. Not to troll, but a project manager at Microsoft probably has more influence on the technological evolution of their products than open source project leaders.
A program (not project) manager at Microsoft must take orders from higher-ups. Linux or Guido make up their own minds based upon community suggestion. Otherwise I agree with you. The Program Manager has more control, but less freedom to act as they wish. The Open Source team lead has a high degree of freedom but less direct control.
You never have to wait overnight for the Canadian election. The ballots are tabulated in about the same time as in American elections. Just as in American elections it may take a day or more if a particular race is very tight and requires a recount. No Canadian election has ever been as close as 2000 (in Florida) so we don't know how long it would take to clean up that sort of mess.
Unless I'm mistaken, the issue here is that VMWare and Xen have different interfaces, and both want theirs to be the "official" one.
"For a long time, it was thought that we'd just merge the Xen patches as-is and be happy. But then, Linux would only run on Xen," Morton said. Instead, VMware programmers suggested a documented, stable interface between the kernel and the hypervisor -- and they're preparing one, he said.
"From a high-level design perspective, I think that VMware's point is a good one, and that a general kernel-to-virtual machine interface is a better thing than a Xen-only one," Morton said.
XenSource and VMware both are fine with the change, but VMware gets a place at the table it lacked before.
"Anything that levels the playing field for different people -- that's going to be good for everyone, but certainly good for us as well," said Dan Chu, the senior director of developer products at EMC subsidiary VMware.
I get the strong impression that Xen is the party trying to play the monopolist in this game. But now that ties with Linux vendors may cool a bit after their cozying up to Microsoft, they may not find that as easy to push through.
What? Nothing to do with interoperability? Xen and Vmware need to sit down & hammer out a shared API - but its nothing to do with interoperability?
Right: nobody is trying to get Xen and VMware to work with each other. Substitutability might be a better term.
VMware is fast losing its patience with both Oracle and Postgresql over their reluctance to work together to help develop a single interface that will integrate a variety of clustering filesystem solutions in the Linux kernel.
Right, what would be wrong with an article like that? Why shouldn't companies criticize each other when intransigence causes consumers difficulty.
Why the hell should we take advice from them about this seriously?
They aren't offering advice. They are stating their opinion that this problem is costing them revenues and delaying customer implementations of virtualization. Do you agree with them or do you think that there is no problem with the fact that Xen is (apparently) trying to push a Xen-specific interface into the Linux kernel and lock out rivals? If you agree with them, then does it matter whether the messenger is Oracle, Microsoft or Satan himself? And if you disagree, then why don't you state your reasons rather than using an ad hominem approach? Nobody claims that Oracle is doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That's a non-sequiter.
It's also incorrect to say that Oracle does not support standards. Oracle supports standards when it is in their own best interest, which may be because of pressure from other companies or customers (or customers advised by other companies to press Oracle on standards compliance). It is precisely because Oracle understands how these decisions are made (on the basis of cash and pressure) that they are making this statement. Good for them!
This issue has nothing to do with interoperability. It is about getting changes into the Linux kernel. I don't see it as particularly (5, Insightful) to say: "Oracle isn't perfect therefore they shouldn't complain about other companies." Oracle is an influential company trying to solve a logjam slowing important technology adoption in Linux. Good for them!
I agree totally (from a very biased point of view). XML is not a silver bullet but if you've ever seen a two week project stretch into months as you discovered more and more quirks of the proprietary syntax someone handed you then you'll see the need for a standard. Does it solve world peace? No. Does it save the industry hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of dollars in parser-writing and subtly incorrect systems? Probably. I find it quite funny when people accuse XML of not solving an insoluable problem -- at the same time that they are declaring the problem insoluable! If a marketer sold you a solution to an insoluable problem then shame on both of you: the technology does not deserve the blame.
"Objects and IDEs don't solve every problem" is a self-evident truth
"Marketers over-hype things" is also pretty widely understood.
So what is he saying that is actually interesting? It would be much more productive to write an article on the appropriate limits of the use of particular technologies than to spew truisms as if they were deep wisdom.
With Vista coming out soon, many new applications written will only run on Vista because of the new architecture, driver model, etc
Many applications only removed Windows 98 support this year. Applications can't target Microsoft's latest and greatest immediately. They have to target the installed base for several years.
The thing that is in the way of us achieving of truly open chat is the fact that the account providers think they "own" the users -- which is why they are possesive about them.
Yes, that is the problem. It has nothing to do with technology or standards availability.
This is exactly what America needs: something that allows the populace to think even less in their everyday lives. The aversion to expending a little extra effort seems to be a uniquely American thing.
Actually quite the opposite is true. German was revised (supposedly simplified) in 1998. French was simplified in 1990. Norwegian was simplified in 1981 and 2003 etc. Avoiding effort is a very wise practice worldwide which is commonly known as "improving productivity." Automobiles and vacuum cleaners are examples of devices that support this practice.
MyDoom.A was also far easier to remove than something that's embedded it'self into the system, making it unremovable, then requiring a complete reinstall of the system.
Once a virus has destroyed your data, emptied your bank account and ruined your reputation through email spam, it hardly matters whether it takes one hour to remove it with a Virus cleaner program or one day through a complete re-install. The damage is done.
So you categorically deny that you accepted any money from the freedb team. If that's true, then your work is yours and good luck in whatever you choose to do with it. I still find it odd that you won't just release a tarball in the spirit of openness but that's your business. If nobody paid you to develop it then it is your code to do with as you wish. I hope the moderators mod you up so that your side of the story can be more visible.
I think that it is pretty well-known that less than 10% of the cost of shoes or jeans is in manufacturing. Nobody cares. Why would they care in the case of iPods?
If Andrew (or whatever his name is) hasn't attempted to distribute binaries that contain GPL code (and I'm not sure we know that he has for a fact), then we need to back the fuck up.
No, now is the time to pressure him to explain his actions. He's popped his head up on Slashdot several times in this thread and not yet has he given any kind of explanation. My understanding of the situation puts him in a very bad light and id he had any defense I would expect him to provide it.
He accepted money to create GPL software. He has not released the software he promised.
For years he has been saying that the software will be "available soon". He should just make a tarball of his development directory and allay everyone's fears.
His actions caused the death of freedb.
He is now directing people to his freedb competitor (presumably based on the software he was paid to make).
That competitor serves Google advertisments and thus each hit makes the author money
Now is the time for him to tell his side of the story. I don't see any virtue in people laying off for a few weeks. Procastination seems to be his MO.
Re:freedb2.org compatibility
on
Freedb.org Ending
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
For almost two years now Ari and I have supported a developer from Australia, who was working on the next generation of the freedb server, which would have overcome most of our current technological problems and offered text searching. This was the biggest chance for freedb in years. Unfortunately there have been rising tensions in our team about the question, how long we should support a development project, which has not yet been made open source by the developer and which is not yet running on freedb servers.
Is it true that you accepted money (which is how I interpret "support") to do open source development and then did not release the code? I'd like to hear your side of the story.
Re:That was actually surprisingly good article
on
The Cost of the iPod
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's not really Renck's place to make that conclusion on Apple's behalf.
The determination is between Apple's CFO, Apple's auditing firm, and the SEC.
You are incorrect on two counts. First, Renck has the right to try to influence the decision of those people by publishing his opinion. It makes no sense to say that the only people who should speak of a decision are those directly involved. According to that logic, online commentators should not discuss Hamden because it is essentially between the Bush administration, the Supreme Court and a bunch of foreigners.
Second, the aggrieved party here is the shareholders, not the SEC, the auditing firm or the CFO. Renck is telling shareholders that they are taking on extra risk investing in a company that does not use transparent accounting. Not only is that his right, it is his job. He never claimed that they were doing something illegal. You're conflating the argument of an analyst (that Apple is a risky investment) and that of a Slashdot poster (that Apple may be breaking the law). Someone on Slashdot postulated that PERHAPS it was illegal. He also has a right to express his opinion.
So do I: it is totally ridiculous to say that Apple's 5% marketshare in PCs, it's much larger market share in music playing devices and its still larger market share in online music have "essentially the same future prospects." For example, the online music business is very vulnerable to changes in copyright law. The handheld business is potentially vulnerable to growth in MP3-playing cell phones (as someone else noted). And the computer business is vulnerable primarily to marginalization or dropping profit margins due to competition from Dell and other commodity PC vendors. I don't know enough about disclosure law to claim that Apple is breaking it, but I do know enough about Apple's business to say that one can easily imagine one of Apple's businesses going kaput while another soars and vice versa.
If people know how much money you're making on a sale, then they feel bad about paying for it. They see the value of the item as what it actually costs to produce, not what it is being sold for..e.g If my friend gets a great deal on a bucket of apples (say 5$), and offers to sell them to me at 10$ a bucket.. I won't feel too happy about that, knowing full well he is taking advantage of and making profit off my skin. If I don't know how much he paid, then I assume he is keeping my best interest in mind, and don't feel harshly towards him for selling me the apples (which at 10$ a bucket is still a great deal.)
I don't think that this is "kinda obvious" at all. How much do Nike running shoes or Gap jeans cost to make? Do consumers care except when they are in an anti-sweatshop mood?
The reason that Apple hides this information has nothing to do with consumers. It is about giving them control over the information they provide to stock analysts so that they can have more control over stock price growth. For example, they could lose money on every new iPod a while without freaking out the investors (e.g. if they added phone capabilities to try and conquer a new market). On the other hand, Microsoft is pretty open about the fact that their XBox unit is losing money which probably has a negative impact on their stock price.
Being a market leader is important in other businesses because it dramatically reduces marketing costs. If the public thinks "quicken=finances" then Quicken can advertise less. The market leader is also more trusted. Have you ever heard "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?" (or Microsoft, or Oracle, or SAP, or whatever) How many people do you know who buy iPods because everyone around them has an iPod. A competitor with exactly the same product would have to spend much more on marketing to achieve sales than Apple does. (Apple chooses to spend a lot on iPod advertising precisely because it is disproportionately beneficial to them...each advertisment results in vastly more sales than would be the case for Creative or Sandisk)
I would argue that gmail is pretty successful. It's forced Yahoo, Hotmail to offer much larger mailboxes to keep their clients.
From a business point of view it is a failure to introduce an innovation so simple to copy that your competitors catch up quickly. It would be a success if Yahoo and Hotmail were now in free-fall because they couldn't match it.
I'd feel obligated to help out my own people and my own country, especially since a large portion of that money was earned here domestically.
I don't understand why you think that "your own people" are more important than other people? Also, I don't see why it matters where the money came from? Ultimately it came from Microsoft customers. The most direct way to "give it back" would be to track them down and send checks. But what good would that do? It is precisely the people who cannot afford the software who are most in need. That means Africans and Asians, not Americans and Europeans.
In any case, the fund DOES invest disproportionately high amounts in America in general and the Pacific Northwest in particular.
The choice of corrective treatment, rather than proactive, means that there will be an ongoing demand for the pills, which will then be bought from the same pharma.
Corrective treatment rather than proactive? Your inaccuracies are really pissing me off. Do you understand that we aren't talking here about Linux versus Windows but rather the survival of hundreds of millions of people? Do you feel any responsibility to tell the truth? Do you feel any responsibility to give credit where it is due? At this point, Bill Gates (evil genious that he is) is looking a lot better than you.
To quote:
Every year, millions of children in the developing world die or become seriously ill because they do not receive immunizations that are standard in the developed world. In 2000, the foundation joined with a diverse group of public and private partners to create the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) to help ensure that all children have access to vaccines. The foundation has provided a total of $1.5 billion to GAVI since its inception, including a $750 million grant announced in January 2005. Also in 2005, GAVI generated unprecedented support from donor countries.
With the support of a $35 million foundation grant, the Seattle-based organization PATH is working with the government of Zambia and other partners to help cut malaria deaths in that country by 75 percent. The partnership--called MACEPA, for Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa--will document the impact of a national malaria-control program that will provide widespread access to insecticide-treated bed nets, effective drug treatment, and other tools. MACEPA's findings will provide critical information for other malaria-affected countries and donors.
While providing greater access to current tools could significantly reduce malaria deaths, developing new tools is also an urgent priority. In October, we announced grants totaling $258.3 million to spur innovation in three critical areas of malaria prevention and treatment:
Malaria vaccine: The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative is working with GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals and African scientists to conduct advanced clinical trials of the RTS,S vaccine candidate, which has been shown to protect young children from severe malaria over an 18-month period.
New drugs: The Medicines for Malaria Venture is developing a new generation of malaria treatments, an effort that has gained new urgency as drug resistance has rendered the cheapest and most widely used malaria drugs useless in many parts of Africa.
Mosquito control: The Innovative Vector Control Consortium, based at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is developing new methods for controlling malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, including longer-lasting bed nets and more effective, safer insecticides.
Slashdot Mirror
. Not to troll, but a project manager at Microsoft probably has more influence on the technological evolution of their products than open source project leaders.
A program (not project) manager at Microsoft must take orders from higher-ups. Linux or Guido make up their own minds based upon community suggestion. Otherwise I agree with you. The Program Manager has more control, but less freedom to act as they wish. The Open Source team lead has a high degree of freedom but less direct control.
You never have to wait overnight for the Canadian election. The ballots are tabulated in about the same time as in American elections. Just as in American elections it may take a day or more if a particular race is very tight and requires a recount. No Canadian election has ever been as close as 2000 (in Florida) so we don't know how long it would take to clean up that sort of mess.
Unless I'm mistaken, the issue here is that VMWare and Xen have different interfaces, and both want theirs to be the "official" one.
I get the strong impression that Xen is the party trying to play the monopolist in this game. But now that ties with Linux vendors may cool a bit after their cozying up to Microsoft, they may not find that as easy to push through.
What? Nothing to do with interoperability? Xen and Vmware need to sit down & hammer out a shared API - but its nothing to do with interoperability?
Right: nobody is trying to get Xen and VMware to work with each other. Substitutability might be a better term.
VMware is fast losing its patience with both Oracle and Postgresql over their reluctance to work together to help develop a single interface that will integrate a variety of clustering filesystem solutions in the Linux kernel.
Right, what would be wrong with an article like that? Why shouldn't companies criticize each other when intransigence causes consumers difficulty.
Why the hell should we take advice from them about this seriously?
They aren't offering advice. They are stating their opinion that this problem is costing them revenues and delaying customer implementations of virtualization. Do you agree with them or do you think that there is no problem with the fact that Xen is (apparently) trying to push a Xen-specific interface into the Linux kernel and lock out rivals? If you agree with them, then does it matter whether the messenger is Oracle, Microsoft or Satan himself? And if you disagree, then why don't you state your reasons rather than using an ad hominem approach? Nobody claims that Oracle is doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That's a non-sequiter.
It's also incorrect to say that Oracle does not support standards. Oracle supports standards when it is in their own best interest, which may be because of pressure from other companies or customers (or customers advised by other companies to press Oracle on standards compliance). It is precisely because Oracle understands how these decisions are made (on the basis of cash and pressure) that they are making this statement. Good for them!
Is it possible VMWare is trolling Oracle for an offer, playing hardball like this?
An offer of what???
This issue has nothing to do with interoperability. It is about getting changes into the Linux kernel. I don't see it as particularly (5, Insightful) to say: "Oracle isn't perfect therefore they shouldn't complain about other companies." Oracle is an influential company trying to solve a logjam slowing important technology adoption in Linux. Good for them!
I agree totally (from a very biased point of view). XML is not a silver bullet but if you've ever seen a two week project stretch into months as you discovered more and more quirks of the proprietary syntax someone handed you then you'll see the need for a standard. Does it solve world peace? No. Does it save the industry hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of dollars in parser-writing and subtly incorrect systems? Probably. I find it quite funny when people accuse XML of not solving an insoluable problem -- at the same time that they are declaring the problem insoluable! If a marketer sold you a solution to an insoluable problem then shame on both of you: the technology does not deserve the blame.
"Objects and IDEs don't solve every problem" is a self-evident truth
"Marketers over-hype things" is also pretty widely understood.
So what is he saying that is actually interesting? It would be much more productive to write an article on the appropriate limits of the use of particular technologies than to spew truisms as if they were deep wisdom.
With Vista coming out soon, many new applications written will only run on Vista because of the new architecture, driver model, etc
Many applications only removed Windows 98 support this year. Applications can't target Microsoft's latest and greatest immediately. They have to target the installed base for several years.
It would be nice to see there be some official standards of a chat protocol.
There is: http://www.jabber.org/
The thing that is in the way of us achieving of truly open chat is the fact that the account providers think they "own" the users -- which is why they are possesive about them.
Yes, that is the problem. It has nothing to do with technology or standards availability.
Mod parent up please.
This is exactly what America needs: something that allows the populace to think even less in their everyday lives. The aversion to expending a little extra effort seems to be a uniquely American thing.
Actually quite the opposite is true. German was revised (supposedly simplified) in 1998. French was simplified in 1990. Norwegian was simplified in 1981 and 2003 etc. Avoiding effort is a very wise practice worldwide which is commonly known as "improving productivity." Automobiles and vacuum cleaners are examples of devices that support this practice.
MyDoom.A was also far easier to remove than something that's embedded it'self into the system, making it unremovable, then requiring a complete reinstall of the system.
Once a virus has destroyed your data, emptied your bank account and ruined your reputation through email spam, it hardly matters whether it takes one hour to remove it with a Virus cleaner program or one day through a complete re-install. The damage is done.
So you categorically deny that you accepted any money from the freedb team. If that's true, then your work is yours and good luck in whatever you choose to do with it. I still find it odd that you won't just release a tarball in the spirit of openness but that's your business. If nobody paid you to develop it then it is your code to do with as you wish. I hope the moderators mod you up so that your side of the story can be more visible.
I think that it is pretty well-known that less than 10% of the cost of shoes or jeans is in manufacturing. Nobody cares. Why would they care in the case of iPods?
If Andrew (or whatever his name is) hasn't attempted to distribute binaries that contain GPL code (and I'm not sure we know that he has for a fact), then we need to back the fuck up.
No, now is the time to pressure him to explain his actions. He's popped his head up on Slashdot several times in this thread and not yet has he given any kind of explanation. My understanding of the situation puts him in a very bad light and id he had any defense I would expect him to provide it.
Now is the time for him to tell his side of the story. I don't see any virtue in people laying off for a few weeks. Procastination seems to be his MO.
Please read this page: http://www.freedb.org/index.php
For almost two years now Ari and I have supported a developer from Australia, who was working on the next generation of the freedb server, which would have overcome most of our current technological problems and offered text searching. This was the biggest chance for freedb in years. Unfortunately there have been rising tensions in our team about the question, how long we should support a development project, which has not yet been made open source by the developer and which is not yet running on freedb servers.
Is it true that you accepted money (which is how I interpret "support") to do open source development and then did not release the code? I'd like to hear your side of the story.
It's not really Renck's place to make that conclusion on Apple's behalf.
The determination is between Apple's CFO, Apple's auditing firm, and the SEC.
You are incorrect on two counts. First, Renck has the right to try to influence the decision of those people by publishing his opinion. It makes no sense to say that the only people who should speak of a decision are those directly involved. According to that logic, online commentators should not discuss Hamden because it is essentially between the Bush administration, the Supreme Court and a bunch of foreigners.
Second, the aggrieved party here is the shareholders, not the SEC, the auditing firm or the CFO. Renck is telling shareholders that they are taking on extra risk investing in a company that does not use transparent accounting. Not only is that his right, it is his job. He never claimed that they were doing something illegal. You're conflating the argument of an analyst (that Apple is a risky investment) and that of a Slashdot poster (that Apple may be breaking the law). Someone on Slashdot postulated that PERHAPS it was illegal. He also has a right to express his opinion.
So do I: it is totally ridiculous to say that Apple's 5% marketshare in PCs, it's much larger market share in music playing devices and its still larger market share in online music have "essentially the same future prospects." For example, the online music business is very vulnerable to changes in copyright law. The handheld business is potentially vulnerable to growth in MP3-playing cell phones (as someone else noted). And the computer business is vulnerable primarily to marginalization or dropping profit margins due to competition from Dell and other commodity PC vendors. I don't know enough about disclosure law to claim that Apple is breaking it, but I do know enough about Apple's business to say that one can easily imagine one of Apple's businesses going kaput while another soars and vice versa.
If people know how much money you're making on a sale, then they feel bad about paying for it. They see the value of the item as what it actually costs to produce, not what it is being sold for. .e.g If my friend gets a great deal on a bucket of apples (say 5$), and offers to sell them to me at 10$ a bucket.. I won't feel too happy about that, knowing full well he is taking advantage of and making profit off my skin. If I don't know how much he paid, then I assume he is keeping my best interest in mind, and don't feel harshly towards him for selling me the apples (which at 10$ a bucket is still a great deal.)
I don't think that this is "kinda obvious" at all. How much do Nike running shoes or Gap jeans cost to make? Do consumers care except when they are in an anti-sweatshop mood?
The reason that Apple hides this information has nothing to do with consumers. It is about giving them control over the information they provide to stock analysts so that they can have more control over stock price growth. For example, they could lose money on every new iPod a while without freaking out the investors (e.g. if they added phone capabilities to try and conquer a new market). On the other hand, Microsoft is pretty open about the fact that their XBox unit is losing money which probably has a negative impact on their stock price.
Being a market leader is important in other businesses because it dramatically reduces marketing costs. If the public thinks "quicken=finances" then Quicken can advertise less. The market leader is also more trusted. Have you ever heard "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?" (or Microsoft, or Oracle, or SAP, or whatever) How many people do you know who buy iPods because everyone around them has an iPod. A competitor with exactly the same product would have to spend much more on marketing to achieve sales than Apple does. (Apple chooses to spend a lot on iPod advertising precisely because it is disproportionately beneficial to them...each advertisment results in vastly more sales than would be the case for Creative or Sandisk)
I would argue that gmail is pretty successful. It's forced Yahoo, Hotmail to offer much larger mailboxes to keep their clients.
From a business point of view it is a failure to introduce an innovation so simple to copy that your competitors catch up quickly. It would be a success if Yahoo and Hotmail were now in free-fall because they couldn't match it.
Absolutely! Drugs and speech should both be free!
I'd feel obligated to help out my own people and my own country, especially since a large portion of that money was earned here domestically.
I don't understand why you think that "your own people" are more important than other people? Also, I don't see why it matters where the money came from? Ultimately it came from Microsoft customers. The most direct way to "give it back" would be to track them down and send checks. But what good would that do? It is precisely the people who cannot afford the software who are most in need. That means Africans and Asians, not Americans and Europeans.
In any case, the fund DOES invest disproportionately high amounts in America in general and the Pacific Northwest in particular.
The choice of corrective treatment, rather than proactive, means that there will be an ongoing demand for the pills, which will then be bought from the same pharma.
Corrective treatment rather than proactive? Your inaccuracies are really pissing me off. Do you understand that we aren't talking here about Linux versus Windows but rather the survival of hundreds of millions of people? Do you feel any responsibility to tell the truth? Do you feel any responsibility to give credit where it is due? At this point, Bill Gates (evil genious that he is) is looking a lot better than you. To quote:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/public/media/an