for keeping the US economy strong. It's nice to know that when anyone pays a tax in Austrailia, they also pay a tax to Redmond to keep our economy here alive.
I'm curious why they don't sell 1000 limited-edition-gold-plated Harry Potter books a month early; and 1,000,000 silver plated ones a week early for outrageously high prices.
Seems like a very nice way to get a little additional revenue & a lot of extra profit.
And before complaining that this isn't fair to poor people, please consider that this is exactly the same as what they do when they sell a hardcover first and a paperback later.
Parent wrote:
The GPL license is perfect for developers.
The BSD license is perfect for everybody else.
I'd say
GPL is what I want when my company is *buying* software - ensures we'll always have access to any upgrades & updates without having to pay recuring fees.
BSD is what I want when my company is *selling* the software - it ensures that we can always charge our existing customer base for upgrades and get a recurring revenue stream that our investors love
For example, if IBM contributed code to FreeBSD, then Sun would be able to add that to Solaris.
Not a chance. If IBM contributed code to FreeBSD they would do it in a distro they forked internally and sold. Why the hell would they give it to one of their most direct competitors!?!
The Creative Commonslicense wizard lets you choose exactly what protections you want to enforce with your license (allowing modifications; requiring sharing; etc).
They at least deserved mention in TFA.
But regarding the specific GPL-vs-BSD troll; I must say I prefer GPL; because every GPL'd project I worked on at previous employers, I can still find that code out there if I ever need it again. With the BSD'd stuff I saw at a previous employer, there's no way for me to get the same version I had used there.
Personally, I see commercial music as not at all different from Microsoft software. Both are focused entirely on selling the largest volume through advertising and marketing. Neither are of much interest to me.
I wish the RIAA the greatest successes in stopping the music pirates - because this will create the opportunity for a Creative Commons licensed music industry in the exact same way Microsoft's absurd prices for commodities creates the Linux/MySQL opportunity..
You can use other microcontrollers for Legos too.
on
Evolving Lego Mindstorms
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· Score: 5, Informative
If you need a more powerful microcontroller for your legos, consider a GameBoy. Programmable in C or C++, has Sound and a color LCD display, and with a 32-bit RISC CPU, you can do far more with this than the current Mindstorm microcontroller.
Bluetooth modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action
The article misses the fact that Microsoft and Linux may be successful BECAUSE they make the Right tradeoffs between bug fixes and features and time to market.
from TFA: "Cox revealed that although Linus is good at developing code, he does not enjoy some of the other jobs that go along with software development such as bug fixing and beta testing."
Note that Linus and Microsoft are both being accused of the same thing.... some purists are arguing that they don't focus enough on the bug fixing. The reality is, that no matter what focus you will NEVER have a bug free system. All software makes such feature/stability tradeoffs perhaps the most important challenge of any software project is balancing the tradeoffs of perfectionism vs. time-to-market of bleeding edge features that is best for their market. Other operating systems that do focus excessively on security for their "core" offering tend to fall behind in features (like the old mainframe software banks use, etc). Sure such software has its place; but it's not the mainstream market.
Note that for the security consious customer, though, Red Hat and SuSE both have higher-security releases of their own (like the Common Criteria vesrions like this one; and releases like Debian Stable that also focus on security and bug fixes only. By people who don't understand that those releases are targeting a different market, those branches are often criticised for being filled with obsolete software.
It doesn't have to be Linus's job to handle the most conservative customer's needs.
I don't think that corporations would care about this.
Well. Then what is it they pay for?
Bug fixes? Not a chance - when I called Oracle or Microsoft about bugs / crashes in their databases the best answer I get is "Wait for our next release" and the worst answer I get is "ok, i've logged your report". When I ask the same to Postgresql's mailinglist, I get a patch the next day.
Risk of end of life software? Not a chance - when a commercial software vendor does poorly (HP) support for much of their software is killed, when a commmercial software vendor does well (peoplesoft) many of their product lines are killed. When a product is open source, regardless of if it does well (Ximian) or poorly (Blender) it's products survive.
If it's not for this generous monitary guarantee, what is the appeal?
Using cryptic, short variable names also shaves valuable microseconds off compile time and run time.
There's nothing wrong with short variable names.
Thus quoth Linus in the Linux Coding Style guide.
Chapter 3: Naming
C is a Spartan language, and so should your naming be. Unlike Modula-2 and Pascal programmers, C programmers do not use cute names like ThisVariableIsATemporaryCounter. A C programmer would call that variable "tmp", which is much easier to write, and not the least more difficult to understand.
HOWEVER, while mixed-case names are frowned upon, descriptive names for global variables are a must. To call a global function "foo" is a shooting offense.
GLOBAL variables (to be used only if you _really_ need them) need to have descriptive names, as do global functions. If you have a function that counts the number of active users, you should call that "count_active_users()" or similar, you should _not_ call it "cntusr()".
Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can check those, and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy programs.
LOCAL variable names should be short, and to the point. If you have some random integer loop counter, it should probably be called "i". Calling it "loop_counter" is non-productive, if there is no chance of it being mis-understood. Similarly, "tmp" can be just about any type of variable that is used to hold a temporary value.
If you are afraid to mix up your local variable names, you have another problem, which is called the function-growth-hormone-imbalance syndrome. See next chapter.
The sense of ballance, and quite a few other "feelngs" have nothing to do with touch, smell, taste, hearing, or seeing.
Other possible ones would be hunger, thirst, diziness, nausea from food poisoning, etc.
Or even better, use a more powerful microcontroller for your legos like a GameBoy.
Programmable in C or C++, has Sound and a color LCD display, and with a 32-bit RISC CPU, you can do far more with this than the current Mindstorm microcontroller.
Bluetooth
modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget
has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action
This seems an interesting hole in the GPL - use GPL'd technology, but only deliver thing parts of the client to the users; and keep all your GPL-tech-using-yet-proprietary stuff on your server. Since you never "distribute" the server side code, seems it is your to do whatever you want with it.
Is there a need for a new Creative Commons license type that says "if you server services using this technology, I need to share the source"?
I think no existing license covers that need very well today.
I love this. It's like the old NeXT Computers that had a general-purpose coprocessor for it's audio (a DSP wasn't it). Moving away from the 'triangle-only' acceleration will be a great advance for all sorts of computing needs.
Personally, I'd like to see search algorithms (perhaps data-search, perhaps even video search) move to suchc a co-processor.
Balmer doesn't let us research it ourselves!
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt," Ballmer said. "I just think people should go out and research this for themselves."
I'd love it if proprietary vendors allowed us the capability to evaluate the risks ourselves. I'll believe the story about proprietary being safer only after Microsoft lets customers audit their source to let me verify that their closed-source stuff doesn't infringe on patents I may be worried about. Note that they let
important customers audit their source for security reasons. Losing mission critical infrastructor because a vendor didn't have the rights to it could be even more harmful to my business than a security hole (which I presume would be easily patched).
If my company depends on a closed-source application, and that application infringes on someone elses patent, I wouldn't want that software yanked out from under me. At least in an open source environment I can understand that the offending parts could be coded around. With closed source, it's more likely the vendor will have to stop providing the software. Also, in the open source case, there's a better likelyhood that people have scoured the source code looking for infringing patents.
So far most of the big vendors, MSFT included, have a pretty weak concept of indemnification - they'll cover purchases prices, and the like. Heck even Gentoo.org'll probably indemnify you the cost of the purchase price. Unless they start offering far better indemnification (cover the costs of migrating off their infringing software to an alternative), I'm better off with open source.
I, for one, wish the MPAA, Microsoft, the RIAA, etc all the best in their attempts to protect and overcharge insane amounts for their content and media.
The more restricted the $40 DRM-enabled Brittney-Spears Clone that can only be played 3 times before triggering the $2/viewing per-use license becomes; the more opportunity there is for Creative-Commons-licensed music to become popular and mainstream.
As Sony/MPAA/Microsoft and nuts like Zaentz(the guy who sued Fogerty for sounding like Fogerty, and then brought us LotR) keep gettting greedier and greedier; they are in fact _creating_ the same kind of opportunity for reasonably licensed Arts that similar nutcases did for Open Source software when they thought they could charge $100 for commodities like OS's and Relational databases.
Let them kill themselves. Personally, I'll go see local bands that let me tape & publish MP3s of their shows and actually want people to hear their stuff.
First, we need hard drives and system buses that can get the data moving at this speed.
But you don't need consumer drives that fast. I suspect the plan (of the carriers) is to have your data on big storage arrays at your ISP - for better lock-in to your ISP.
This bandwidth, if it's low latency, would make a thin/diskless client much more practical than it is today.
"ooh, scary, pay us protection-money for indemnification"
and Sun's
"come buy a legal linux from us because we paid SCO"
IBM, of all the vendors, took by far the most productive aproach without trying to leverage and further hype SCO's fud. They're certainly my prefered Linux vendor, and probably will be unless/until their position changes radically.
Dominate supercomputing & buy SUN. Seriously
on
Yet More Google Gazing
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Google almost certainly already has the most scalable database, and scalable file systems in the world. What they don't have yet is a way to capatalize on their supercomputing expertise.
I think they will buy Sun, who has a different set of strengths in high-end computing (customer contacts).
I expect plenty of mergers (perhaps them buying, perhaps someone buying them); but perhaps not Microsoft.
Here's the trend I see of lots of Kleiner companies like Sun, Compaq, AOL, Netscape, Electronic Arts, and yes, Google.
The begin with lots of top-talent in lots of areas - academic, practical, financial, etc. Eventually they do very well (Sun, Netsape and AOL come to mind as the examples most familiar to/.); and some of the bright peole move on - some to start their own things, some to retire, or get promoted to management. Whatever the reason, most (notable exceptions, electroninc arts, genentech) fade after a while; IMHO because the best people moved on.
Then KPCB'll invest in those best people's next venture that will once again take on Microsoft in the next hot area of High Tech.
IMHO it never was Netscape vs MSFT, or Sun vs MSFT or AOL vs MSFT -- it's always been KPCB vs MSFT; with Sun, NSCP, AOL, Google just minor divisions of KPCB's virtual company bound together by a common culture of great innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
Also worth noting, Bill Gates is one of the world's biggest funders of measles research programs.
Slashdot had articles when Patrick Volkerding of Slackware was suffering from an illness.
What's wrong with sharing the same compassion when fellow IT guys at Microsoft have illnesses.
Considering
- Linux is the leading OS in the Top-500 supercomputers, and
- Linux runs large clusters such as Google, and
- Linux runs
a bunch of stuff for Schwab, ETrade, etc -
- and this other computer company that's a bit bigger than HP called IBM already noticed Linux
I think this article is badly misnamed.The article should have been titled
"Linux Propelling HP into Truly 'Big' Time".
for keeping the US economy strong. It's nice to know that when anyone pays a tax in Austrailia, they also pay a tax to Redmond to keep our economy here alive.
Seems like a very nice way to get a little additional revenue & a lot of extra profit.
And before complaining that this isn't fair to poor people, please consider that this is exactly the same as what they do when they sell a hardcover first and a paperback later.
Methinks this earlier blog that analyzed the same device was perhaps even more informative. I trust this other blogger's explanation more because it's pictures look more attractive.
The GPL license is perfect for developers. The BSD license is perfect for everybody else.
I'd say
Not a chance. If IBM contributed code to FreeBSD they would do it in a distro they forked internally and sold. Why the hell would they give it to one of their most direct competitors!?!
They at least deserved mention in TFA.
But regarding the specific GPL-vs-BSD troll; I must say I prefer GPL; because every GPL'd project I worked on at previous employers, I can still find that code out there if I ever need it again. With the BSD'd stuff I saw at a previous employer, there's no way for me to get the same version I had used there.
Personally, I see commercial music as not at all different from Microsoft software. Both are focused entirely on selling the largest volume through advertising and marketing. Neither are of much interest to me.
I wish the RIAA the greatest successes in stopping the music pirates - because this will create the opportunity for a Creative Commons licensed music industry in the exact same way Microsoft's absurd prices for commodities creates the Linux/MySQL opportunity..
Bluetooth modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action
from TFA: "Cox revealed that although Linus is good at developing code, he does not enjoy some of the other jobs that go along with software development such as bug fixing and beta testing."
Note that Linus and Microsoft are both being accused of the same thing.... some purists are arguing that they don't focus enough on the bug fixing. The reality is, that no matter what focus you will NEVER have a bug free system. All software makes such feature/stability tradeoffs perhaps the most important challenge of any software project is balancing the tradeoffs of perfectionism vs. time-to-market of bleeding edge features that is best for their market. Other operating systems that do focus excessively on security for their "core" offering tend to fall behind in features (like the old mainframe software banks use, etc). Sure such software has its place; but it's not the mainstream market.
Note that for the security consious customer, though, Red Hat and SuSE both have higher-security releases of their own (like the Common Criteria vesrions like this one; and releases like Debian Stable that also focus on security and bug fixes only. By people who don't understand that those releases are targeting a different market, those branches are often criticised for being filled with obsolete software.
It doesn't have to be Linus's job to handle the most conservative customer's needs.
Well. Then what is it they pay for?
- Bug fixes? Not a chance - when I called Oracle or Microsoft about bugs / crashes in their databases the best answer I get is "Wait for our next release" and the worst answer I get is "ok, i've logged your report". When I ask the same to Postgresql's mailinglist, I get a patch the next day.
- Risk of end of life software? Not a chance - when a commercial software vendor does poorly (HP) support for much of their software is killed, when a commmercial software vendor does well (peoplesoft) many of their product lines are killed. When a product is open source, regardless of if it does well (Ximian) or poorly (Blender) it's products survive.
If it's not for this generous monitary guarantee, what is the appeal?There's nothing wrong with short variable names.
Thus quoth Linus in the Linux Coding Style guide.
The sense of ballance, and quite a few other "feelngs" have nothing to do with touch, smell, taste, hearing, or seeing. Other possible ones would be hunger, thirst, diziness, nausea from food poisoning, etc.
Interesting!?! This was clearly an attempt at Funny
Bluetooth modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action
Is there a need for a new Creative Commons license type that says "if you server services using this technology, I need to share the source"?
I think no existing license covers that need very well today.
Personally, I'd like to see search algorithms (perhaps data-search, perhaps even video search) move to suchc a co-processor.
I'd love it if proprietary vendors allowed us the capability to evaluate the risks ourselves. I'll believe the story about proprietary being safer only after Microsoft lets customers audit their source to let me verify that their closed-source stuff doesn't infringe on patents I may be worried about. Note that they let important customers audit their source for security reasons. Losing mission critical infrastructor because a vendor didn't have the rights to it could be even more harmful to my business than a security hole (which I presume would be easily patched).
If my company depends on a closed-source application, and that application infringes on someone elses patent, I wouldn't want that software yanked out from under me. At least in an open source environment I can understand that the offending parts could be coded around. With closed source, it's more likely the vendor will have to stop providing the software. Also, in the open source case, there's a better likelyhood that people have scoured the source code looking for infringing patents.
So far most of the big vendors, MSFT included, have a pretty weak concept of indemnification - they'll cover purchases prices, and the like. Heck even Gentoo.org'll probably indemnify you the cost of the purchase price. Unless they start offering far better indemnification (cover the costs of migrating off their infringing software to an alternative), I'm better off with open source.
I, for one, wish the MPAA, Microsoft, the RIAA, etc all the best in their attempts to protect and overcharge insane amounts for their content and media.
The more restricted the $40 DRM-enabled Brittney-Spears Clone that can only be played 3 times before triggering the $2/viewing per-use license becomes; the more opportunity there is for Creative-Commons-licensed music to become popular and mainstream.
As Sony/MPAA/Microsoft and nuts like Zaentz(the guy who sued Fogerty for sounding like Fogerty, and then brought us LotR) keep gettting greedier and greedier; they are in fact _creating_ the same kind of opportunity for reasonably licensed Arts that similar nutcases did for Open Source software when they thought they could charge $100 for commodities like OS's and Relational databases.
Let them kill themselves. Personally, I'll go see local bands that let me tape & publish MP3s of their shows and actually want people to hear their stuff.
But you don't need consumer drives that fast. I suspect the plan (of the carriers) is to have your data on big storage arrays at your ISP - for better lock-in to your ISP.
This bandwidth, if it's low latency, would make a thin/diskless client much more practical than it is today.
It sure beats HP's
and Sun's IBM, of all the vendors, took by far the most productive aproach without trying to leverage and further hype SCO's fud. They're certainly my prefered Linux vendor, and probably will be unless/until their position changes radically.I think they will buy Sun, who has a different set of strengths in high-end computing (customer contacts).
This is made more likely because of the personal connections between the companies, including having the same investors, whose portfolio companies often help each other long after they're small (remember AOL,NSCP), and recieved their seed money from Andy Bechtolsheim one of the founders of Sun Microsystems .
Here's the trend I see of lots of Kleiner companies like Sun, Compaq, AOL, Netscape, Electronic Arts, and yes, Google.
The begin with lots of top-talent in lots of areas - academic, practical, financial, etc. Eventually they do very well (Sun, Netsape and AOL come to mind as the examples most familiar to /.); and some of the bright peole move on - some to start their own things, some to retire, or get promoted to management. Whatever the reason, most (notable exceptions, electroninc arts, genentech) fade after a while; IMHO because the best people moved on.
Then KPCB'll invest in those best people's next venture that will once again take on Microsoft in the next hot area of High Tech.
IMHO it never was Netscape vs MSFT, or Sun vs MSFT or AOL vs MSFT -- it's always been KPCB vs MSFT; with Sun, NSCP, AOL, Google just minor divisions of KPCB's virtual company bound together by a common culture of great innovation.