If something is highly customizable, it's an advantage. But if it's highly customizable AND difficult to use, then it deters users.
Many people believe that the more customizable software is, the more difficult it is to use. In reality, it's just a case of bad design. You can have software that's customizable AND have an easy-to-use intuitive GUI (nextstep and linux w/ gnome).
But human beings think in binary terms, so this idea of opposites will persist for a long time. It's progressed so far that people think something HAS to be difficult to use in order for it to be customizable. Sad, isn't it?
The new national missile defense will protect us from these stupid rocks. NMD is the answer - it will shoot lasers and blow up the rocks, thereby providing alternative entertainment for those bored of the regular TV sitcoms.
By definition, a privacy policy is an arrangement to not reveal something. If it can be changed later without the customer's knowledge, what good is it?
Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where he reserves a car, and when he gets to the rental place, finds out his reserved car is gone. Anybody can take a reservation, the whole point is to keep it, he reminds the clerk. It's the same with a privacy policy. What good is it if it is sold off later?
There seems to be no solution to this. nobody can guarantee that a company will stay in business, and there's no law that prevents a privacy policy from being changed (or they wouldn't be doing it).
Is there an industry standard which can be realistically followed, and is there an incentive for it?
Richard Powers had a good essay in the NY times about the impossibility of privacy. He is an eccentric and shy writer, and never had a credit card or even a checking account, quietly deciding to opt out of the "system". He discovered he couldn't get a phone line installed because he had no history. Even when he offered to pay money up-front. I suppose the IT business rules in the phoneco. were coded that way, and god forbid a human being making a decision on your phone line.
The point of the essay was that privacy isn't only a personal preference, but it's not *possible* any more if you want to live a fairly normal life. Even getting a phone or a house on rent requires you to be plugged into the system and give your pound of flesh, or live like a hermit in a shack.
The days when you could visit a doctor and pay only for that visit without involving a multi-billion dollar insurance industry having all your personal records cross indexed, are pretty much gone. Privacy is not possible any more, even if you are willing to pay for it.
If anyone did have a solution to the problem of how to really make money on the net, why would this post it publicly? (Oh wait, they could share their real valuable money making idea w/ the entire world, on slashdot.)
In other words, this entire thread is a red herring (not the magazine, though that is a red herring too, literally speaking, ironically enough). I wonder how many journalists scrum through this stuff for "insights".
A vendor famous for its remarkably comical marketing dept, SCO shocked the entire unix world by jumping on the linux bandwagon after everyone else had, instead of standing alone and fighting it out as it generally does. "Our marketing dept. ran out of analogies and cliches," said a senior SCO executive on condition of anonymity. "So we jumped on the bandwagon to show we are not a flash in the pan".
SCO's CEO had been quoted a few years ago in Byte magazine ridiculing open source development for linux, using the analogy of holding a cup under a waterfall and waiting for the water to flow.
But having changed its mind, SCO outlined some of the features which would differentiate it from other distributions:
* README files with a neverending flood of press releases announcing "industry partnerships" and "strategic alliances".
* Industrial strength stick-to-it persistence. "Once we make a mistake, we repeat it until we get bored of it or people stop paying attention," said a SCO executive.
* Clueless marketroids included free with each upgrade.
* 20 year old icons, stored carefully in clingwrap in the secret SCO vault.
* Open Source Litigation to harness free legal support for SCO's battles with Microsoft over Xenix (not included with distribution, but free if you buy a $5 "I love SCO" bumper sticker).
Corporations operating in a capitalist economy don't walk on egg-shells, tap on the shoulder, smile, and nicely elbow each other out. They ruthlessly cut each other down. This is known as "hostility", and is commonly seen in all industries (except the tobacco lobby, where they are all buddies fighting the evil govt.).
Now...lies. When companies make products, they generally hire a bunch of people whose job it is to say that the product does good things, and not say that it does anything bad. These people are known as "marketing dudes". It is their job to tell lies, and they use space on printed paper and short intervals of time between predictably formulaic TV programmes to say how good the product it. These are known as "advertisements", and are a sophisticated and more entertaining form of lies. (Sometimes these go on forever, and these are known as "infomercials", and were invented by Ross Perot).
Sometimes, a company gets a brilliant idea - they can make their product in a certain way, so that other products can interact with their products only as they like it. These are called "standards". Companies battle over these to the death (see "beta vs. VHS", "AC vs. DC", "viagra vs. rhino horns") and the winner makes lots of $$$. The loser gets nothing.
Now, let's consider 2 scenarios.
1) All companies in the software industry were hostile and have always ruthlessly lied and cheated to gain the upper hand, using the techniques described above.
Or...
2) Before Microsoft came along, the software industry was veritably like the garden of eden. Companies cooperated and followed standards, and never tried to use their dominance (example - IBM with its mainframes, DEC with their servers). Everything was cheap and plentiful, and all the companies lived in harmony. There were no lies and hostility. Then came along evil Microsoft. It introduced an atmosphere of fear and hatred and hostility and lies. Companies started HATING each other and trying to DESTROY one another. And that's when the rot began. If Microsoft had not been around, none of this would have happened, and we would have lived in a wonderful world of magical soft music and nicely interacting software and hardware that meshed flawlessly to create a universe of little red LEDs and undying bliss.
"I'm happy to say that Sun sounds like they're fairly serious about Linux support."
NOW? How many years has it been? Sun has been so boneheaded with java, which was once considered a threat to Windows as a platform. Now it's just another language. Consider all the signs:
1) A lot of the Sun java team quit right after it became a hit. This would have been unthinkable at MS. What does McNealy do, not hand around the stock option cookies?
2) When java was taking off, linux support was lacking badly, and sun didn't give a shit. With the world's biggest volunteer hacker base aching to help, ignore them. Nice move.
3) Sun invented java, and its own java products were among the least popular for development (compare symantec and visual j++). And it insisted on controlling java as its proprietary property.
If they had been smart, linux+java could have been a formidable combination a few years ago. Instead, they are still being myopic at this stage.
If you go through a/. thread on MS, you will find most opinions attacking MS and proclaiming the superiority of linux. It is probably unlikely to discover the vast majority of posts saying MS software is solid stuff.
What happens in cases like this is that you generalize and say something like "Slashdot posters don't like Microsoft" (something remarkably common in most media articles about slashdot). Now you could say that these journalists are unfairly stereotyping/. readers, who have various unique viewpoints on MS, and many of whom like the better features of MS products. But on the whole, you, I and anyone without severe neurosis would admit that/. posters generally like MS as much as boiled turnips.
Similarly, based on the general viewpoints of a group, one makes generalisations. Various media articles portray OS supporters in specific ways:
Amiga users - nostalgic, loyal supporters of a bygone OS
Mac users - die-hard graphics intensive bunch
linux users - geeky hackers who like networks and OS fundamentals
windows supporters - "average newbie" types who bought what everyone else is buying.
You might say these portrayals are unfair, but they encapsulate the general attitude of the group. If you were to claim that each user of the above has his/her own attitude, no such group characterisation would be possible, since you'd be stereotyping all those people with unique viewpoints.
Most of the responses are to the effect that I'm generalising the diverse and unique viewpoints of various linux supporters, and viewing the entire community as a whole. This is pretty much the case. We all generalize groups with distinct identities, in an attempt to summarise their attitude, behavior, etc.
In short, what I wrote was based on what I read on/. and hear from talking to people at LUGs. I use linux myself, and find it rare for linux users to be unbiased on MS. Even on matters in which MS is acknowledged, by neutral bystanders, for having the upper hand (such as ease of use, number of applications), linux users often claim the contrary (linux is easier to use, has all the apps you need).
This is why linux supporters have acquired a well deserved reputation for being zealots who won't see another point of view. As evidence, I present to you the responses to my post.
They complain that MS doesn't innovate, it just repeats what's already out there; at the same time they bristle in anger at the suggestion that linux doesn't innovate, that it just refines what's already there in unix and other systems.
They complain that MS products are difficult to use; at the same time they dismiss people who complain linux is difficult to use as "ignorant newbies", or simply "low IQ users".
They think they have brought MS to its knees, or are just about to crush it; at the same time they complain of MS having a monopoly.
They want linux to beat MS by being successful commercially; at the same time they ridicule any linux company that succeeds commercially for abandoning its free software, grass-roots principles.
They ridicule MS for only paying attention to something that makes money; at the same time they want MS to pay attention to linux as a serious competitor.
They reject the claim that linux supporters aren't responsive to the needs of average users; at the same time they reject the criticism of average users that linux is difficult to use, or that the community is insular and filled with zealotry and thus won't make it outside the geek base.
Exactly, this book seems to attack the symptoms (i.e., generic global marketing), not the actual problem (i.e, unethical production).
To start with, too many logos and a marketing feeding frenzy for consumers is a natural consequence of plentiful supply of goods, and this by itself is a good thing. If you want to try the opposite, you can. Simply go to remote villages in Asia, where you can lead a life refreshingly devoid of brand marketing. The flip side is that you can't get thousands of products when you want it.
A natural consequence of highly productive capitalism is that the number and variety of goods mushrooms, and this results in better choice, annoying brand marketing, and a higher quality-of-life with improved life expectancy. More goods and more brand marketing in more devious ways by greedy corporations aren't by themselves wrong - it's only when the means of production and distribution are unethical and exploit or hurt vulnerable people (e.g., cheap labor in authoritarian regimes).
But these topics are boring. A better way to sell a book is to target the global-capitalists-are-sucking-the-life-blood-out- of-us crowd. In other words, market the book as an attack on global marketing. Ironic, isn't it?
"The folks who line their pocket are the large corporations who then get the rules they want. You would rather leave it to the corporations directly? Isn't this logic flawed somewhere?"
Exactly, we *should* leave it to the corporations directly, i.e, survival-of-the-fittest vs. Govt. regulation to ensure "good" outcomes. Whatever you may say about MS, it won its battles on the field, without using the govt. to do its fighting. Compare this with defense, which gets billions of $$$ in contracts in return for campaign contributions, or tobacco, or the gun lobby, all of whose profits depend more on how happy they keep their congressmen, instead of their customers (well, doesn't matter in tobacco's case - what can the customers do, smoke something else?).
Until recently, the software industry was remarkably untainted by govt. intervention, AKA campaign contributions in return for political support. Companies didn't have to worry about keeping congressmen in their pockets, coz this was one industry where nobody gave a shit what our eminent elected representatives thought.
Now, you can rest assured it'll be like any other heavily lobbied industry. Now, companies will have to spend their resources on keeping politicians on their side, to prevent something like this. Well, it was a good ride while it lasted.
It's a place for people to freely swap pieces of a company that they own in exchange for cash.
IANA-stock-market-historian, but it appears the SEC and regulation were basically regulatory mechanisms that arose into place to prevent abuses occurring during this transaction. Somehow, regulatory mechanisms have a way of becoming default laws, irrespective of how relevant they are.
It wouldn't surprise me if the stock market underwent as earth shaking a change as the retail world is undergoing, simply due to the unleashing of millions of people being able to freely trade with each other. It also wouldn't surprise me if the powers that be try to hold this back.
Of course, it's entirely possible that scams and unwholesome activities will run wild on the scary beast known as the "internet" (or "cyberspace" for the buzzword impaired). But ultimately, I think the reins will be lost. And ultimately, massive dergulation may be more productive than well-intentioned regulation.
Of course, it won't be idiot proof or conducive to a nanny-state. Any bets on how long it will be before a pensioned school teacher loses his life savings on e-bay stock trading?
I'm not sure a miniature mammoth would be a bad idea. It would look pretty cool, and I'd definitely like to have one romping around my apt. It might dig into the wall, though. That would really make the neighbors complain.
What if you could create a real tiny one, the size of a cubicle paperweight....now, THAT would be nifty.
you gotta wonder if processors are headed down this road in the future, to where they are mostly silicon rather than ceramic and plastic
I don't quite see the comparison with a P III. The peripheral components for CPUs are mainly for heat loss optimization (the fan itself is as big as the CPU). As far as packing more transistors/mm goes, CPU designers are already fearing the imminent era of hitting the size barrier of a few molecules/transistor.
I know that on my own PC with a celery 300 overclocked to 450, the little fan and packaging gets pretty hot to the touch, and if the transistors are already packed as tightly as they can be, I'm tempted to assume the National chips are of a different breed altogether, which doesn't make sense to compare to pentiums.
But then, I couldn't understand much of the electronics in the article, so maybe I'm wrong.
I remember browsing in '95 a crypto book (PGP, I think) with a nifty preface, in which they describe how the book contains the entire source code in a format ideal for OCR scanning. This was because even though the compiled binary was illegal for export, the *book* with the source code was a book, and thus could not only be exported but contain guidelines for scanning and compilation to create the final product.
Rather schizophrenic situation, and ironic to boot, esp. since the binary is considered a "munitions" product. Just about the entire book consisted of only source code - can't remember what it was. I guess there are subtle legal differences between exporting a book w/ source code vs. posting the source code for download.
BTW, when Phil Zimmerman of PGP won a legal case against the FBI, a govt. agent asked him how he felt. His answer - "Pretty Damn Good".
Caldera has several employees who are regular Slashdot readers, and Freshmeat, and even User Friendly. Yes, they have aimed more at the big corporate markets than the other distros
But they haven't been successful at it. That was my point.
But believe me, they have a rep there.
They have a rep where? Really.......I've been following the tech media for months now, and I've yet to read a single news article extolling the virtues of Caldera. If they have a PR agency, it's doing a horribly crappy job. If they have people who are members of the/. or FSF community, I have yet to see them. If they are reading this, maybe they can reply, but I doubt they will, and it simply proves my point - they are out of touch.
I can't argue that Caldera has a penetration problem in the end-user community. But they're actually pretty well known it the corporate world as Linux distros go, which is what they were aiming at, methinks.
Yes, but the question is - were they successful? My understanding, from what I've seen of the Caldera effort, is that they are positioning themselves as "different from the freebies". This might work if they had a strong penetration in the corporate market, which is historically opposed to the free software movement.
But they've been dismally bad in this sector. See, if you target corporate business, you need to make a case as to how you're good at it. Has Caldera made a good case about it? I don't think so.
Frankly, it's VERY, VERY difficult to take an open source product and position yourself as a "corporate-therefore-I'm-different-from-them" company.
It seems to me Caldera has tried to be a semi-open-source, semi-corporate distro, and failed spectacularly at both.
As an aside, media is everything. Nobody covers caldera today. So they are dead. Unless they suddenly get a clue. Are they even reading this? I doubt it.
The whole point is to make NT apps run under *nix. Since the old school unix platforms are being drowned by the linux wave, MS is latching on to linux as an interoperability platform to stamp out. It's a clever tactic - basically, their goal in buying mainsoft was to position and elbow in NT. This is part of the elbowing process.
Nobody can accuse MS of being stupid. Their whole game plan in this area is to make NT indispensable.
This reminds me of an Andy Grove statement about how MS has its structure set up to act like antibodies reacting - they use email and feedback mechanisms to react rapidly and carry out their defense. It's very effective. Sure, people accuse them of being clueless, but they're the ones laughing. It's clever, and it works far more effectively than any other large software company.
BTW - Mary Jo Foley has been on a pro-linux anti-MS spree for months now. A lot of her articles are quite insightful too, though I suspect she's lost some of her MS insiders at this point. And she does read/. a few times a day.
Quick! Name a Caldera employee! OK....now, name a redhat employee. See what I mean?
In open source software, momentum to harness enthusiasm is everything. This includes media momentum, developer momentum, slashdot momentum, USENET momentum. Try this thought experiment - how many posts about Redhat can you remember reading in the past week? Now...how many posts about Caldera can you remember? My guess is, not many.
Redhat has a close relationship with the community. It knows how to play the media, even if it stumbles over IPO embarrassments. OTOH, Caldera seems to put on the cloak of Yet Another Corporation. At least, that's the impression I get.
I bought a book with a caldera CD a couple of yrs ago. For some reason, I got the impression that Caldera was trying to differentiate itself from the linux community by portraying itself as "Commercial" and not just a freebie company. Maybe this is an unfair characterization, but that's the impression I got.
This strategy is not new. Every other month, a company tries to portray itself as superior because it doesn't depend on the services of freebie programmers; it has its own skilled workforce. If anybody from such companies is reading this, let me repeat - this will not only screw your image in the open source community, it will not make any headlines in the commercial world.
So what is the magic that endears a company to the open source world? Why do linux users flock to redhat or SUSE but ignore caldera? I'd say it's being in touch with the community.
It doesn't make any sense to take a community product and hawk it with detachment. If Caldera has a clue, they need to change their attitude. Simply making a better product won't win the war, as so many dead software companies have proven.
It may seem that there have been too many earthquakes of late - Turkey, Taiwan, california, etc.
Is this some kind of weird anamoly, a sign of the apocalypse about to come? Actually, according to seismologists, we have had far FEWER quakes than normal so far this year. It's just a coincidence that they tended to befall heavily populated areas, thus drawing a lot of attention. Apparently, there have been only 10 of the 18 major quakes expected every year, or something like that.
I know there are differences in the open/free software community, but what exactly is the *technical* difference? And what is the *philosophical* difference?
For instance, id software is technically not open, but philosophically, they are extremely friendly to programmers and developers. OTOH, the open source ppl have supported Apple and other biz leaders, who don't give a shit philosophically about the programming community. (read John Carmack's.plan file vs. Steve Job's speeches for an example).
Since there seems to be a splintering of opinions on this - what exactly are the technical & philosophical differences among the various factions of the free/open source software community?
Another question - if there were a company (like id) which is extremely friendly to programmers and tries its best to release source code, yet keeps its latest product proprietary for business reasons, would that win your support? What about the opposite - an open source co. which is unfriendly to developers?
(By way of background - id released the DOOM source code, and Carmack has said he was developing quake II for multiple platforms for the sheer joy of programming. He said something like - There may be only 10 people playing it using linux on SPARC, but we still want to do it because it's good programming. I was REALLY impressed by that statement. id's software is never open/free for the latest release, and they try to open it after some years, when it's obsolete in terms of market value. However, nobody doubts that they are the programmer's programming company.)
For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man in a movie who was not a terrorist?
BTW, that was a rhetorical question...
I guess I should have known better than to throw that in the midst of people who'd take it literally and dissect it apart, while providing voluminous data as to examples and historical origins.:)
Hollywood stereotypes everything and everybody in a way that fits into the public imagination. For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man in a movie who was not a terrorist?
The same goes for just about every profession and group. The reason they do this is because if you suddenly deviate from the public image, you may end up confusing the dumbed down audience.
The safe money lies in following the beaten path.
Here, let's count the stereotypes:
1) Hackers: nerdy, unshaven guys wearing odd colorful clothes; often wear glasses; weird laugh; stumble and spill stuff. Or.... the opposite extreme - goth freaks with wild outfits and rapid typing skills.
2) scientists: mostly male, always wear long white coats, glasses. Talk technobabble and look thoughtful. If a scientist is a female, she has long legs which are revealed at some point, and the plot surprises us in the middle of the movie by showing how she is a repressed sexual tigress.
3) Politicians: sinister eyebrow action and lots of glaring, dark suits, depraved sick lifestyle.
4) Japanese: funny mannerisms, thick accent, lots of bowing. Skilled at gadgets.
5) Construction workers/truck drivers: If it's the hero, he's handsome, witty, and a dashing Romeo with the ladies (oddly, he has a sweet tender heart which is supposed to surprise everyone after the depiction of disgusting tobacco habits and prolific booze consumption). If it's not a hero, he's just disgusting and stupid. Lots of body hair, bad clothes. (And geeks think they have something to complain about unfair portrayal?:) )
6) Women : 'nuff said.
OK, add your own. Maybe geeks get off fairly generously. Just imagine how much worse it could be if movies showed them as drunken child molesting perverts who live with their parents.
Oh, one excellent movie for portrayal was Contact - the female scientist (Jodie foster) was quite nicely shown as informally dressed, passionate about science, smart, etc., etc. Big win for astronomy geeks there. I liked this one a lot. It was surprisingly realistic in the dress code. Hardly any difference from Nova documentaries.
You could widen the question to "What do you listen to?", instead of focusing on music. At my recent cubicle job, I used to listen to NPR just about constantly, because their programs are just so good. (see npr.org ). This has two advantages:
1) NPR programs are very in-depth and geeky, focusing on everything from sociology to interviews with Nobel winners (don't forget Science Friday, with its delightful coverage that perfectly caps the last weekday at work).
2) It drowns out the cubicle chatter of your co-workers. Mine were pretty inane, and keeping the headphones on served a dual purpose....
I think NPR is pretty much the only quality station around on FM.
A couple of other points - normally I've found FM reception in cubicles to be really bad, probably due to electromagnetic interference. Any way around this? AM sucks even more, I think.
Also, while driving around, my pref. choice is still NPR, but I sometimes tune in to AM stations to listen to the chatter. For some reason, a lot of AM stations tend to air sensational right wing stuff, but it's amusing to listen to (not to mention giving an insight into the Rush Limbaugh fans at work).
I also like it that NPR's web site archives stuff on Real Audio, which makes it really fun for searching and listening to whatever you feel like. I guess it's the precursor to video-on-demand, and though I like what I hear, for some reason, it still doesn't have the appeal of fresh live broadcast.
Slashdot Mirror
If something is highly customizable, it's an advantage. But if it's highly customizable AND difficult to use, then it deters users.
Many people believe that the more customizable software is, the more difficult it is to use. In reality, it's just a case of bad design. You can have software that's customizable AND have an easy-to-use intuitive GUI (nextstep and linux w/ gnome).
But human beings think in binary terms, so this idea of opposites will persist for a long time. It's progressed so far that people think something HAS to be difficult to use in order for it to be customizable. Sad, isn't it?
LL.
The new national missile defense will protect us from these stupid rocks. NMD is the answer - it will shoot lasers and blow up the rocks, thereby providing alternative entertainment for those bored of the regular TV sitcoms.
w/m
By definition, a privacy policy is an arrangement to not reveal something. If it can be changed later without the customer's knowledge, what good is it?
Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where he reserves a car, and when he gets to the rental place, finds out his reserved car is gone. Anybody can take a reservation, the whole point is to keep it, he reminds the clerk. It's the same with a privacy policy. What good is it if it is sold off later?
There seems to be no solution to this. nobody can guarantee that a company will stay in business, and there's no law that prevents a privacy policy from being changed (or they wouldn't be doing it).
Is there an industry standard which can be realistically followed, and is there an incentive for it?
LL.
Richard Powers had a good essay in the NY times about the impossibility of privacy. He is an eccentric and shy writer, and never had a credit card or even a checking account, quietly deciding to opt out of the "system". He discovered he couldn't get a phone line installed because he had no history. Even when he offered to pay money up-front. I suppose the IT business rules in the phoneco. were coded that way, and god forbid a human being making a decision on your phone line.
The point of the essay was that privacy isn't only a personal preference, but it's not *possible* any more if you want to live a fairly normal life. Even getting a phone or a house on rent requires you to be plugged into the system and give your pound of flesh, or live like a hermit in a shack.
The days when you could visit a doctor and pay only for that visit without involving a multi-billion dollar insurance industry having all your personal records cross indexed, are pretty much gone. Privacy is not possible any more, even if you are willing to pay for it.
If anyone did have a solution to the problem of how to really make money on the net, why would this post it publicly? (Oh wait, they could share their real valuable money making idea w/ the entire world, on slashdot.)
In other words, this entire thread is a red herring (not the magazine, though that is a red herring too, literally speaking, ironically enough). I wonder how many journalists scrum through this stuff for "insights".
Newsflash:
A vendor famous for its remarkably comical marketing dept, SCO shocked the entire unix world by jumping on the linux bandwagon after everyone else had, instead of standing alone and fighting it out as it generally does. "Our marketing dept. ran out of analogies and cliches," said a senior SCO executive on condition of anonymity. "So we jumped on the bandwagon to show we are not a flash in the pan".
SCO's CEO had been quoted a few years ago in Byte magazine ridiculing open source development for linux, using the analogy of holding a cup under a waterfall and waiting for the water to flow.
But having changed its mind, SCO outlined some of the features which would differentiate it from other distributions:
* README files with a neverending flood of press releases announcing "industry partnerships" and "strategic alliances".
* Industrial strength stick-to-it persistence. "Once we make a mistake, we repeat it until we get bored of it or people stop paying attention," said a SCO executive.
* Clueless marketroids included free with each upgrade.
* 20 year old icons, stored carefully in clingwrap in the secret SCO vault.
* Open Source Litigation to harness free legal support for SCO's battles with Microsoft over Xenix (not included with distribution, but free if you buy a $5 "I love SCO" bumper sticker).
Corporations operating in a capitalist economy don't walk on egg-shells, tap on the shoulder, smile, and nicely elbow each other out. They ruthlessly cut each other down. This is known as "hostility", and is commonly seen in all industries (except the tobacco lobby, where they are all buddies fighting the evil govt.).
Now...lies. When companies make products, they generally hire a bunch of people whose job it is to say that the product does good things, and not say that it does anything bad. These people are known as "marketing dudes". It is their job to tell lies, and they use space on printed paper and short intervals of time between predictably formulaic TV programmes to say how good the product it. These are known as "advertisements", and are a sophisticated and more entertaining form of lies. (Sometimes these go on forever, and these are known as "infomercials", and were invented by Ross Perot).
Sometimes, a company gets a brilliant idea - they can make their product in a certain way, so that other products can interact with their products only as they like it. These are called "standards". Companies battle over these to the death (see "beta vs. VHS", "AC vs. DC", "viagra vs. rhino horns") and the winner makes lots of $$$. The loser gets nothing.
Now, let's consider 2 scenarios.
1) All companies in the software industry were hostile and have always ruthlessly lied and cheated to gain the upper hand, using the techniques described above.
Or...
2) Before Microsoft came along, the software industry was veritably like the garden of eden. Companies cooperated and followed standards, and never tried to use their dominance (example - IBM with its mainframes, DEC with their servers). Everything was cheap and plentiful, and all the companies lived in harmony. There were no lies and hostility. Then came along evil Microsoft. It introduced an atmosphere of fear and hatred and hostility and lies. Companies started HATING each other and trying to DESTROY one another. And that's when the rot began. If Microsoft had not been around, none of this would have happened, and we would have lived in a wonderful world of magical soft music and nicely interacting software and hardware that meshed flawlessly to create a universe of little red LEDs and undying bliss.
I wonder which of these is true.
"I'm happy to say that Sun sounds like they're fairly serious about Linux support."
NOW? How many years has it been? Sun has been so boneheaded with java, which was once considered a threat to Windows as a platform. Now it's just another language. Consider all the signs:
1) A lot of the Sun java team quit right after it became a hit. This would have been unthinkable at MS. What does McNealy do, not hand around the stock option cookies?
2) When java was taking off, linux support was lacking badly, and sun didn't give a shit. With the world's biggest volunteer hacker base aching to help, ignore them. Nice move.
3) Sun invented java, and its own java products were among the least popular for development (compare symantec and visual j++). And it insisted on controlling java as its proprietary property.
If they had been smart, linux+java could have been a formidable combination a few years ago. Instead, they are still being myopic at this stage.
If you go through a /. thread on MS, you will find most opinions attacking MS and proclaiming the superiority of linux. It is probably unlikely to discover the vast majority of posts saying MS software is solid stuff.
/. readers, who have various unique viewpoints on MS, and many of whom like the better features of MS products. But on the whole, you, I and anyone without severe neurosis would admit that /. posters generally like MS as much as boiled turnips.
/. and hear from talking to people at LUGs. I use linux myself, and find it rare for linux users to be unbiased on MS. Even on matters in which MS is acknowledged, by neutral bystanders, for having the upper hand (such as ease of use, number of applications), linux users often claim the contrary (linux is easier to use, has all the apps you need).
What happens in cases like this is that you generalize and say something like "Slashdot posters don't like Microsoft" (something remarkably common in most media articles about slashdot). Now you could say that these journalists are unfairly stereotyping
Similarly, based on the general viewpoints of a group, one makes generalisations. Various media articles portray OS supporters in specific ways:
Amiga users - nostalgic, loyal supporters of a bygone OS
Mac users - die-hard graphics intensive bunch
linux users - geeky hackers who like networks and OS fundamentals
windows supporters - "average newbie" types who bought what everyone else is buying.
You might say these portrayals are unfair, but they encapsulate the general attitude of the group. If you were to claim that each user of the above has his/her own attitude, no such group characterisation would be possible, since you'd be stereotyping all those people with unique viewpoints.
Most of the responses are to the effect that I'm generalising the diverse and unique viewpoints of various linux supporters, and viewing the entire community as a whole. This is pretty much the case. We all generalize groups with distinct identities, in an attempt to summarise their attitude, behavior, etc.
In short, what I wrote was based on what I read on
This is why linux supporters have acquired a well deserved reputation for being zealots who won't see another point of view. As evidence, I present to you the responses to my post.
LL.
They complain that MS doesn't innovate, it just repeats what's already out there; at the same time they bristle in anger at the suggestion that linux doesn't innovate, that it just refines what's already there in unix and other systems.
They complain that MS products are difficult to use; at the same time they dismiss people who complain linux is difficult to use as "ignorant newbies", or simply "low IQ users".
They think they have brought MS to its knees, or are just about to crush it; at the same time they complain of MS having a monopoly.
They want linux to beat MS by being successful commercially; at the same time they ridicule any linux company that succeeds commercially for abandoning its free software, grass-roots principles.
They ridicule MS for only paying attention to something that makes money; at the same time they want MS to pay attention to linux as a serious competitor.
They reject the claim that linux supporters aren't responsive to the needs of average users; at the same time they reject the criticism of average users that linux is difficult to use, or that the community is insular and filled with zealotry and thus won't make it outside the geek base.
LL.
Exactly, this book seems to attack the symptoms (i.e., generic global marketing), not the actual problem (i.e, unethical production).
- of-us crowd. In other words, market the book as an attack on global marketing. Ironic, isn't it?
To start with, too many logos and a marketing feeding frenzy for consumers is a natural consequence of plentiful supply of goods, and this by itself is a good thing. If you want to try the opposite, you can. Simply go to remote villages in Asia, where you can lead a life refreshingly devoid of brand marketing. The flip side is that you can't get thousands of products when you want it.
A natural consequence of highly productive capitalism is that the number and variety of goods mushrooms, and this results in better choice, annoying brand marketing, and a higher quality-of-life with improved life expectancy. More goods and more brand marketing in more devious ways by greedy corporations aren't by themselves wrong - it's only when the means of production and distribution are unethical and exploit or hurt vulnerable people (e.g., cheap labor in authoritarian regimes).
But these topics are boring. A better way to sell a book is to target the global-capitalists-are-sucking-the-life-blood-out
"The folks who line their pocket are the large corporations who then get the rules they want. You would rather leave it to the corporations directly? Isn't this logic flawed somewhere?"
Exactly, we *should* leave it to the corporations directly, i.e, survival-of-the-fittest vs. Govt. regulation to ensure "good" outcomes. Whatever you may say about MS, it won its battles on the field, without using the govt. to do its fighting. Compare this with defense, which gets billions of $$$ in contracts in return for campaign contributions, or tobacco, or the gun lobby, all of whose profits depend more on how happy they keep their congressmen, instead of their customers (well, doesn't matter in tobacco's case - what can the customers do, smoke something else?).
Until recently, the software industry was remarkably untainted by govt. intervention, AKA campaign contributions in return for political support. Companies didn't have to worry about keeping congressmen in their pockets, coz this was one industry where nobody gave a shit what our eminent elected representatives thought.
Now, you can rest assured it'll be like any other heavily lobbied industry. Now, companies will have to spend their resources on keeping politicians on their side, to prevent something like this. Well, it was a good ride while it lasted.
It's a place for people to freely swap pieces of a company that they own in exchange for cash.
IANA-stock-market-historian, but it appears the SEC and regulation were basically regulatory mechanisms that arose into place to prevent abuses occurring during this transaction. Somehow, regulatory mechanisms have a way of becoming default laws, irrespective of how relevant they are.
It wouldn't surprise me if the stock market underwent as earth shaking a change as the retail world is undergoing, simply due to the unleashing of millions of people being able to freely trade with each other. It also wouldn't surprise me if the powers that be try to hold this back.
Of course, it's entirely possible that scams and unwholesome activities will run wild on the scary beast known as the "internet" (or "cyberspace" for the buzzword impaired). But ultimately, I think the reins will be lost. And ultimately, massive dergulation may be more productive than well-intentioned regulation.
Of course, it won't be idiot proof or conducive to a nanny-state. Any bets on how long it will be before a pensioned school teacher loses his life savings on e-bay stock trading?
L.
black market as everyone would want to have their own 'piece' of a wooly mammoth.
We could have them designed according to our preferences. I can just see it now:
Ebay Auctions: Mammoths, Furby, Ricky Martin, Ricky Martin-like Mammoths.
I'm not sure a miniature mammoth would be a bad idea. It would look pretty cool, and I'd definitely like to have one romping around my apt. It might dig into the wall, though. That would really make the neighbors complain.
What if you could create a real tiny one, the size of a cubicle paperweight....now, THAT would be nifty.
Hey, it could even fit into the freezer!
you gotta wonder if processors are headed down this road in the future, to where they are mostly silicon rather than ceramic and
plastic
I don't quite see the comparison with a P III. The peripheral components for CPUs are mainly for heat loss optimization (the fan itself is as big as the CPU). As far as packing more transistors/mm goes, CPU designers are already fearing the imminent era of hitting the size barrier of a few molecules/transistor.
I know that on my own PC with a celery 300 overclocked to 450, the little fan and packaging gets pretty hot to the touch, and if the transistors are already packed as tightly as they can be, I'm tempted to assume the National chips are of a different breed altogether, which doesn't make sense to compare to pentiums.
But then, I couldn't understand much of the electronics in the article, so maybe I'm wrong.
L.
I remember browsing in '95 a crypto book (PGP, I think) with a nifty preface, in which they describe how the book contains the entire source code in a format ideal for OCR scanning. This was because even though the compiled binary was illegal for export, the *book* with the source code was a book, and thus could not only be exported but contain guidelines for scanning and compilation to create the final product.
Rather schizophrenic situation, and ironic to boot, esp. since the binary is considered a "munitions" product. Just about the entire book consisted of only source code - can't remember what it was. I guess there are subtle legal differences between exporting a book w/ source code vs. posting the source code for download.
BTW, when Phil Zimmerman of PGP won a legal case against the FBI, a govt. agent asked him how he felt. His answer - "Pretty Damn Good".
L.
Caldera has several employees who are regular Slashdot readers, and Freshmeat, and even User Friendly. Yes, they have aimed more
/. or FSF community, I have yet to see them. If they are reading this, maybe they can reply, but I doubt they will, and it simply proves my point - they are out of touch.
at the big corporate markets than the other distros
But they haven't been successful at it. That was my point.
But believe me, they have a rep there.
They have a rep where? Really.......I've been following the tech media for months now, and I've yet to read a single news article extolling the virtues of Caldera. If they have a PR agency, it's doing a horribly crappy job. If they have people who are members of the
I can't argue that Caldera has a penetration problem in the end-user community. But they're actually pretty well known it the corporate world as Linux
distros go, which is what they were aiming at, methinks.
Yes, but the question is - were they successful? My understanding, from what I've seen of the Caldera effort, is that they are positioning themselves as "different from the freebies". This might work if they had a strong penetration in the corporate market, which is historically opposed to the free software movement.
But they've been dismally bad in this sector. See, if you target corporate business, you need to make a case as to how you're good at it. Has Caldera made a good case about it? I don't think so.
Frankly, it's VERY, VERY difficult to take an open source product and position yourself as a "corporate-therefore-I'm-different-from-them" company.
It seems to me Caldera has tried to be a semi-open-source, semi-corporate distro, and failed spectacularly at both.
As an aside, media is everything. Nobody covers caldera today. So they are dead. Unless they suddenly get a clue. Are they even reading this? I doubt it.
L.
The whole point is to make NT apps run under *nix. Since the old school unix platforms are being drowned by the linux wave, MS is latching on to linux as an interoperability platform to stamp out. It's a clever tactic - basically, their goal in buying mainsoft was to position and elbow in NT. This is part of the elbowing process.
Nobody can accuse MS of being stupid. Their whole game plan in this area is to make NT indispensable.
This reminds me of an Andy Grove statement about how MS has its structure set up to act like antibodies reacting - they use email and feedback mechanisms to react rapidly and carry out their defense. It's very effective. Sure, people accuse them of being clueless, but they're the ones laughing. It's clever, and it works far more effectively than any other large software company.
BTW - Mary Jo Foley has been on a pro-linux anti-MS spree for months now. A lot of her articles are quite insightful too, though I suspect she's lost some of her MS insiders at this point. And she does read
L.
Quick! Name a Caldera employee! OK....now, name a redhat employee. See what I mean?
In open source software, momentum to harness enthusiasm is everything. This includes media momentum, developer momentum, slashdot momentum, USENET momentum. Try this thought experiment - how many posts about Redhat can you remember reading in the past week? Now...how many posts about Caldera can you remember? My guess is, not many.
Redhat has a close relationship with the community. It knows how to play the media, even if it stumbles over IPO embarrassments. OTOH, Caldera seems to put on the cloak of Yet Another Corporation. At least, that's the impression I get.
I bought a book with a caldera CD a couple of yrs ago. For some reason, I got the impression that Caldera was trying to differentiate itself from the linux community by portraying itself as "Commercial" and not just a freebie company. Maybe this is an unfair characterization, but that's the impression I got.
This strategy is not new. Every other month, a company tries to portray itself as superior because it doesn't depend on the services of freebie programmers; it has its own skilled workforce. If anybody from such companies is reading this, let me repeat - this will not only screw your image in the open source community, it will not make any headlines in the commercial world.
So what is the magic that endears a company to the open source world? Why do linux users flock to redhat or SUSE but ignore caldera? I'd say it's being in touch with the community.
It doesn't make any sense to take a community product and hawk it with detachment. If Caldera has a clue, they need to change their attitude. Simply making a better product won't win the war, as so many dead software companies have proven.
L.
It may seem that there have been too many earthquakes of late - Turkey, Taiwan, california, etc.
Is this some kind of weird anamoly, a sign of the apocalypse about to come? Actually, according to seismologists, we have had far FEWER quakes than normal so far this year. It's just a coincidence that they tended to befall heavily populated areas, thus drawing a lot of attention. Apparently, there have been only 10 of the 18 major quakes expected every year, or something like that.
Ok, time to go pick up pizza. Mmmm....pizza.
L.
I know there are differences in the open/free software community, but what exactly is the *technical* difference? And what is the *philosophical* difference?
.plan file vs. Steve Job's speeches for an example).
For instance, id software is technically not open, but philosophically, they are extremely friendly to programmers and developers. OTOH, the open source ppl have supported Apple and other biz leaders, who don't give a shit philosophically about the programming community. (read John Carmack's
Since there seems to be a splintering of opinions on this - what exactly are the technical & philosophical differences among the various factions of the free/open source software community?
Another question - if there were a company (like id) which is extremely friendly to programmers and tries its best to release source code, yet keeps its latest product proprietary for business reasons, would that win your support? What about the opposite - an open source co. which is unfriendly to developers?
(By way of background - id released the DOOM source code, and Carmack has said he was developing quake II for multiple platforms for the sheer joy of programming. He said something like - There may be only 10 people playing it using linux on SPARC, but we still want to do it because it's good programming. I was REALLY impressed by that statement. id's software is never open/free for the latest release, and they try to open it after some years, when it's obsolete in terms of market value. However, nobody doubts that they are the programmer's programming company.)
For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man
:)
in a movie who was not a terrorist?
BTW, that was a rhetorical question...
I guess I should have known better than to throw that in the midst of people who'd take it literally and dissect it apart, while providing voluminous data as to examples and historical origins.
Hollywood stereotypes everything and everybody in a way that fits into the public imagination. For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man in a movie who was not a terrorist?
:) )
The same goes for just about every profession and group. The reason they do this is because if you suddenly deviate from the public image, you may end up confusing the dumbed down audience.
The safe money lies in following the beaten path.
Here, let's count the stereotypes:
1) Hackers: nerdy, unshaven guys wearing odd colorful clothes; often wear glasses; weird laugh; stumble and spill stuff. Or.... the opposite extreme - goth freaks with wild outfits and rapid typing skills.
2) scientists: mostly male, always wear long white coats, glasses. Talk technobabble and look thoughtful. If a scientist is a female, she has long legs which are revealed at some point, and the plot surprises us in the middle of the movie by showing how she is a repressed sexual tigress.
3) Politicians: sinister eyebrow action and lots of glaring, dark suits, depraved sick lifestyle.
4) Japanese: funny mannerisms, thick accent, lots of bowing. Skilled at gadgets.
5) Construction workers/truck drivers: If it's the hero, he's handsome, witty, and a dashing Romeo with the ladies (oddly, he has a sweet tender heart which is supposed to surprise everyone after the depiction of disgusting tobacco habits and prolific booze consumption). If it's not a hero, he's just disgusting and stupid. Lots of body hair, bad clothes. (And geeks think they have something to complain about unfair portrayal?
6) Women : 'nuff said.
OK, add your own. Maybe geeks get off fairly generously. Just imagine how much worse it could be if movies showed them as drunken child molesting perverts who live with their parents.
Oh, one excellent movie for portrayal was Contact - the female scientist (Jodie foster) was quite nicely shown as informally dressed, passionate about science, smart, etc., etc. Big win for astronomy geeks there. I liked this one a lot. It was surprisingly realistic in the dress code. Hardly any difference from Nova documentaries.
L.
You could widen the question to "What do you listen to?", instead of focusing on music. At my recent cubicle job, I used to listen to NPR just about constantly, because their programs are just so good. (see npr.org ). This has two advantages:
1) NPR programs are very in-depth and geeky, focusing on everything from sociology to interviews with Nobel winners (don't forget Science Friday, with its delightful coverage that perfectly caps the last weekday at work).
2) It drowns out the cubicle chatter of your co-workers. Mine were pretty inane, and keeping the headphones on served a dual purpose....
I think NPR is pretty much the only quality station around on FM.
A couple of other points - normally I've found FM reception in cubicles to be really bad, probably due to electromagnetic interference. Any way around this? AM sucks even more, I think.
Also, while driving around, my pref. choice is still NPR, but I sometimes tune in to AM stations to listen to the chatter. For some reason, a lot of AM stations tend to air sensational right wing stuff, but it's amusing to listen to (not to mention giving an insight into the Rush Limbaugh fans at work).
I also like it that NPR's web site archives stuff on Real Audio, which makes it really fun for searching and listening to whatever you feel like. I guess it's the precursor to video-on-demand, and though I like what I hear, for some reason, it still doesn't have the appeal of fresh live broadcast.
L.