ADA was only one reason. The main reason was OS/2 was EOL and they couldn't really do anything with it.
You haven't truly loathed an OS until you waited an hour for an ATM to boot, only to find out the next config change would require another reboot....and you had 5 more config changes to make.
I remember as a kid seeing the pictures of the early shuttle missions where many, many tiles were missing. IIRC, it was called the "flying brickyard". Can't seem to find any of those pictures now.
But it seems like our shuttle program is suddenly pansified. I mean c'mon...there's a difference between blowing a hole in the wing and a few flaky tiles.
...is to make it possible to exist without it. Lots of indie artists and smaller labels would love to sell non-DRM tracks through iTunes. (another issue is bitrate, but that's a seperate issue).
Then you could label them with some catchy name for non-DRM and/or higher bitrate. The majors would be too scared of to use this, but the smaller players would jump at it. The result would be a way for those smaller players to compete. I can spend a buck and buy an inconvenient, crappy sounding major label song, or I can buy a better sounding indie song that doesn't have all that confusing DRM.
I bet the majors would follow...but that's the point. Major labels don't innovate, they print money using their artificial monopolies and cartel powers. Major labels follow. If they did innovate, iTunes wouldn't even be around. If Jobs is serious, then he needs to step up to the plate and use his power to back up his words.
It's great to hear someone as influential as Jobs talking the good talk, I'd like to see him fight the good fight.
knowing that the right to a national guard is forever enshrined as a God given right....
This "they mean a national guard" argument is about the stupidest argument on either side. It's the constitution and the bill of rights. Think about it.
On one hand, I think Theo and crew are right on. I've used OpenBSD for many years now and have seen the results of the no-compromise-and-take-no-prisoner approach in execution. The result is good.
Lack of compromise can be messy. But in the wide world o' technology compromise can often equal crap...particularly with regard to corporate interest, marketing, and profit motive.
On the other hand, the things discussed here are a)documentation and b)distribution rights.
These are both things very easily reversed down the road. If a brazillion of these laptops get out into the field, then the interested parties decide to pull a fast one, a) the documentation is out there for people to get their hands on (even if it's against the agreement) and b)it will be difficult to prevent distribution of the code when it's "For the children".
The tragedy in this scenario is that once again the artificial constructs of human legalities will be interfering with a great creation.
It would be good to have all this above board and cleared up, preferably along the lines of Theo's hard line stance. However, if it's not cleared up, it's not the end of the world. It'll just be another nasty grey area in the screwed up world of intellectual property.
I didn't truly appreciate how hard it is to get into orbit until I played with that freeware Orbiter game (heard about it on slashdot).
Granted, the geekiness of just flying spaceships around is not exactly compelling next to the current group of shoot 'em ups. The trick would be making something that was interesting and compelling. Get some good eye candy and the right balance of 'real' and 'fun'. Maybe there are some multiplayer possibilities.
Think of it as "today's astronauts" instead of "todays army".
I've worked in both banks and credit unions for awhile now.
I can understand Banks inherent unwillingness to contribute to OSS. I don't agree with it, but the culture is very averse to collaboration with anyone or anything outside the bank.
Credit unions, on the other hand, love to collaborate all over the place. They share ATMs, branches, information...all sorts of stuff. However, when it comes to things technology (core processing, etc), they share many of the same fears and behaviors as banks.
CU's have many of the same core values that OSS has. I've often wondered why 15 or so don't band together and create a full open source environment from the ground up. It would benefit members at the bottom line, as well as give the CU world important flexibility in competing with banks. Properly, executed, of course.
That pretty much ensures that all best music is there!
No wonder they're charging $2.50. If they only dealt with labels then this shows what the labels are going to push Apple for next year.
The situation is getting riper and riper for musicians to tell these folks to go jump and take the primary seat in dealing with digital distrubutors. Sooner or later it will happen.
If labels had any sense they would be charging nickels and dimes for very lightly DRM'd downloads to hold that market.
It's "of course" because you can't just install the industry supported Red Hat Linux without a purchased license.
Sure, you can compile it yourself or go with all the other precompiled RH options out there. But for that you don't really have a contract with RH do you? In that sense it's technically "open" but that's not what companies are doing. They are going with the proprietary version that asks for licensing info when you install it.
RHEL is a proprietary, purchased license to use. You can't say "I'm going to run critical application X on Red Hat" unless you're going to purchase a Red Hat license.
My point is that proprietary, purchased, supported distributions are gateways to a more open approach. It would be a short step to go from RHEL to one of the precompiled versions and support it yourself, but companies will generally go the proprietary route first.
My workplace recently started moving some critical servers from Solaris to Red Hat. Of course this is a proprietary (and often reviled) Linux. But that's not important.
What's important are the number of people installing test boxes and "piddle" boxes running Linux to get more familiar with it. Some of these are Red Hat, but a couple folks are starting to look at the other non-commercial packages. I fully expect more to do this.
Once corporate folks have put their feet on the Linux platform and found it will both hold weight and perform fabulously, they can then move on to the freer options. I think almost all of it has to do with support and CYA.
Personally, my philosophy is "best tool for the job". If that's a commercial/proprietary Linux, so be it. If it's Sun, so be it. MS...same deal. This adoption of proprietary Linux is a first step towards a similar, more open philosophy, so it shouldn't be poo-poo'd.
An engineer friend of mine just recorded 80 tracks of audio simultaneously using protools (dual G5 mac)...over an hour solid. It was a large live event with no second chances, and it went without a hitch.
I think one huge advantage of the commercial apps is the associated hardware. The DACs and off board procs do far more than a single workstation could do, and unfortunately open source hardware can't really be free. For big tasks, professional recording is much more than software.
There may be a way to cluster some slave workstations or something to provide the required horsepower, but some time-sensitive situations are going to require that such a system be very, very stable.
The Good: Using cheap components in a cluster to create scalability at a good value
The Bad: Using a cluster to cover up coding issues, architectural crap, or instabilities in the system
The Ugly: "the bad" gets so bad that it crashes the whole freakin' cluster. Why did we do this again?
Umm, why are you rebooting your phones during working hours? That seems like a bad idea.
Couple reasons...one, it's a relatively new technology and sometimes the phones reboot themselves. This has gotten rarer as the implementation has progressed, but it seems a bit odd to put that many points of failure out there when it affects completely unrelated functional systems.
Also, we are not the typical 9-5 shop. There are people working from 7 to midnight, and much of that is very important financial production work. Sure, they can tweak the phone system during the remaining hours, but this is difficult...again...particularly during early implementation when lots of tweaking takes place.
My point is that before combining the two worlds, a messed up phone system is a messed up phone system. Now that has the capacity to whack the PCs and the network too.
Not to mention the fact that it makes network guys phone guys--as if they don't already have enough to do.
We recently implemented a medium size lot at our shop...around 160 IP phones.
One thing that's really annoying is the 'bridging' factor in the phones. Seems most people freak at the cost of needing twice the Ethernet switch (not to mention if a large number of catV runs are required), so these phones bridge the connection from the PC.
In our phones, when you bounce the phone you bounce the network connection to the PC due to this bridging approach. Not fun when you have many folks working on open files.
Anyway, I'm sure there are implementations where this isn't the case, but just from asking around, the logistical and logical requirement of doubling the ethernet connections is something most people don't think about.
As someone who hires IT folks...I'm not sure that CS degrees actually correlate with "Computer Career" right now.
Some of the best and brightest SAs/DBAs/Operators/Developers I work with have degrees in all sorts of completely unrelated things. For whatever reason, CS and related degrees didn't appeal to the same spark that makes them "good".
On the other hand, some of the worst people have had MIS degrees.
Whatever these chillun's are learning, the best prep for a career in computing still seems to be making your games work b/t ages 12-21. The real indicator of how advanced we'll be in 10 years is the current ratio of solid-state console gaming to PC based gaming!
"Google is going to release their own operating system."
Why would they do that?
When you write software that runs on any operating system like Google does, you don't care about operating systems.
As applications become more abstracted from the OS by implementations of standards, operating systems matter less and less. Why do you think MS is so big on "embrace and extend"? They have to control the standards so they can funnel people into Windows.
Google is aimed squarely at the next chunk of value in computing: abstracted functionality. Let Apple and MS squabble over desktop searching. I can already search my Gmail from any of my several PCs. The remaining relevant applications won't be *too* far behind.
if you don't run DHCP, a fun project is to throw a DHCP server out there and see who gets configured.
It's amazing all the little devices that show up. Switches, old print servers, workstations tucked away in a corner somewhere that time forgot....now that many of these networks are starting to push 10 years, it's like archeology.
Every now and then you find something that you just can't physically find. Lotsa fun.
Slashdot Mirror
ADA was only one reason. The main reason was OS/2 was EOL and they couldn't really do anything with it. You haven't truly loathed an OS until you waited an hour for an ATM to boot, only to find out the next config change would require another reboot. ...and you had 5 more config changes to make.
...what the "gub" stands for in "gubmint"! Seriously, we'll completely kill Europe in collapse style points if we do this...
I remember as a kid seeing the pictures of the early shuttle missions where many, many tiles were missing. IIRC, it was called the "flying brickyard". Can't seem to find any of those pictures now.
But it seems like our shuttle program is suddenly pansified. I mean c'mon...there's a difference between blowing a hole in the wing and a few flaky tiles.
...is to make it possible to exist without it. Lots of indie artists and smaller labels would love to sell non-DRM tracks through iTunes. (another issue is bitrate, but that's a seperate issue).
Then you could label them with some catchy name for non-DRM and/or higher bitrate. The majors would be too scared of to use this, but the smaller players would jump at it. The result would be a way for those smaller players to compete. I can spend a buck and buy an inconvenient, crappy sounding major label song, or I can buy a better sounding indie song that doesn't have all that confusing DRM.
I bet the majors would follow...but that's the point. Major labels don't innovate, they print money using their artificial monopolies and cartel powers. Major labels follow. If they did innovate, iTunes wouldn't even be around. If Jobs is serious, then he needs to step up to the plate and use his power to back up his words.
It's great to hear someone as influential as Jobs talking the good talk, I'd like to see him fight the good fight.
The labels aren't going to change. It's like asking a cat to bark.
A) Cat's are generally disagreeable about anything...it's just who they are
B) A cat wouldn't even know how to bark anyway
When indie artists sign up via CDBaby and such, it automagically goes to all the foreign stores. Why? Because they are not labels.
That's the only way things are going to change.
knowing that the right to a national guard is forever enshrined as a God given right.... This "they mean a national guard" argument is about the stupidest argument on either side. It's the constitution and the bill of rights. Think about it.
On one hand, I think Theo and crew are right on. I've used OpenBSD for many years now and have seen the results of the no-compromise-and-take-no-prisoner approach in execution. The result is good.
Lack of compromise can be messy. But in the wide world o' technology compromise can often equal crap...particularly with regard to corporate interest, marketing, and profit motive.
On the other hand, the things discussed here are a)documentation and b)distribution rights.
These are both things very easily reversed down the road. If a brazillion of these laptops get out into the field, then the interested parties decide to pull a fast one, a) the documentation is out there for people to get their hands on (even if it's against the agreement) and b)it will be difficult to prevent distribution of the code when it's "For the children".
The tragedy in this scenario is that once again the artificial constructs of human legalities will be interfering with a great creation.
It would be good to have all this above board and cleared up, preferably along the lines of Theo's hard line stance. However, if it's not cleared up, it's not the end of the world. It'll just be another nasty grey area in the screwed up world of intellectual property.
Captain
Wesley
Crusher
for the Vista upgrade.
Jumping the gun a bit, probably.
I didn't truly appreciate how hard it is to get into orbit until I played with that freeware Orbiter game (heard about it on slashdot).
Granted, the geekiness of just flying spaceships around is not exactly compelling next to the current group of shoot 'em ups. The trick would be making something that was interesting and compelling. Get some good eye candy and the right balance of 'real' and 'fun'. Maybe there are some multiplayer possibilities.
Think of it as "today's astronauts" instead of "todays army".
I've worked in both banks and credit unions for awhile now.
I can understand Banks inherent unwillingness to contribute to OSS. I don't agree with it, but the culture is very averse to collaboration with anyone or anything outside the bank.
Credit unions, on the other hand, love to collaborate all over the place. They share ATMs, branches, information...all sorts of stuff. However, when it comes to things technology (core processing, etc), they share many of the same fears and behaviors as banks.
CU's have many of the same core values that OSS has. I've often wondered why 15 or so don't band together and create a full open source environment from the ground up. It would benefit members at the bottom line, as well as give the CU world important flexibility in competing with banks. Properly, executed, of course.
...when the author commented that R2 and 3P0 landing on tatooine was a coincidence.
I'm not that big of a SW geek, but even I know that there is a reason they ended up back in the same place.
The slate article seems more interested in the academic thought than the actual subject matter. They should at least be related.
That pretty much ensures that all best music is there!
No wonder they're charging $2.50. If they only dealt with labels then this shows what the labels are going to push Apple for next year.
The situation is getting riper and riper for musicians to tell these folks to go jump and take the primary seat in dealing with digital distrubutors. Sooner or later it will happen.
If labels had any sense they would be charging nickels and dimes for very lightly DRM'd downloads to hold that market.
"How, "of course?""
It's "of course" because you can't just install the industry supported Red Hat Linux without a purchased license.
Sure, you can compile it yourself or go with all the other precompiled RH options out there. But for that you don't really have a contract with RH do you? In that sense it's technically "open" but that's not what companies are doing. They are going with the proprietary version that asks for licensing info when you install it.
RHEL is a proprietary, purchased license to use. You can't say "I'm going to run critical application X on Red Hat" unless you're going to purchase a Red Hat license.
My point is that proprietary, purchased, supported distributions are gateways to a more open approach. It would be a short step to go from RHEL to one of the precompiled versions and support it yourself, but companies will generally go the proprietary route first.
My workplace recently started moving some critical servers from Solaris to Red Hat. Of course this is a proprietary (and often reviled) Linux. But that's not important.
What's important are the number of people installing test boxes and "piddle" boxes running Linux to get more familiar with it. Some of these are Red Hat, but a couple folks are starting to look at the other non-commercial packages. I fully expect more to do this.
Once corporate folks have put their feet on the Linux platform and found it will both hold weight and perform fabulously, they can then move on to the freer options. I think almost all of it has to do with support and CYA.
Personally, my philosophy is "best tool for the job". If that's a commercial/proprietary Linux, so be it. If it's Sun, so be it. MS...same deal. This adoption of proprietary Linux is a first step towards a similar, more open philosophy, so it shouldn't be poo-poo'd.
An engineer friend of mine just recorded 80 tracks of audio simultaneously using protools (dual G5 mac)...over an hour solid. It was a large live event with no second chances, and it went without a hitch.
I think one huge advantage of the commercial apps is the associated hardware. The DACs and off board procs do far more than a single workstation could do, and unfortunately open source hardware can't really be free. For big tasks, professional recording is much more than software.
There may be a way to cluster some slave workstations or something to provide the required horsepower, but some time-sensitive situations are going to require that such a system be very, very stable.
The Good: Using cheap components in a cluster to create scalability at a good value The Bad: Using a cluster to cover up coding issues, architectural crap, or instabilities in the system The Ugly: "the bad" gets so bad that it crashes the whole freakin' cluster. Why did we do this again?
Has anyone played with that Orbetor Simulator?
Seeing this animation made me realize just how good that programmer is. The visualizations on that simulator nailed it pretty well. And it's free too!
Greetings Pluto!
I am barrister JOSEPH ZOOMANEENE from Earth. 2 Years ago a space probe crashed on Jupiter, killing my rich uncle....
I've noticed that Yahoo's crawl visits my site more frequently...but Google's crawl seems to be intelligent about how often it crawls.
If I update alot, google crawls more. Yahoo doesn't seem to care.
So all these folks talking about yahoo being better may be off the mark. Why crawl all the time when you can only crawl when necessary?
Umm, why are you rebooting your phones during working hours? That seems like a bad idea.
Couple reasons...one, it's a relatively new technology and sometimes the phones reboot themselves. This has gotten rarer as the implementation has progressed, but it seems a bit odd to put that many points of failure out there when it affects completely unrelated functional systems.
Also, we are not the typical 9-5 shop. There are people working from 7 to midnight, and much of that is very important financial production work. Sure, they can tweak the phone system during the remaining hours, but this is difficult...again...particularly during early implementation when lots of tweaking takes place.
My point is that before combining the two worlds, a messed up phone system is a messed up phone system. Now that has the capacity to whack the PCs and the network too.
Not to mention the fact that it makes network guys phone guys--as if they don't already have enough to do.
We recently implemented a medium size lot at our shop...around 160 IP phones.
One thing that's really annoying is the 'bridging' factor in the phones. Seems most people freak at the cost of needing twice the Ethernet switch (not to mention if a large number of catV runs are required), so these phones bridge the connection from the PC.
In our phones, when you bounce the phone you bounce the network connection to the PC due to this bridging approach. Not fun when you have many folks working on open files.
Anyway, I'm sure there are implementations where this isn't the case, but just from asking around, the logistical and logical requirement of doubling the ethernet connections is something most people don't think about.
As someone who hires IT folks...I'm not sure that CS degrees actually correlate with "Computer Career" right now.
Some of the best and brightest SAs/DBAs/Operators/Developers I work with have degrees in all sorts of completely unrelated things. For whatever reason, CS and related degrees didn't appeal to the same spark that makes them "good".
On the other hand, some of the worst people have had MIS degrees.
Whatever these chillun's are learning, the best prep for a career in computing still seems to be making your games work b/t ages 12-21. The real indicator of how advanced we'll be in 10 years is the current ratio of solid-state console gaming to PC based gaming!
"Google is going to release their own operating system."
Why would they do that?
When you write software that runs on any operating system like Google does, you don't care about operating systems.
As applications become more abstracted from the OS by implementations of standards, operating systems matter less and less. Why do you think MS is so big on "embrace and extend"? They have to control the standards so they can funnel people into Windows.
Google is aimed squarely at the next chunk of value in computing: abstracted functionality. Let Apple and MS squabble over desktop searching. I can already search my Gmail from any of my several PCs. The remaining relevant applications won't be *too* far behind.
if you don't run DHCP, a fun project is to throw a DHCP server out there and see who gets configured.
It's amazing all the little devices that show up. Switches, old print servers, workstations tucked away in a corner somewhere that time forgot....now that many of these networks are starting to push 10 years, it's like archeology.
Every now and then you find something that you just can't physically find. Lotsa fun.