What's amazing about this system is that it increasingly punishes the very consumer who pays for the service. I want to believe in having high-definition content. I want to be able to have my PC/TV/PVR/music-playing/photo-viewing/game machine convergence box, and I want to have the freedom of running software of my choosing on that box, with hardware of my choosing. In fact, I'd be willing to pay a sizeable amount of money to have that.
What is missing is a media option / cable company / whatever that will let me have the freedom to use their services in the way that I want -- because when it comes down to it, *I'm the one who is paying for it*. I'm the one wanting to *buy* the service, not steal it, yet I'm the one worst off in the situation.
I'm continually surprised by how angry this actually makes me. I think, "Give me my rights back! Something has to be done about this!" "Trusted" anything is about people, not computing, hardware, and encryption.
Then I remember that it's all just TV and movies.
I'll read a book until someone gives me fair use back... but then I remember that, increasingly, there is so little power that the consumer has.
Having been in constant pursuit of the perfect setup, I have found that silence is golden. The importance of a very quiet computer is critical for my own concentration. I'd put it above having a good keyboard. However, I've found it frustrating to find adequate components at reasonable prices. Although sites like SilentPC do a good job of sorting out what is worthwhile, I simply wish component manufacturers would consider noise levels as a very high priority!
The thing about this: I think our minds are distracted somewhat unconsciously. Every time the hard drive whirs back up, I'm more likely to become distracted, and more likely to let something slip, but it took me a long time before I recognized this pattern.
Being a recent hire to Amazon, I found this article especially amusing, because Cendant Mobility is handling my relocation to Amazon (and I assume they handle the relocations for many others to Amazon as well).
Friends with the enemy?
Of course, it's more likely that patent law is the rightful enemy.
Compiling is always the joke, but there are much more significant barriers to adoption. First let me say that I believe Gentoo is the most powerful distribution available. However, a graphical installer still does not address what I believe are the most difficult aspects of configuring Gentoo.
For example, where in the documentation does it mention starting/etc/init.d/famd at boot? (This will improve KDE's file monitoring responsiveness.) Does a user know to chmod his RTC? How to umask a vfat partition so that users can access it? How to setup multiple sound cards? How to set up your application sound server settings? How to enable the kernel laptop mode? How to setup power management runlevels? Which kernel modules need to be added to modules.autoload? How to make fonts appear cleanly and consistently?
A second major problem with Gentoo is the uncontrolled proliferation of USE flags. The vast majority of flags are for individual packages. A new user would be likely to completely miss the importance of configuring many of the higher level use flags.
Unfortunately Gentoo is plagued by naive users who believe that--just because they have a Gentoo system that boots--they are somehow empowered. The largest reason they feel that way is because their system is 'optimized' for their hardware. The truth is an ignorant user's CFLAGS are more likely to hinder his system's performance.
Gentoo is an incredible distribution; however, it has a long way to go in terms of usability. While I am excited at the prospect of a graphical installer, I hope that these larger issues can also be addressed. These issues are what make Linux difficult, and fun.
AllOfMP3 uses DRM-free files for all of their content. Moreover, many files support online encoding, in nearly every useful format that exists, at your choice of bitrate.
I wish more music services would follow this example.
Of course, I also wish every music site out there used their pay by the megabyte approach, at ridiculously low rates. I actually end up spending much more on music, because I'm not afraid to waste a dollar getting a few new albums. It's proof that cheap, DRM-free online distribution can work.
The true problem is that, right now, we're stuck in a transition where there is not yet an accepted binary standard. So yes, right now there is a problem in debugging. But give it a few years, and (hopefully!) there won't be.
However (as I tried to emphasize), ASCII is binary too. It's not that binary is inherently more difficult to debug. It's that we need a binary standard as universal as ASCII has become.
Imagine debugging before in the 1960's, when ASCII wasn't standardized. We forget about those times now, because ASCII has been there for nearly 50 years. But go ahead, take a look.
Believe it or not, there were over 60 binary text standards in use before ASCII. I think we should be thanking Bob Bemer (the father of ASCII) a whole lot more often.
The fact is, ASCII is a binary format. It just happens to be a format that has become universally accepted. As the article says, there are certainly benefits to having ASCII-based XML: "The fact that XML is ordinary plain text that you can pull into Notepad... has turned out to be a boon, in practice," he said. "Any time you depart from that straight-and-narrow path, you risk loss of interoperability."
However, if anything, XML has shown us the power of well-structured information. XML has given the possibility of universal interoperability. Developments in XML-based technologies have led us to the point where we know enough now to create a standard for structured information that will last for several decades.
It's time that we had a new ASCII. That standard should be binary XML.
When I think of the time that has been wasted by every developer in the history of Computer Science, writing and rewriting basic parsing code, I shudder. Binary XML would produce a standard such that an efficient, universal data structure language would allow significant advances in what is technically possible with our data. For example: why is what we put on disk any different from what's in memory? Binary XML could erase this distinction.
A binary XML standard needs to become ubiquitous, so that just as Notepad can open any ASCII file today, SuperNotepad could open any file in existance, or look at any portion of your computer's memory, in an informative, structured manner.
What's more, we have the technology to do this now.
While this is a nice feature, it is strictly (at least for now), syntactic. The difference is that the expense of casting is still occurring under the hood; you just no longer have to bother typing it out. I believe people are referring to it as 'autoboxing'. Therefore, these strongly typed container classes are not as powerful as C++'s templates.
I read a pretty good interview w/ Eckel and that guy who has done most of the work on C#. The creator of C# was bashing Java's generics, because they aren't giving the full performance possible. And I agree. There is still such a thing as performance critical code, and Java can make it frustratingly hard to write it. Providing featureful, fast data structures would be a good place to start.
Pizza was an alternative implementation of generics for Java. I wish that Sun had chosen this project as their basis for 1.5's generics, rather than GJ (Generic Java). I believe its implementation is much closer to that of C++'s templates. I'd love to use pizza, but it's just not wide-spread enough to justify it in enterprise code.
From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."
The Zaurus both has superior hardware to the Agenda, and a superior community has been built around it (partly due to the fact that they keep evolving by putting out improved models). In some sense, the Agenda fails the 'useful hardware' test that I stated above.
Agenda, IIRC, was released in 2001, and the company making it soon after went out of business. The fact is, if it weren't for open-source, there wouldn't be anything new you'd be doing with your PDA. The fact that you can still find software for it after 4 years says something.
My favorite thing about my Zaurus...
on
Zaurus SL-6000 Review
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...is that it isn't instantly obselete. The open-source nature of the software gaurantees that people will always be tinkering, improving, and interested in any genuinely useful piece of hardware (which, with a WiFi card and a spacious sD card, it certainly is).
I love being able to know that many of the advances people make for the new SL-6000 will be equally applicable to my SL-5500, because the source is open!
In contrast, my roommate's older WinCE PDA, even though it has some nice hardware, is stuck with old software. There will never be anything new that he can do with it, because there is no upgrade path.
I believe there was a DVD distro of version 3.3, that was handed out only at a some various Linux conferences. There were bandwidth concerns, so it was never placed on the official mirrors.
IIRC, the DVD was given out at Linux-tag, in Germany a few months ago. If you google around, you might be able to find it.
Why Gentoo Should Be the next Debian
on
Gentoo Linux Musings
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Debian's true success has been in spawning so many other interesting distros (Knoppix, Libranet, Lindows, and on and on).
I believe however, that Gentoo is even better suited to this task. A fix in the source is a fix for every distro, where as a fix in a package fixes only a single release of a single distro.
With the recent release of catalyst, gentoo makes even more sense in this role.
I guess there are two knocks against Gentoo as a 'distribution base distribution': installation, and packaging. Honestly though, packaging -- once the source has been compiled once -- now works great. That's what the knockoff distros would be doing. Installation, they've left somewhat open-ended. Every distro seems to make an installer though, so I can assume it'd be easy to make one for a Gentoo knockoff.
Gentoo's source database is simply of the highest quality. I think it is the distro to watch, but because it is so useful as a technology to create truly customized, useful distros.
At least for my mobo, APIC support is horrible. Everything gets "spurious IRQs" and the computer crashes away into oblivion. With certain kernel's, all looks well until my NIC freezes up, or my soundcard loops, or my.... uh.
Couldn't arrays be done as/array-name/0,/array-name/1,... etc?
And for m-n mappings, I assume you mean a hash table. Couldn't this be done in almost exactly the same way/hash-name/key? Then to get the reverse mapping, we use some utility like find.
These new filesystem ideas are incredibly important. I've had this stuff in the back of my head for years. The biggest barriers: first, a syntax that people can understand (it will be very easy to forget what's metadata, and what's not, so why should we be accessing it in a different way), and second, adoption. As many people have pointed out, this breaks all kinds of compatibility.
Another perhaps unforseen benefit: the filesystem could become an interesting abstraction layer for component based software development, rather than using an architecture like COM, or CORBA (although it feels like we have enough component architectures already)...
Slashdot Mirror
What is missing is a media option / cable company / whatever that will let me have the freedom to use their services in the way that I want -- because when it comes down to it, *I'm the one who is paying for it*. I'm the one wanting to *buy* the service, not steal it, yet I'm the one worst off in the situation.
I'm continually surprised by how angry this actually makes me. I think, "Give me my rights back! Something has to be done about this!" "Trusted" anything is about people, not computing, hardware, and encryption.
Then I remember that it's all just TV and movies.
I'll read a book until someone gives me fair use back... but then I remember that, increasingly, there is so little power that the consumer has.
The thing about this: I think our minds are distracted somewhat unconsciously. Every time the hard drive whirs back up, I'm more likely to become distracted, and more likely to let something slip, but it took me a long time before I recognized this pattern.
Friends with the enemy?
Of course, it's more likely that patent law is the rightful enemy.
For example, where in the documentation does it mention starting /etc/init.d/famd at boot? (This will improve KDE's file monitoring responsiveness.) Does a user know to chmod his RTC? How to umask a vfat partition so that users can access it? How to setup multiple sound cards? How to set up your application sound server settings? How to enable the kernel laptop mode? How to setup power management runlevels? Which kernel modules need to be added to modules.autoload? How to make fonts appear cleanly and consistently?
A second major problem with Gentoo is the uncontrolled proliferation of USE flags. The vast majority of flags are for individual packages. A new user would be likely to completely miss the importance of configuring many of the higher level use flags.
Unfortunately Gentoo is plagued by naive users who believe that--just because they have a Gentoo system that boots--they are somehow empowered. The largest reason they feel that way is because their system is 'optimized' for their hardware. The truth is an ignorant user's CFLAGS are more likely to hinder his system's performance.
Gentoo is an incredible distribution; however, it has a long way to go in terms of usability. While I am excited at the prospect of a graphical installer, I hope that these larger issues can also be addressed. These issues are what make Linux difficult, and fun.
I wish more music services would follow this example.
Of course, I also wish every music site out there used their pay by the megabyte approach, at ridiculously low rates. I actually end up spending much more on music, because I'm not afraid to waste a dollar getting a few new albums. It's proof that cheap, DRM-free online distribution can work.
However (as I tried to emphasize), ASCII is binary too. It's not that binary is inherently more difficult to debug. It's that we need a binary standard as universal as ASCII has become.
Imagine debugging before in the 1960's, when ASCII wasn't standardized. We forget about those times now, because ASCII has been there for nearly 50 years. But go ahead, take a look.
Believe it or not, there were over 60 binary text standards in use before ASCII. I think we should be thanking Bob Bemer (the father of ASCII) a whole lot more often.
However, if anything, XML has shown us the power of well-structured information. XML has given the possibility of universal interoperability. Developments in XML-based technologies have led us to the point where we know enough now to create a standard for structured information that will last for several decades.
It's time that we had a new ASCII. That standard should be binary XML.
When I think of the time that has been wasted by every developer in the history of Computer Science, writing and rewriting basic parsing code, I shudder. Binary XML would produce a standard such that an efficient, universal data structure language would allow significant advances in what is technically possible with our data. For example: why is what we put on disk any different from what's in memory? Binary XML could erase this distinction.
A binary XML standard needs to become ubiquitous, so that just as Notepad can open any ASCII file today, SuperNotepad could open any file in existance, or look at any portion of your computer's memory, in an informative, structured manner. What's more, we have the technology to do this now.
I read a pretty good interview w/ Eckel and that guy who has done most of the work on C#. The creator of C# was bashing Java's generics, because they aren't giving the full performance possible. And I agree. There is still such a thing as performance critical code, and Java can make it frustratingly hard to write it. Providing featureful, fast data structures would be a good place to start.
I can't find the article I'm referencing, but this sums up Eckel's view.
Pizza was an alternative implementation of generics for Java. I wish that Sun had chosen this project as their basis for 1.5's generics, rather than GJ (Generic Java). I believe its implementation is much closer to that of C++'s templates. I'd love to use pizza, but it's just not wide-spread enough to justify it in enterprise code.
Check this out if you're so concerned. It's easy. It'll fix the icon spacing.
Why do they bother wasting screen real estate?
From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."
linky linky!
Agenda, IIRC, was released in 2001, and the company making it soon after went out of business. The fact is, if it weren't for open-source, there wouldn't be anything new you'd be doing with your PDA. The fact that you can still find software for it after 4 years says something.
I love being able to know that many of the advances people make for the new SL-6000 will be equally applicable to my SL-5500, because the source is open!
In contrast, my roommate's older WinCE PDA, even though it has some nice hardware, is stuck with old software. There will never be anything new that he can do with it, because there is no upgrade path.
IIRC, the DVD was given out at Linux-tag, in Germany a few months ago. If you google around, you might be able to find it.
I believe however, that Gentoo is even better suited to this task. A fix in the source is a fix for every distro, where as a fix in a package fixes only a single release of a single distro.
With the recent release of catalyst, gentoo makes even more sense in this role.
I guess there are two knocks against Gentoo as a 'distribution base distribution': installation, and packaging. Honestly though, packaging -- once the source has been compiled once -- now works great. That's what the knockoff distros would be doing. Installation, they've left somewhat open-ended. Every distro seems to make an installer though, so I can assume it'd be easy to make one for a Gentoo knockoff.
Gentoo's source database is simply of the highest quality. I think it is the distro to watch, but because it is so useful as a technology to create truly customized, useful distros.
Somebody may have already pointed it out, but...
the version of the Gmail Privacy Policy is v. 040104.
Who knows? Maybe that was the reason for the delay. It'd look even more suspicious if their fix came out the same day as OpenSSL's.
Maybe it could use the existing ntfs vfs to get the ntfs.sys of the partition, and then load it.
I think it would be important that a consumer can watch a DVD on a competing OS...
Now they'll be a new exploit for the next Matrix movie!
Maybe 2.6 will fix it.
My fonts becoming all sorts of sizes once I put my resolution above 1280x1024
The fact that regular Xinerama and nvidia's twinview xinerama extensions don't work together.
KDE having wwwaay to many poorly placed options.
The 'More programs' submenu on (nearly) every KDE menu.
Not having OpenGL across multiple Xinerama heads.
My BT878 tv-tuner card not tuning correctly without significant manual adjustment.
The fact that I have to know I have a BT878 type=78 tv-tuner card.
The fact that I had to spend hours guessing LIRC options for my KWorld remote control.
And the list goes on and on... don't get me wrong though, I do love linux! It's just a difficult love at times.
mindview.net/Books
You'll be glad you did!
And for m-n mappings, I assume you mean a hash table. Couldn't this be done in almost exactly the same way /hash-name/key? Then to get the reverse mapping, we use some utility like find.
These new filesystem ideas are incredibly important. I've had this stuff in the back of my head for years. The biggest barriers: first, a syntax that people can understand (it will be very easy to forget what's metadata, and what's not, so why should we be accessing it in a different way), and second, adoption. As many people have pointed out, this breaks all kinds of compatibility. Another perhaps unforseen benefit: the filesystem could become an interesting abstraction layer for component based software development, rather than using an architecture like COM, or CORBA (although it feels like we have enough component architectures already)...