to shame or intimidate; it's not analysis.
What is happening in actuality? My guess is that the anger comes from trying to work on a complicated project with too little coordination. People are blaming each other rather than the cause of the problem. They do that because they don't feel socially empowered to criticize the lack of true leadership.
Notice that Linux Torvalds gets different results. Although Mr. Torvalds sometimes lacks social elegance, he has provided true leadership, and that leadership has provided an atmosphere in which people work together. I am not saying Mr. Torvalds' leadership has been perfect. It has been amazingly good, however. Who would have thought the world would come together and create the kernel of a good computer operating system for everyone to use?
When we talked at OSCON 2008, Mr. Shuttleworth asked me what I thought about how to handle anger. I've done extensive analysis of anger, and I told him what I think. However, as I said in the former paragraph, I don't think anger is the correct fundamental diagnosis of his present problem. The "tribalism" he describes is in this case just a symptom of the lack of sufficient coordination, I'm guessing.
I gave Mr. Shuttleworth printed copies of a 27-page manual that can be downloaded from my web site that shows part of my ability to understand how sociology and technology interact. I have no evidence that he read it.
My understanding is that Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical has never made a profit. For example, see the November 2, 2008 article Canonical founder will wait for profits. Canonical's biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is the poor marketing and public relations. The article referenced in this Slashdot story is a good example of poor public relations. It says to the business community, "I don't know how to handle this situation well."
I think that, if Canonical had professional marketing and public relations, it would have no trouble making a profit. Numerous articles say, "You can't make a profit selling a desktop operating system", but I think that is not the problem.
In my opinion, Mr. Shuttleworth is facing a problem that, if solved, could be life-changing for him. If he is willing to encounter the difficulties of personal growth, Canonical will be a success, and his life will be enriched. If he is not willing, Canonical may never make a profit.
You are doing what many people do. You are trying to reduce a complex social phenomenon to one word.
Mr. Shuttleworth was not prepared to deal with the occasional anger of the software contributors, for example. Running a complicated technological business requires an understanding of not only the technology, but also the immense social complications.
I talked with Mr. Shuttleworth. My impression is that he is not ready for the huge social challenges of running an extraordinarily complex software development effort.
Detailed explanation of loan guarantees.
Quote: "Loan guarantees can be made to a wide variety of innovative energy technologies and projects, not just nuclear energy."
"... $600 Billion of Taxpayer money..."
That is for loan guarantees, not spending. A story from today: U.S. Nuclear Projects Tied Up Awaiting Federal Loan Guarantees.
Fraud Alert! My guess is that this story is a public relations piece by people who are trying to sell solar energy. Is a Slashdot editor paid to run P.R.?
Read the comment by "BillWoods" posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 14:19" to the story linked in this Slashdot story. Quote: "Using the same amortization factor that they use for solar, the most expensive nuclear project on their list would produce power for a capital cost of about 11 cents/kW-h, well below even the subsidized cost of solar."
The previous comment, by "Marcel F. Williams", posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 12:51" says, "The capital cost of nuclear reactors are going to fall dramatically once the US and other countries start to mass produce and ship centrally manufactured modular nuclear reactors. Its going to be extremely difficult for any other clean energy systems to economically compete against small nuclear reactors during the rest of this century for producing electricity and carbon neutral synfuels."
Wow! That was easy! Indicating the falsehood of the Slashdot story only required copying the comments in the linked story.
... making a new stereo with a volume control from 2 to 10.
Superintendent Larrie Reynolds is not smart enough to be involved with schools.
As someone else has said, it was the movie The China Syndrome that scared everyone about the Three Mile Island accident.
But nuclear radiation is off-topic.
Those who are concerned about the radiation from cell phone antennas should think about the 1,218,000,000,000,000 Watts of electromagnetic radiation the earth receives continuously from that big antenna in the sky, the Sun.
He means Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is claimed that it is "Up to 99% Accurate". "Up to" means "0% to".
Even if Dragon NaturallySpeaking is 99% accurate, that last 1% is a problem to correct. The software will never make a mistake in spelling. However, it will sometimes substitute similar words that change the meaning of what you intended to say, sometimes in subtle ways.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking has improved a lot since version 7. I don't know whether there were improvements in the recognition engine since version 8.
Sometimes Version 10 Standard is sold at Fry's with rebates that make the total cost $25. However, only the Preferred and more expensive versions allow you to dictate into a handheld recorder for later transcription.
Would Steve Jobs be abusive? Quote from Publishers Weekly: "Like other commentators, Deutschman portrays Jobs as both engaging and troubling, a natural charmer who is also an abusive, egomaniacal boss fond of meting out public humiliations."
There is always, in my experience, something sensible underlying what Dr. Steven Chu of the DOE says. However, in this case, and in many, many others, he did not make himself clear to the interviewer.
That's a social conflict, and he didn't handle it well.
It seems to me that the important issue is that many companies are using "open source" and "free" to get attention and web site hits, when they aren't really open source or free.
"Is he paying attention?"
No, he isn't. He does not have the social ability to handle the enormous conflicts inside the U.S. Department of Energy. I sent him a long letter before he decided to take the job expressing that opinion.
He doesn't give politics or social conflicts much attention: "Mr. Secretary, I would say I'm worried that you only know what you read in the papers about what's being approved."
There is more about my opinions concerning the DOE on my web site.
Dr. Chu is, however, FAR better than the Secretary of the DOE under President George W. Bush.
Never be an early adopter. Wait for iPhone 5, release 2.
Those are just the crashes in the latest version, that was released a few days ago. Most people don't update immediately, I suppose.
"So I could hardly call it 'unstable'."
202,704 crashes in the latest version in the last 14 days.
Those crashes do NOT include the crashes that also crash the crash reporter. Notice that almost all the crashes were observed only in Windows. That may partly reflect the fact that Windows users are much more common.
This much more detailed comment occurs much later in the discussion because it was moved down by comments that are mostly unhelpful or irrelevant: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use
Stay relevant: See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the latest version, Firefox 3.6.6. Those are just the top 300. They don't include the crashes that don't invoke the crash reporter.
Often Slashdot discussions are degraded by people trying to make jokes.
Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.
Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.
We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.
Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.
The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.
Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.
There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.
Look at the current crash statistics.
See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.
It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.
Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.
That is entirely meaningless to the customer, since the customer only cares about the speed with which data is delivered over the internet, which is less that 2 Megabits per second, as the PC Magazine story said.
VERY good question. QWest in Portland, Oregon is currently advertising 40 Mbps. There is, however, very fine print saying "Connection speeds are based on sync rates."
Of course, QWest knows that most people won't understand that. QWest is saying that the advertised speeds are only the speed that the customer's modem synchronizes with QWest's equipment. The actual speed that QWest supplies data over the internet can be anything QWest likes, with those fixed synchronization speeds.
The same ads call the service "Fiber Optic Fast Internet". The fine print says, "Fiber optics exists only from the neighborhood terminal to the internet." That means NOT to your house or business.
The quotes are transcribed from an ad I have on my desk.