Re:Debian unstable.. I Second this idea!!
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Storm Linux
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I have been slowly upgrading from Slink to Potato over the past 2 months. Of course I have been downloading the OS piece at a time since March due to the fact that I used the 7 disk install and apt on a 33.6 modem. The only thing that I have found painful is the speed of my modem. TCI HURRY UP AND GET CABLE MODEMS IN BOULDER! September to October isn't fast enough!
Re:That's the Whole Point of Free Software!
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Storm Linux
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There is a big difference between stormix and Debian. Stormix is being produced by a company looking for money, Debian is not.
Re:Yet another KDE based dist.
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Storm Linux
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· Score: 1
I have several guesses on why they are choosing KDE. It's older, and more stable. I personally think Gnome has a better user interface, but I have had problems with some of the Gnome apps and understand that it needs more time to be ready for main stream.
Personally I don't think it really matters to most of us whether a distro has KDE of Gnome as the primary install because we can always not install it and go out and get the other. It only matters to those who either don't want to download, or aren't very computer literate. And for the computer illiterate, KDE is probably a better choice right now due to stability and its connection with CDE.
Well, they said that they will be using dkpg from Debian and that all of their software will be open. If this is the case then, perhaps I'm going out on a limb but, they are supporting Debian. This may seem like a rip off but with Corel and now this "Storm" group selling Debian for Dumbies Distros gives Debian a larger presence outside of the Linux community. This could be very helpful, for both money and 3rd party support.
We have all read people in the past say things like, if Red Hat stumbles or gets bought out Debian will be there to pick up the pieces. Well, Debian isn't going to market their product, but Corel and Storm will.
Think of Linux like a tree. There is the kernel, which is the base of the tree. From there there are several branches, ie the main set of distros like Debian, Red Hat, Caldara... . Eventually a branch gets big enough, and strong enough to branch into several other branches, like Corel Debian, and Storm, and Mandrake. The idea of having other Distros pop up based off of Debian is only showing the strenght of Debian.
When I first heard about DIVX I laughed at the person for being scared of it. I knew that even if all of the movie industry took to crusade for it that the computer industry would destroy it as being a silly idea, if it didn't die do to lack of support. Well it died due to lack of support, but it was the idea that it wouldn't survive. This may seem similar but it really isn't. Right now the major supporters of mp3 are a large relatively unorganized group of people. I don't think any major corporation is going to champion the mp3 because they know that they will get the daylights sued out of them. There is a lot of support from the music industry because they know that if they don't do something they are screwed.
On a dual sided, dual layered DVD using mp3 compression such that it is roughly 1.5 megs per minute you can get ~190 HOURS worth of music. That is nearly 8 DAYS of continuously playing music. At 1 meg a minute it comes out to ~283 hours, or nearly 12 days. On a single sided single layer DVD with 1.5 meg/min it is still ~45 hours of play time, or ~67 hours at 1 meg/min. They are scared of that. The movie industry will still survive quite easily because they still sell tickets at movie theaters. With the introduction of online radio, and DVD burners the music industry WILL die. They know that, they aren't dumb. They have a lot of money and they will fight mp3 full force.
If you want to keep mp3 alive then don't take this threat too lightly mp3 may be entrenched but it is not invicible. WE are the people who have to fight this one, because no one else will.
If mp3 could be turned into the sound file for Linux we would have more leverage. Kill.wav's, kill.au, kill midi, and replace with mp3. Try to implant mp3 players directly into browsers and replace midi, midi sucks anyway. Send e-mail as attached mp3's, even if you have to use a crappy speak and spell type device on you computer. That is how we will win. Scoffing will do nothing!
Unfortunately I use CDE every day at work. I am not a fan of it, Enlightenment must have spoiled me. It also doesn't help that my Ultra 1 only seems to support 256 colors. I admit that CDE is a much better design over Windows, but there are some major improvements that could take place.
I found it quite interesting, and amusing, that he considered the Unversity of Colorado, Boulder as one of the places to donate the source to. CU's CS department only became a full department in the College of Engineering just this last year! I remember two years ago they told me that I couldn't take CS classes to fill my engineering electives because CS wasn't technically in the College of Engineering, nor was it in the College of Arts and Sciences, they were in limbo. And frankly the CS department at CU isn't exactly well known, decent program but not a powerhouse in CS. Probably thought that it was mostly harmless to give to CU.
All very good points. Commenting, and documenting the different registers by descibing what they do, what the limits are, and what the consiquences are when they are set to certain values would be much more helpful in preventing the destruction of cards than leaving it closed and proprietary. If the product is valued by a group that isn't supported, and if that group has the ability, the chances are very good that the product will be reverse engineered. This increases the chances of destroying the card because there better chances of changing one of those variables to a value that in inappropriate.
As for the average joe calling engineers. There is no good way to prevent that unfortunately. Perhaps in order to gain access to the code one would need to register themselves with the company as requesting it. To keep the code from getting into the wrong hands, so to speak, place some sort of identifing tag in it, so that derivations can be traced back to a specific person. That way when complains of broken code are sent in they can be directed to the person who owns the identifing tag. Not perfect, but it makes it harder for Joe to get his hands on code and from hunting down the engineer who made the original code.
Your observation about W95 being faster than NT3.51 is true under most cases. I found that on a 486SX25 with 8 Megs of ram that NT3.51 was actually faster than W95, and very compariable to W3.11 in speed. Hopefully no one else will be as unfortunate to make this discovery, but it is true.
ACK! Have you used Notis Lotes, I mean Lotis Notes. The idea of porting that to Java SCARES me! I delt with enough Java apps compiled by the most proper of compilers and the complex ones are slow, very slow. Ugh, the very thought of porting Notes to Java sent chills down my back
Yup, and in a couple of years I will have my own Eistein-Bose condensate as a pet living in my house. There is a difference, electronic parts can be easily manufactured. Apparati that can get temperatures of 1K and lower won't be for a very very long time. Also, there are enough problems with people hurting themselves on computer today. Imagine what would happen when one of these breaks open and freezes some poor bastard into an icicle. His wife comes home, screams, and sues. Tempuratures of 1K are NOT SAFE!
You are right that the final straw is Heisenberg's theory. By observing, or computing in this case, what will happen will by the most basic law of the universe change that result so that it may not. That is the beauty of the quantum world. This is one of those cases where you can't fight fire with fire. Predicting large objects, by large I mean things large enough that classical mechanical physics can be used without too much degredation in accurace, will be easily computed. When you get down to the quantum level of physics, by the time the quantum computer knows the answer it will have already have happened because one is still just dealing with probabilities at that level.
As for time only going forward. Read Feinmann (I know I misspelled his name). He had devolped this really interesting and far reaching theory about the idea of anti-matter actually being matter going backwards in time. Mathematically all the speed of light is is a vertical asymptote. It slopes up then comes right back down.:)
Ahhhh, super-fluid helium! All of those days studying frictionless surfaces in physics won't come to waste if I ever get my hands on some SF helium. Imagine having a play toy at tempuratures under 7K. Or in the case of the article 1K!
Unfortunately with the fact being that one needs temperatures that low in order to have the right conditions for quantum computing means that we probably won't see a consumer version in our life time. The amount of really cool stuff that can be done at temperatures 1K and lower is amazing. Eistein-Bose condensates, which lead to matter beams, which lead to true 3D holograms like what we have seen in so many movies. Quantum computing. Tests with frictionless surfaces. Ahh. That is why I'm a physics major.
>DOS applications, circa 1988: WordPerfect, Lotus 123, dBase, Crosstalk, etc.
Ahh yes. 1988, 80286, 2 megs RAM, and a whopping 40 meg hard drive dual booted with SCO, DOS. I remember those grand days of the blue screened WordPerfect with the cool little plastic function sheet. And Crosstalk, dialing up to a local BBS to play hack and superrogue. Those were the days.
Just so long as the flight simulator in Excel doesn't do what the first releases of MS Flight Simulator 98 did to computers. I fixed several computers that had installed an early release of MS FS 98, and it had put something it the autoexec.bat file, and something somewhere else that caused the machine to load Win 95 then go directly to FS 98. If you quit, and or died due to any cause, it would reboot the machine, and you couldn't alt-tab out of it. After I fixed the second machine I told everyone in the dorms NOT to install the !@#!ing thing.
Re:The problem is that it's not bloated enough!
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All Hail Bloatware
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· Score: 1
----------------------------------------------- AutoCAD is another program which regularly pulls this scam, and I think it's about time for customers to stop accepting this philosophy -----------------------------------------------
If I remember correctly, AutoCAD v11-13 didn't sell worth squat. It really wasn't until AutoCAD 14, which finally stopped being a DOS program and became a Windows program that consumers started to buy their product in mass quantities again. They may have tried to pull that trick from 11-13, but it obviously didn't work. And AutoCAD 14.01 is merged with another program, the name of which escapes me, and they probably need a new format from v10 up to v14 anyway.
As for the magic talking paperclip, I think that not just the customer that suggested it should be hurt but the whole chain of people who put it on the specs and programmed it. They are all just as guilty for not fighting tooth and nail against something so obviously annoying and stupid.
I finally have access to my material. The first Soviet was form during the October General Strikes, which started on October 20th 1905 (using the old calander). The Soviet, translated roughly to councel, was of workers deputies. It was created so that workers had the ability to speak out. Due to the October General Strike Nicholas II issued the "October Manifesto" wich granted people civil liberties, and allowed the recently formed Duma to pass laws. At this point it was still St. Petersburg, and didn't change to Petrograd until 1914.
The Duma members were the first to create the Provisional Government. Unfortunately they were weak, and were always going to be weak for several reasons. They had "Dual Power" with the Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet was spontainously created and was mostly SR's and Menshivicks. They actually voted to tolarate the Prov. Gov. because they felt they needed it. And the Prov. Gov. could not disband the Soviet because the Soviet had the real power, the people. Lenin returns in April. In May the Prov. Gov. calls for a coalition Gov. with a merging of the Prov. Gov. the SR's and the SD's. Only the Bolsheviks don't join. During the July days there was massive riots, Bolshevik power increased during these riots. Then there was a backlash against the Bolsheviks when the Prov. Gov. said that Lenin was a German Spy, and that the Bolsheviks were receiving German money. Lenin leaves the country.
Kornilov attempts a counter-revolution and fails. This allows for the Bolsheviks to gain more power, and the Soviet gains more Bolsheviks in it. By September 10th, old calander, the Bolsheviks controled the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. The MRC gains control of the weapons, and is controled by Trotsky. Power is taken on October 26th while the Second congress of Soviets is meeting.
Lenin's idea was that party be led by a small group of hard core disapplined professional revolutionaries, aka the vanguard of the proletariat. The vanguard was to be a temporary step towards full socialism. Unfortunately Stalin modified this and made the vanguard permenent. This is one of the differences between Leninism and Stalinism.
The vanguard was to help ease into socialism, by protecting it until it was fully formed. Then it was to be disbanded. didn't happen that way though. But the idea of having a small group of hard core professional Linux programers being a vanguard, but permenate, is a useful thing.
I guess that the army is the computer manufacturers, the armory is periferals manufacturers, and the Battleship Aurora could be someone like Compaq or IBM, maybe Intel?
As for the Constituent Assembly being lopsided, I guess the Bolshevik troups in the entrances and in the seating area could be considered lopsiding the floor.
As for the Soviet, I will look in my books and notes when I get home but if I remember it started before the revolution, was shutdown, and then reformed right after the revolution. It started out as a second choice for a government but wasn't very powerful, gained more support and power, gained equal power with the Prov.Gov. and decisions in one had to be ratified by the other, then eventually overtook them, allowing for them to order the Prov.Gov. to give them control of the troups and armories in Petrograd.
This could be used as another metaphor. The Prov. Gov. was ineffective due to it being a temporary government and generally inept but held a lot of power. Sounds like MS. Eventually the Soviet gained power as the support of the people grew. Eventually overtaking the Prov. Gov. before a more permenate government could be properly formed. Linux is gaining populariety and as it does so more and more computer companies are supporting it. If the progression continues as it is going now Linux compatability will almost be necessary for a computer, part, or software. That is until it surpasses MS before they can come out with something well formed. Hopefully by then we will be able to have our troups sitting at the entrance taunting them.:)
Ahh, thank you for correcting me. I am here at work and don't have all of my resources with me. So I was just winging it. And as long winded as one can be with the Russian revolution I didn't want to create thesis online.
Also, it wasn't so much a majority in the Soviet, in fact I don't think they had a pure majority but damn close, but the fact that the Soviet gained control of the armories in October due to distrust of the PG and that, I believe it was Trotsky, was in charge of that branch of the Soviet. By gaining access to the weapons, the Battleship Auroria (I think thats its name), and popular support they were able to take over fairly quickly. Also, Lenin and the Bolsheviks moved to control the city before the elected government (I can't remember the name of it) had their first meeting thereby removing any of its power before it formed.
I don't think that there will be any real weapons of any decent power to seize from MS nor any Battleships worth keeping. So I guess we will just have to rely on the popular support.
Let's see here. The the Russian Revolution starts, not so much due to the Bolsheviks but do to the other groups like the Moderates and the SR's. The Bolsheviks enter into the scene when Lenin returns in the box car from Germanys help. He enters into an already controlled Petrograd. The Whites, although not called that at the time, did attempt an attack on Petrograd and the Soviet well before the Bolsheviks even had control. The Bolsheviks take over in Petrograd with nearly no blood shed. The Bolsheviks pull Russia out of WWI, which neither the Whites nor the Provisional government were willing to do. Thereby ending that slaughter, especially considering the Russians didn't have enough equiptment nor the right technology equiptment it was a slaughter. The Civil War was started against the Bolsheviks by the SR's and the Whites. After a Civil war in a land that isn't very fertile to begin with, where a lot of the workers die there is going to be starvation. Sure the requisition of grain from the peasants wasn't conducted very intellegently and caused more hardship than was necessary.
As for the GULags, they were essetially started during the Feudialist times, they just weren't called that at the time. Although Solzhenitsen gives a very good acount of what happened in the GULags, and is one of my favorite authors mainly because of Achipalag GULag odin dva e tre (I II and III), he is also a very biased in his opinion. After reading Achiplag GULag I, I had the opinion that Lenin was as evil as Stalin until I took several classes in college, mainly a class on the Russian Revolution and a couple Russian Culture classes. Lenin had some really good ideas, Stalin corrupted them and formed a new type of communism that is not Leninism.
Yes Lenin did do some horrific things at times but to compair him to Stalin is wrong. In his will he specifically stated that Stalin was too brash to rule. Trotsky and Lenin's wife tried to bring this up to the Soviet but it was shot down by the Troika before it could get aired to the public. There IS a differance between Leninism and Stalinism, people generally get them confused because we have been brought so as to believe that Lenin created the version of Communism that ruled the USSR, which in fact is not true. He built a base but was, in a sense, unable to finish the house before he died, and have you seen Stalist achitecture, it's as ugly as Stalin is evil and as ugly as his form of Communism.
I prefer to use the analogy of the Russian Revolution to Linux. A Monarchy that censers the populus. Small groups of intellectuals fighting for the freedom of the people. Multiple failed attemps to usurp the government before the revolution of 1917 where several groups all with a good chance of victory striking at an opportune moment. If it is really looked at there are some striking comparisons. Apple could be considered the Socialist Revolutionsaries, or SR's. The BeOS people, originally helped by Apple now thrown out due to conflicts of interest sort of fit the Left SR's who were too radical to be really considered by the SR's, and who were simpathetic and helpful to the Menshevic and Bolshevic groups. *BSD fits very well with the Menshevic group, very radical, good ideas, intellegent, but no really strong single leader (by really strong, I mean very noticeable). Which leaves Linux with the Bolshevics. A good fit in my humble opinion. Let's look at the comparisons.
The Bolshevics were a small radical group that were originally part of the same group as the Menshevics but broke off due to a dispute. The Bolshevics were more radical than the Menshevics.
Linux in a sense breaking away from UNIX, being newer and similar but more radical.
The Bolshevics had a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow the people to rule themselves if they wanted to.
Linux has a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow for the people to change their OS as they please, while still allowing for those who choose not to rule their OS to still have a lot of freedom.
The Bolshevics had a very far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Lenin. Strong central leadership is argueably the reason why the Bolshevics won. Lenin knew when to fight and when to run. He also was able to adapt so that control that was gained was not lost, ie abolition of the death penalty in 1918 and the New Economic Policy (1).
Linux has a far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Linus. Having a central leader to regulate the code that goes into major improvements in Linux has been a key to the ability for Linux to become what it is today. Plus the ability to adapt has been a major necessity to keep alive.
The Bolshevics gained popular support quickly due to ingenius propaganda techniques and due to the inability of the other groups to connect with the populus. The Bolshevics showed themselves as a group of the people. The other groups, especially the SR's, were eccentially decendents of the Populists, who, although dedicated to helping the people, couldn't relate to them because of their up-bringing in different society. Although the Bolshevics also were brought up in a different society they were able to adapt to draw in the masses.
Linux is the fastest growing OS, and partially due to great coverage in the news, and partially due to the fact that our word spreads quickly. Although the other groups, Apple, BeOS, *BSD, UNIX, are all great they are all very separated from the general populus. They have their supporters who are all out to make life better for people but all have some sort of hang-up with people. Apple is "seen" (seen and truth are two different things! ok!) as overly basic, simple, and generally underpowerd. BeOS isn't know of very well outside the respective community of well, us. UNIX and *BSD are still "seen" as text based and very complicated. Linux has been able to adapt.
There are a great deal of other similarities that I don't want to go into right now because I have already been too long winded.
(1) The New Economic Policy actually allowed for some capitalism, as sort of a transition over to Communism. Lenin saw this as a necissary to help rebuild and stablize. In a sense the idea of selling Linux as a product is like that. Use it until people get used to the idea of free software being powerful and useful.
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I have been slowly upgrading from Slink to Potato over the past 2 months.
Of course I have been downloading the OS piece at a time since March due to the fact that I used the 7 disk install and apt on a 33.6 modem. The only thing that I have found painful is the speed of my modem.
TCI HURRY UP AND GET CABLE MODEMS IN BOULDER! September to October isn't fast enough!
There is a big difference between stormix and Debian. Stormix is being produced by a company looking for money, Debian is not.
I have several guesses on why they are choosing KDE. It's older, and more stable. I personally think Gnome has a better user interface, but I have had problems with some of the Gnome apps and understand that it needs more time to be ready for main stream.
Personally I don't think it really matters to most of us whether a distro has KDE of Gnome as the primary install because we can always not install it and go out and get the other. It only matters to those who either don't want to download, or aren't very computer literate. And for the computer illiterate, KDE is probably a better choice right now due to stability and its connection with CDE.
I wonder if they got the idea of calling it Storm while drinking a can of Storm from Pepsi?
Well, they said that they will be using dkpg from Debian and that all of their software will be open. If this is the case then, perhaps I'm going out on a limb but, they are supporting Debian. This may seem like a rip off but with Corel and now this "Storm" group selling Debian for Dumbies Distros gives Debian a larger presence outside of the Linux community. This could be very helpful, for both money and 3rd party support.
... . Eventually a branch gets big enough, and strong enough to branch into several other branches, like Corel Debian, and Storm, and Mandrake. The idea of having other Distros pop up based off of Debian is only showing the strenght of Debian.
We have all read people in the past say things like, if Red Hat stumbles or gets bought out Debian will be there to pick up the pieces. Well, Debian isn't going to market their product, but Corel and Storm will.
Think of Linux like a tree. There is the kernel, which is the base of the tree. From there there are several branches, ie the main set of distros like Debian, Red Hat, Caldara
Isn't Diamond in the process of being sued over their portable mp3 player?
When I first heard about DIVX I laughed at the person for being scared of it. I knew that even if all of the movie industry took to crusade for it that the computer industry would destroy it as being a silly idea, if it didn't die do to lack of support. Well it died due to lack of support, but it was the idea that it wouldn't survive. This may seem similar but it really isn't.
.wav's, kill .au, kill midi, and replace with mp3. Try to implant mp3 players directly into browsers and replace midi, midi sucks anyway. Send e-mail as attached mp3's, even if you have to use a crappy speak and spell type device on you computer.
Right now the major supporters of mp3 are a large relatively unorganized group of people. I don't think any major corporation is going to champion the mp3 because they know that they will get the daylights sued out of them. There is a lot of support from the music industry because they know that if they don't do something they are screwed.
On a dual sided, dual layered DVD using mp3 compression such that it is roughly 1.5 megs per minute you can get ~190 HOURS worth of music. That is nearly 8 DAYS of continuously playing music. At 1 meg a minute it comes out to ~283 hours, or nearly 12 days. On a single sided single layer DVD with 1.5 meg/min it is still ~45 hours of play time, or ~67 hours at 1 meg/min. They are scared of that. The movie industry will still survive quite easily because they still sell tickets at movie theaters. With the introduction of online radio, and DVD burners the music industry WILL die. They know that, they aren't dumb. They have a lot of money and they will fight mp3 full force.
If you want to keep mp3 alive then don't take this threat too lightly mp3 may be entrenched but it is not invicible. WE are the people who have to fight this one, because no one else will.
If mp3 could be turned into the sound file for Linux we would have more leverage. Kill
That is how we will win. Scoffing will do nothing!
Unfortunately I use CDE every day at work. I am not a fan of it, Enlightenment must have spoiled me. It also doesn't help that my Ultra 1 only seems to support 256 colors.
I admit that CDE is a much better design over Windows, but there are some major improvements that could take place.
I found it quite interesting, and amusing, that he considered the Unversity of Colorado, Boulder as one of the places to donate the source to. CU's CS department only became a full department in the College of Engineering just this last year! I remember two years ago they told me that I couldn't take CS classes to fill my engineering electives because CS wasn't technically in the College of Engineering, nor was it in the College of Arts and Sciences, they were in limbo.
And frankly the CS department at CU isn't exactly well known, decent program but not a powerhouse in CS. Probably thought that it was mostly harmless to give to CU.
All very good points.
Commenting, and documenting the different registers by descibing what they do, what the limits are, and what the consiquences are when they are set to certain values would be much more helpful in preventing the destruction of cards than leaving it closed and proprietary. If the product is valued by a group that isn't supported, and if that group has the ability, the chances are very good that the product will be reverse engineered. This increases the chances of destroying the card because there better chances of changing one of those variables to a value that in inappropriate.
As for the average joe calling engineers. There is no good way to prevent that unfortunately. Perhaps in order to gain access to the code one would need to register themselves with the company as requesting it. To keep the code from getting into the wrong hands, so to speak, place some sort of identifing tag in it, so that derivations can be traced back to a specific person. That way when complains of broken code are sent in they can be directed to the person who owns the identifing tag. Not perfect, but it makes it harder for Joe to get his hands on code and from hunting down the engineer who made the original code.
Your observation about W95 being faster than NT3.51 is true under most cases. I found that on a 486SX25 with 8 Megs of ram that NT3.51 was actually faster than W95, and very compariable to W3.11 in speed. Hopefully no one else will be as unfortunate to make this discovery, but it is true.
ACK! Have you used Notis Lotes, I mean Lotis Notes. The idea of porting that to Java SCARES me! I delt with enough Java apps compiled by the most proper of compilers and the complex ones are slow, very slow.
Ugh, the very thought of porting Notes to Java sent chills down my back
I love my major. Gives me the practical education of an engineer with all the scientific background of a physics major.
:)
As for practical applications, look at Eistein-Bose condensates and matter lasers.
Yup, and in a couple of years I will have my own Eistein-Bose condensate as a pet living in my house.
There is a difference, electronic parts can be easily manufactured. Apparati that can get temperatures of 1K and lower won't be for a very very long time. Also, there are enough problems with people hurting themselves on computer today. Imagine what would happen when one of these breaks open and freezes some poor bastard into an icicle. His wife comes home, screams, and sues. Tempuratures of 1K are NOT SAFE!
You are right that the final straw is Heisenberg's theory. By observing, or computing in this case, what will happen will by the most basic law of the universe change that result so that it may not. That is the beauty of the quantum world. This is one of those cases where you can't fight fire with fire.
:)
Predicting large objects, by large I mean things large enough that classical mechanical physics can be used without too much degredation in accurace, will be easily computed. When you get down to the quantum level of physics, by the time the quantum computer knows the answer it will have already have happened because one is still just dealing with probabilities at that level.
As for time only going forward. Read Feinmann (I know I misspelled his name). He had devolped this really interesting and far reaching theory about the idea of anti-matter actually being matter going backwards in time. Mathematically all the speed of light is is a vertical asymptote. It slopes up then comes right back down.
Ahhhh, super-fluid helium! All of those days studying frictionless surfaces in physics won't come to waste if I ever get my hands on some SF helium.
Imagine having a play toy at tempuratures under 7K. Or in the case of the article 1K!
Unfortunately with the fact being that one needs temperatures that low in order to have the right conditions for quantum computing means that we probably won't see a consumer version in our life time.
The amount of really cool stuff that can be done at temperatures 1K and lower is amazing. Eistein-Bose condensates, which lead to matter beams, which lead to true 3D holograms like what we have seen in so many movies. Quantum computing. Tests with frictionless surfaces. Ahh. That is why I'm a physics major.
>DOS applications, circa 1988: WordPerfect, Lotus 123, dBase, Crosstalk, etc.
Ahh yes. 1988, 80286, 2 megs RAM, and a whopping 40 meg hard drive dual booted with SCO, DOS. I remember those grand days of the blue screened WordPerfect with the cool little plastic function sheet. And Crosstalk, dialing up to a local BBS to play hack and superrogue.
Those were the days.
Just so long as the flight simulator in Excel doesn't do what the first releases of MS Flight Simulator 98 did to computers. I fixed several computers that had installed an early release of MS FS 98, and it had put something it the autoexec.bat file, and something somewhere else that caused the machine to load Win 95 then go directly to FS 98. If you quit, and or died due to any cause, it would reboot the machine, and you couldn't alt-tab out of it.
After I fixed the second machine I told everyone in the dorms NOT to install the !@#!ing thing.
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AutoCAD is another program which regularly pulls this scam, and I think it's about time for customers to stop accepting this philosophy
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If I remember correctly, AutoCAD v11-13 didn't sell worth squat. It really wasn't until AutoCAD 14, which finally stopped being a DOS program and became a Windows program that consumers started to buy their product in mass quantities again. They may have tried to pull that trick from 11-13, but it obviously didn't work. And AutoCAD 14.01 is merged with another program, the name of which escapes me, and they probably need a new format from v10 up to v14 anyway.
As for the magic talking paperclip, I think that not just the customer that suggested it should be hurt but the whole chain of people who put it on the specs and programmed it. They are all just as guilty for not fighting tooth and nail against something so obviously annoying and stupid.
I finally have access to my material.
The first Soviet was form during the October General Strikes, which started on October 20th 1905 (using the old calander).
The Soviet, translated roughly to councel, was of workers deputies. It was created so that workers had the ability to speak out.
Due to the October General Strike Nicholas II issued the "October Manifesto" wich granted people civil liberties, and allowed the recently formed Duma to pass laws. At this point it was still St. Petersburg, and didn't change to Petrograd until 1914.
The Duma members were the first to create the Provisional Government. Unfortunately they were weak, and were always going to be weak for several reasons.
They had "Dual Power" with the Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet was spontainously created and was mostly SR's and Menshivicks. They actually voted to tolarate the Prov. Gov. because they felt they needed it. And the Prov. Gov. could not disband the Soviet because the Soviet had the real power, the people.
Lenin returns in April. In May the Prov. Gov. calls for a coalition Gov. with a merging of the Prov. Gov. the SR's and the SD's. Only the Bolsheviks don't join. During the July days there was massive riots, Bolshevik power increased during these riots. Then there was a backlash against the Bolsheviks when the Prov. Gov. said that Lenin was a German Spy, and that the Bolsheviks were receiving German money. Lenin leaves the country.
Kornilov attempts a counter-revolution and fails. This allows for the Bolsheviks to gain more power, and the Soviet gains more Bolsheviks in it. By September 10th, old calander, the Bolsheviks controled the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. The MRC gains control of the weapons, and is controled by Trotsky. Power is taken on October 26th while the Second congress of Soviets is meeting.
etc...
Lenin's idea was that party be led by a small group of hard core disapplined professional revolutionaries, aka the vanguard of the proletariat. The vanguard was to be a temporary step towards full socialism. Unfortunately Stalin modified this and made the vanguard permenent. This is one of the differences between Leninism and Stalinism.
The vanguard was to help ease into socialism, by protecting it until it was fully formed. Then it was to be disbanded. didn't happen that way though. But the idea of having a small group of hard core professional Linux programers being a vanguard, but permenate, is a useful thing.
I guess that the army is the computer manufacturers, the armory is periferals manufacturers, and the Battleship Aurora could be someone like Compaq or IBM, maybe Intel?
As for the Constituent Assembly being lopsided, I guess the Bolshevik troups in the entrances and in the seating area could be considered lopsiding the floor.
As for the Soviet, I will look in my books and notes when I get home but if I remember it started before the revolution, was shutdown, and then reformed right after the revolution. It started out as a second choice for a government but wasn't very powerful, gained more support and power, gained equal power with the Prov.Gov. and decisions in one had to be ratified by the other, then eventually overtook them, allowing for them to order the Prov.Gov. to give them control of the troups and armories in Petrograd.
This could be used as another metaphor. The Prov. Gov. was ineffective due to it being a temporary government and generally inept but held a lot of power. Sounds like MS. Eventually the Soviet gained power as the support of the people grew. Eventually overtaking the Prov. Gov. before a more permenate government could be properly formed. Linux is gaining populariety and as it does so more and more computer companies are supporting it. If the progression continues as it is going now Linux compatability will almost be necessary for a computer, part, or software. That is until it surpasses MS before they can come out with something well formed. Hopefully by then we will be able to have our troups sitting at the entrance taunting them.
Ahh, thank you for correcting me. I am here at work and don't have all of my resources with me. So I was just winging it. And as long winded as one can be with the Russian revolution I didn't want to create thesis online.
Also, it wasn't so much a majority in the Soviet, in fact I don't think they had a pure majority but damn close, but the fact that the Soviet gained control of the armories in October due to distrust of the PG and that, I believe it was Trotsky, was in charge of that branch of the Soviet. By gaining access to the weapons, the Battleship Auroria (I think thats its name), and popular support they were able to take over fairly quickly. Also, Lenin and the Bolsheviks moved to control the city before the elected government (I can't remember the name of it) had their first meeting thereby removing any of its power before it formed.
I don't think that there will be any real weapons of any decent power to seize from MS nor any Battleships worth keeping. So I guess we will just have to rely on the popular support.
Thanks again for correcting me
Let's see here. The the Russian Revolution starts, not so much due to the Bolsheviks but do to the other groups like the Moderates and the SR's. The Bolsheviks enter into the scene when Lenin returns in the box car from Germanys help. He enters into an already controlled Petrograd. The Whites, although not called that at the time, did attempt an attack on Petrograd and the Soviet well before the Bolsheviks even had control. The Bolsheviks take over in Petrograd with nearly no blood shed. The Bolsheviks pull Russia out of WWI, which neither the Whites nor the Provisional government were willing to do. Thereby ending that slaughter, especially considering the Russians didn't have enough equiptment nor the right technology equiptment it was a slaughter.
The Civil War was started against the Bolsheviks by the SR's and the Whites. After a Civil war in a land that isn't very fertile to begin with, where a lot of the workers die there is going to be starvation. Sure the requisition of grain from the peasants wasn't conducted very intellegently and caused more hardship than was necessary.
As for the GULags, they were essetially started during the Feudialist times, they just weren't called that at the time. Although Solzhenitsen gives a very good acount of what happened in the GULags, and is one of my favorite authors mainly because of Achipalag GULag odin dva e tre (I II and III), he is also a very biased in his opinion. After reading Achiplag GULag I, I had the opinion that Lenin was as evil as Stalin until I took several classes in college, mainly a class on the Russian Revolution and a couple Russian Culture classes. Lenin had some really good ideas, Stalin corrupted them and formed a new type of communism that is not Leninism.
Yes Lenin did do some horrific things at times but to compair him to Stalin is wrong. In his will he specifically stated that Stalin was too brash to rule. Trotsky and Lenin's wife tried to bring this up to the Soviet but it was shot down by the Troika before it could get aired to the public. There IS a differance between Leninism and Stalinism, people generally get them confused because we have been brought so as to believe that Lenin created the version of Communism that ruled the USSR, which in fact is not true. He built a base but was, in a sense, unable to finish the house before he died, and have you seen Stalist achitecture, it's as ugly as Stalin is evil and as ugly as his form of Communism.
I prefer to use the analogy of the Russian Revolution to Linux.
A Monarchy that censers the populus. Small groups of intellectuals fighting for the freedom of the people. Multiple failed attemps to usurp the government before the revolution of 1917 where several groups all with a good chance of victory striking at an opportune moment.
If it is really looked at there are some striking comparisons. Apple could be considered the Socialist Revolutionsaries, or SR's. The BeOS people, originally helped by Apple now thrown out due to conflicts of interest sort of fit the Left SR's who were too radical to be really considered by the SR's, and who were simpathetic and helpful to the Menshevic and Bolshevic groups. *BSD fits very well with the Menshevic group, very radical, good ideas, intellegent, but no really strong single leader (by really strong, I mean very noticeable).
Which leaves Linux with the Bolshevics. A good fit in my humble opinion.
Let's look at the comparisons.
The Bolshevics were a small radical group that were originally part of the same group as the Menshevics but broke off due to a dispute. The Bolshevics were more radical than the Menshevics.
Linux in a sense breaking away from UNIX, being newer and similar but more radical.
The Bolshevics had a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow the people to rule themselves if they wanted to.
Linux has a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow for the people to change their OS as they please, while still allowing for those who choose not to rule their OS to still have a lot of freedom.
The Bolshevics had a very far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Lenin. Strong central leadership is argueably the reason why the Bolshevics won. Lenin knew when to fight and when to run. He also was able to adapt so that control that was gained was not lost, ie abolition of the death penalty in 1918 and the New Economic Policy (1).
Linux has a far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Linus. Having a central leader to regulate the code that goes into major improvements in Linux has been a key to the ability for Linux to become what it is today. Plus the ability to adapt has been a major necessity to keep alive.
The Bolshevics gained popular support quickly due to ingenius propaganda techniques and due to the inability of the other groups to connect with the populus. The Bolshevics showed themselves as a group of the people. The other groups, especially the SR's, were eccentially decendents of the Populists, who, although dedicated to helping the people, couldn't relate to them because of their up-bringing in different society. Although the Bolshevics also were brought up in a different society they were able to adapt to draw in the masses.
Linux is the fastest growing OS, and partially due to great coverage in the news, and partially due to the fact that our word spreads quickly. Although the other groups, Apple, BeOS, *BSD, UNIX, are all great they are all very separated from the general populus. They have their supporters who are all out to make life better for people but all have some sort of hang-up with people. Apple is "seen" (seen and truth are two different things! ok!) as overly basic, simple, and generally underpowerd. BeOS isn't know of very well outside the respective community of well, us. UNIX and *BSD are still "seen" as text based and very complicated. Linux has been able to adapt.
There are a great deal of other similarities that I don't want to go into right now because I have already been too long winded.
(1) The New Economic Policy actually allowed for some capitalism, as sort of a transition over to Communism. Lenin saw this as a necissary to help rebuild and stablize. In a sense the idea of selling Linux as a product is like that. Use it until people get used to the idea of free software being powerful and useful.