...for what it is, a *tool* to do the real work. Use that tool with other tools to design build sell and service widgets,"stuff", things of tangible value to society that people are willing to exchange cash for. Just the software as it is is not where the ultimate money comes from in most instances, it's just used to expedite the creation and servicing of tangible *things*. Does a carpenter try to make all his money selling off his hammer and saw and nails, or does he build stuff every day with those tools, and make his money that way? You make your money off of those *things* whatever they are, a-z, check yellow pages for complete list of "stuff" humans find valuable enough to purchase or have serviced after purchase. Software and computers are a merely a partial means to that end. Don't lose sight of that reality, don't try to overly compete only in the tool business, just go use those open source tools you can get to go do actually productive work of value.
They should have done this years ago, cut napster and that sort of thing off totally by offering something similar just priced to reflect the savings that advanced tech obviously allows.. They even got asked,they got warned, yet the "industry" refused, they wanted to (still do really) monopolise digital technology. They would have sold billions more with a hundred songs on a CD for 3 dollars, rather than 10 songs for 15$. And I think it's because to the high level execs who make these decision, 15$ is chump change, they have no personal basis in reality how much 15$ really is to most people. They even resisted 99 cents a song, to them that is already close to "free". It gives them the feinting fantoids to think of something less than that.
No idea if 5 cents is a real answer, but I would think exactly doubling actual distribution cost would leave plenty of profit to go around and it would be cheap as all get out compared to what it is now. Say it costs a few pennies to distribute it on the net, double that, whatever it actually is as a price there. If tech improves so that transmitting it gets cheaper, then they can actually drop the price again, but keep the same margins.
Really,and I'm glad this professor was swinging the clue stick hard at that conference, I hope he cracked some heads with it, because a market works best when both parties are very very happy with the exchange. If only one party is very happy and the other one is merely reluctantly content or actually annoyed, that particular market is not efficient enough yet.
It's obvious there's a huge entertainment market, the demand is there, it just needs to be cheap enough to keep the demand side happy so they are content to actually make the exchange for their money. That leaves it on the producers and distributors side, what could make them happy? So far it looks like they are being beyond unreasonable in pricing and in transfer modality, hence, so called "piracy" took off. Instead of making their customers happy, they pissed them off, year after year, now they wonder why they have problems. A nickle a song and a dollar a movie (whatever) would go a long ways to alleviate that.
I'm not going to STFU about stating the unspoken obvious outloud.
The emperor has no clothes.
They can merrily hack away all they want on the kernel, it's a supremely important job,no one denies that, there just needs to be some rational and constructive leadership in the operating system side of the "Linux to the masses" efforts. It doesn't exist yet, that emperor has no clothes. It won't exist until somehow several of the major vendors are persuaded to actually preinstall and ship "linux" and they get put on the store shelves all over, so that a critical mass of people out there can use it. And for that to happen, they will needs to be offered something that well and truly is a major community COOPERATIVE effort.
1% usage on the desktop is NOT a very good showing in 2005. If the kernel gods refuse to do it, if they don't care, why should anyone else, especially people who have never seen it or use it?? And if you think fragmenting all the efforts in a thousand different barely compatable distro directions is going to get them on machines by the multi multi millions..well, just go right ahead believing that. Well see one year from today what the numbers say, then in two years, then three. Go back three years, what were the numbers? It hasn't changed much at all has it?
Maybe one or two critical aspects of linux development and deployment might need to be readdressed? Just maybe? Can I say that outloud?
There's another thread running, "how do you make money with open source?" Well, I would think one way just might be if there really WAS a mainstream linux out on the machines that the vendors ship, one where the devs on it all got a small fee for development? One that has a unified look and feel and how things worked, one that actually worked out of the box with all the hardware out there, one that was professionally maintained and worked on, not a hodge podge of conflicting overlapping similar in function and too similar in bugs apps? How is this going to happen without some serious consolidation and some rational standards?
No one is demanding the end of linux hacking as a hobby, I'm just *suggesting*, really, all it is is a suggestion from someone on the other side of the aisle, a consumer, that it's time for ya'all to take it to the next level for the rest of the planet outside the hobbiests, to actually notice this linux car got a transmission with more than one potential gear in it. The kernel engine keeps getting horsepower improvements, but the userland OS fragmentation and obvious cultism is keeping it stuck in first gear when it comes to getting it to go down the road into millions of garages. Step away from being a serious IT guy next time you go to the average computer store and look on the shelves and put yourself in the shoes of joe consumer of computers and software, then maybe you can see what I am talking about. There's no rational choice there yet, when you walk into that store it might as well say "welcome to XP land!". You can either see this or not, but it's *true*.
I think this can be addressed by doing just a couple critical things differently, but it would take quite a bit of mass ego swallowing to accomplish. That's my opinion on it anyway.
your good question -> "How would userspace applications be helped by forking the kernel? I can't think of anything obviously missing from current kernel builds, but please state what is absent, if anything"
my answer -> What is in spadesabsent is "this kernel" inside of some linux operating system sitting on a hard drive, said hard drive being inside a computer that a major vendor pre installed and shipped by the millions to stores all over. THAT'S what's wrong with this model of linux development and getting it out to more people. It's not happening in any big way outside of the less than 1% linux enthusiast realms, and this is 2005 like I said, not 1995. Whether or not you can see this as a problem or not is just a matter of taste, but frankly, I'm sorta tired of NOT getting to see "linux" inside the computers being offered on the store shelves, having to see all these peripherals that say "XP READY!" on them, and etc. For every install of linux, there's a thousand new MS offerings getting shipped and sold. I think it's time to address this, because in the long run, having a lot more people across the board use "linux" it will get a lot better faster. I'm just saying it's way past time to take it mainstream, and that won't happen with anarchy distro fork cult linux. MS got adopted because it came pre installed mostly, that's it, that and some apps. Linux is there, has the apps, but it's not really showing up preinstalled in machines yet outside of a few little baby token efforts. And I blame it squarely on fanboi distro cultism,and fanboi package management cultism, and so on, the fragmentation of "the community", and the complete lack of caring from the head honchos of the "movement".
How many times have people been chided for saying "Linux" when referring to a Linux Operating system? They get lectured "linux is only the kernel" blah blah blah
Well, here ya go, time to STFU about that
"Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more;)" he said."
If the inventor of it can call the operating system "Linux", then I say that means it's officially "cool" to use the term "Linux" to in fact refer to Joe Blow's "LinuxOS". We;ve more or less dropped saying GNU in front of it, so let's just drop the pedantic grammar fascist lecturing about the difference between a Kernel and the OS.
Now the other issue. He doesn't care about userland space. You know, I think this is a serious problem. Think about this long and hard for awhile. Then rethink about it.
Maybe it's time someone with ultimate say so DID care? Just maybe that might be a good idea seeing as how it's 2005 and not 1995? Look on the shelf at the retail level, how much "Linux" do you see? Perhaps time for some groups to think about forking the kernel and having the forked maintainer dictators actually *care* about userland? Get some much needed standards going? Evolution is not static.
This is slashdot, I am here. I am fully aware of the difference between a kernel and a complete operating system. This discussion was about the adoption of "linux", the phrase commonly used in casual speech as a shorthand word for the operating systems running that kernel-by this "the masses" guy, if he's even heard of it that is, which most haven't yet, let alone "Fred's linux OS" or any of the other incompatable "me too" distros out there, all squabbling over who's the bestus and reinventing the same round wheel. It's a big fat waste of time unless all you want is some tiny hobby distro. There's the big difference in the discussion, and I already said if that is what you want, you got it, and I have no probs with that. Really, none at all, and it's not even what I am talking about. I'm talking about something completely different here, an actual well supported standardized release that is world class and is actually a reasonable alternative to XP or OSX, in feature set, ease of use, professional support, community support, agreed upon standaridized layout, etc, etc. and most importantly, from computer vendors, support from THEM. It doesn't exist yet except a few widely sparse token examples..
Instead of actually having a very decent well fleshed out and non betaware "Linux OS" sitting on the shelves pre installed in millions of computers for sale, we have daily *more* fragmentation and actually less community. It's like little teenage gangs or something, it's ridiculous in that respect, and that part is only tangential to what I am interested in.
No, I don't mind paying for functional non beta ware software. Betaware I am not going to pay for, I get it free for testing it, that's why it's beta. I dislike when someone attempts to sell me off on some distro and call it a full fledged release, when it's still alpha or beta, even though they just slap some big number on it like "release 3.0 Gold final!!" and it's not much different from "3.99RC25!" and has just as much new bugs as the old ones they just fixed, and it's the same bugs that x,y,z,a,b,c distro are "working on". That's not a "community" effort, that's ego-centric near-cult like behavior. It's called "fanboi" here on slashdot, for a reason, it *fits* as a description. It's embarrassing really, reminds me of decades ago watching people get all worked up over their "team" in some sports deal like it was actually important or something. I didn't understand it then, and still think it's pretty stoopid actually.
I would prefer software I purchase to be open source though, the model works better than it doesn't, and it's "more fair" to people actually using it and developing it. I agree with the principla and philosphy.. I would prefer it-an OS- even more to be a linux kernel based, standardized layout system, standardized package management and update scheme that is both a widely adopted community effort and also supported in full by the various large hardware vendors,chip makers, box makers, graphic card makers, etc, various peripherals makers, etc to the point that this theoretical Linux OS of the future is actually on the retail store shelves in at least a parity with Windows, especially pre-installed on machines. I think that's a worthy goal, but can just about guarantee it's not going to happen with any of the two thousand-whatever "me too" distros and more arriving daily. No big hardware vendors are going to take any of those efforts seriously. It's going to take some actual true standardization to crack that, IMO. My best guess is those hardware vendors will *eventually* just get tired of the fragmentation and squabbling in this "community" and just release their own version, which might become the default "linux" this "the masses" guy will use, not one of the "me too" cult versions out there now. Or, they will just stick with one of the top three out there now.
We can disagree on this, that's ok, just think about it next time you go to the computer store and look at all the new computer systems
...with computers and operating systems yet. No OS vendor so far is accepting any liability for all the various viruses and trojans and whatnot that infest the internet and get on peoples machines running that OS. No ISP is accepting liability claims or paying out either as far as I know anyway. So there ya go. It's in the EULAs and various other contracts consumers "voluntarily agree" to. Why should the small computers in phones with their OSes and apps and the vendors there be any different? Until we can force by law that software makers/sellers/leasers/licensers have to offer some minimum normal consumer warranties, it will continue to happen. As it is now, it's almost pure "caveat emptor".
oh, I really don't expect it to happen, just feel it would be more useful than not. As to picking one distro over another and paying for it, that's my point, at this time it's still one distro, standardized to itself. Kinda silly. Not even close to what I am describing.
Anyway, I think my point will be proven, as it is already, this "Linux" thing, despite have some pretty decent software, is still amazingly under utilised by the computing public at large, as an installed base percentage wise. And it will stay that was as long as the fragmentation continues, and as long as the fragmentation contiues you won't be seeing it come pre installed by any major vendors. I am postulating that is one (one, not all) of the primary reasons why that is so at this time. Again, you can see it at the retail level, very little actual "linux" on the shelf at the major retailers, it's just not on most peoples radar, because they can't even see it. I've kept track, at least in my area. this year I have been in 5 stores that sell computers/software, and one other store that has software as a side issue, a Barnes and Noble bookstore. The B&N was the only one to have at least some "linux" on the shelf, in fact I went there on purpose to buy some books and a Linux OS disk. The other retailers had zero linux software titles, zero machines with any Linux pre installed. It was pure XP. I realise that is merely one anecdotal, and could be different in other areas, but I think it's more typical than not.
As long as the "linux community" fails to understand the significance of this, and belittles any advice as to how maybe to do things just a little bit different, this situation will continue. If that's the results anyone "you" want, to stay at around a small single digit percentage of usage with computer users, well then swell, keep doing things the same fragmented and niche OS fanboy way you are doing them. If anyone "you" want different results, it might pay to at least realise that there are some alternative ways to do business out there. If constructive criticism isn't wanted, then again, no probs, as in "who cares?". I don't have a dog in the hunt, I have no particlar niche product to push at anyone myself, not my job or interest really. I would like to see better products available for joe consumer, products of lasting worth, not things released one day and still in beta broken stages and obsolete the next day, repeated ad infinitum.
Linux is pushed as a "community" effort,I have read that so many times, so I merely suggesting go even more in that direction, and try to develop a larger, tighter, more integrated "community" rather than developing hundreds of smaller arguing squabbling semi non cooperating "communities" that divert resources and efforts into reinventing the same looking wheel constantly and can't even develop any standard ways to go about the same thing. It's friendly advice based on observable and quantifiable data, that's all. If the goal is to remain a small effort, then never mind, it has achieved that goal splendidly, it works for that purpose. Even with several larger companies "going to Linux", at the rate of adoption in the total scheme of things it will still be decades (some large number of years anyway) before it even approaches a 50/50 split parity with MS, if that ever happens, which I doubt at this time because of the basic design incompatabilities.
Even such a thing as merely people in huge numbers adopting an open source browser, not even near as radical a move as changing out an entire OS, has slowed down considerably from just a couple months ago. There was a real nice honeymoon surge with FF, now it's slowing down considerably. I think that is quite telling really, because it indicates what sort of reality you are up against with societal inertia and mind and market share. Take the FF example and magnify by 100, that's what you are up against in the market. This linux "you" have two choices, cooperate and present a more coherent and united front and of
It's pretty unique, I'll give you that much. Have to see if the materials science is up to the task and how soon. I still haven't seen a good description of the "elevator" motor and power system for it yet though, or how they would actually get the thing deployed in the first place. I can understand how it would work after it was up, but not how they plan to get it there in the first place. A spool of any cable stuff that long would be pretty darn big, and seems like they would have to drop it down, and not string it upwards. Still a quite interesting idea though. I need to do some more googling on it and research it further I guess.
Standardization is not a bad thing. It got PC hardware to drop in cost, and it went up in quality and functionality for the most part.
I'm not saying there needs to be "one" standard on the planet with OSes,no one outside of redmond wants that, but in Loony Linux Land it wouldn't hurt to have a scosh more than what is out there right now. And enough other folks agree to the point that several standardization orgs have been formed. Attemtps at least. They, serious linux devs and other insterested parties, recognize that this is critical for mass acceptance of Linux, and I agree with that assessment. And one of the ways that could happen, how it could be sped up, is if several of the big hardware vendors endorsed one of those software standardization efforts, just picked one and stated that is "the" linux they were going to actively support.
I do not see that as a bad thing.
And also,there's a big difference between an embedded OS in some gadget and what joe home or business user uses for a computer OS and applications of choice. The embedded stuff can be "fred's operating system", no one outside of the much less than.oo1% programming hobbiest market really cares what some gadget is "running" as long as the gadget functions as advertised. The hardware guys just take what is the cheapest and easiest to use that gets the job done, but again, that doesn't effect mass consumer sales as much. It's really two different sorts of markets.
Aynway, you got it your way right now, so let's see how it is doing. Minimal stanards, pure anarchy, competing fanboy sub niches of cult OSes. Barely a single digit installed desktop base, or some absurd low number like that. Wow, really successful. How many years agin to get there? How many years now?
So we'll watch some more years slide by like they have been and see how fast linux shows up on the desktop outside of the hobbiest desktops and a few others.
Now I run linux myself,I sorta like it, but really, I'm a realist, I can also see some serious problems with it, and lack of any rational standardization is the most glaringly obvious. The only "inroads" it's making on the desktop of note are in a small handful of commercial orgs, a few gov orgs,and that still leaves the vast bulk out there running you know what. If you got proof otherwise lets see it, hard numbers, verified references, name the huge retail stores that have as much pre installed linux on the shelf in new boxes as they have XP, store name, distro name, retail level. Let's see the very large geographical areas where just as many people run linux as they do windows, like "in Topeka today it was announced linux is now on over 50% of the desktops in the state!" and etc. Dare ya, you just go for it to your hearts content, see what ya find out.
Now, if you want to keep seeing that, go right ahead, no or little linux on the shelf, no big vendors shipping it preinstalled to thousands of stores, etc, selling it by the millions, just you keep insisting like ya'all have been on no standards and very little interoperability with the various "me too" fan boy versions of this thing called "Linux". Ya'all have fun while MS and to a much lesser extent Apple keeps raking in the dough by the truckload and seeing *their* OS at least out on the shelves actually being sold and used by millions and millions and millions of people.
I would basically agree with that. And the thing with computers is, it's easier to increase your skill set safely compared to driving or building structures, etc. I am not sure how to implement it, but some sort of minimum design functionality required by law to access the web safely-a warranty in other words-would force the software devs and box sellers to at least release stuff to the general public that is a lot safer and easier to "drive" than the kludges we have now. In other words, less skins and themes, more useful and secure functionality. I think a normal consumer waranty like with other products would go a long ways to achieving this goal. As long as software is allowed to be sold, err I mean "licensed to use", with zero consumer warranties, it will continue to be buggy and insecure, no matter who makes it, closed or open source, because they will concentrate on blinkenlights "improvements" instead of secure functionality.
They still use the smaller version, it's their main rocket. Launches stuff all the time. The deal with it is, it's designed to scale UP pretty easy, all the way to moon or mars missions probably, heavy satellites, etc.. that's why it's a good design. It's your basic space truck, which is what we need, not some tempermental sportscar thing that happens to coincidently haul cargo once in awhile.. It's there, ain't no mothballs to it, although point taken on the spare parts for vodka deal, I'm sure it happens over there, and over here as well. Google for "surplus" mil hardware waltzing out the door in Huntsville for an example, a pretty big hardly-reported and on going scandal, mainly involving retired flag rankers making their pile in "private" industry now. I'd call it looting the tax payer and compromising national security, and maybe the T word, but it ain't my call on what goes on at those big bucks levels. Just what it looks like to me.
Anyway, Here's some handy recent references to the Proton showing it's various uses and what's been launched recently with them and what's coming up scheduled. It's turned out to be the "slant 6" of rockets, along with our atlas. They "just work". I say just use them until we figure out gravity distortion or whatever drives, if that ever happens. If it was my call the shuttles would have been grounded years ago,they turned out to be way too expensive to be practical. To be fair, the original idea was good and I liked it,(I was always in favor of the x-planes/spaceshipone styled piggyback designs as being the best for reusable craft) but after they had weird budget problems and instituted constant design changes and it became mostly political and "national prestige" the original ideas went down the drain and it became a big fat expensive engineering waste. More or less, mostly more, IMO. Too bad, had high hopes for it too.
...a *serious* effort on consolidation and standardization with Linux in general, speaking only as an end user and not a developer or hobbiest. This article really nails some realities out there. I like the philosophy of Open source, I agree with it. I dislike expensive OSes and programs that are still for all practical purposes broken and in a beta stage (alpha stage is more like it). We have a model that is loosely called closed source, propietary and expensive. We have an alternative that goes loosely by the descriptive name "FOSS", and which the article outlines, and it's serious problems that do in fact exist. I propose an alternative, a reasonably priced, very stable, standardidized "Linux" thing that the 99% of the end users out there who aren't software hobbiests can use, something for business, home users. Even if it means a serious fork in efforts including the kernel and several companies deciding to join forces and offer basically the same thing. Maybe one or the other of the established desktop cooperatives could do it in conjunction with some larger distros and meatspace companies. Just *something* beyond the efforts we see now. How many more "me too" OSes are really needed? How many of the "me too" OSes honestly think and expect that theirs will become "the" Linux distro? Even the larger efforts today are incompatable with each other. What hardware box vendor really wants to be forced to pick one of the hundreds of different offerings out there, with no guarantees it will be functional next week or next month? Have to be realistic about this, until something "Linux" or "BSD" or something elsecomes preinstalled on the millions of PCs shipped every year, it will remain niche, low numbers, and just get more fragmented than it is now. That means it's up to the hardware vendors to make a critical decision, so if it were you as a hardware vendor, how would you go about actually picking an OS a package manager, the actual packages, etc? You have the chip makers, the memory and drive makers, the video card makers, etc, all being forced to at least think about something "linux" yet there's no overall "linux" to look at beyond a box of parts that may or may not work if you plug them together and a kernel that changes by the hour. Huh? How are they realistically supposed to do this again? It's freeking hard even contemplating it from that perspective. There isn't a single candidate OS out there yet that would "work" for this task, because of this alleged "community" non cooperation and fragmentation.
Now Linus many moons ago had an opportunity to nudge things along into the standardization direction, and for his own reasons he chose not too, he chose anarchy over actual cooperation and decision making. This is neither terrible nor brilliant, it's merely a decsion he made appaarently because he just didn't want to decide, he likes kernel hacking, not OS building or business. Swell, no probs with that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done either, just he chose not to be the guy who did it, nor did he even indicate a direction to go in.
I think it's time to decide if computing society is ready to just go ahead and make a decision beyond his "who cares?" non-decision, then work towards that goal. The 1% niche hobbiests can have whatever they want,they can stick with "who cares?" anarchy and build your own and whatever like it is now, and I am saying there's definetly a place for that as well, but there needs to also be something else for the other 99% of humanity out here to at least look at and use, not tinker, actually use.
For all practical purposes there's Windows, OSX, and then this other thing which you can't even point at with one finger because bits and pieces of it are all spread out all over in a non compatable "kit" form. The 99% of the potential user base for a computer operating system, business, government, home users, do NOT want a hobbiest "kit". It's just reality. I think people would actually like a decent alt
...who wants to use a computer has to complete a college level intense CS course? Do you drive a car? Do you have mechanical engineering and thermodyanic engineering degrees? Would it be necessary for that just to drive? Do you live and work inside someplace? Do you think it should be necessary to have an architectural design degree and at least a journeyman's level skill set in building to be able to use a home or office space?
Am I sure that a big heavy normal rocket with a normal capsule payload works? Well, yes, that's all that's feeding humans and cargo to space right now isn't it? You got some evidence to show different? What actually went to the moon back in the 60's and early 70s? A shuttle? About weekly another satellite goes up some place, what lifts it? When's the last time the shuttle actually went up and delivered something successfully? It was sold to the public as a very reliable cheap reusable spacecraft, at best it was a very expensive worked once in awhile spaceraft that had to be constantly rebuilt and even then has a high failure record spacecraft. Decent idea, bad implementation, and much more expensive than what they ever said.
So ya, a larger heavy lift alternative is out there right now, the design is good, it's called the proton and with a little interest and work it would still function for quite a variety of space purposes, just it's not a US rocket/space system so hardly anyone cares in the US. Just because something is old doesn't mean it sucks.
Space has always been about politics as much as science and engineering. I've watched and had interest in space in general since the night I went outside and tried to see this new "sputnik" with some binoculars. Heavy lift rockets with normal capsules seem to work perfectly OK it appears.
Talking about computers here, that's a little music player, and it's also relatively recent as far as Apple history goes. I've owned quite a few Apple Macs and was a fanboy, so I think I can comment on reality a bit here. I used them almost exclusively since the 512k up to the switch to OSX when I went to just clone PCs and Linux due to cost realistically. They just priced me out of their market at that time frame so I switched. I had just dropped quite a bit on a pb1400 and osx wouldn't run on it, finally it got to me how absurd it was. Still have quite a few working Macs here. I'm not dissing the quality,always liked that and how they worked, which was much better than windows, I'm dissing how they sold them, it was *pitiful*. It was always a bear to even find them except mailorder. I can remember going into store after store that if you were lucky maybe had one model on the shelf, the store demo model and about zip anything else. And that was my last desktop from them, a beat-on store demo model. Talking about things of that nature, and even then it was lean on the street. I don't call that any sort of great marketing. Unless you lived someplace close to a *big* official store or something, and even then it was usually cheaper to get them mail order for most people direct from Apple, which slowed down their sales quite a bit. People like to see and touch a major purchase like that, want to see it on the shelf running. They so screwed even their own vendors when they made that so hard to even be a vendor for them, I looked into it because I was interested way back when, because of so few vendors. They had to be kidding, multi multi thousands of dollars to even think about selling new Macs! It was beyond pitiful. That's just data and history, and they are once again going to be in court over weird crap they pulled on their vendors, just reading about it last week or so.. And it's taken them until *now* to release a more reasonably priced entry level desktop computer. And they had a huge jump on everyone with the Newton PDA and just blew off that entire market, just threw it away. They are catching back up now with the iPod, but it's still an example where it took them years to actually apply their engineering and marketing in an equal fashion, and even then it's not a full PDA when it could be.
Macs aren't on the shelf most places, and neither is Linux. there's your answer. Apple has always been stupid about marketing, and there has been little linux marketing to anyone except large coporate users. Home users run what comes on their machines, they have never even had a decent opportunity to try something else out. It's not like going to buy some other consumer appliance with a lot of choice staring at you right there in the store. Sure, a huge variety of hardware, but all of it pre installed with MS leads to joe home consumer only ever using MS, so they put up with it. They honestly don't know any better. yesterday I was in a computer store, a local whitebox place, talked to two other customers while I was waiting for service, neither of them had ever used an apple product (although they admitted they knew they existed) and neither of them had even HEARD of linux. Absolutely no idea what I was talking about. True story. Even normal places like walmart, although they sell linux online, don't have that option on the shelf retail, well, at least I have never seen it.
If/when some big box vendors start offering a choice at the local retail level, you might see it start to change more rapidly. Until then it's going to be very very slow. It's changing, but that is really why it hasn't changed faster.
I think it will speed up some now as MS gets more restrictive with updates, etc. People are very used to just slapping in a random MS OS disk and reformatting, etc, and casual piracy has been rampant. As MS makes this more difficult and people are kept being forced to drop 60$ every other month to drag their box to the store to get it cleaned and back to a somewhat functional state, eventually they will investigate matters a little closer.
I thought the combo of the weather and the not as good foam tile glue did it. Supposedly IIRC they had to switch types of glue to something more green, which didn't stick as well.
Either way I say ground them, and drag the russian proton out of mothballs and use that thing for the time being.
...if they can send a robot mission to attach some rockets to it, to make it *come down*, seems like they could just re-aim it for a higher orbit and park the thing so it stays up longer, and eventually space flight will be cheaper/easier and etc and it can be rebuilt and reused. I mean what's the diff? so they got to use a scosh more powerful rocket propulsion dealie, again, so what? still cheap enough to do most likely. It's not like there are thousands of advanced space telescopes to go around for all the researchers who would like to use one. It's built, launched, up there,paid for, still at least half way working and cost a bundle already, seems sorta nutso to just trash it on purpose when they can park it until such a time as they can get to it.
"They shouldn't be able to hide behind the skirts of some web-site"
You are correct. I agree with you in principal if this is in fact what happened.
And also speaking as joe consumer,not a developer, software makers in general shouldn't be allowed to hide behind a no warranty product year after decade after generation now either, whether it's some EULA or whatever. No other manufacturer gets to do that.
Basically, I'm tired of windows, tired of apple, tired of linux, whomever, I don't care (I have all three here), they are all pushing semi functional betaware with zero guarantees of any functionality or security. I'm switching to the first fully warrantied software maker who actually has the nads and the skills to really stand behind their product, if they offer the hardware as well or at least it will run on "normal" non weird hardware. I'm not paying for closed source or open source beta ware any more. I'll take a cheap clone betaware product, that's it, cheap or free, very reluctantly because that's about it for any options nowadays, expensive betaware or cheap betaware, it's all betaware. As soon as it starts to be double figures and up in cost, I want a real consumers warranty, not a "neener neener" EULA that amounts to legalised betaware forever broken crap for sale. Been one of these consumers stuck with betaware since the 80's, gotten old it has.
There's a huge untapped market for that too, just no one wants to offer it at any sort of rational price, and no, thousands of dollars a year or even mutilple hundreds is not a rational price either.
At least the hardware vendors will offer some sort of warranty for the hardware, and it actually has gotten much cheaper and better over the last two decades, but sad to say software just has one million more pieces of betaware out there, no matter who offers it at any price.
..locally to me I can give a realistic figure. I use a local mom and pop ISP primarily, although I also have a cheap earthlink as a backup. The local has a few hundred dialup users and I am the *only* linux customer they have, I asked them to check. No macs, one linux, the rest windows. Maybe planetary wide linux has a slightly larger market share, but I doubt it's even 2% inside the US. Maybe in some college towns, or places like that, but across the board I doubt it. Either way combined mac and linux and bsd is still pitiful small, and it's primarily because only a few places sell macs, and MUCH fewer have linux preinstalled on machines, which is primarily where people get their OSes from, pre-installed. I was just at a computer store today trying to get some parts, a couple other customers in there, so being a ratchet jaw kinda guy I start talking, etc, neither of them had even HEARD of linux, they had no idea what I was talking about.
I blame two things for this, in this order-1- severe fragmentation in the linux "community", because there really isn't a "linux" nor is there a "community", there's dozens of perpetual betaware non compatabile ever changing monthly operating systems basically using a similar sort of kernel and that's it, and they each have a miniscule tiny niche fanbase with hardly any rational cooperation, and 2- lack of decent vendor support at the "on the shelf" retail level. And I don't see number #2 changing until #1 changes and there really IS a true well supported and universally adopted "linux standard operating system". I doubt this will happen though.
There is an economic benefit to having your area be on the cutting edge of technology. It attracts and expands the "smart" base. This sort of move is very similar to what many "depressed" downtown areas discovered,they could make *more* money by not being dinks on the cheap stuff, such as a simple thing like getting rid of the penny ante nickel and dime parking meters, thereby encouraging people to come and shop and do business in those areas. Planting a few trees, greening it up, making it friendlier and more convenient. Short term, yes, it would cost money, medium and long term-well look around the world, places with more internet connectivity are doing much better than places that don't have that. It is that easy to see. And making it be all "private" just doesn't work all the time, this quarters "profits" mentality that is more or less the most common denominator of US business frequently ignores huge areas where the immediate profit margin isn't high enough.
Of course, to be fair, this is Texas you are talking about, where they are going to go to mostly all toll roads and football is a subsidised state sponsored religion.... Just a whole different mindset there so it's hard to figger. No idea really what they will do. My *guess* is big money monopoly styled capitalism in the form of some good ole boy backroom deals and some cash and hookers and booze will run the legislative vote on that issue, same as most places when something this controversial and of such a threat to the monopolists comes up.
That's not "waste" to those guys it's "job security", busywork they can do blindfolded. 50% of the windows work out there is because it supports this humongous multi billion dollar a year "busywork" industry. From hard ware to software to admining, it's 1/2 busywork. Tons 0 loot.
It helps the big box vendors, they sell more machines as the old ones "break" because they get so hosed. software, the never ending no warranty perpetual beta. that's all software is any more. perpetual never quite right beta ware. Admining-no money in making it rock solid and bullet proof, is there? Really, people think their computers are 'broken". The IT guys love it, the admins love it, the vendors love it, the security guys triple plus bonus love it, E-Z money. It's big time folding money cashola by the bucketful to have stuff that is *broken* and remains voodoo to 99% of the people who use computers. There's very little money in selling functional hardware or software, there's TONS and TONS to be made selling almost functional and in constant need of fixes, tweaks,"upgrades" and etc hardware and software.
The computer world could eliminate half the jobs right there, and who wants to actually give up their job? That's why you see it, and why you will always see it, especially with the double whammy scam of software patents plus no warranties. Consumer fraud with a wink wink nod nod all around.
Slashdot Mirror
...for what it is, a *tool* to do the real work. Use that tool with other tools to design build sell and service widgets,"stuff", things of tangible value to society that people are willing to exchange cash for. Just the software as it is is not where the ultimate money comes from in most instances, it's just used to expedite the creation and servicing of tangible *things*. Does a carpenter try to make all his money selling off his hammer and saw and nails, or does he build stuff every day with those tools, and make his money that way? You make your money off of those *things* whatever they are, a-z, check yellow pages for complete list of "stuff" humans find valuable enough to purchase or have serviced after purchase. Software and computers are a merely a partial means to that end. Don't lose sight of that reality, don't try to overly compete only in the tool business, just go use those open source tools you can get to go do actually productive work of value.
They should have done this years ago, cut napster and that sort of thing off totally by offering something similar just priced to reflect the savings that advanced tech obviously allows.. They even got asked,they got warned, yet the "industry" refused, they wanted to (still do really) monopolise digital technology. They would have sold billions more with a hundred songs on a CD for 3 dollars, rather than 10 songs for 15$. And I think it's because to the high level execs who make these decision, 15$ is chump change, they have no personal basis in reality how much 15$ really is to most people. They even resisted 99 cents a song, to them that is already close to "free". It gives them the feinting fantoids to think of something less than that.
No idea if 5 cents is a real answer, but I would think exactly doubling actual distribution cost would leave plenty of profit to go around and it would be cheap as all get out compared to what it is now. Say it costs a few pennies to distribute it on the net, double that, whatever it actually is as a price there. If tech improves so that transmitting it gets cheaper, then they can actually drop the price again, but keep the same margins.
Really,and I'm glad this professor was swinging the clue stick hard at that conference, I hope he cracked some heads with it, because a market works best when both parties are very very happy with the exchange. If only one party is very happy and the other one is merely reluctantly content or actually annoyed, that particular market is not efficient enough yet.
It's obvious there's a huge entertainment market, the demand is there, it just needs to be cheap enough to keep the demand side happy so they are content to actually make the exchange for their money. That leaves it on the producers and distributors side, what could make them happy? So far it looks like they are being beyond unreasonable in pricing and in transfer modality, hence, so called "piracy" took off. Instead of making their customers happy, they pissed them off, year after year, now they wonder why they have problems. A nickle a song and a dollar a movie (whatever) would go a long ways to alleviate that.
I'm not going to STFU about stating the unspoken obvious outloud.
The emperor has no clothes.
They can merrily hack away all they want on the kernel, it's a supremely important job,no one denies that, there just needs to be some rational and constructive leadership in the operating system side of the "Linux to the masses" efforts. It doesn't exist yet, that emperor has no clothes. It won't exist until somehow several of the major vendors are persuaded to actually preinstall and ship "linux" and they get put on the store shelves all over, so that a critical mass of people out there can use it. And for that to happen, they will needs to be offered something that well and truly is a major community COOPERATIVE effort.
1% usage on the desktop is NOT a very good showing in 2005. If the kernel gods refuse to do it, if they don't care, why should anyone else, especially people who have never seen it or use it?? And if you think fragmenting all the efforts in a thousand different barely compatable distro directions is going to get them on machines by the multi multi millions..well, just go right ahead believing that. Well see one year from today what the numbers say, then in two years, then three. Go back three years, what were the numbers? It hasn't changed much at all has it?
Maybe one or two critical aspects of linux development and deployment might need to be readdressed? Just maybe? Can I say that outloud?
There's another thread running, "how do you make money with open source?" Well, I would think one way just might be if there really WAS a mainstream linux out on the machines that the vendors ship, one where the devs on it all got a small fee for development? One that has a unified look and feel and how things worked, one that actually worked out of the box with all the hardware out there, one that was professionally maintained and worked on, not a hodge podge of conflicting overlapping similar in function and too similar in bugs apps? How is this going to happen without some serious consolidation and some rational standards?
No one is demanding the end of linux hacking as a hobby, I'm just *suggesting*, really, all it is is a suggestion from someone on the other side of the aisle, a consumer, that it's time for ya'all to take it to the next level for the rest of the planet outside the hobbiests, to actually notice this linux car got a transmission with more than one potential gear in it. The kernel engine keeps getting horsepower improvements, but the userland OS fragmentation and obvious cultism is keeping it stuck in first gear when it comes to getting it to go down the road into millions of garages. Step away from being a serious IT guy next time you go to the average computer store and look on the shelves and put yourself in the shoes of joe consumer of computers and software, then maybe you can see what I am talking about. There's no rational choice there yet, when you walk into that store it might as well say "welcome to XP land!". You can either see this or not, but it's *true*.
I think this can be addressed by doing just a couple critical things differently, but it would take quite a bit of mass ego swallowing to accomplish. That's my opinion on it anyway.
your good question -> "How would userspace applications be helped by forking the kernel? I can't think of anything obviously missing from current kernel builds, but please state what is absent, if anything"
my answer -> What is in spadesabsent is "this kernel" inside of some linux operating system sitting on a hard drive, said hard drive being inside a computer that a major vendor pre installed and shipped by the millions to stores all over. THAT'S what's wrong with this model of linux development and getting it out to more people. It's not happening in any big way outside of the less than 1% linux enthusiast realms, and this is 2005 like I said, not 1995. Whether or not you can see this as a problem or not is just a matter of taste, but frankly, I'm sorta tired of NOT getting to see "linux" inside the computers being offered on the store shelves, having to see all these peripherals that say "XP READY!" on them, and etc. For every install of linux, there's a thousand new MS offerings getting shipped and sold. I think it's time to address this, because in the long run, having a lot more people across the board use "linux" it will get a lot better faster. I'm just saying it's way past time to take it mainstream, and that won't happen with anarchy distro fork cult linux. MS got adopted because it came pre installed mostly, that's it, that and some apps. Linux is there, has the apps, but it's not really showing up preinstalled in machines yet outside of a few little baby token efforts. And I blame it squarely on fanboi distro cultism,and fanboi package management cultism, and so on, the fragmentation of "the community", and the complete lack of caring from the head honchos of the "movement".
How many times have people been chided for saying "Linux" when referring to a Linux Operating system? They get lectured "linux is only the kernel" blah blah blah
;)" he said."
Well, here ya go, time to STFU about that
"Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more
If the inventor of it can call the operating system "Linux", then I say that means it's officially "cool" to use the term "Linux" to in fact refer to Joe Blow's "LinuxOS". We;ve more or less dropped saying GNU in front of it, so let's just drop the pedantic grammar fascist lecturing about the difference between a Kernel and the OS.
Now the other issue. He doesn't care about userland space. You know, I think this is a serious problem. Think about this long and hard for awhile. Then rethink about it.
Maybe it's time someone with ultimate say so DID care? Just maybe that might be a good idea seeing as how it's 2005 and not 1995? Look on the shelf at the retail level, how much "Linux" do you see? Perhaps time for some groups to think about forking the kernel and having the forked maintainer dictators actually *care* about userland? Get some much needed standards going? Evolution is not static.
This is slashdot, I am here. I am fully aware of the difference between a kernel and a complete operating system. This discussion was about the adoption of "linux", the phrase commonly used in casual speech as a shorthand word for the operating systems running that kernel-by this "the masses" guy, if he's even heard of it that is, which most haven't yet, let alone "Fred's linux OS" or any of the other incompatable "me too" distros out there, all squabbling over who's the bestus and reinventing the same round wheel. It's a big fat waste of time unless all you want is some tiny hobby distro. There's the big difference in the discussion, and I already said if that is what you want, you got it, and I have no probs with that. Really, none at all, and it's not even what I am talking about. I'm talking about something completely different here, an actual well supported standardized release that is world class and is actually a reasonable alternative to XP or OSX, in feature set, ease of use, professional support, community support, agreed upon standaridized layout, etc, etc. and most importantly, from computer vendors, support from THEM. It doesn't exist yet except a few widely sparse token examples..
Instead of actually having a very decent well fleshed out and non betaware "Linux OS" sitting on the shelves pre installed in millions of computers for sale, we have daily *more* fragmentation and actually less community. It's like little teenage gangs or something, it's ridiculous in that respect, and that part is only tangential to what I am interested in.
No, I don't mind paying for functional non beta ware software. Betaware I am not going to pay for, I get it free for testing it, that's why it's beta. I dislike when someone attempts to sell me off on some distro and call it a full fledged release, when it's still alpha or beta, even though they just slap some big number on it like "release 3.0 Gold final!!" and it's not much different from "3.99RC25!" and has just as much new bugs as the old ones they just fixed, and it's the same bugs that x,y,z,a,b,c distro are "working on". That's not a "community" effort, that's ego-centric near-cult like behavior. It's called "fanboi" here on slashdot, for a reason, it *fits* as a description. It's embarrassing really, reminds me of decades ago watching people get all worked up over their "team" in some sports deal like it was actually important or something. I didn't understand it then, and still think it's pretty stoopid actually.
I would prefer software I purchase to be open source though, the model works better than it doesn't, and it's "more fair" to people actually using it and developing it. I agree with the principla and philosphy.. I would prefer it-an OS- even more to be a linux kernel based, standardized layout system, standardized package management and update scheme that is both a widely adopted community effort and also supported in full by the various large hardware vendors,chip makers, box makers, graphic card makers, etc, various peripherals makers, etc to the point that this theoretical Linux OS of the future is actually on the retail store shelves in at least a parity with Windows, especially pre-installed on machines. I think that's a worthy goal, but can just about guarantee it's not going to happen with any of the two thousand-whatever "me too" distros and more arriving daily. No big hardware vendors are going to take any of those efforts seriously. It's going to take some actual true standardization to crack that, IMO. My best guess is those hardware vendors will *eventually* just get tired of the fragmentation and squabbling in this "community" and just release their own version, which might become the default "linux" this "the masses" guy will use, not one of the "me too" cult versions out there now. Or, they will just stick with one of the top three out there now.
We can disagree on this, that's ok, just think about it next time you go to the computer store and look at all the new computer systems
...with computers and operating systems yet. No OS vendor so far is accepting any liability for all the various viruses and trojans and whatnot that infest the internet and get on peoples machines running that OS. No ISP is accepting liability claims or paying out either as far as I know anyway. So there ya go. It's in the EULAs and various other contracts consumers "voluntarily agree" to. Why should the small computers in phones with their OSes and apps and the vendors there be any different? Until we can force by law that software makers/sellers/leasers/licensers have to offer some minimum normal consumer warranties, it will continue to happen. As it is now, it's almost pure "caveat emptor".
oh, I really don't expect it to happen, just feel it would be more useful than not. As to picking one distro over another and paying for it, that's my point, at this time it's still one distro, standardized to itself. Kinda silly. Not even close to what I am describing.
Anyway, I think my point will be proven, as it is already, this "Linux" thing, despite have some pretty decent software, is still amazingly under utilised by the computing public at large, as an installed base percentage wise. And it will stay that was as long as the fragmentation continues, and as long as the fragmentation contiues you won't be seeing it come pre installed by any major vendors. I am postulating that is one (one, not all) of the primary reasons why that is so at this time. Again, you can see it at the retail level, very little actual "linux" on the shelf at the major retailers, it's just not on most peoples radar, because they can't even see it. I've kept track, at least in my area. this year I have been in 5 stores that sell computers/software, and one other store that has software as a side issue, a Barnes and Noble bookstore. The B&N was the only one to have at least some "linux" on the shelf, in fact I went there on purpose to buy some books and a Linux OS disk. The other retailers had zero linux software titles, zero machines with any Linux pre installed. It was pure XP. I realise that is merely one anecdotal, and could be different in other areas, but I think it's more typical than not.
As long as the "linux community" fails to understand the significance of this, and belittles any advice as to how maybe to do things just a little bit different, this situation will continue. If that's the results anyone "you" want, to stay at around a small single digit percentage of usage with computer users, well then swell, keep doing things the same fragmented and niche OS fanboy way you are doing them. If anyone "you" want different results, it might pay to at least realise that there are some alternative ways to do business out there. If constructive criticism isn't wanted, then again, no probs, as in "who cares?". I don't have a dog in the hunt, I have no particlar niche product to push at anyone myself, not my job or interest really. I would like to see better products available for joe consumer, products of lasting worth, not things released one day and still in beta broken stages and obsolete the next day, repeated ad infinitum.
Linux is pushed as a "community" effort,I have read that so many times, so I merely suggesting go even more in that direction, and try to develop a larger, tighter, more integrated "community" rather than developing hundreds of smaller arguing squabbling semi non cooperating "communities" that divert resources and efforts into reinventing the same looking wheel constantly and can't even develop any standard ways to go about the same thing. It's friendly advice based on observable and quantifiable data, that's all. If the goal is to remain a small effort, then never mind, it has achieved that goal splendidly, it works for that purpose. Even with several larger companies "going to Linux", at the rate of adoption in the total scheme of things it will still be decades (some large number of years anyway) before it even approaches a 50/50 split parity with MS, if that ever happens, which I doubt at this time because of the basic design incompatabilities.
Even such a thing as merely people in huge numbers adopting an open source browser, not even near as radical a move as changing out an entire OS, has slowed down considerably from just a couple months ago. There was a real nice honeymoon surge with FF, now it's slowing down considerably. I think that is quite telling really, because it indicates what sort of reality you are up against with societal inertia and mind and market share. Take the FF example and magnify by 100, that's what you are up against in the market. This linux "you" have two choices, cooperate and present a more coherent and united front and of
It's pretty unique, I'll give you that much. Have to see if the materials science is up to the task and how soon. I still haven't seen a good description of the "elevator" motor and power system for it yet though, or how they would actually get the thing deployed in the first place. I can understand how it would work after it was up, but not how they plan to get it there in the first place. A spool of any cable stuff that long would be pretty darn big, and seems like they would have to drop it down, and not string it upwards. Still a quite interesting idea though. I need to do some more googling on it and research it further I guess.
Standardization is not a bad thing. It got PC hardware to drop in cost, and it went up in quality and functionality for the most part.
.oo1% programming hobbiest market really cares what some gadget is "running" as long as the gadget functions as advertised. The hardware guys just take what is the cheapest and easiest to use that gets the job done, but again, that doesn't effect mass consumer sales as much. It's really two different sorts of markets.
I'm not saying there needs to be "one" standard on the planet with OSes,no one outside of redmond wants that, but in Loony Linux Land it wouldn't hurt to have a scosh more than what is out there right now. And enough other folks agree to the point that several standardization orgs have been formed. Attemtps at least. They, serious linux devs and other insterested parties, recognize that this is critical for mass acceptance of Linux, and I agree with that assessment. And one of the ways that could happen, how it could be sped up, is if several of the big hardware vendors endorsed one of those software standardization efforts, just picked one and stated that is "the" linux they were going to actively support.
I do not see that as a bad thing.
And also,there's a big difference between an embedded OS in some gadget and what joe home or business user uses for a computer OS and applications of choice. The embedded stuff can be "fred's operating system", no one outside of the much less than
Aynway, you got it your way right now, so let's see how it is doing. Minimal stanards, pure anarchy, competing fanboy sub niches of cult OSes. Barely a single digit installed desktop base, or some absurd low number like that. Wow, really successful. How many years agin to get there? How many years now?
So we'll watch some more years slide by like they have been and see how fast linux shows up on the desktop outside of the hobbiest desktops and a few others.
Now I run linux myself,I sorta like it, but really, I'm a realist, I can also see some serious problems with it, and lack of any rational standardization is the most glaringly obvious. The only "inroads" it's making on the desktop of note are in a small handful of commercial orgs, a few gov orgs,and that still leaves the vast bulk out there running you know what. If you got proof otherwise lets see it, hard numbers, verified references, name the huge retail stores that have as much pre installed linux on the shelf in new boxes as they have XP, store name, distro name, retail level. Let's see the very large geographical areas where just as many people run linux as they do windows, like "in Topeka today it was announced linux is now on over 50% of the desktops in the state!" and etc. Dare ya, you just go for it to your hearts content, see what ya find out.
Now, if you want to keep seeing that, go right ahead, no or little linux on the shelf, no big vendors shipping it preinstalled to thousands of stores, etc, selling it by the millions, just you keep insisting like ya'all have been on no standards and very little interoperability with the various "me too" fan boy versions of this thing called "Linux". Ya'all have fun while MS and to a much lesser extent Apple keeps raking in the dough by the truckload and seeing *their* OS at least out on the shelves actually being sold and used by millions and millions and millions of people.
I would basically agree with that. And the thing with computers is, it's easier to increase your skill set safely compared to driving or building structures, etc. I am not sure how to implement it, but some sort of minimum design functionality required by law to access the web safely-a warranty in other words-would force the software devs and box sellers to at least release stuff to the general public that is a lot safer and easier to "drive" than the kludges we have now. In other words, less skins and themes, more useful and secure functionality. I think a normal consumer waranty like with other products would go a long ways to achieving this goal. As long as software is allowed to be sold, err I mean "licensed to use", with zero consumer warranties, it will continue to be buggy and insecure, no matter who makes it, closed or open source, because they will concentrate on blinkenlights "improvements" instead of secure functionality.
They still use the smaller version, it's their main rocket. Launches stuff all the time. The deal with it is, it's designed to scale UP pretty easy, all the way to moon or mars missions probably, heavy satellites, etc.. that's why it's a good design. It's your basic space truck, which is what we need, not some tempermental sportscar thing that happens to coincidently haul cargo once in awhile.. It's there, ain't no mothballs to it, although point taken on the spare parts for vodka deal, I'm sure it happens over there, and over here as well. Google for "surplus" mil hardware waltzing out the door in Huntsville for an example, a pretty big hardly-reported and on going scandal, mainly involving retired flag rankers making their pile in "private" industry now. I'd call it looting the tax payer and compromising national security, and maybe the T word, but it ain't my call on what goes on at those big bucks levels. Just what it looks like to me.
Anyway, Here's some handy recent references to the Proton showing it's various uses and what's been launched recently with them and what's coming up scheduled. It's turned out to be the "slant 6" of rockets, along with our atlas. They "just work". I say just use them until we figure out gravity distortion or whatever drives, if that ever happens. If it was my call the shuttles would have been grounded years ago,they turned out to be way too expensive to be practical. To be fair, the original idea was good and I liked it,(I was always in favor of the x-planes/spaceshipone styled piggyback designs as being the best for reusable craft) but after they had weird budget problems and instituted constant design changes and it became mostly political and "national prestige" the original ideas went down the drain and it became a big fat expensive engineering waste. More or less, mostly more, IMO. Too bad, had high hopes for it too.
Now Linus many moons ago had an opportunity to nudge things along into the standardization direction, and for his own reasons he chose not too, he chose anarchy over actual cooperation and decision making. This is neither terrible nor brilliant, it's merely a decsion he made appaarently because he just didn't want to decide, he likes kernel hacking, not OS building or business. Swell, no probs with that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done either, just he chose not to be the guy who did it, nor did he even indicate a direction to go in.
I think it's time to decide if computing society is ready to just go ahead and make a decision beyond his "who cares?" non-decision, then work towards that goal. The 1% niche hobbiests can have whatever they want,they can stick with "who cares?" anarchy and build your own and whatever like it is now, and I am saying there's definetly a place for that as well, but there needs to also be something else for the other 99% of humanity out here to at least look at and use, not tinker, actually use.
For all practical purposes there's Windows, OSX, and then this other thing which you can't even point at with one finger because bits and pieces of it are all spread out all over in a non compatable "kit" form. The 99% of the potential user base for a computer operating system, business, government, home users, do NOT want a hobbiest "kit". It's just reality. I think people would actually like a decent alt
...who wants to use a computer has to complete a college level intense CS course? Do you drive a car? Do you have mechanical engineering and thermodyanic engineering degrees? Would it be necessary for that just to drive? Do you live and work inside someplace? Do you think it should be necessary to have an architectural design degree and at least a journeyman's level skill set in building to be able to use a home or office space?
Am I sure that a big heavy normal rocket with a normal capsule payload works? Well, yes, that's all that's feeding humans and cargo to space right now isn't it? You got some evidence to show different? What actually went to the moon back in the 60's and early 70s? A shuttle? About weekly another satellite goes up some place, what lifts it? When's the last time the shuttle actually went up and delivered something successfully? It was sold to the public as a very reliable cheap reusable spacecraft, at best it was a very expensive worked once in awhile spaceraft that had to be constantly rebuilt and even then has a high failure record spacecraft. Decent idea, bad implementation, and much more expensive than what they ever said.
So ya, a larger heavy lift alternative is out there right now, the design is good, it's called the proton and with a little interest and work it would still function for quite a variety of space purposes, just it's not a US rocket/space system so hardly anyone cares in the US. Just because something is old doesn't mean it sucks.
Space has always been about politics as much as science and engineering. I've watched and had interest in space in general since the night I went outside and tried to see this new "sputnik" with some binoculars. Heavy lift rockets with normal capsules seem to work perfectly OK it appears.
Talking about computers here, that's a little music player, and it's also relatively recent as far as Apple history goes. I've owned quite a few Apple Macs and was a fanboy, so I think I can comment on reality a bit here. I used them almost exclusively since the 512k up to the switch to OSX when I went to just clone PCs and Linux due to cost realistically. They just priced me out of their market at that time frame so I switched. I had just dropped quite a bit on a pb1400 and osx wouldn't run on it, finally it got to me how absurd it was. Still have quite a few working Macs here. I'm not dissing the quality,always liked that and how they worked, which was much better than windows, I'm dissing how they sold them, it was *pitiful*. It was always a bear to even find them except mailorder. I can remember going into store after store that if you were lucky maybe had one model on the shelf, the store demo model and about zip anything else. And that was my last desktop from them, a beat-on store demo model. Talking about things of that nature, and even then it was lean on the street. I don't call that any sort of great marketing. Unless you lived someplace close to a *big* official store or something, and even then it was usually cheaper to get them mail order for most people direct from Apple, which slowed down their sales quite a bit. People like to see and touch a major purchase like that, want to see it on the shelf running. They so screwed even their own vendors when they made that so hard to even be a vendor for them, I looked into it because I was interested way back when, because of so few vendors. They had to be kidding, multi multi thousands of dollars to even think about selling new Macs! It was beyond pitiful. That's just data and history, and they are once again going to be in court over weird crap they pulled on their vendors, just reading about it last week or so.. And it's taken them until *now* to release a more reasonably priced entry level desktop computer. And they had a huge jump on everyone with the Newton PDA and just blew off that entire market, just threw it away. They are catching back up now with the iPod, but it's still an example where it took them years to actually apply their engineering and marketing in an equal fashion, and even then it's not a full PDA when it could be.
"leverage" - you have to use the word "leverage" when talking about busy-ness and profits for the "enterprise".
Macs aren't on the shelf most places, and neither is Linux. there's your answer. Apple has always been stupid about marketing, and there has been little linux marketing to anyone except large coporate users. Home users run what comes on their machines, they have never even had a decent opportunity to try something else out. It's not like going to buy some other consumer appliance with a lot of choice staring at you right there in the store. Sure, a huge variety of hardware, but all of it pre installed with MS leads to joe home consumer only ever using MS, so they put up with it. They honestly don't know any better. yesterday I was in a computer store, a local whitebox place, talked to two other customers while I was waiting for service, neither of them had ever used an apple product (although they admitted they knew they existed) and neither of them had even HEARD of linux. Absolutely no idea what I was talking about. True story. Even normal places like walmart, although they sell linux online, don't have that option on the shelf retail, well, at least I have never seen it.
If/when some big box vendors start offering a choice at the local retail level, you might see it start to change more rapidly. Until then it's going to be very very slow. It's changing, but that is really why it hasn't changed faster.
I think it will speed up some now as MS gets more restrictive with updates, etc. People are very used to just slapping in a random MS OS disk and reformatting, etc, and casual piracy has been rampant. As MS makes this more difficult and people are kept being forced to drop 60$ every other month to drag their box to the store to get it cleaned and back to a somewhat functional state, eventually they will investigate matters a little closer.
I thought the combo of the weather and the not as good foam tile glue did it. Supposedly IIRC they had to switch types of glue to something more green, which didn't stick as well.
Either way I say ground them, and drag the russian proton out of mothballs and use that thing for the time being.
...if they can send a robot mission to attach some rockets to it, to make it *come down*, seems like they could just re-aim it for a higher orbit and park the thing so it stays up longer, and eventually space flight will be cheaper/easier and etc and it can be rebuilt and reused. I mean what's the diff? so they got to use a scosh more powerful rocket propulsion dealie, again, so what? still cheap enough to do most likely. It's not like there are thousands of advanced space telescopes to go around for all the researchers who would like to use one. It's built, launched, up there,paid for, still at least half way working and cost a bundle already, seems sorta nutso to just trash it on purpose when they can park it until such a time as they can get to it.
"They shouldn't be able to hide behind the skirts of some web-site"
You are correct. I agree with you in principal if this is in fact what happened.
And also speaking as joe consumer,not a developer, software makers in general shouldn't be allowed to hide behind a no warranty product year after decade after generation now either, whether it's some EULA or whatever. No other manufacturer gets to do that.
Basically, I'm tired of windows, tired of apple, tired of linux, whomever, I don't care (I have all three here), they are all pushing semi functional betaware with zero guarantees of any functionality or security. I'm switching to the first fully warrantied software maker who actually has the nads and the skills to really stand behind their product, if they offer the hardware as well or at least it will run on "normal" non weird hardware. I'm not paying for closed source or open source beta ware any more. I'll take a cheap clone betaware product, that's it, cheap or free, very reluctantly because that's about it for any options nowadays, expensive betaware or cheap betaware, it's all betaware. As soon as it starts to be double figures and up in cost, I want a real consumers warranty, not a "neener neener" EULA that amounts to legalised betaware forever broken crap for sale. Been one of these consumers stuck with betaware since the 80's, gotten old it has.
There's a huge untapped market for that too, just no one wants to offer it at any sort of rational price, and no, thousands of dollars a year or even mutilple hundreds is not a rational price either.
At least the hardware vendors will offer some sort of warranty for the hardware, and it actually has gotten much cheaper and better over the last two decades, but sad to say software just has one million more pieces of betaware out there, no matter who offers it at any price.
..locally to me I can give a realistic figure. I use a local mom and pop ISP primarily, although I also have a cheap earthlink as a backup. The local has a few hundred dialup users and I am the *only* linux customer they have, I asked them to check. No macs, one linux, the rest windows. Maybe planetary wide linux has a slightly larger market share, but I doubt it's even 2% inside the US. Maybe in some college towns, or places like that, but across the board I doubt it. Either way combined mac and linux and bsd is still pitiful small, and it's primarily because only a few places sell macs, and MUCH fewer have linux preinstalled on machines, which is primarily where people get their OSes from, pre-installed. I was just at a computer store today trying to get some parts, a couple other customers in there, so being a ratchet jaw kinda guy I start talking, etc, neither of them had even HEARD of linux, they had no idea what I was talking about.
I blame two things for this, in this order-1- severe fragmentation in the linux "community", because there really isn't a "linux" nor is there a "community", there's dozens of perpetual betaware non compatabile ever changing monthly operating systems basically using a similar sort of kernel and that's it, and they each have a miniscule tiny niche fanbase with hardly any rational cooperation, and 2- lack of decent vendor support at the "on the shelf" retail level. And I don't see number #2 changing until #1 changes and there really IS a true well supported and universally adopted "linux standard operating system". I doubt this will happen though.
There is an economic benefit to having your area be on the cutting edge of technology. It attracts and expands the "smart" base. This sort of move is very similar to what many "depressed" downtown areas discovered,they could make *more* money by not being dinks on the cheap stuff, such as a simple thing like getting rid of the penny ante nickel and dime parking meters, thereby encouraging people to come and shop and do business in those areas. Planting a few trees, greening it up, making it friendlier and more convenient. Short term, yes, it would cost money, medium and long term-well look around the world, places with more internet connectivity are doing much better than places that don't have that. It is that easy to see. And making it be all "private" just doesn't work all the time, this quarters "profits" mentality that is more or less the most common denominator of US business frequently ignores huge areas where the immediate profit margin isn't high enough.
Of course, to be fair, this is Texas you are talking about, where they are going to go to mostly all toll roads and football is a subsidised state sponsored religion.... Just a whole different mindset there so it's hard to figger. No idea really what they will do. My *guess* is big money monopoly styled capitalism in the form of some good ole boy backroom deals and some cash and hookers and booze will run the legislative vote on that issue, same as most places when something this controversial and of such a threat to the monopolists comes up.
easy money man
"these guys waste half their budget fixing PCs"
That's not "waste" to those guys it's "job security", busywork they can do blindfolded. 50% of the windows work out there is because it supports this humongous multi billion dollar a year "busywork" industry. From hard ware to software to admining, it's 1/2 busywork. Tons 0 loot.
It helps the big box vendors, they sell more machines as the old ones "break" because they get so hosed. software, the never ending no warranty perpetual beta. that's all software is any more. perpetual never quite right beta ware. Admining-no money in making it rock solid and bullet proof, is there? Really, people think their computers are 'broken". The IT guys love it, the admins love it, the vendors love it, the security guys triple plus bonus love it, E-Z money. It's big time folding money cashola by the bucketful to have stuff that is *broken* and remains voodoo to 99% of the people who use computers. There's very little money in selling functional hardware or software, there's TONS and TONS to be made selling almost functional and in constant need of fixes, tweaks,"upgrades" and etc hardware and software.
The computer world could eliminate half the jobs right there, and who wants to actually give up their job? That's why you see it, and why you will always see it, especially with the double whammy scam of software patents plus no warranties. Consumer fraud with a wink wink nod nod all around.
someone had to say it
Way cool! Ask him if they are contemplating a solar/electric attempt. That would be interesting. Give him a WTG guy for me as well!