I think what you just said is exactly why OSS won't cause the sky to fall, as the Tocqueville article claims.
Most of the specialized, vertical applications that companies hire people to write will never be Open Source. (They could even be built on GNU libraries, but never distributed outside the company).
OSS tends to default the software that needs devaluing. Microsoft sits back and milks the OS/Office cow with 85% profit margins year after year. Ending this situation will not destroy our economy, it would just distribute ownership of Microsoft's 50 billion dollars a lot more broadly.
I suspect google is more interested in building a platform that would be a competitor to this product. For the device in this article they estimate 1 FTE (full-time-employee) for each petabyte of storage. That doesn't sound so good. Google's system will apparently replicate and migrate data betwen units as necessary so you never need to replace drives at all; the maximum capacity just degrades slowly with time. Perhaps when it gets to 80% original capacity you just roll in a newer unit (which is probably much bigger in capacity as well), hook them together for a day, then throw out the old one.
The power requirements are also quite hefty. It shouldn't be necessary to run all those drives (and the computers behind them) unless the unit is near capacity and access is random (which I'm sure would rarely be the case). Instead, they should be dynamically powering drives and computers up and down, and migrating data to a reasonably small 'working set' of drives.
On the hardware front, the device in this article also incorporates 800 "low-end PCs." IOW it's a big cluster that happens to be heavy on storage. If all you want is the storage, surely there is some way to get rid of all those motherboards and CPUs with their fault-prone, power-hungry fans. They need to develop a controller that can directly handle, say, 64 hard drives, analogous to a big network switch.
Does Mozilla's mail client really work with exchange, or just do email through IMAP (if IMAP is enabled) and.pst files?
The calendaring, in particular, is a necessity to those of us whose meetings are all scheduled in outlook. I'm excited, this will make my Linux desktop at work that much nicer!
Very school-marmish. What is wrong with buying and driving a car - well - because one LIKES it? Why is that contemptable to so many people?
I tend to agree. But I think the current high gas prices have people annoyed, and soaring demand contributes to the high prices.
Also you have to keep in mind that nobody is "making" gas; they're pumping it out of the ground and cleaning it up. Ultimately there's only a fixed amount which we all must share. The idea that one deserves to burn whatever he can pay for makes less sense when you consider that the money only covers the cost of shipping and refining.
The nice thing about 7 tuners is you could preview all your favorite stations at once to see what's on - not just tiled static images updating every 10 seconds, but 7 pictures-in-a-picture.
Overkill? Yeah, I suppose. But last time I checked the Earth still had plenty of silicon. If each additional channel is just a couple of extra chips why not have enough to never think about it?
My question is: can I buy a 7 channel tuner/encoder board separate from the Vaio, and when will it have linux drivers:)
Interesting, does that count "professors" at all levels, including assistant professors and so forth?
The main problem with a tenured professorship is that they aren't easy to come by. You have to put in a lot of work for a little money for a long time, and if you don't get enough grants or good publications, it's all for naught. Get denied tenure once or twice and your academic career is over.
Couldn't you say the same thing about guns? Guns are designed to kill. Pistols particularly are made for just that (do you go hunting with your 9mm Beretta?). Sure you could use them for target-practice and such, but that doesn't change the fact that killing is what they are meant to do.
Yeah, so? In the US we have the right to kill people under certain conditions, and that's how it should be.
Now, if the only purpose of guns was murder, then you'd have a point.
Compared to a car, a house seems like a very easy environment for batteries - no worries about weight, and much less concern about space. How about using the solar to preheat water and save power to your water heater? You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time. Or maybe a flywheel (whereas safety concerns hamper their application in cars). I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.
But "miserable failure" was easily subverted because it's not a particularly interesting phrase in the first place. I'd be much more convenced if you managed to make your personal blog come up as the #1 hit for "news."
Still, I'm no fan of the competition this story is about. It's no more or less than a competition to find ways to lessen the usefulness of the Web by giving more power to "spammers" (in the loose sense of the word).
In economics, a natural monopoly refers to a situation where a single company tends to become the only supplier of a product or service over time because the nature of that product or service makes a single supplier more efficient than multiple, competing ones.
This is precisely the case with the operating system. Standardizing on one saves the work of reimplementing each application for every OS, and the cost of having to learn to use every OS. This prompts standardization.
It's hard to say for sure what the future will prove, but my crystal ball says there will be only one dominant operating system at any given time, because it's a natural monopoly. However in distinct niches (like server vs. desktop operating sytems) co-existence is much more feasible.
You don't see a lot of older chips in multi-CPU configurations for sale do you? Among other reasons, it's because chip makers would prefer you buy the newer processor, the one they just spent a lot of money on.
Here are some of the "other" reasons, which I think are more concrete and more important: first, two old processors are less useful than a single new processor that's roughly twice as fast, because you can't apply two cpus to a single thread. Second, two older processors are more expensive than a new single processor because it's twice the silicon.
I'm disappointed to see Intel focusing on a dual core. This is the beginning of complicating the programming model to make programmers compensate for the diffculty of making an ever-faster core. It's a slowing of progress in CPU evolution, even if the 'total MIPS' charts don't show it.
I disagree. It looks to me like "other" and "Netscape 5.x" have both grown a lot. "Other" looks like it has at least doubled in the past year and a half (Safari?), and Mozilla has grown steadily (and NOT just at expense of Netscape 4.x). It's just that they're both still dwarfed by the happenings on center stage, where different versions of MSIE battle for the mainstream.
I'm not saying Mozilla or "Other" will be #1 anytime in the forseeable future, but they are getting closer to that crucial 10%-15% where web developers will feel a bit of pressure to use Web standards instead of just programming for MSIE.
The price of Windows has very little to do with the cost of developing it. The OS division has annual profits of about 85%. And of that last 15%, most of it is marketing, support, and manufacturing, not r&d. They are already charging what the market will bear, and since the operating system is a natural monopoly this is far beyond the production cost.
Except, of course, if you don't agree with the changed licencing agreement you don't have to download and install the new iTunes.
Thus limiting yourself, not only to software from a certain company, but to a certain version of a certain program which will never be supported or updated again, and which likely won't even work with the iMusic store anymore within a short period of time.
Well, I guess it's a half-step better than the Windows Media Player - Microsoft DOES reserve the right to update their player and remove capabilities at any time.
Meanwhile, some of the usage rules - such as how many times users can burn downloads - have been altered. For example, full playlists will now only be able to be burned seven times instead of the current 10.
Retroactively decreasing the value of what you paid for is a retroactive price hike. Just like if you brought home a 5 lb. bag of sugar from the grocery store, and C&H decided they needed more money and came and took 2 lbs out of your bag - retroactively increasing the price per pound.
Face it, if you're "investing" in a DRM music collection, you own nothing. You have no idea what your access to that music will look like in 10 years.
No problem, Intel will now adopt the "PR" rating system, all part numbers will be estimated comparable speed to P4 chips at speeds that never existed:)
I can't believe this, to me it seems like a big deal. The Pentium-M is a modded Pentium-3. If this is true, Intel is abandoning the whole direction they took with the P4 = MHz at all cost. Also IIRC the Pentium-M was designed in Israel, and was their first-ever chip delivered on time, so this isn't a great development for US computer engineering.
I don't think we can count on quiet, low-power desktops though. I bet Intel will just ramp up the Pentium-M until it's a hot as the P4 (but by then it will be faster than todays P4 due to higher IPC).
Read more down towards the bottom of the article. What the shoe does is dynamically adjust the resistance of the cusion so you can use the whole range of shock-absorbing motion despite your weight, speed, terrain, etc.
Sort of like those hydralic shock systems for trucks that allow you to stiffen the shocks when you're towing a heavy load.
Here's an idea on how they *might* help serious runners. Serious runners know the best shoe for them, but the best shoe for running downhill might not be the same as for running uphill (or running on sandy vs. rocky soil, etc). These shoes adapt dynamically. A dynamically adjusting shoe might be able to decrease fatigue, and that might lead to faster race times (if it's enough to overcome the added weight of the dynamically adjusting shoe).
I think a good application for these shoes would be in a running store, who aren't willing to fork out $250 for a pair. For $10 you wear them on the treadmill for 10 minutes. Now you can get the shoes with the best padding density for you. (You still don't get any benefit that dynamic padding might provide, but at least you have the right foam in your shoes).
This thing weighs less than half of an IPod mini. It has no moving parts and is likely to have better battery life. If it is like previous Jens models it has a built-in radio, and a sound recorder. So there are significant advantages.
The nicest model has 512 megs. That's close to a CDR, which is what my Sony Mp3 Discman plays. I use it for exercising. It's easy to change the disk, but how often do I do that? Rarely. An hour of running is quite a while (try it!) and half a gig is about 10 hours at 128kbps (I suspect 96kps would be fine for working out but I don't bother resampling).
Are there times when browsing is a bonus? Sure, that's why I use my laptop for music at work or the library (80 gigs and a 1600x1200 display). But for working out this thing should be perfect.
I take it back, it would be perfect with a double-digit price:)
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Most of the specialized, vertical applications that companies hire people to write will never be Open Source. (They could even be built on GNU libraries, but never distributed outside the company).
OSS tends to default the software that needs devaluing. Microsoft sits back and milks the OS/Office cow with 85% profit margins year after year. Ending this situation will not destroy our economy, it would just distribute ownership of Microsoft's 50 billion dollars a lot more broadly.
The power requirements are also quite hefty. It shouldn't be necessary to run all those drives (and the computers behind them) unless the unit is near capacity and access is random (which I'm sure would rarely be the case). Instead, they should be dynamically powering drives and computers up and down, and migrating data to a reasonably small 'working set' of drives.
On the hardware front, the device in this article also incorporates 800 "low-end PCs." IOW it's a big cluster that happens to be heavy on storage. If all you want is the storage, surely there is some way to get rid of all those motherboards and CPUs with their fault-prone, power-hungry fans. They need to develop a controller that can directly handle, say, 64 hard drives, analogous to a big network switch.
Anyways, it sounds like a fun project!
The calendaring, in particular, is a necessity to those of us whose meetings are all scheduled in outlook. I'm excited, this will make my Linux desktop at work that much nicer!
Also you have to keep in mind that nobody is "making" gas; they're pumping it out of the ground and cleaning it up. Ultimately there's only a fixed amount which we all must share. The idea that one deserves to burn whatever he can pay for makes less sense when you consider that the money only covers the cost of shipping and refining.
Overkill? Yeah, I suppose. But last time I checked the Earth still had plenty of silicon. If each additional channel is just a couple of extra chips why not have enough to never think about it?
My question is: can I buy a 7 channel tuner/encoder board separate from the Vaio, and when will it have linux drivers :)
The main problem with a tenured professorship is that they aren't easy to come by. You have to put in a lot of work for a little money for a long time, and if you don't get enough grants or good publications, it's all for naught. Get denied tenure once or twice and your academic career is over.
Now, if the only purpose of guns was murder, then you'd have a point.
Compared to a car, a house seems like a very easy environment for batteries - no worries about weight, and much less concern about space. How about using the solar to preheat water and save power to your water heater? You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time. Or maybe a flywheel (whereas safety concerns hamper their application in cars). I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.
Still, I'm no fan of the competition this story is about. It's no more or less than a competition to find ways to lessen the usefulness of the Web by giving more power to "spammers" (in the loose sense of the word).
It's hard to say for sure what the future will prove, but my crystal ball says there will be only one dominant operating system at any given time, because it's a natural monopoly. However in distinct niches (like server vs. desktop operating sytems) co-existence is much more feasible.
I'm disappointed to see Intel focusing on a dual core. This is the beginning of complicating the programming model to make programmers compensate for the diffculty of making an ever-faster core. It's a slowing of progress in CPU evolution, even if the 'total MIPS' charts don't show it.
I'm not saying Mozilla or "Other" will be #1 anytime in the forseeable future, but they are getting closer to that crucial 10%-15% where web developers will feel a bit of pressure to use Web standards instead of just programming for MSIE.
The price of Windows has very little to do with the cost of developing it. The OS division has annual profits of about 85%. And of that last 15%, most of it is marketing, support, and manufacturing, not r&d. They are already charging what the market will bear, and since the operating system is a natural monopoly this is far beyond the production cost.
perl -e 'while(1) { fork; system "pizzaparty" }'
Well, I guess it's a half-step better than the Windows Media Player - Microsoft DOES reserve the right to update their player and remove capabilities at any time.
Face it, if you're "investing" in a DRM music collection, you own nothing. You have no idea what your access to that music will look like in 10 years.
Just to make your day a little worse, look up "flammable" and "inflammable."
No problem, Intel will now adopt the "PR" rating system, all part numbers will be estimated comparable speed to P4 chips at speeds that never existed :)
I don't think we can count on quiet, low-power desktops though. I bet Intel will just ramp up the Pentium-M until it's a hot as the P4 (but by then it will be faster than todays P4 due to higher IPC).
Amen! And anybody who doesn't see a valid, legal reason to copy DVD's hasn't seen what 4-year-olds do to them.
Sort of like those hydralic shock systems for trucks that allow you to stiffen the shocks when you're towing a heavy load.
But what's the point of winning if you can't sign a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with Nike!?
I think a good application for these shoes would be in a running store, who aren't willing to fork out $250 for a pair. For $10 you wear them on the treadmill for 10 minutes. Now you can get the shoes with the best padding density for you. (You still don't get any benefit that dynamic padding might provide, but at least you have the right foam in your shoes).
The nicest model has 512 megs. That's close to a CDR, which is what my Sony Mp3 Discman plays. I use it for exercising. It's easy to change the disk, but how often do I do that? Rarely. An hour of running is quite a while (try it!) and half a gig is about 10 hours at 128kbps (I suspect 96kps would be fine for working out but I don't bother resampling).
Are there times when browsing is a bonus? Sure, that's why I use my laptop for music at work or the library (80 gigs and a 1600x1200 display). But for working out this thing should be perfect. I take it back, it would be perfect with a double-digit price :)