Err, What?!? Io is the name of a moon, or satellite to use the more correct term, of Jupiter. It's not an acronym.
They DID "take a second to add a short phrase" describing what it was all about. Jupiter, flyby, Galileo, NASA, radiation. All of these terms should have given you some clue! Or, may be not...
While I agree that Silex's message is probably flamebait the way it was written he probably does have a point. I would hazzard to guess that the average Unix user has a higher IQ than the average Windows user. Why? Well, everyone keeps saying that Unix is so hard to use, right? And everyone keeps saying that Windows is so easy, right? Then it logically follows that the average Unix user would be more intelligent than the average Windows user. This is true more so when you consider that the number of people that choose to learn Unix and be proficient instead of being "forced" to use it is probably larger now than it has ever been. Certainly people who choose to learn difficult things instead of taking the "easy" road intellectually would be more intellectual as a result. Perhaps Unix users and Windows users had the same "intellect" before they started, but I can't help to think that the process of learning has the tendancy to increase your intellect. If that's the case then Unix users have to have a higher intellect than Windows users because of all the learning they have had to do.
Mark it down as flamebait if you want, but I believe this to be at least an arguably sound logical conclusion given the facts.
Well, I never said government intervention either, did I? I think it is an error to assume that "Big Brother" like tactics are only applicable to government agencies. I believe that it is just as a horrible idea to have a community belief that results in Big Brother like monitoring by other community members, whether they are government officials or not.
I don't believe it is in the best interest of society to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of their customers. Sure, if the Internet self-regulating community makes an ISP aware of abuse by one of it's customers then it should take immediate action, although allowing for a rebuttal to prevent against actions against innocent victims of falsely reported misconduct. I think almost everyone agrees with this. I don't think that anyone expects ISP's to have a "hands off" policy even when they are notified and shown "evidence" from the community that someone is using their service unethically and in contradiction to their policies. I believe that ISP's should even cooperate with investigators if it is shown that the acts of one of their customers is or could be illegal. Certainly they should comply with any court orders demanding the turnover of any logs or records of the customer's actions.
This, however, is MUCH different than saying that ISP's should monitor each and every transaction that it's members have on-line, and that failure to do so is unethical. That would mean that ISP's would have to install monitoring equipment to check each and every email, web post, and usenet message sent by all of their customers for specific things. Someone would have to review the flagged messages and make a decision whether to turn over the "evidence" to authorities, terminate the users contract, or let it pass. How else are ISP's supposed to be "ethical" by making sure their customers are not using their free services for unethical and immoral things (such as child pornagraphy), which according to you is their moral and ethical obligation. Yes, ISP's can install software or design their system so that use of "free" services is easily trackable to someone who actually pays the phone bills -- much like HotMail records the IP address of users who send mail, which should be trackable by the ISP as to who was assigned that IP address at a particular date and time. Having these tracking mechanisms in place is not the same as saying that ISP's are ethically responsible to ensure that their customers are acting in an ethical and moral manner. I support, and I would guess that most others support, the "tracking" of messages like this. Unfortunately, I may differ in that I don't support the "release" of this information unless sufficient evidence is provided to indicate that the person being tracked has committed an illegal act or an act that is against the use policy for the ISP.
So, may be our views are more similar thay you think. I disagree in your terminology, however, that ISP's are acting "unethical" or "immoral" if they provide for free services that they don't monitor to assure compliance with the law, their fair use policy, or common decency. I think it is enough to "cover their but" legally, morally, and ethically, to ensure that proper tracking mechanisms are in place so that people who break the law, their fair use contract, or common decency can be tracked.
I don't want to live in a police state whether enforced by actual government authorities or by my fellow citizens. I sincerely doubt that you do either, so there has to be some misunderstanding...
IMHO a one-time occurance does not consititute harrassment. If you tried to have the poice chief removed because you got pulled over one time then yes, I would think you're kinda nuts (or have something to hide). Yes, I do believe that Microsoft "had done something wrong" and should be punished. While that may taint my perspective somewhat I don't think it totally invalidates my suggestion that the actions Microsoft is taking are not the actions of an innocent "victim" of the judicial system.
Most people do not believe they are being harassed. Most people would not react in the same manner given similar circumstances.
You seem to have the view that Microsoft is being harassed, because according to you they didn't do anything wrong and the DOJ is just prosecuting them because they have something against Microsoft (if you didn't believe this then you couldn't accuse the DOJ of harassing MS). O.K., that's your opinion. It's not bee proven that this is the case. That's what the trial is all about.
It's kinda like if you were driving your car and got pulled over for speeding. You swear that you were right up to the speed limit but didn't cross over that line. The police say that they believe you did cross over that line and have independant evidence to back it up (much like the DOJ has independant evidence to say that MS caused harm to other companies and consumers by using their monopoly power illegally). Whether the police are right or you are right is determined in court, based on the strength of their evidence and your defense. You wouldn't start lobbying your local government to cut the police budget so that they couldn't "harass" you in the future, would you? If so, I don't think you're the kind of person that anyone would want in their neighborhood.
While I believe you in saying that non progit organizations are probably barred from lobbying, I don't think writing a letter constitutes official lobbying. That's my understanding of what these "non-profit" orgs did, so they probably won't get dinged for it. I think they should -- at least be forced to explain their actions in court, but doubt they will.
If there was a breakup the, much like Ma Bell, there would be a judge that would oversee the breakup for many years. It's not as simple as "O.K., which company do you want to head? O.K., that's fine, see ya!"
I can't help but feel that the point of your post is that free services are "bad" and that they are somehow unethical because some people use them for unethical purposes. What else is one to assume from your post? Why do we need "methods of verification?" Do we really want Big Brother watching over our every move to ensure we don't hurt ourselves? The answer is not to restrict free or "anonymous" access to the net. Rather, it is for grown adults to take responsibility for their actions and not try to push the responsibility onto another entity. For children and other minors, it's the parents responsability to protect them and nurture them. Handing off the sresponsibility to another person or entity is as neglectful and act as any.
When people learn to take responsibility for their actions our current "problems" will cease to exist, or at least be reduced to a level that our law enforcement authorities can deal with effectively.
Or a way to dynamically change the instruction set of a processor so that one "generic" CPU is both a "generic" CPU and application specific CPU at the same time. A lot of the work that generic CPU's do, and will be doing more and more of because they are so fast and have the raw power to do it, is finding solutions to application specific problems. Because generic CPUs are so fast and cheap they are as cost effective as application specific CPUs in certain circumstances.
Look at the "WIN printers" for instance. It was thought that it would be cheaper to take the (relatively cheap) intelligence out of printers and put it into software drivers that are run on a generic CPU. Whether it is true or not (that it is more cost effective) is beside the point. The point is that we are asking the generic CPU to do things that it normally would not, requiring large amounts of processing power due to the timing and other issues.
If Transmeta is working on what is rumored, using current chip manufacturing techniques and not some new fangled method, then both the generic CPU instructions and the application specific instructions could then be executed on the same chip. Since the application specific instruction set would be taylored to the applications, presumably less cycles would need to be done to solve the same problem. This would reduce the need for faster and faster CPU's, would it not? Would not this be a new approach to the "problem?" May be not finding a new way to make a faster same old generic CPU product but finding a new paradigm that used a single unit in order to do both generic and app specific "stuff."
You're forgetting Microsoft's propensity to throw everything including the kitchen sink into their products. When Windows 2010 requires a 1.5GHz CPU/w 2GB RAM just to boot (come now this is not too unrealistic) your point about the general consumer vs state of the art does not hold up. Sure, there will be some small "appliances" that would do fine with today's high end CPU's, but if MS and Intel has their way then ppl will be in an ever continuing cycle up upgrades -- needing to upgrade their hardware (which contains some "new" features) in order to handle the latest monstrosity from MS, which upgrades their software to handle the few new features in the new hardware (along with a lot of useless bloat), which demands a new hardware upgrade in order to run acceptably, etc....
I don't think the need for faster and more capable hardware will cease until computers advance to our "dream" computers. For each person what this means is different.
What I see most likely is the current manufacturers following their current practices of concentrating their R&D on faster and faster generic purpose CPUs until they reach some sort of "wall." When this happens, they will probably branch out in two separate directions. One focused on R&D into totally new methods of producing generic purpose CPUs that break through this wall and the other on application specific designs. They will most likely need to get the bulk of their revenue from application specific designs, taking a larger and larger percentage from the generic purpose CPUs as they get cheaper and cheaper (because other companies will reach the same barrier and the competition will reflect lower prices).
This is not necessarily a "bad" thing. I think it makes much more sense to design a chip specifically for, say, speach recognition. Sure, there is a very important software part of this and there has been some recent work on neural net chips or systems that supposedly is in the right direction, but someone like Intel spending vast amounts of resources on a speach recognition chip (based on neural computing or not) using 5 micron casts would likely have great success in a short amount of time (2-3 years). Think of all the other application specific areas where Intel and the other manufacturers could branch out if they ever do get to a 5 micron technology. Perhaps "visual" recognition, handwriting recognition, Oh, here's a big one -- language translation. The possibilities are endless, with a matching revenue stream. I could see someone spending $1000 or more for a generic language translation unit to take with them on their vacation (I certainly would and there's a heck of a lot of people in this world).
That would be kinda hard to cool. May be they will have to have a self-contained liquid cooling system that is integrated into the 'chip.' I always thought that if it wasn't for the heat problems the most effective way would be to have '3D' chips where you stack multiple layers of chips on top of each other. I know that that's how they make the current chips, with several layers masked out to create the transistors and connecting 'lines,' but to my knowledge they don't stack complete chips on top of each other with a thin insulating layer in between (and 'holes' in this layer to connect the two chips together). It would be kinda like the multi-layer motherboard designs, which are probably all you find today. Remember when a four or five layer motherboard was something 'special?'
O.K., I know it's a nit pick, but it should be CMOS, not C.M.O.'s. May be they should pass their stories through/. for editing too, or get a technology editor that can spot this obvious mistake.
Why, then, oh why, do so many people act like he's a Visionary?
Why can't he be both? If you're a journalist or a writer, you can be an visionary. If you're a politician you can be a visionary. Why can't a programmer? Granted, visionaries usually have "Vision" in their area of expertise. Since you seem to think people act like ESR is a visionary, and what he is being visionary in is his own field of expertise, I don't think there is a conflict.
This rather substantial article cuts through a lot of the amateur pop-economist stuff ESR tries to pull off whenever he can.
I have not read the article myself, but comments from others seem to indicate that it consists largely of opinions of others and not much on raw facts. If this is true, and appears to be based on a quick check of the number of quoted passages in the article, then I wouldn't call it "rather substatial." You're use of the term "pop-economist stuff" indicates a predisposition on your part against ESR and support of anything that critiques him, reguardless of it's merrit.
Let's just admit that the Cathederal/Bazzaar paradigm plays well to the choir, but that there's a whole world out there.
Well, isn't that what a visionary does? Playing well to the choir, giving them a "Vision" of how things can end up if they agree with the Vision? You're confusing me now. First you imply that ESR is not a Visionary for programmers, then you say he plays well to the choir. Which is it? If ESR's vision is so wrong, why does it play to the choir so nicely?
I would think most of the community here would disagree with you. Nerds or geeks tend to demand technical excellence and won't put up with sub-standard products. That's probably one of the underlying reasons that we support Linux so much. Because we think we can do a technically better job than Microsoft writing an operating system -- and we seem to have done so, no?
I think it would be honest and accurate to say that we would gladly pay top dollar for the technically superior hardware device. Unless we had an absolute immediate need I don't think anyone prefers a cheaper product that has "proprietary and/or 'quirky' drivers."
Be aware that printer drivers (at least for non-PS printers) often are a lot more than the implementation of the specs of the printer, and contain a fair ammount of the printer's functionality within.
Um, that would be a "WinPrinter," and we don't want no stinking WinPrinters in Linux!
My point is not that this is good or bad, just that saying that printer vendors must open-source their drivers is to open a whole nother can of worms - is it appropriate for a company to sell closed software that runs on an open platform? I'm still not done eating my last can of worms!
I suppose that last can of worms was Open Source operating systems or applications? If you're not done with that one yet I can see why you have the opinion you do. Give it time, you may learn the benefits of OSS some day...
I don't see how the fact that the sign (source code? code comments?) is in English excludes anyone. The actual code is in C or C++ or Perl or whatever. The only thing that is in English, if anything, are the code comments and documentation. I don't see why anyone who is a good programmer, hinting at at least slightly above average linguistic abilities, can't learn English.
It's my understanding that they do hold a monopoly. When the "new" companies are able to register new domain names, they pass the information to Network Solutions who will still be in "control" of the root name servers and maintaining them, right? I personally believe that this qualifies as a monopoly.
Why doesn't our (USA) government take the monopoly away and assign it to another company? Can't be all that hard to transfer control of a bunch of root domain servers over to another company, can it?
I think you're a little off base here. We use Viso strictly for network diagrams and as builts. We find little to no use in it's "flowcharts and suppelment presentation" features. If this is the direction that MS will take the product, then we may need to look elsewhere...
Are you sure about that? Depends on how many people would be using the system. What's the list price of Windows NT Server (or two, one for SQL Server) with enough client licenses for all the users to connect. Then you probably want to add a separate PDC and BDC apart from the SAP servers. The you have the cost of the upgrades that might be necessary on the workstations. It gets to be expensive. Didn't you see that article that mentioned a cost of up to $3000 just to upgrade to Windows 2000, let alone any cost for a system such as SAP...
Are you sure you have a good quality set of software you are using to encode MP3's? Do you use cdparanoia which can (most of the time) correct scratches and errors when reading the raw audio CD or are you stuck with a lower quality Windows product? Are you recording at 128bit, or have you tried at the highest bit rate? Are you comparing MP3's you downloaded, where you have absolutely no indication of the quality of the software utilized, or your own encoding tests.
Again, no insult intended, but just because you have a kick ass stereo system does not mean that you, or those that have prepaired MP3's for you, have the skills necessary to do a proper encoding.
That's only the licensing cost and does not include the actual hardware needed in order to support Firewire on the motherboard.
View it as similar to SCSI and you may see why the motherboard manufacturers think it's a bad idea. SCSI is a great technology but it didn't start to get included on motherboards until it was WAY successful and peripherals abundant in the marketplace. Until then everyone used an adapter board to have SCSI functionality. Even now, I don't think that SCSI capability is designed into the chipsets that Intel makes. It's handled by the motherboard manufacturers and SCSI chip vendors (like Adaptec).
For Intel to design Firewire into their basic chip sets would be like them designing SCSI into the basic chipset. I don't think you would want to pay the additional cost for a SCSI controller on every motherboard out in the marketplace would you? To not have any choice about it! Either get a Firewire controller and stick it in an open slot or let the individual motherboard manufacturers design it into the motherboard the same way they did SCSI.
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Err, What?!? Io is the name of a moon, or satellite to use the more correct term, of Jupiter. It's not an acronym.
They DID "take a second to add a short phrase" describing what it was all about. Jupiter, flyby, Galileo, NASA, radiation. All of these terms should have given you some clue! Or, may be not...
Was that a troll?
Or just get a dual CPU box and run VMWare so that you can run your Windows tools...
While I agree that Silex's message is probably flamebait the way it was written he probably does have a point. I would hazzard to guess that the average Unix user has a higher IQ than the average Windows user. Why? Well, everyone keeps saying that Unix is so hard to use, right? And everyone keeps saying that Windows is so easy, right? Then it logically follows that the average Unix user would be more intelligent than the average Windows user. This is true more so when you consider that the number of people that choose to learn Unix and be proficient instead of being "forced" to use it is probably larger now than it has ever been. Certainly people who choose to learn difficult things instead of taking the "easy" road intellectually would be more intellectual as a result. Perhaps Unix users and Windows users had the same "intellect" before they started, but I can't help to think that the process of learning has the tendancy to increase your intellect. If that's the case then Unix users have to have a higher intellect than Windows users because of all the learning they have had to do.
Mark it down as flamebait if you want, but I believe this to be at least an arguably sound logical conclusion given the facts.
Well, I never said government intervention either, did I? I think it is an error to assume that "Big Brother" like tactics are only applicable to government agencies. I believe that it is just as a horrible idea to have a community belief that results in Big Brother like monitoring by other community members, whether they are government officials or not.
I don't believe it is in the best interest of society to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of their customers. Sure, if the Internet self-regulating community makes an ISP aware of abuse by one of it's customers then it should take immediate action, although allowing for a rebuttal to prevent against actions against innocent victims of falsely reported misconduct. I think almost everyone agrees with this. I don't think that anyone expects ISP's to have a "hands off" policy even when they are notified and shown "evidence" from the community that someone is using their service unethically and in contradiction to their policies. I believe that ISP's should even cooperate with investigators if it is shown that the acts of one of their customers is or could be illegal. Certainly they should comply with any court orders demanding the turnover of any logs or records of the customer's actions.
This, however, is MUCH different than saying that ISP's should monitor each and every transaction that it's members have on-line, and that failure to do so is unethical. That would mean that ISP's would have to install monitoring equipment to check each and every email, web post, and usenet message sent by all of their customers for specific things. Someone would have to review the flagged messages and make a decision whether to turn over the "evidence" to authorities, terminate the users contract, or let it pass. How else are ISP's supposed to be "ethical" by making sure their customers are not using their free services for unethical and immoral things (such as child pornagraphy), which according to you is their moral and ethical obligation. Yes, ISP's can install software or design their system so that use of "free" services is easily trackable to someone who actually pays the phone bills -- much like HotMail records the IP address of users who send mail, which should be trackable by the ISP as to who was assigned that IP address at a particular date and time. Having these tracking mechanisms in place is not the same as saying that ISP's are ethically responsible to ensure that their customers are acting in an ethical and moral manner. I support, and I would guess that most others support, the "tracking" of messages like this. Unfortunately, I may differ in that I don't support the "release" of this information unless sufficient evidence is provided to indicate that the person being tracked has committed an illegal act or an act that is against the use policy for the ISP.
So, may be our views are more similar thay you think. I disagree in your terminology, however, that ISP's are acting "unethical" or "immoral" if they provide for free services that they don't monitor to assure compliance with the law, their fair use policy, or common decency. I think it is enough to "cover their but" legally, morally, and ethically, to ensure that proper tracking mechanisms are in place so that people who break the law, their fair use contract, or common decency can be tracked.
I don't want to live in a police state whether enforced by actual government authorities or by my fellow citizens. I sincerely doubt that you do either, so there has to be some misunderstanding...
IMHO a one-time occurance does not consititute harrassment. If you tried to have the poice chief removed because you got pulled over one time then yes, I would think you're kinda nuts (or have something to hide). Yes, I do believe that Microsoft "had done something wrong" and should be punished. While that may taint my perspective somewhat I don't think it totally invalidates my suggestion that the actions Microsoft is taking are not the actions of an innocent "victim" of the judicial system.
Most people do not believe they are being harassed. Most people would not react in the same manner given similar circumstances.
You seem to have the view that Microsoft is being harassed, because according to you they didn't do anything wrong and the DOJ is just prosecuting them because they have something against Microsoft (if you didn't believe this then you couldn't accuse the DOJ of harassing MS). O.K., that's your opinion. It's not bee proven that this is the case. That's what the trial is all about.
It's kinda like if you were driving your car and got pulled over for speeding. You swear that you were right up to the speed limit but didn't cross over that line. The police say that they believe you did cross over that line and have independant evidence to back it up (much like the DOJ has independant evidence to say that MS caused harm to other companies and consumers by using their monopoly power illegally). Whether the police are right or you are right is determined in court, based on the strength of their evidence and your defense. You wouldn't start lobbying your local government to cut the police budget so that they couldn't "harass" you in the future, would you? If so, I don't think you're the kind of person that anyone would want in their neighborhood.
While I believe you in saying that non progit organizations are probably barred from lobbying, I don't think writing a letter constitutes official lobbying. That's my understanding of what these "non-profit" orgs did, so they probably won't get dinged for it. I think they should -- at least be forced to explain their actions in court, but doubt they will.
If there was a breakup the, much like Ma Bell, there would be a judge that would oversee the breakup for many years. It's not as simple as "O.K., which company do you want to head? O.K., that's fine, see ya!"
I can't help but feel that the point of your post is that free services are "bad" and that they are somehow unethical because some people use them for unethical purposes. What else is one to assume from your post? Why do we need "methods of verification?" Do we really want Big Brother watching over our every move to ensure we don't hurt ourselves? The answer is not to restrict free or "anonymous" access to the net. Rather, it is for grown adults to take responsibility for their actions and not try to push the responsibility onto another entity. For children and other minors, it's the parents responsability to protect them and nurture them. Handing off the sresponsibility to another person or entity is as neglectful and act as any.
When people learn to take responsibility for their actions our current "problems" will cease to exist, or at least be reduced to a level that our law enforcement authorities can deal with effectively.
Or a way to dynamically change the instruction set of a processor so that one "generic" CPU is both a "generic" CPU and application specific CPU at the same time. A lot of the work that generic CPU's do, and will be doing more and more of because they are so fast and have the raw power to do it, is finding solutions to application specific problems. Because generic CPUs are so fast and cheap they are as cost effective as application specific CPUs in certain circumstances.
Look at the "WIN printers" for instance. It was thought that it would be cheaper to take the (relatively cheap) intelligence out of printers and put it into software drivers that are run on a generic CPU. Whether it is true or not (that it is more cost effective) is beside the point. The point is that we are asking the generic CPU to do things that it normally would not, requiring large amounts of processing power due to the timing and other issues.
If Transmeta is working on what is rumored, using current chip manufacturing techniques and not some new fangled method, then both the generic CPU instructions and the application specific instructions could then be executed on the same chip. Since the application specific instruction set would be taylored to the applications, presumably less cycles would need to be done to solve the same problem. This would reduce the need for faster and faster CPU's, would it not? Would not this be a new approach to the "problem?" May be not finding a new way to make a faster same old generic CPU product but finding a new paradigm that used a single unit in order to do both generic and app specific "stuff."
Think about it!
You're forgetting Microsoft's propensity to throw everything including the kitchen sink into their products. When Windows 2010 requires a 1.5GHz CPU /w 2GB RAM just to boot (come now this is not too unrealistic) your point about the general consumer vs state of the art does not hold up. Sure, there will be some small "appliances" that would do fine with today's high end CPU's, but if MS and Intel has their way then ppl will be in an ever continuing cycle up upgrades -- needing to upgrade their hardware (which contains some "new" features) in order to handle the latest monstrosity from MS, which upgrades their software to handle the few new features in the new hardware (along with a lot of useless bloat), which demands a new hardware upgrade in order to run acceptably, etc....
I don't think the need for faster and more capable hardware will cease until computers advance to our "dream" computers. For each person what this means is different.
What I see most likely is the current manufacturers following their current practices of concentrating their R&D on faster and faster generic purpose CPUs until they reach some sort of "wall." When this happens, they will probably branch out in two separate directions. One focused on R&D into totally new methods of producing generic purpose CPUs that break through this wall and the other on application specific designs. They will most likely need to get the bulk of their revenue from application specific designs, taking a larger and larger percentage from the generic purpose CPUs as they get cheaper and cheaper (because other companies will reach the same barrier and the competition will reflect lower prices).
This is not necessarily a "bad" thing. I think it makes much more sense to design a chip specifically for, say, speach recognition. Sure, there is a very important software part of this and there has been some recent work on neural net chips or systems that supposedly is in the right direction, but someone like Intel spending vast amounts of resources on a speach recognition chip (based on neural computing or not) using 5 micron casts would likely have great success in a short amount of time (2-3 years). Think of all the other application specific areas where Intel and the other manufacturers could branch out if they ever do get to a 5 micron technology. Perhaps "visual" recognition, handwriting recognition, Oh, here's a big one -- language translation. The possibilities are endless, with a matching revenue stream. I could see someone spending $1000 or more for a generic language translation unit to take with them on their vacation (I certainly would and there's a heck of a lot of people in this world).
Shouldn't that be CMOS' then?
Transmeta?
That would be kinda hard to cool. May be they will have to have a self-contained liquid cooling system that is integrated into the 'chip.' I always thought that if it wasn't for the heat problems the most effective way would be to have '3D' chips where you stack multiple layers of chips on top of each other. I know that that's how they make the current chips, with several layers masked out to create the transistors and connecting 'lines,' but to my knowledge they don't stack complete chips on top of each other with a thin insulating layer in between (and 'holes' in this layer to connect the two chips together). It would be kinda like the multi-layer motherboard designs, which are probably all you find today. Remember when a four or five layer motherboard was something 'special?'
O.K., I know it's a nit pick, but it should be CMOS, not C.M.O.'s. May be they should pass their stories through /. for editing too, or get a technology editor that can spot this obvious mistake.
Indeed, ESR is a Programmer?
Yep.
Why, then, oh why, do so many people act like he's a Visionary?
Why can't he be both? If you're a journalist or a writer, you can be an visionary. If you're a politician you can be a visionary. Why can't a programmer? Granted, visionaries usually have "Vision" in their area of expertise. Since you seem to think people act like ESR is a visionary, and what he is being visionary in is his own field of expertise, I don't think there is a conflict.
This rather substantial article cuts through a lot of the amateur pop-economist stuff ESR tries to pull off whenever he can.
I have not read the article myself, but comments from others seem to indicate that it consists largely of opinions of others and not much on raw facts. If this is true, and appears to be based on a quick check of the number of quoted passages in the article, then I wouldn't call it "rather substatial." You're use of the term "pop-economist stuff" indicates a predisposition on your part against ESR and support of anything that critiques him, reguardless of it's merrit.
Let's just admit that the Cathederal/Bazzaar paradigm plays well to the choir, but that there's a whole world out there.
Well, isn't that what a visionary does? Playing well to the choir, giving them a "Vision" of how things can end up if they agree with the Vision? You're confusing me now. First you imply that ESR is not a Visionary for programmers, then you say he plays well to the choir. Which is it? If ESR's vision is so wrong, why does it play to the choir so nicely?
I believe it was a Xerox printer driver.
I would think most of the community here would disagree with you. Nerds or geeks tend to demand technical excellence and won't put up with sub-standard products. That's probably one of the underlying reasons that we support Linux so much. Because we think we can do a technically better job than Microsoft writing an operating system -- and we seem to have done so, no?
I think it would be honest and accurate to say that we would gladly pay top dollar for the technically superior hardware device. Unless we had an absolute immediate need I don't think anyone prefers a cheaper product that has "proprietary and/or 'quirky' drivers."
Be aware that printer drivers (at least for non-PS printers) often are a lot more than the implementation of the specs of the printer, and contain a fair ammount of the printer's functionality within.
Um, that would be a "WinPrinter," and we don't want no stinking WinPrinters in Linux!
My point is not that this is good or bad, just that saying that printer vendors must open-source their drivers is to open a whole nother can of worms - is it appropriate for a company to sell closed software that runs on an open platform? I'm still not done eating my last can of worms!
I suppose that last can of worms was Open Source operating systems or applications? If you're not done with that one yet I can see why you have the opinion you do. Give it time, you may learn the benefits of OSS some day...
I don't see how the fact that the sign (source code? code comments?) is in English excludes anyone. The actual code is in C or C++ or Perl or whatever. The only thing that is in English, if anything, are the code comments and documentation. I don't see why anyone who is a good programmer, hinting at at least slightly above average linguistic abilities, can't learn English.
It's my understanding that they do hold a monopoly. When the "new" companies are able to register new domain names, they pass the information to Network Solutions who will still be in "control" of the root name servers and maintaining them, right? I personally believe that this qualifies as a monopoly.
Why doesn't our (USA) government take the monopoly away and assign it to another company? Can't be all that hard to transfer control of a bunch of root domain servers over to another company, can it?
I think you're a little off base here. We use Viso strictly for network diagrams and as builts. We find little to no use in it's "flowcharts and suppelment presentation" features. If this is the direction that MS will take the product, then we may need to look elsewhere...
Are you sure about that? Depends on how many people would be using the system. What's the list price of Windows NT Server (or two, one for SQL Server) with enough client licenses for all the users to connect. Then you probably want to add a separate PDC and BDC apart from the SAP servers. The you have the cost of the upgrades that might be necessary on the workstations. It gets to be expensive. Didn't you see that article that mentioned a cost of up to $3000 just to upgrade to Windows 2000, let alone any cost for a system such as SAP...
I really don't mean to be insulting either but...
Are you sure you have a good quality set of software you are using to encode MP3's? Do you use cdparanoia which can (most of the time) correct scratches and errors when reading the raw audio CD or are you stuck with a lower quality Windows product? Are you recording at 128bit, or have you tried at the highest bit rate? Are you comparing MP3's you downloaded, where you have absolutely no indication of the quality of the software utilized, or your own encoding tests.
Again, no insult intended, but just because you have a kick ass stereo system does not mean that you, or those that have prepaired MP3's for you, have the skills necessary to do a proper encoding.
That's only the licensing cost and does not include the actual hardware needed in order to support Firewire on the motherboard.
View it as similar to SCSI and you may see why the motherboard manufacturers think it's a bad idea. SCSI is a great technology but it didn't start to get included on motherboards until it was WAY successful and peripherals abundant in the marketplace. Until then everyone used an adapter board to have SCSI functionality. Even now, I don't think that SCSI capability is designed into the chipsets that Intel makes. It's handled by the motherboard manufacturers and SCSI chip vendors (like Adaptec).
For Intel to design Firewire into their basic chip sets would be like them designing SCSI into the basic chipset. I don't think you would want to pay the additional cost for a SCSI controller on every motherboard out in the marketplace would you? To not have any choice about it! Either get a Firewire controller and stick it in an open slot or let the individual motherboard manufacturers design it into the motherboard the same way they did SCSI.