...you'll get use to no task bar, and no maximize, and no start menu...
You know, I have to say that I like the Maximize feature in Windows. I keep thinking that there's probably some Cmd-Option-Shift-Click the Green Dot option in OS X that I'm not aware of to do the same thing (I haven't cared enough to look it up), but I still lament that, when I want the window I'm in to take up the entire desktop, it's click to "bigger," drag the window into upper-left position, then resize the window to the extent of the screen space. I don't miss the Start menu, and I could take or leave the task bar.
I upgraded two machines to Panther last night, and it went pretty well. The registration function doesn't seem to be able to pull my.mac account password out of my keychain, and I've evidently forgotten it. It was too late to fool with it further by the time both upgrades finished, and I haven't QA'd the whole thing yet. Today, QuickBooks 2006 is evidently running fine, which is a huge positive for us.
Mechanical vibrations of the nanotube modulate the field-emission current,[10] which then serves as the easily detected electrical signal.
So, it's acting a lot like a stylus on a phonograph? Vinyl is back!
Your suggestion that a nano-radio be enclosed in, essentially, a vacuum bottle, is interesting. Such a bottle would make a nice delivery package, helping to componentize the device for inclusion in larger constructs.
It would be interesting to see a chart of member sign-ups by date range over the last ten years. I've been reading/posting for several years, but my ID# pegs me as one of the latecomers. Was there a big bubble in years three and four? Is membership increasing or decreasing?
Also interesting would be a graph of posts. How long did it take to cross the million-post mark? Ten million? Twenty?
What you're missing is that (we) business people aren't interested in a device's ability to play music, movies or games, except possibly as a secondary feature (the icing on the cake I mentioned). Imagine using the iPod Touch or the iPhone to review a business plan or software requirements document, annotating as you go, or looking at a spreadsheet or report of annual sales figures, then go on to a slide presentation that includes a lot of business graphics. I sit in meetings on a regular basis where these sort of activities go on. Laptops are a pain in the butt, and are more or less designed as shrunken versions of their desktop-bound bretheren. That's what made Palm devices so popular, until someone merged them with a phone. Really, what business people want is more along the lines of what the Palm-like device can do rather than the phone stuff, except that merging it with a phone reduces the number of devices you have to carry. I don't care what the underlying OS is; the device needs to perform functionally with business-based apps and have a useable form factor.
The upside to this is that such a device would be hugely popular in a variety of vertical markets. The processor and memory requirements of a targeted general computing device like this would make it more than capable of playing movies, music and games. If GPS wasn't onboard already, the required chipsets are small enough that it could be added with an unobtrusive peripheral. And, as for the size, look how many young people carry around a Nintendo DS, a PSP or other similar devices. A friend of mine carries an Archos video player with him to and from work each day, and, for the business crowd, look at the number of people you see lugging DayTimer-style planners. Sure, you wouldn't want to clip a Steno-pad sized device to your belt or put it in your pocket, but its not like you're toting a three or four pound laptop. Subnotes are unpopular becuase you're spending more money for something that's a smaller version of something. If you're going to carry a subnote, you might as well carry the regular sized notebook and be done with it.
Apple is well positioned to produce a device that I keep wanting to call the iSlate. The technology is already deployed in the form of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, it's just a matter of scaling it. There's virtually no development to be done, and their marketing machine can certainly sell it. Furthermore, it would fit well within their aesthetic lineup and create yet another product that no one else is really making well in a time that companies are playing catch up to Apple's phone and media player products. And, from the looks of things, they're going to catch up.
So, I'll continue to wait. April isn't too long to wait for something I want as much as this, and if the cost is reasonable (I would pay $800 and hope for $500), I'll look forward to owning one. But it had better not be some half-assed device disabled in functionality. I want to be able to load third-party apps when I want, and I want to be able to use it to do whatever its hardware is capable of.
When I was in the Air Force (many years ago), I was a Loadmaster on C-130 cargo planes. Every aircraft had a sliderule as standard equipment, and we had to know how to use it to calculate load balances for the cargo, even though we used electronic calculators. The idea was that if our batteries died, we had to have a fallback. When the numbers you're dividing are seven digits for the numerator and four digits for the denominator, and your precision is 0.1, long division on a scrap of paper isn't reliable.
I almost bought an iPod Touch. I didn't care if it played music or not; that's sort of an "icing on the cake" thing. The movie thing is nice, too, but not huge. But it looked to be a UMPC that I could like. That was until the calendar disabling. Then you couldn't use it as a disk. Oh, and the screen is really too small. I've said (here and several other places) many times before that what I want is something the size of a Steno pad (in all three dimensions) that has a minimum of buttons and no hardware keyboard. Yeah, I want a "PADD" from Star Trek: TNG. I think most business people would use one for their primary computer, leaving their "desktop" machine to gather dust.
Well, FWIW, I agree with you, energy is cheap. I wasn't complaining, per se, that energy might cost.17/kWh, just saying that I was surprised at the figure based on what I know of such things. I accept the fact that one day (possibly within my lifetime) the collector will come a'callin' and we'll have to start paying real costs, probably retroactively for all the damage we've done. Whatever happens, we'll figure out a way to live with it, likely altering our lives dramatically. We as Americans will be the last holdouts of insanity, though, as the rest of the Western world looks at us and says, "Aren't you paying attention to what's happening?" Oh, yeah, they're doing that now.
Eventually, we're going to have to get a fear of the word nuclear...
Absolutely. However, we have, AFAIK, around 500 years of coal reserves at our current rate of usage. We just need to figure out a better way to mine it. Natural gas availability is declining, with rising dependence on foreign imports of LNG. New nuclear technologies are important considerations, but not for an Executive Branch of oil men. Unfortunately, if the pendulum swings too far the other direction, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) will put a stop to anything nuclear because it's scary.
I don't understand where they get the number of 17 cents per kilowatt hour of production from this solar plant, unless it's ridiculously expensive to build. Solar, like wind and hydro, which are really just solar plants of a different nature, are mostly capital cost to construct, then operations cost (minimal) and maintenance down the line. Construction costs are commonly amortized over 20 years, so.17/kW, declining to.10/kW seems expensive.
Once all the financial deals are done to buy (or sell) power at all the delivery points around the country, a small army of people get together on telephones and by IM to figure out what the most efficient way is to deliver all that power.
I've been a Business Systems Analyst for energy companies for over eight years, supporting trading floors and transmission operators for most of that time, so I'm fairly familiar with what goes on in these places. It's not the trading that's the issue, but the coordination of delivery afterward that I believe could have a significant level of automation applied to it. In a tight market, traders make some very complicated deals in order to try and realize a profit. As you point out, it's far more complicated than 'buy low, sell high.' By the time they're done, energy schedulers end up pulling their hair out trying to figure out, on a physical level, who owes what to whom at which points, where they can do "bookouts" (physical position trading), how they want to shape their delivery with counterparties (human decision required here), etc.
I'd like to see some video game AI developers use their talents to make some business software. Not that I think games don't deserve their efforts, but it frustrates me to see entertainment apps with more capability than the ones we're using to keep this country's economy running (or not, as the case may be). Take for instance the world of wholesale energy delivery (and try not to fall asleep). Once all the financial deals are done to buy (or sell) power at all the delivery points around the country, a small army of people get together on telephones and by IM to figure out what the most efficient way is to deliver all that power. This happens each hour of each day, all across the country. For that matter, AFAIK, in all Westernized countries.
It wouldn't take long for a few savvy game developers to figure out how to put together an AI that would, in a distributed fashion, talk to all its brethren and coordinate energy delivery. Human monitors at each energy company would keep the situation from turning into Skynet (not that it ever would, but people would talk). At $250K per installation and 20% annual maintenance costs (standard pricing for vertical market apps), every one of the ~500 energy companies in the U.S. would be hot after the software.
This is just one example of commercial software that would benefit from the advanced and abstract thinking that goes into game design. So, why aren't there products like these? Is game development that lucrative?
Let's see... "viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," yet they keep you from skipping commercials (which I presume means you can't fast-forward at all, though that may be a reach) or watching them all in a bundle. Someone tagged this as "windowsonly." If true, that leaves out watching it on a Mac, Linux box, iPod, Archos media player, etc. If the window of availability is from the time of broadcast to fourteen days out (available for seven, expires after seven), that certainly keeps me from being away from home for a couple of weeks on vacation and wanting to catch up on past episodes of my favorite show. As for where, well, it will be interesting to see what path is available to stream these videos to the television in my living room.
If they start charging for shows next year and leave out the commercials (in theory, I've paid for it, I shouldn't need to do so again with my time), and I can keep them until I'm done with them, then I'll consider downloading them. iTunes price of $1.99 per show is more than I want to pay, though, so they (NBC) should consider setting the price level somewhere under $1 if they want my business.
You forgot, "Buy equipment that's not frustrating." A friend of mine has an entry-level 8" Dobsonian (?) telescope that he loaned me for a few months so I could try out astronomy. The focus mechanism on it was operated by unscrewing a thumbscrew that held the eyepiece in place, then sliding said eyepiece up and down in its socket to focus. The slightest bump to the main tube pushed the thing out of inclination angle, but (maddeningly), moving it on purpose was an effort (too much push, it went way too far, not enough push, it wouldn't move at all).
In the end, I could find the moon just fine and get focused on it, but never anything else. He had plenty of experience, and once when I was over at his place (after returning the telescope), he lined it up on Jupiter and focused in for me. It was beautiful, and I could even make out a couple of the moons when I knew what I was looking for.
With a motorized base and a dial-&-gear focus mechanism, I think I could really get into astronomy. Without those things, any scope I owned would sit and gather dust.
This thing was in Portland (Oregon) last year, possibly doing sea trials. It's quite ugly, and doesn't look terribly comfortable to ride in, particularly when comparing it against catamarans of similar size.
Right. I think the comment was meant to indicate the threat of Apple installing a microphone would keep AT&T in line. I think it's more a matter of just not wanting to piss off their new playground buddy. OTOH, it probably won't be long (next week, maybe) before some enterprising fourteen-year-old cracks the iPod Touch open, finds the chip connector for "mic" and solders one on. From there, a minor hack into the software to enable the non-existent microphone (you know the driver is there), and the Apple WiPhone (tm) will be born.
I balked at the "nearly" comment as well, but don't know enough about it to really know one way or the other. Maybe you can add some insight. What is "highly enriched uranium in a solution?" If I mix really pure cane sugar into a glass of really pure water, neither is really pure anymore. And the 3% hydrogen peroxide we have in our bathroom (a 97% water solution) isn't anywhere near the 97% pure (3% water) rocket fuel.
Also, if some uranium solution was to somehow find its way into a container that reflected the neutrons back into the solution (am I getting this right?), wouldn't there have to be some high level of uranium in the solution to make it achieve a self-sustaining reaction (which I believe is called "critical mass")? Are the stored solutions really that uranium rich?
Okay, thanks everyone. This discussion has been... interesting. I believe it's also been informative, but the gist of it seems to be that the whole situation is very confusing, and I'm not the only one confused.
I haven't fooled around with ESX Server just yet; my VMWare implementation project is still in the early stages. From an implementation standpoint, it doesn't really matter to me whether there's source code or not, so long as VMWare supports the solution. From an OSS advocate's standpoint, it bothers me because there are a lot of people who contributed to the development of the Linux kernel who seem to be having their code plundered without getting their due. Maybe VMWare should have started with a BSD platform instead.
So, the question becomes, what path does VMWare have out of this (presumed) mess? I suspect that, as someone asserted here, VMWare has modified the kernel in such a way that they can efficiently run and control a hypervisor. They've likely also trimmed down the kernel to just what they need to support their platform, making it fast and efficient for their purposes, but unsuited for many other situations. That's great and all, but they still need to follow rules as they're laid out.
The problem for them may be that, in releasing the modifications they've made to the kernel, it will expose their underbelly, showing the world how to do unwanted things to running VMs. Even if they created some sort of stub in the kernel that sets up an encrypted pipeline to their userspace application, the interface of the stub may give away some critical clues. Furthermore, history has shown that any encryption system is more or less a matador's cape for a giant herd of bulls intent on breaking it regardless of its reason for existence. I've not known anyone who says "information wants to be free" to post their social security number, credit card numbers or banking information on a publicly accessible web site.
But I digress... The rub here is that, without a look at the source code, it's hard to tell just what VMWare is or isn't doing that may or may not be in violation of copyright. But by opening the code up for review, they may be scuttling their entire product line, one that a growing number of organizations rely on heavily for production stability.
Maybe what they're up to is refactoring their code base to resolve the problem, relying on lawyers and the marketing department to keep the world at bay until they can make the changes. We may see some near-term release with a "please upgrade immediately" notice from Support, along with an announcement of contributions back to the kernel.
If all that happens, what would the dispensation be for the existing, possibly violating, code that's in the wind already? Would everyone march forward, saying, "Okay, they fixed a perceived problem, let's ignore the thousands of implementations of possibly-dirty code that's out there now so long as they cease and desist distribution of those versions," or would the natives become restless, demanding that, no matter what overtures of reconciliation VMWare might make, someone's going to sue to demand release of the source code for a now-outdated version of their software?
It's an interesting question (of course -I- think so), and it will be an interesting thing to watch, particularly now that the SCO thing seems to have been decided. For any speculators out there, no, I'm not a VMWare insider, and I've already said at least 40% more than I actually know about the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I have to say that I like the Maximize feature in Windows. I keep thinking that there's probably some Cmd-Option-Shift-Click the Green Dot option in OS X that I'm not aware of to do the same thing (I haven't cared enough to look it up), but I still lament that, when I want the window I'm in to take up the entire desktop, it's click to "bigger," drag the window into upper-left position, then resize the window to the extent of the screen space. I don't miss the Start menu, and I could take or leave the task bar.
I upgraded two machines to Panther last night, and it went pretty well. The registration function doesn't seem to be able to pull my .mac account password out of my keychain, and I've evidently forgotten it. It was too late to fool with it further by the time both upgrades finished, and I haven't QA'd the whole thing yet. Today, QuickBooks 2006 is evidently running fine, which is a huge positive for us.
Mechanical vibrations of the nanotube modulate the field-emission current,[10] which then serves as the easily detected electrical signal.
So, it's acting a lot like a stylus on a phonograph? Vinyl is back!
Your suggestion that a nano-radio be enclosed in, essentially, a vacuum bottle, is interesting. Such a bottle would make a nice delivery package, helping to componentize the device for inclusion in larger constructs.
Or Hooke, Swindell and Crouch.
With a Java interface, I wonder if you could get some traction combining URBI with SunSpot [PDF] nodes for controller interfaces...
It would be interesting to see a chart of member sign-ups by date range over the last ten years. I've been reading/posting for several years, but my ID# pegs me as one of the latecomers. Was there a big bubble in years three and four? Is membership increasing or decreasing?
Also interesting would be a graph of posts. How long did it take to cross the million-post mark? Ten million? Twenty?
What you're missing is that (we) business people aren't interested in a device's ability to play music, movies or games, except possibly as a secondary feature (the icing on the cake I mentioned). Imagine using the iPod Touch or the iPhone to review a business plan or software requirements document, annotating as you go, or looking at a spreadsheet or report of annual sales figures, then go on to a slide presentation that includes a lot of business graphics. I sit in meetings on a regular basis where these sort of activities go on. Laptops are a pain in the butt, and are more or less designed as shrunken versions of their desktop-bound bretheren. That's what made Palm devices so popular, until someone merged them with a phone. Really, what business people want is more along the lines of what the Palm-like device can do rather than the phone stuff, except that merging it with a phone reduces the number of devices you have to carry. I don't care what the underlying OS is; the device needs to perform functionally with business-based apps and have a useable form factor.
The upside to this is that such a device would be hugely popular in a variety of vertical markets. The processor and memory requirements of a targeted general computing device like this would make it more than capable of playing movies, music and games. If GPS wasn't onboard already, the required chipsets are small enough that it could be added with an unobtrusive peripheral. And, as for the size, look how many young people carry around a Nintendo DS, a PSP or other similar devices. A friend of mine carries an Archos video player with him to and from work each day, and, for the business crowd, look at the number of people you see lugging DayTimer-style planners. Sure, you wouldn't want to clip a Steno-pad sized device to your belt or put it in your pocket, but its not like you're toting a three or four pound laptop. Subnotes are unpopular becuase you're spending more money for something that's a smaller version of something. If you're going to carry a subnote, you might as well carry the regular sized notebook and be done with it.
Apple is well positioned to produce a device that I keep wanting to call the iSlate. The technology is already deployed in the form of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, it's just a matter of scaling it. There's virtually no development to be done, and their marketing machine can certainly sell it. Furthermore, it would fit well within their aesthetic lineup and create yet another product that no one else is really making well in a time that companies are playing catch up to Apple's phone and media player products. And, from the looks of things, they're going to catch up.
So, I'll continue to wait. April isn't too long to wait for something I want as much as this, and if the cost is reasonable (I would pay $800 and hope for $500), I'll look forward to owning one. But it had better not be some half-assed device disabled in functionality. I want to be able to load third-party apps when I want, and I want to be able to use it to do whatever its hardware is capable of.
Come on, Mr. Jobs, are you listening?
When I was in the Air Force (many years ago), I was a Loadmaster on C-130 cargo planes. Every aircraft had a sliderule as standard equipment, and we had to know how to use it to calculate load balances for the cargo, even though we used electronic calculators. The idea was that if our batteries died, we had to have a fallback. When the numbers you're dividing are seven digits for the numerator and four digits for the denominator, and your precision is 0.1, long division on a scrap of paper isn't reliable.
Schoolhouse Rock reference? Nice.
I almost bought an iPod Touch. I didn't care if it played music or not; that's sort of an "icing on the cake" thing. The movie thing is nice, too, but not huge. But it looked to be a UMPC that I could like. That was until the calendar disabling. Then you couldn't use it as a disk. Oh, and the screen is really too small. I've said (here and several other places) many times before that what I want is something the size of a Steno pad (in all three dimensions) that has a minimum of buttons and no hardware keyboard. Yeah, I want a "PADD" from Star Trek: TNG. I think most business people would use one for their primary computer, leaving their "desktop" machine to gather dust.
Well, FWIW, I agree with you, energy is cheap. I wasn't complaining, per se, that energy might cost .17/kWh, just saying that I was surprised at the figure based on what I know of such things. I accept the fact that one day (possibly within my lifetime) the collector will come a'callin' and we'll have to start paying real costs, probably retroactively for all the damage we've done. Whatever happens, we'll figure out a way to live with it, likely altering our lives dramatically. We as Americans will be the last holdouts of insanity, though, as the rest of the Western world looks at us and says, "Aren't you paying attention to what's happening?" Oh, yeah, they're doing that now.
Absolutely. However, we have, AFAIK, around 500 years of coal reserves at our current rate of usage. We just need to figure out a better way to mine it. Natural gas availability is declining, with rising dependence on foreign imports of LNG. New nuclear technologies are important considerations, but not for an Executive Branch of oil men. Unfortunately, if the pendulum swings too far the other direction, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) will put a stop to anything nuclear because it's scary.
I don't understand where they get the number of 17 cents per kilowatt hour of production from this solar plant, unless it's ridiculously expensive to build. Solar, like wind and hydro, which are really just solar plants of a different nature, are mostly capital cost to construct, then operations cost (minimal) and maintenance down the line. Construction costs are commonly amortized over 20 years, so .17/kW, declining to .10/kW seems expensive.
Once all the financial deals are done to buy (or sell) power at all the delivery points around the country, a small army of people get together on telephones and by IM to figure out what the most efficient way is to deliver all that power.
I've been a Business Systems Analyst for energy companies for over eight years, supporting trading floors and transmission operators for most of that time, so I'm fairly familiar with what goes on in these places. It's not the trading that's the issue, but the coordination of delivery afterward that I believe could have a significant level of automation applied to it. In a tight market, traders make some very complicated deals in order to try and realize a profit. As you point out, it's far more complicated than 'buy low, sell high.' By the time they're done, energy schedulers end up pulling their hair out trying to figure out, on a physical level, who owes what to whom at which points, where they can do "bookouts" (physical position trading), how they want to shape their delivery with counterparties (human decision required here), etc.
I'd like to see some video game AI developers use their talents to make some business software. Not that I think games don't deserve their efforts, but it frustrates me to see entertainment apps with more capability than the ones we're using to keep this country's economy running (or not, as the case may be). Take for instance the world of wholesale energy delivery (and try not to fall asleep). Once all the financial deals are done to buy (or sell) power at all the delivery points around the country, a small army of people get together on telephones and by IM to figure out what the most efficient way is to deliver all that power. This happens each hour of each day, all across the country. For that matter, AFAIK, in all Westernized countries.
It wouldn't take long for a few savvy game developers to figure out how to put together an AI that would, in a distributed fashion, talk to all its brethren and coordinate energy delivery. Human monitors at each energy company would keep the situation from turning into Skynet (not that it ever would, but people would talk). At $250K per installation and 20% annual maintenance costs (standard pricing for vertical market apps), every one of the ~500 energy companies in the U.S. would be hot after the software.
This is just one example of commercial software that would benefit from the advanced and abstract thinking that goes into game design. So, why aren't there products like these? Is game development that lucrative?
Let's see... "viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," yet they keep you from skipping commercials (which I presume means you can't fast-forward at all, though that may be a reach) or watching them all in a bundle. Someone tagged this as "windowsonly." If true, that leaves out watching it on a Mac, Linux box, iPod, Archos media player, etc. If the window of availability is from the time of broadcast to fourteen days out (available for seven, expires after seven), that certainly keeps me from being away from home for a couple of weeks on vacation and wanting to catch up on past episodes of my favorite show. As for where, well, it will be interesting to see what path is available to stream these videos to the television in my living room.
If they start charging for shows next year and leave out the commercials (in theory, I've paid for it, I shouldn't need to do so again with my time), and I can keep them until I'm done with them, then I'll consider downloading them. iTunes price of $1.99 per show is more than I want to pay, though, so they (NBC) should consider setting the price level somewhere under $1 if they want my business.
I just copied/pasted the link to this story in an IM. Please don't arrest me.
You forgot, "Buy equipment that's not frustrating." A friend of mine has an entry-level 8" Dobsonian (?) telescope that he loaned me for a few months so I could try out astronomy. The focus mechanism on it was operated by unscrewing a thumbscrew that held the eyepiece in place, then sliding said eyepiece up and down in its socket to focus. The slightest bump to the main tube pushed the thing out of inclination angle, but (maddeningly), moving it on purpose was an effort (too much push, it went way too far, not enough push, it wouldn't move at all).
In the end, I could find the moon just fine and get focused on it, but never anything else. He had plenty of experience, and once when I was over at his place (after returning the telescope), he lined it up on Jupiter and focused in for me. It was beautiful, and I could even make out a couple of the moons when I knew what I was looking for.
With a motorized base and a dial-&-gear focus mechanism, I think I could really get into astronomy. Without those things, any scope I owned would sit and gather dust.
This thing was in Portland (Oregon) last year, possibly doing sea trials. It's quite ugly, and doesn't look terribly comfortable to ride in, particularly when comparing it against catamarans of similar size.
How big is "a load" of diesel?
It can carry a shipload of the stuff.
If someone mirrors this site, will all the letters show up backward?
Right. I think the comment was meant to indicate the threat of Apple installing a microphone would keep AT&T in line. I think it's more a matter of just not wanting to piss off their new playground buddy. OTOH, it probably won't be long (next week, maybe) before some enterprising fourteen-year-old cracks the iPod Touch open, finds the chip connector for "mic" and solders one on. From there, a minor hack into the software to enable the non-existent microphone (you know the driver is there), and the Apple WiPhone (tm) will be born.
http://docs.google.com/
Not that it costs $1000, but you forgot the components to build the cart.
I balked at the "nearly" comment as well, but don't know enough about it to really know one way or the other. Maybe you can add some insight. What is "highly enriched uranium in a solution?" If I mix really pure cane sugar into a glass of really pure water, neither is really pure anymore. And the 3% hydrogen peroxide we have in our bathroom (a 97% water solution) isn't anywhere near the 97% pure (3% water) rocket fuel.
Also, if some uranium solution was to somehow find its way into a container that reflected the neutrons back into the solution (am I getting this right?), wouldn't there have to be some high level of uranium in the solution to make it achieve a self-sustaining reaction (which I believe is called "critical mass")? Are the stored solutions really that uranium rich?
Thanks for whatever you can add (or correct).
Paranoia: where everyone's just a little bit Chaotic Neutral while trying to appear Lawful Good.
Okay, thanks everyone. This discussion has been... interesting. I believe it's also been informative, but the gist of it seems to be that the whole situation is very confusing, and I'm not the only one confused.
I haven't fooled around with ESX Server just yet; my VMWare implementation project is still in the early stages. From an implementation standpoint, it doesn't really matter to me whether there's source code or not, so long as VMWare supports the solution. From an OSS advocate's standpoint, it bothers me because there are a lot of people who contributed to the development of the Linux kernel who seem to be having their code plundered without getting their due. Maybe VMWare should have started with a BSD platform instead.
So, the question becomes, what path does VMWare have out of this (presumed) mess? I suspect that, as someone asserted here, VMWare has modified the kernel in such a way that they can efficiently run and control a hypervisor. They've likely also trimmed down the kernel to just what they need to support their platform, making it fast and efficient for their purposes, but unsuited for many other situations. That's great and all, but they still need to follow rules as they're laid out.
The problem for them may be that, in releasing the modifications they've made to the kernel, it will expose their underbelly, showing the world how to do unwanted things to running VMs. Even if they created some sort of stub in the kernel that sets up an encrypted pipeline to their userspace application, the interface of the stub may give away some critical clues. Furthermore, history has shown that any encryption system is more or less a matador's cape for a giant herd of bulls intent on breaking it regardless of its reason for existence. I've not known anyone who says "information wants to be free" to post their social security number, credit card numbers or banking information on a publicly accessible web site.
But I digress... The rub here is that, without a look at the source code, it's hard to tell just what VMWare is or isn't doing that may or may not be in violation of copyright. But by opening the code up for review, they may be scuttling their entire product line, one that a growing number of organizations rely on heavily for production stability.
Maybe what they're up to is refactoring their code base to resolve the problem, relying on lawyers and the marketing department to keep the world at bay until they can make the changes. We may see some near-term release with a "please upgrade immediately" notice from Support, along with an announcement of contributions back to the kernel.
If all that happens, what would the dispensation be for the existing, possibly violating, code that's in the wind already? Would everyone march forward, saying, "Okay, they fixed a perceived problem, let's ignore the thousands of implementations of possibly-dirty code that's out there now so long as they cease and desist distribution of those versions," or would the natives become restless, demanding that, no matter what overtures of reconciliation VMWare might make, someone's going to sue to demand release of the source code for a now-outdated version of their software?
It's an interesting question (of course -I- think so), and it will be an interesting thing to watch, particularly now that the SCO thing seems to have been decided. For any speculators out there, no, I'm not a VMWare insider, and I've already said at least 40% more than I actually know about the subject.
Cheers.
JD