There are many more reasons for techies to not move to Utah than just "can't have a beer with dinner".
The LDS church has been behind some of the most vicious, hateful, dehumanizing legislative attacks on gay/lesbians, and has been actively promoting legislation to strip gays/lesbians of what few protections we have. Any attempt to enact legislation for something as basic as "you can't fire me just because I'm gay" or "a gay family should have equal status as a heterosexual childless family" is met with (literally) millions of LDS dollars portraying gays as evil incarnate. And given that in Utah most of their law makers and law enforcers are LDS...
I am gay. I am not a Christian. If I moved to Utah, and someone vandalized my car or assaulted me in a supermarket parking lot, I have no faith that I would be afforded police protection, or that a jury would convict the person responsible. Why on earth would I want to move to a place where I would be demonized? Why on earth would I want to associate with coworkers (or for that matter, anyone) who believe me to be the son of Satan?
Here in the tech industry in Silicon valley, no employer can afford to don the pointed white hood. Tech workers, straight and gay alike, will not put up with racism, sexism, or homophobia. Even if there were no legal recourse, the fact that an offending company would instantly lose its best and brightest (as well as their rank and file) ensures decent behavior. There is no such social environment in place in Utah.
(Credit where credit is due: I worked at Borland at the time that Novell bought out the Quattro Pro for Windows product line. When Novell took over that division, they didn't mess with the corporate culture, at least not while I was there. That was the only employer that didn't balk at me displaying my Gay Pride flag right next to my "I'm the NRA and I vote" poster. Most employers would be uncomfortable with either or both of those, but the QPW group just didn't care.)
The core issue here is the distributed nature of Gnutella (and other pure peer-to-peer models without centralized indexes), and its effect on bandwidth.
With Napster, the bandwidth usage from the query is negligable. A single packet (your query) goes out to a single destination (the Napster index server). A small handful of packets (your listing of places your desired song is located) comes back. A few K total, then you get your 4mb transfer.
With Gnutella, the bandwidth usage from the query is significant. Your query goes to several peers, which then forward it to other peers, etc... and each server with the song requested sends you back a packet. Looking at the numbers in the analysis shows that your query will quickly generate more bandwidth usage than the actual transfer (which you'll still have to do to get your song). The bandwidth hit is distributed, true, but it still adds up, and grows logarithmically with the user-base rather than linearly.
Gnutella's success depends upon a significant portion of its users also being servers (i.e. making files available for download) -- being a provider as well as a consumer. There's a server-side hit, too... with Napster, a provider of files sends a few packets to the Napster index server advertising its wares. Aside from the bandwidth usage of the actual transfers the provider is serving, very little impact. With Gnutella, every query within your range will hit your server. Bandwidth usage from queries will quickly outstrip bandwidth usage from transfers, and this will tend to discourage people from being providers.
Please, don't get me wrong here. I think that peer-to-peer will be the future, but there are problems to be solved. Gnutella, as it stands now, will not scale well... the math in the paper in question is good, and matches real-world observations. The challenge is managing the queries, routing the queries intelligently, and keeping the bandwidth usage down "below the radar" of backbone providers and system administrators.
I don't know what can be done about the bandwidth usage of the transfer itself, but keeping the query traffic down will help in keeping administrators and providers no more filesharing-hostile than they already are. Now is the time to be treating these people well, instead of antagonizing them further. You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you your bandwidth:)
This problem has been solved before, by the way. Think "routing tables".
Disclaimer: I work for a company that does bandwidth management. What bias that gives me, I don't know... only fair to let you know.
One of the greatest dangers to the armed forces that manned aircraft represent is the loss of their aircrew.
In this case, I'm not talking about the expense of the loss of a highly-trained pilot, or the simple human factor of pilots dying. I'm talking about what happens when an aircraft is downed over enemy territory.
Do you remember what happened during the Gulf War when Hussein got his hands on Allied pilots? They were tortured, paraded in front of television cameras, and used as instruments of psychological warfare and propaganda. Let's look at each of these eventualities as dispassionately as such a subject will allow:
Western nations' aircrews know a great deal about what's going on. A downed pilot is almost always a high-ranking officer, and will know things that the enemy would dearly love to find out: base locations, upcoming missions, the numbers and dispositions of military units on their own side, what military intelligence (no canned cliches here, please) knows, etc... and this information will be forcibly extracted. "Interrogation" is an ancient science, and has been developed to horrific effectiveness. The desired information
will be extracted.
I can't speak for other nations, but I do know that modern Americans have no stomach for military casualties, no matter what the cause. One of the best ways to get the US out of a local war is to rack up the body count and prisoner count... you don't need many. Just a few widely-televised images, and the "bring our boys home" protests begin (note: I am not taking a side on whether we should be involved in any specific military action; I don't have the dependable information to judge, and neither do you. What, you trust CNN? Pentagon spokesmen? Iraqi spokesmen?). A downed pilot is a very effective weapon against the will of Americans to fight.
Remove the pilot from the possibility of capture, and you deny the enemy (whoever that might be at the moment... these things tend to change) a source of accurate military intelligence and a psychological warfare tool.
Plus, people like me whose fathers are combat pilots can be a bit more certain Dad will be home for Christmas.
PARC has been, to a great extent, a "basic research" institution (that's what the "R" is for in its name, after all). They develop technology, not products. The task of turning technology into product has been the work of other groups.
Okay, you're a venture capitalist. PARC comes across your desk as being for sale. How is PARC going to turn a profit? They don't make anything. They learn things. And as admirable and necessary as that is, VCs have to be concerned about eventual profitability first and foremost. It's their job.
PARC could make money, by creating patentable (oooh, there's that word) technology then licensing it to other companies to develop into products. That's risky, though, since the patent process is slow and uncertain (it can take years and years between applying for and receiving a patent). Someone might simply steal your idea and productize it, and play the lawyer/stalling for time game that Certain Monopolistic Companies are so skilled at. Or, you could add a product development team to PARC, but that would dilute it into "just another tech company". You'd have a respected name, but that won't pay the rent.
It's a real shame that Xerox is considering selling PARC. Basic research is an endangered species, and in today's cutthroat corporate environment, shareholders won't tolerate money going into a black box with no clear returns (remember, the Board of Directors is elected by the shareholders, and they are bound to enact the will of their shareholders... we have met the enemy, and it is us. you DO have a 401K, right?). This leaves the government as the primary funder of basic research, and this is notoriously inefficient (when was the last time you heard of a government agency spending its money anywhere near as frugally as any corporation? Corps do have skills that the rest of us could stand to learn.)
Ah well. The end of an era. As I reach for the mouse to click "Submit", I think kindly on you, PARC.
Granted that Napster can be used for legal purposes... granted that Napster often IS used for legal purposes... there is still the legitimate issue of bandwidth.
As pointed out previously, Napster accounts for a *huge* amount of university LAN traffic. A system administrator who is perfectly Libertarian might have to shut down Napster access for no other reason than to protect the network's mission-critical traffic: supporting academic research and administration.
Bandwidth management is the answer. There are plenty of tools out there that will allow an administrator to allow Napster (and whatever other traffic types that may be a problem) to peacefully co-exist with mission-critical traffic, dynamically scaling back Napster to tolerable levels whenever the mission-critical applications are in demand. This stuff has existed for several years (disclaimer: I work for a company that makes bandwidth managers, and yes, we DO classify Napster, thus enabling system admins to keep Napster around when they otherwise would be forced to squelch it). There simply has to be the will to use these tools (and the budget).
Look on Napster's website. They even have a FAQ on the bandwidth issue, what to do about it, and where to get the solutions. Students should tell their administrators about this FAQ when presented with the bandwidth argument.
Have any United States elected officials contacted you or your legal team offering support? (and if they did, would you accept it, given that these would be representatives of the government attempting to harm you?)
Has your legal team considered a large-dollars countersuit, alleging slander, libel, and harassment (specifically, that they are claiming you to be a video pirate in absence of proof otherwise)?
I think that Judge Jackson misused 'benevolent', then. 'Benevolent' assumes good intentions, applying force only when needed, etc. That is clearly not the case in the context of Judge Jackson's findings.
When I say 'benevolent despot', I mean that Linus is in a position of self-made authority... and that his decisions are his own, not subject to being overridden by a 'public', and that he has demonstrated he is willing to use that authority (hence, 'despot'). Linus controls the kernel. The 'benevolent' part is that he uses this authority well, in my opinion. He is not capricious, he uses the Big Stick of lawyerdom sparingly, and lets self-correcting problems take care of themselves. The world needs more benevolent despots and fewer self-serving oligarchs (big word!).
I like Linux. I have a feeling I'd like Linus, if I knew him personally. I certainly respect the heck out of him, and I certainly don't intend that my comments be taken as negative.
As noted by others, Linus has left parody sites like www.linuxsucks.com alone. Those are not a commercial infringement of trademark. There's no impetus to do anything about it... one of the legal definitions of when something like that is 'parody' is whether the intent is primarily commercial.
I imagine Linus gets a laugh out of it once in a while, too... and even he will admit there are parts of Linux which do, in fact, suck.
Let he whose software is free of suction cast the first Dhrystone. (My code certainly sucks!)
This is probably going to be massively redundant, and many of you already know this, but I'll say it anyway. Trademark law requires that a trademark holder defend their trademark, otherwise they can lose it.
Irrespective of that, there has been a lot of stink raised recently regarding LinuxOne. The "word on the street" (Wall Street) is that this is an operation just trying to cash in on the word "Linux" and not really offer anything except an IPO. A get-rich-quick scheme. If this goes through, it could seriously damage the credibility of "Linux" (quotes added to indicate the word and the image, separated from the actual product), and that hurts every legitimate Linux user, Linux administrator, and Linux support-and-sales company.
Linus is doing the right thing.
There are those who accuse people like Linus of being despots... and they're right. but Linus is a benevolent despot. And given the propensity the online community has for divisiveness and special-interests-at-the-cost-of-everybody-else, I think that's a Good Thing.
By claiming official support for Linux on their laptops, Dell is now on the hook to resolve (or at least prove "it ain't our fault") problems with their laptops and Linux. It means that if you have problems with a supported Linux on a supported Dell laptop, you can call tech support and they have to support you. If they don't, they get to talk to Mr. Lawyer.
One more (small) step towards Linux For The Masses, or, at least, Linux As A Viable Choice For The Masses.
Side note: the company I work for has standardized upon the Sony Vaio laptops and the Dell Inspirons (someone authorized to get a laptop has a choice between a few models on a short list). Being a networking hardware/software company, many of the laptops are used in the field for on-site diagnostics. The operating system of choice? It ain't 98!
This is just the sort of thing that can help combat the single biggest problem in getting your film seen: distribution.
There are plenty of independent studios nowadays trying to turn out "Blair Witch" clones, be the next Spike Lee, or hit the big time on a tiny budget like "Clerks" did ("Clerks" cost about 25k to make and was shot on 16mm film). There is no lack of good material that lots of people would enjoy. But the problem is how to get independent films in front of people.
The bottleneck is the number of theaters, and the "gatekeepers" for access to those screens. Operating a theater has become progressively more expensive recently, and has been reflected in the cost of tickets and the disproportionate percentage of screens devoted to hunting for the next blockbuster (if you as a theater manager have four screens, are you going to risk devoting 25% of your screen space to a low-budget unknown film, or are you going to add another five daily showings of "The Phantom Menace"? Your decision can make the difference between being able to give another 5 people jobs or not... or even being able to pay rent on a large-square-foot building or not.).
Distributors like Orion (one of the more daring distributors... they are very large, with contracts for a good percentage of screens, and they have shown a willingness to consider and distribute independent films... a risky thing in a guild-run and union-run industry) have contracts for a specific number of screens, and unless a "Titanic" or "Blair Witch" shows up, the theaters will be reluctant to mess with those contracts. The distributors like to make their stockholders happy too, so they go for big-budget blockbusters in preference to low-budget high-risk films. Contrary to popular belief, most coprorate decision makers DO want to "do the right thing", no matter the industry, but when you're answerable to the stockholders and the Securiies and Exchange commission, you *must* put profit first. If you don't, you get to stand on a streetcorner with a "Will Promote Films For Food" sign.
Given that we're not going to see a doubling of the number of screens any time soon, and given that "art cinemas" (usually theaters converted from showing porno films that have been zoned out of existence) are on the decline, what's an indie film to do?
So here's the $64,000 question... will this be successful enough for indies to occasionally make a "crossover" and pick up mainstream distribution a la "Clerks" and "Blair Witch" and "Do The Right Thing"? Is this going to be the preferred method?
And if it starts to work... what are the guilds going to do ensure they get a piece of the action? And what are Viacom and TCI (ahem.. I mean AT&T) going to do?
A couple of points on why Lucas is in a different position than most Hollywood movie-moguls:
Every major studio is a public entity (i.e. their stock is publically traded), and they have the legal duty to their stockholders to maximize their profits. If they don't, they can be sued by their stockholders.
Except George Lucas. LucasFilm Limited is privately-held. It's accountable to George Lucas and nobody else.
This is important because it means he can pursue "non-standard" ways of doing things, right or wrong, profitable or otherwise. When you've got your billions, you get to indulge your Messaihanic ideas. When I get my billions, I know I will!
There is a traditional big-big surge in video sales just before Christmas every year (how many of you gave or received movies as a gift?. Lucas knows this. What are the odds he will "change his mind" and TPM will be available around 1 December 2000?
Lucas is by no means the first to have a rigidly-controlled home video release schedule. Disney is the "best" example... they periodically pull their videos from the market for years at a time, then rekindle interest with a "limited time release" (look at what they're doing with DVDs, now that DIVX (which they co-founded) is dead. 60 days only on each DVD Disney animated film. If you're a Disney fan, you've only got a few weeks left to get the first batch... can you say "feeding frenzy"?). So, while Lucas is taking the "dark side" on this, he is certainly not the first.
It certainly sucks, but Lucas well within his rights, and isn't answerable to anyone except you, when you decide whether to reach for your wallet.
So I'm standing here, wondering: what's the point?
Like the title says... embedded systems.
Devices such as routers, firewalls, and other network appliances (not to mention things like assembly-line robots and traffic signals) all come under the category of embedded systems. They are typically single-task devices that run without direct human intervention.
These devices share a few common characteristics:
They have cheap CPU's (typically at least two generations old... hey, there are still Z80's being made!)
They have small amounts of RAM (a few K to a few megs)
They have a very limited space for the operating system itself (typically a few K of non-volatile RAM up to a few megs of flash disk)
There is quite a market for such mini operating systems. Many such devices use Intel architecture hardware, and of these, most are sufficiently PC-compatible that you can actually boot them under DOS (assuming you can get DOS onto the nonvolatile storage).
A few examples: pSOS, VxWorks, IOS (okay, well, IOS isn't "mini":)
The point is, these systems all need an operating system that is small-footprint, CPU-cycle-efficient, doesn't need much of a user-interface (just enough for editing config files and such), and extensible. x86 compatibility is a big, big plus, as it makes the physical design MUCH easier and cheaper.
The M16 rifle is the very definition of a hack in hardware. It is elegant, and it gets the job done extremely well, even under the most adverse conditions.
The early history of Eugene Stoner's AR-15/M-16 was riddled with problems. Close manufacturing tolerances and adverse field conditions (think Viet Nam) caused jams at the worst possible moments. These problems weren't really solved until the introduction of the M-16A1 with its kludgy "forward assist" (and a switch to less corrosive propellants).
A little extra info here...
The M16 performed very well in trials. The problem never was with the rifle itself... the bad field performance of the early M16 was due entirely to bad decisions made by the military procurement personnel trying to save a buck.
The M16 is gas-operated. This means that the mechanism that loads another round automatically is powered by a bit of burned-gunpowder gas bled off of the barrel at a point about halfway down the barrel's length through a small "gas port". The gas goes down a small tube back to the receiver (the part of the rifle that the trigger, barrel, stock, and magazine all come together), which then operates the loading mechanism. Think of it as an air-operated tool.
When Stoner designed the rifle, he used a quick-burning gunpowder. It was finished burning before the bullet had moved far enough down the barrel to uncover the gas port, so no unburned powder entered the gas tube. However, the procurement folks decided at the very last minute to use slower-burning gunpowder left over from older, larger rounds. This gunpowder was still burning when the bullet passed the gas port, meaning that unburned powder flakes would get into the gas port and clog it up. Eventually, the gas tube would be so clogged that the rifle would jam (not enough gas was getting through the clogged gas tube to operate the rifle).
This is exactly the sort of thing when bean-counters who don't understand a technology mess with the technical specifications. Lesson: accountants aren't engineers. And people can die when accountants think they are engineers.
The other part of the equation? When the M16 was first issued to field troops, they didn't issue cleaning kits with it. No means of cleaning the gunked-up mechanism was available to the soldier.
One of the arguments used by the "ban-the-games" crowd and the media covering Columbine is that first-person shooters somehow teach kids to be supersoldiers.
Wrong.
I am a shooter of some skill. I've been shooting for many years, including some competition, and I also play FPS-style games (off-topic: Half-Life is my favorite). I know what it takes to be a good shooter, and I know what it takes to be a good gamer. The two have almost NO overlap.
Being a good shooter requires a calm head (physical trembling, however small, can mean the difference between a hit and a miss at rifle ranges. Jerking the trigger will cause a miss even at close handgun ranges). Being a good shooter requires intelligence (what is your target? What is beyond it? When something suddenly appears, do I shoot or not?). Being a good shooter requires attention to detail, in the care of your firearm and thinking about the circumstances of your shooting.
This has what to do with first-person shooters?
When the military uses FPS-style simulators to train soldiers, the concepts being taught are to pay attention to your flanks and rear, and to familiarize entry teams with the layout of a specific place (example: the Marines are the ones in charge of embassy security. They have "levels" with the floor plans and layouts of all the US embassy installations, so a guard can receive familiarization with all the rooms of a building and all the likely places the "bad guys" would hide, without bursting in on the ambassador's quarters in the name of "training"). They teach *nothing* about shooting skills.
But then, if this were well-known, there'd be no sensationalist headlines for local media atempting to get national attention, would there?
There is a phrase I've heard... "rubber hose cryptography". It amounts to "Give me your encryption keys or we will do something very bad to you." Constitutional or not, IT HAPPENS. Constitutional amendments don't mend broken bones or give you back the finite days of your life spent under a 'contempt of court' trial-less incarceration.
Anyone remember how many YEARS Susan McDougal spent in jail because Ken Starr put her there to extort falsified testimony? Rapists get less time in jail than McDougal did. And if Starr can do that to someone with the whole nation watching, what prevents anyone with a badge or a gavel from doing exactly the same thing to YOU? The difference is, you don't have reporters interested in you like McDougal did. No one will be demanding YOUR release.
Bottom line: crypto is a Good Thing, but no crypto in the world will protect you from good old-fashioned application of force. Worried about something Politically Incorrect being on your computer? DON'T PUT IT THERE.
And for God's sake, don't labor under the illusion that the Powers That Be consider themselves subject to law.
One thing I see people here missing: the point of the article is that technical considerations aren't what will cause the migration away form Linux. It's the human factor.
When Linux is "good enough" for mass-market acceptance (not there yet, but soon...), the mass market will use Linux in great numbers. Why not? It's free, and it's good! However, we must remember that the "mass market" is significantly less technical than Slashdotters. Their concerns aren't our concerns, and vice versa. Remember also, there are far more of them than there are of us, and when the mass market accepts Linux, it is THEY who will decide where Linux goes. Not us.
This isn't a bad thing! NASA once made a comment that when a shuttle launch wasn't even newsworthy, they will have attained their goal. I see Linux in the same way. When you say "I run Linux!" and the response is "Yeah, you and everybody else, so what?" instead of "Cool!"... THAT is when Linux will have "won".
The cool thing will be something else. No big deal... the cycle will go on, and on. What IS important about Linux is that Linux has created a mechanism by which ANY software industry leader can be successfully competed with. When Linux runs only on museum pieces, the legacy that Linux left will still be powerful.
Thanks to Linux, there can be no more Microsofts... not without a fight. And THAT, more than anything else, is the real value of Linux. The power and weapons to rebel against a market leader are out there now, and aren't going away, no matter whether its caliber is Linux, Hurd, or anything else.
This particular search engine isn't honoring the robots.txt file (at least, not on my site). I checked to see if it knew about my pages, and it had indexed deep into my site DESPITE the "disallow" directives in my robots.txt file.
Microsoft's traditional area of strength is software, not hardware (whether this is through programming skill, marketing savvy or hairy men named Guido is irrelevant for this particular point). AT&T's traditional strength is voice communications, not digital content (and their recent purchase of TCI really hasn't added much to this).
While Microsoft/AT&T may be in a situation to sell desktop boxes, someone has to MAKE them. National Semi will be in a position to sell TO the Microsoft/AT&T partnership. National Semi isn't competing with Microsoft/AT&T, because the product in question is a chipset, not a content-delivery network. And since the Geode is based on the MediaGX core (which is an x86 chip), porting WinCE to the Geode will be a snap. I'd bet Microsoft LIKES this.
It's just another platform. Sure, it will run WinCE shortly. And just as sure, someone's going to get a flavor of Linux running on it. The only exciting thing about the Geode is the fact that it's single-chip, meaning that the barrier to entry into 'information appliances' design just got a lot lower.
It is now within the realm of possibility that a talented hardware geek, operating not as a Big Expensive Company but as a hobbyist, could create a Palm-like device that runs x86/PC software with a bare minimum of porting.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many more reasons for techies to not move to Utah than just "can't have a beer with dinner".
The LDS church has been behind some of the most vicious, hateful, dehumanizing legislative attacks on gay/lesbians, and has been actively promoting legislation to strip gays/lesbians of what few protections we have. Any attempt to enact legislation for something as basic as "you can't fire me just because I'm gay" or "a gay family should have equal status as a heterosexual childless family" is met with (literally) millions of LDS dollars portraying gays as evil incarnate. And given that in Utah most of their law makers and law enforcers are LDS...
I am gay. I am not a Christian. If I moved to Utah, and someone vandalized my car or assaulted me in a supermarket parking lot, I have no faith that I would be afforded police protection, or that a jury would convict the person responsible. Why on earth would I want to move to a place where I would be demonized? Why on earth would I want to associate with coworkers (or for that matter, anyone) who believe me to be the son of Satan?
Here in the tech industry in Silicon valley, no employer can afford to don the pointed white hood. Tech workers, straight and gay alike, will not put up with racism, sexism, or homophobia. Even if there were no legal recourse, the fact that an offending company would instantly lose its best and brightest (as well as their rank and file) ensures decent behavior. There is no such social environment in place in Utah.
(Credit where credit is due: I worked at Borland at the time that Novell bought out the Quattro Pro for Windows product line. When Novell took over that division, they didn't mess with the corporate culture, at least not while I was there. That was the only employer that didn't balk at me displaying my Gay Pride flag right next to my "I'm the NRA and I vote" poster. Most employers would be uncomfortable with either or both of those, but the QPW group just didn't care.)
With Napster, the bandwidth usage from the query is negligable. A single packet (your query) goes out to a single destination (the Napster index server). A small handful of packets (your listing of places your desired song is located) comes back. A few K total, then you get your 4mb transfer.
With Gnutella, the bandwidth usage from the query is significant. Your query goes to several peers, which then forward it to other peers, etc... and each server with the song requested sends you back a packet. Looking at the numbers in the analysis shows that your query will quickly generate more bandwidth usage than the actual transfer (which you'll still have to do to get your song). The bandwidth hit is distributed, true, but it still adds up, and grows logarithmically with the user-base rather than linearly.
Gnutella's success depends upon a significant portion of its users also being servers (i.e. making files available for download) -- being a provider as well as a consumer. There's a server-side hit, too... with Napster, a provider of files sends a few packets to the Napster index server advertising its wares. Aside from the bandwidth usage of the actual transfers the provider is serving, very little impact. With Gnutella, every query within your range will hit your server. Bandwidth usage from queries will quickly outstrip bandwidth usage from transfers, and this will tend to discourage people from being providers.
Please, don't get me wrong here. I think that peer-to-peer will be the future, but there are problems to be solved. Gnutella, as it stands now, will not scale well... the math in the paper in question is good, and matches real-world observations. The challenge is managing the queries, routing the queries intelligently, and keeping the bandwidth usage down "below the radar" of backbone providers and system administrators.
I don't know what can be done about the bandwidth usage of the transfer itself, but keeping the query traffic down will help in keeping administrators and providers no more filesharing-hostile than they already are. Now is the time to be treating these people well, instead of antagonizing them further. You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you your bandwidth :)
This problem has been solved before, by the way. Think "routing tables".
In this case, I'm not talking about the expense of the loss of a highly-trained pilot, or the simple human factor of pilots dying. I'm talking about what happens when an aircraft is downed over enemy territory.
Do you remember what happened during the Gulf War when Hussein got his hands on Allied pilots? They were tortured, paraded in front of television cameras, and used as instruments of psychological warfare and propaganda. Let's look at each of these eventualities as dispassionately as such a subject will allow:
- Western nations' aircrews know a great deal about what's going on. A downed pilot is almost always a high-ranking officer, and will know things that the enemy would dearly love to find out: base locations, upcoming missions, the numbers and dispositions of military units on their own side, what military intelligence (no canned cliches here, please) knows, etc... and this information will be forcibly extracted. "Interrogation" is an ancient science, and has been developed to horrific effectiveness. The desired information
- will be extracted.
Remove the pilot from the possibility of capture, and you deny the enemy (whoever that might be at the moment... these things tend to change) a source of accurate military intelligence and a psychological warfare tool.I can't speak for other nations, but I do know that modern Americans have no stomach for military casualties, no matter what the cause. One of the best ways to get the US out of a local war is to rack up the body count and prisoner count... you don't need many. Just a few widely-televised images, and the "bring our boys home" protests begin (note: I am not taking a side on whether we should be involved in any specific military action; I don't have the dependable information to judge, and neither do you. What, you trust CNN? Pentagon spokesmen? Iraqi spokesmen?). A downed pilot is a very effective weapon against the will of Americans to fight.
Plus, people like me whose fathers are combat pilots can be a bit more certain Dad will be home for Christmas.
Okay, you're a venture capitalist. PARC comes across your desk as being for sale. How is PARC going to turn a profit? They don't make anything. They learn things. And as admirable and necessary as that is, VCs have to be concerned about eventual profitability first and foremost. It's their job.
PARC could make money, by creating patentable (oooh, there's that word) technology then licensing it to other companies to develop into products. That's risky, though, since the patent process is slow and uncertain (it can take years and years between applying for and receiving a patent). Someone might simply steal your idea and productize it, and play the lawyer/stalling for time game that Certain Monopolistic Companies are so skilled at. Or, you could add a product development team to PARC, but that would dilute it into "just another tech company". You'd have a respected name, but that won't pay the rent.
It's a real shame that Xerox is considering selling PARC. Basic research is an endangered species, and in today's cutthroat corporate environment, shareholders won't tolerate money going into a black box with no clear returns (remember, the Board of Directors is elected by the shareholders, and they are bound to enact the will of their shareholders... we have met the enemy, and it is us. you DO have a 401K, right?). This leaves the government as the primary funder of basic research, and this is notoriously inefficient (when was the last time you heard of a government agency spending its money anywhere near as frugally as any corporation? Corps do have skills that the rest of us could stand to learn.)
Ah well. The end of an era. As I reach for the mouse to click "Submit", I think kindly on you, PARC.
Granted that Napster can be used for legal purposes... granted that Napster often IS used for legal purposes... there is still the legitimate issue of bandwidth.
As pointed out previously, Napster accounts for a *huge* amount of university LAN traffic. A system administrator who is perfectly Libertarian might have to shut down Napster access for no other reason than to protect the network's mission-critical traffic: supporting academic research and administration.
Bandwidth management is the answer. There are plenty of tools out there that will allow an administrator to allow Napster (and whatever other traffic types that may be a problem) to peacefully co-exist with mission-critical traffic, dynamically scaling back Napster to tolerable levels whenever the mission-critical applications are in demand. This stuff has existed for several years (disclaimer: I work for a company that makes bandwidth managers, and yes, we DO classify Napster, thus enabling system admins to keep Napster around when they otherwise would be forced to squelch it). There simply has to be the will to use these tools (and the budget).
Look on Napster's website. They even have a FAQ on the bandwidth issue, what to do about it, and where to get the solutions. Students should tell their administrators about this FAQ when presented with the bandwidth argument.
Have any United States elected officials contacted you or your legal team offering support? (and if they did, would you accept it, given that these would be representatives of the government attempting to harm you?)
Has your legal team considered a large-dollars countersuit, alleging slander, libel, and harassment (specifically, that they are claiming you to be a video pirate in absence of proof otherwise)?
When I say 'benevolent despot', I mean that Linus is in a position of self-made authority... and that his decisions are his own, not subject to being overridden by a 'public', and that he has demonstrated he is willing to use that authority (hence, 'despot'). Linus controls the kernel. The 'benevolent' part is that he uses this authority well, in my opinion. He is not capricious, he uses the Big Stick of lawyerdom sparingly, and lets self-correcting problems take care of themselves. The world needs more benevolent despots and fewer self-serving oligarchs (big word!).
I like Linux. I have a feeling I'd like Linus, if I knew him personally. I certainly respect the heck out of him, and I certainly don't intend that my comments be taken as negative.
As noted by others, Linus has left parody sites like www.linuxsucks.com alone. Those are not a commercial infringement of trademark. There's no impetus to do anything about it... one of the legal definitions of when something like that is 'parody' is whether the intent is primarily commercial.
I imagine Linus gets a laugh out of it once in a while, too... and even he will admit there are parts of Linux which do, in fact, suck.
Let he whose software is free of suction cast the first Dhrystone. (My code certainly sucks!)
Irrespective of that, there has been a lot of stink raised recently regarding LinuxOne. The "word on the street" (Wall Street) is that this is an operation just trying to cash in on the word "Linux" and not really offer anything except an IPO. A get-rich-quick scheme. If this goes through, it could seriously damage the credibility of "Linux" (quotes added to indicate the word and the image, separated from the actual product), and that hurts every legitimate Linux user, Linux administrator, and Linux support-and-sales company.
Linus is doing the right thing.
There are those who accuse people like Linus of being despots... and they're right. but Linus is a benevolent despot. And given the propensity the online community has for divisiveness and special-interests-at-the-cost-of-everybody-else, I think that's a Good Thing.
By claiming official support for Linux on their laptops, Dell is now on the hook to resolve (or at least prove "it ain't our fault") problems with their laptops and Linux. It means that if you have problems with a supported Linux on a supported Dell laptop, you can call tech support and they have to support you. If they don't, they get to talk to Mr. Lawyer.
One more (small) step towards Linux For The Masses, or, at least, Linux As A Viable Choice For The Masses.
Side note: the company I work for has standardized upon the Sony Vaio laptops and the Dell Inspirons (someone authorized to get a laptop has a choice between a few models on a short list). Being a networking hardware/software company, many of the laptops are used in the field for on-site diagnostics. The operating system of choice? It ain't 98!
--Lance
This is just the sort of thing that can help combat the single biggest problem in getting your film seen: distribution.
There are plenty of independent studios nowadays trying to turn out "Blair Witch" clones, be the next Spike Lee, or hit the big time on a tiny budget like "Clerks" did ("Clerks" cost about 25k to make and was shot on 16mm film). There is no lack of good material that lots of people would enjoy. But the problem is how to get independent films in front of people.
The bottleneck is the number of theaters, and the "gatekeepers" for access to those screens. Operating a theater has become progressively more expensive recently, and has been reflected in the cost of tickets and the disproportionate percentage of screens devoted to hunting for the next blockbuster (if you as a theater manager have four screens, are you going to risk devoting 25% of your screen space to a low-budget unknown film, or are you going to add another five daily showings of "The Phantom Menace"? Your decision can make the difference between being able to give another 5 people jobs or not... or even being able to pay rent on a large-square-foot building or not.).
Distributors like Orion (one of the more daring distributors... they are very large, with contracts for a good percentage of screens, and they have shown a willingness to consider and distribute independent films... a risky thing in a guild-run and union-run industry) have contracts for a specific number of screens, and unless a "Titanic" or "Blair Witch" shows up, the theaters will be reluctant to mess with those contracts. The distributors like to make their stockholders happy too, so they go for big-budget blockbusters in preference to low-budget high-risk films. Contrary to popular belief, most coprorate decision makers DO want to "do the right thing", no matter the industry, but when you're answerable to the stockholders and the Securiies and Exchange commission, you *must* put profit first. If you don't, you get to stand on a streetcorner with a "Will Promote Films For Food" sign.
Given that we're not going to see a doubling of the number of screens any time soon, and given that "art cinemas" (usually theaters converted from showing porno films that have been zoned out of existence) are on the decline, what's an indie film to do?
So here's the $64,000 question... will this be successful enough for indies to occasionally make a "crossover" and pick up mainstream distribution a la "Clerks" and "Blair Witch" and "Do The Right Thing"? Is this going to be the preferred method?
And if it starts to work... what are the guilds going to do ensure they get a piece of the action? And what are Viacom and TCI (ahem.. I mean AT&T) going to do?
- Every major studio is a public entity (i.e. their stock is publically traded), and they have the legal duty to their stockholders to maximize their profits. If they don't, they can be sued by their stockholders.
- There is a traditional big-big surge in video sales just before Christmas every year (how many of you gave or received movies as a gift?. Lucas knows this. What are the odds he will "change his mind" and TPM will be available around 1 December 2000?
- Lucas is by no means the first to have a rigidly-controlled home video release schedule. Disney is the "best" example... they periodically pull their videos from the market for years at a time, then rekindle interest with a "limited time release" (look at what they're doing with DVDs, now that DIVX (which they co-founded) is dead. 60 days only on each DVD Disney animated film. If you're a Disney fan, you've only got a few weeks left to get the first batch... can you say "feeding frenzy"?). So, while Lucas is taking the "dark side" on this, he is certainly not the first.
It certainly sucks, but Lucas well within his rights, and isn't answerable to anyone except you, when you decide whether to reach for your wallet.Except George Lucas. LucasFilm Limited is privately-held. It's accountable to George Lucas and nobody else.
This is important because it means he can pursue "non-standard" ways of doing things, right or wrong, profitable or otherwise. When you've got your billions, you get to indulge your Messaihanic ideas. When I get my billions, I know I will!
Like the title says... embedded systems.
Devices such as routers, firewalls, and other network appliances (not to mention things like assembly-line robots and traffic signals) all come under the category of embedded systems. They are typically single-task devices that run without direct human intervention.
These devices share a few common characteristics:
- They have cheap CPU's (typically at least two generations old... hey, there are still Z80's being made!)
- They have small amounts of RAM (a few K to a few megs)
- They have a very limited space for the operating system itself (typically a few K of non-volatile RAM up to a few megs of flash disk)
There is quite a market for such mini operating systems. Many such devices use Intel architecture hardware, and of these, most are sufficiently PC-compatible that you can actually boot them under DOS (assuming you can get DOS onto the nonvolatile storage).A few examples: pSOS, VxWorks, IOS (okay, well, IOS isn't "mini" :)
The point is, these systems all need an operating system that is small-footprint, CPU-cycle-efficient, doesn't need much of a user-interface (just enough for editing config files and such), and extensible. x86 compatibility is a big, big plus, as it makes the physical design MUCH easier and cheaper.
Sounds like a useful thing to me!
- The M16 rifle is the very definition of a hack in hardware. It is elegant, and it gets the job done extremely well, even under the most adverse conditions.
The early history of Eugene Stoner's AR-15/M-16 was riddled with problems. Close manufacturing tolerances and adverse field conditions (think Viet Nam) caused jams at the worst possible moments. These problems weren't really solved until the introduction of the M-16A1 with its kludgy "forward assist" (and a switch to less corrosive propellants).A little extra info here...
The M16 performed very well in trials. The problem never was with the rifle itself... the bad field performance of the early M16 was due entirely to bad decisions made by the military procurement personnel trying to save a buck.
The M16 is gas-operated. This means that the mechanism that loads another round automatically is powered by a bit of burned-gunpowder gas bled off of the barrel at a point about halfway down the barrel's length through a small "gas port". The gas goes down a small tube back to the receiver (the part of the rifle that the trigger, barrel, stock, and magazine all come together), which then operates the loading mechanism. Think of it as an air-operated tool.
When Stoner designed the rifle, he used a quick-burning gunpowder. It was finished burning before the bullet had moved far enough down the barrel to uncover the gas port, so no unburned powder entered the gas tube. However, the procurement folks decided at the very last minute to use slower-burning gunpowder left over from older, larger rounds. This gunpowder was still burning when the bullet passed the gas port, meaning that unburned powder flakes would get into the gas port and clog it up. Eventually, the gas tube would be so clogged that the rifle would jam (not enough gas was getting through the clogged gas tube to operate the rifle).
This is exactly the sort of thing when bean-counters who don't understand a technology mess with the technical specifications. Lesson: accountants aren't engineers. And people can die when accountants think they are engineers.
The other part of the equation? When the M16 was first issued to field troops, they didn't issue cleaning kits with it. No means of cleaning the gunked-up mechanism was available to the soldier.
Save a buck, lose a life.
One of the arguments used by the "ban-the-games" crowd and the media covering Columbine is that first-person shooters somehow teach kids to be supersoldiers.
Wrong.
I am a shooter of some skill. I've been shooting for many years, including some competition, and I also play FPS-style games (off-topic: Half-Life is my favorite). I know what it takes to be a good shooter, and I know what it takes to be a good gamer. The two have almost NO overlap.
Being a good shooter requires a calm head (physical trembling, however small, can mean the difference between a hit and a miss at rifle ranges. Jerking the trigger will cause a miss even at close handgun ranges). Being a good shooter requires intelligence (what is your target? What is beyond it? When something suddenly appears, do I shoot or not?). Being a good shooter requires attention to detail, in the care of your firearm and thinking about the circumstances of your shooting.
This has what to do with first-person shooters?
When the military uses FPS-style simulators to train soldiers, the concepts being taught are to pay attention to your flanks and rear, and to familiarize entry teams with the layout of a specific place (example: the Marines are the ones in charge of embassy security. They have "levels" with the floor plans and layouts of all the US embassy installations, so a guard can receive familiarization with all the rooms of a building and all the likely places the "bad guys" would hide, without bursting in on the ambassador's quarters in the name of "training"). They teach *nothing* about shooting skills.
But then, if this were well-known, there'd be no sensationalist headlines for local media atempting to get national attention, would there?
--Lance
There is a phrase I've heard... "rubber hose cryptography". It amounts to "Give me your encryption keys or we will do something very bad to you." Constitutional or not, IT HAPPENS. Constitutional amendments don't mend broken bones or give you back the finite days of your life spent under a 'contempt of court' trial-less incarceration.
Anyone remember how many YEARS Susan McDougal spent in jail because Ken Starr put her there to extort falsified testimony? Rapists get less time in jail than McDougal did. And if Starr can do that to someone with the whole nation watching, what prevents anyone with a badge or a gavel from doing exactly the same thing to YOU? The difference is, you don't have reporters interested in you like McDougal did. No one will be demanding YOUR release.
Bottom line: crypto is a Good Thing, but no crypto in the world will protect you from good old-fashioned application of force. Worried about something Politically Incorrect being on your computer? DON'T PUT IT THERE.
And for God's sake, don't labor under the illusion that the Powers That Be consider themselves subject to law.
One thing I see people here missing: the point of the article is that technical considerations aren't what will cause the migration away form Linux. It's the human factor.
When Linux is "good enough" for mass-market acceptance (not there yet, but soon...), the mass market will use Linux in great numbers. Why not? It's free, and it's good! However, we must remember that the "mass market" is significantly less technical than Slashdotters. Their concerns aren't our concerns, and vice versa. Remember also, there are far more of them than there are of us, and when the mass market accepts Linux, it is THEY who will decide where Linux goes. Not us.
This isn't a bad thing! NASA once made a comment that when a shuttle launch wasn't even newsworthy, they will have attained their goal. I see Linux in the same way. When you say "I run Linux!" and the response is "Yeah, you and everybody else, so what?" instead of "Cool!"... THAT is when Linux will have "won".
The cool thing will be something else. No big deal... the cycle will go on, and on. What IS important about Linux is that Linux has created a mechanism by which ANY software industry leader can be successfully competed with. When Linux runs only on museum pieces, the legacy that Linux left will still be powerful.
Thanks to Linux, there can be no more Microsofts... not without a fight. And THAT, more than anything else, is the real value of Linux. The power and weapons to rebel against a market leader are out there now, and aren't going away, no matter whether its caliber is Linux, Hurd, or anything else.
This particular search engine isn't honoring the robots.txt file (at least, not on my site). I checked to see if it knew about my pages, and it had indexed deep into my site DESPITE the "disallow" directives in my robots.txt file.
Shame on them.
Microsoft's traditional area of strength is software, not hardware (whether this is through programming skill, marketing savvy or hairy men named Guido is irrelevant for this particular point). AT&T's traditional strength is voice communications, not digital content (and their recent purchase of TCI really hasn't added much to this).
While Microsoft/AT&T may be in a situation to sell desktop boxes, someone has to MAKE them. National Semi will be in a position to sell TO the Microsoft/AT&T partnership. National Semi isn't competing with Microsoft/AT&T, because the product in question is a chipset, not a content-delivery network. And since the Geode is based on the MediaGX core (which is an x86 chip), porting WinCE to the Geode will be a snap. I'd bet Microsoft LIKES this.
It's just another platform. Sure, it will run WinCE shortly. And just as sure, someone's going to get a flavor of Linux running on it. The only exciting thing about the Geode is the fact that it's single-chip, meaning that the barrier to entry into 'information appliances' design just got a lot lower.
It is now within the realm of possibility that a talented hardware geek, operating not as a Big Expensive Company but as a hobbyist, could create a Palm-like device that runs x86/PC software with a bare minimum of porting.
Now, THAT'S interesting.