I guess the acid test for KDE 4 (as for KDE 3) will be KBear, then - the strangely named fpt client with the strange user interface that seems to come with each release whether you want it or not.
Will it run this time? Or will it revert to its lovable self and crash shortly after starting up, taking the kicker down with it?
Hmmn, another "news item" that's really just a PR puff from the marketing flaks. You need to stick to real news, guys, and avoid the free publicity crack even if our national press can't get off the stuff.
In the UK, independent operators have been able to install equipment allowing such speeds in only a tiny, tiny number of telephone exchanges. That's because the exchanges are controlled by the local monopoly, British Telecom, which has fought tooth and nail to make it as difficult as possible for third parties to move into their turf. So, 24-meg connections will only be available to a very, very small number of well-heeled consumers fortunate enough to live near an enabled exchange. The standard speed on a BT connection is limited to 512/256, now being upgraded gradually to 2megs/256. And if you throw increasingly stringent usage caps into the mix, broadband in the UK is not cheaper either.
Second, the last company to offer fast adsl, Bulldog, got itself into such a mess that it's been the subject of hundreds of complaints to the regulator, mostly from folks who after signing up found that they had no telephone phone service at all let alone adsl as well.
So these are not serious, well-funded operations - more wide boys on the make with all the problems that swiftly arise from under-investment, lack of capacity and taking on too many users to service properly. Why? Because any first-league player is going to keep well clear, knowing that the road to installation and expansion nationwide is very thoroughly blocked by British Telecom. Technically, BT aren't entitled to do this, of course. But that means nothing. Among big corporations, the UK isn't known as "treasure island" by accident. Our regulators here make a dead wombat look vigorous. Indeed, if they were ever asked to check over Microsoft, they would almost certainly conclude that it wasn't a monopoly and its prices were extremely reasonable.
Job burnout due to an unsatisfactory emotional and/or intellectual dynamic may be important but it is also something of a Western luxury.
Across the world, the reasons for job burnout are likely the same they have always been. Such as choking to death on coal dust down the mines, dying in accidents, getting worn out before your time through hard physical labour without a decent diet to support yourself or a proper roof over your head, and working on through illness until your immunue system collapses because you can't afford not to earn and/or such medicines as may exist are way beyond your purchasing power. In Western offices we can chuck in gloomy lighting, poor monitors that shaft your eyesight, bad posture leading to RSI, lack of natural light, junk-based diet grabbed at your desk, a nasty soup that passes for air made up of plastics, ozone, air con and 1001 other chemicals in modern buildings, lack of exercise and constant stress from a noisy, unsettled environment.
Such things are going to burn you out all the way to the cemetery a darn sight mure surely than an unsympathetic boss. They just take a little longer, that's all. If the boss is an asshole, move on and thank your lucky stars you don't have to live inside their head.
Not sure your guess is right. Yes, there may well be an element of fashion/kewl kred driving Ubuntu's ratings, leading to folks soon leaving it or perhaps not even installing it. However, it's hard to think that Ubuntu's success is a kind of accident. They've been darn canny in the way they've set up the whole outfit and in following through on all the details, not just a few of them.
Ubuntu is the first distro to stick to the KISS principle the whole way down the chain - from a single install CD, single best of breed app per task, sensible defaults all done for you right through to an online support system which is as strong as any at building their brand and actually helping people. Other distros can match or exceed some of these aspects, but imho Ubuntu is the only one that features all of them.
Believe me, it makes a real difference being able to give someone that nicely designed official CD and know that it contains all of the above. I mean, I like Debian and am typing this on it, but Ubuntu's ability to get things down to essentials that might put Joe Sixpack at ease is pretty awesome whether you use it or not.
Many thanks for taking the time to clarify some points.
OK, I apologize for being rude which undoubtedly I was. I guess it comes from a sense of frustration that so many folks just shrug when the word Debian is mentioned, anticipating a lot of jaw-jaw and not much else. That, and a lack of tools for the job. For example, it's fairly easy to show people the fruits of desktop Linux - pop in just one Ubuntu (or Mepis or whatever) CD and leave an hour later with a machine humming away nicely and in the case of Ubuntu very good online user forums to help with the many questions. The user doesn't know it's all based on Debian and may never know. Debian will be mentioned, but probably not that visibly unless you dig around for it.
How nice it would be to be able to do the same for a new user or small outfit using Debian Debian, but it is far, far more complicated and by comparison takes forever. The DCC Alliance still hasn't changed their website, so far as I can tell. I wonder if it's worth taking a bet that they will before the end of the month.
Exactly, and trust Sun to climb on the publicity bandwagon after a few days of stuff about web services being the next big thing, etc. Where's the evidence that users will flock to web services when they see all the usual tricks being promulgated - lock in, handing over personal data, costs much more than the companies like to pretend, etc.
If Sun were really committed to change, then they could make a decent fist of opening up OpenSlolaris instead of releasing it and then making it as much of a pain as possible to go anywhere with it. Oh well, I guess if life is discovered on Mars, Sun will pop up a few days later claiming they've sold 600,000 seats for Sun Java Desktop Linux to the Martian government.
Herd mentality to a large degree. The received wisdom is that China is the next boom time, so every thinks it will be. Everyone then thinks they can't afford not to be in the Chinese market because all their competitors will be. It's surprising that it's taken so long for dirty deeds among IT companies to float into view. Press barons like Rupert Murdoch were bending over before the Chinese government a decade ago.
So adopt a contrarian view. The Chinese banking system is known to be flakey as hell. Corruption is rampant. The Chinese have not, so far, shown themselves adept at setting up on a large scale in other countries. And the more wealthy parts of China become, so the more they will start to contempate secession into a state of their own. This next big thing could easily implode and become the next big nightmare.
So keep away from the Yahoos of this world. No one has to use them. I wonder where Saint Google fits into this.
Interesting... a couple of days ago, crazed press speculation on the MS restructuring had Mr Allchin marked down as a loser and on the way out. This excellent article has him as a quietly spoken hero who saved the day against the initial wishes of his boss, and who is now going at a time of his own choosing.
If Gates had had his way, according to the article, MS would even now be launching a 96,000-ton flying spaghetti code monster instead of a rewritten product that's based much more on Lego lines, part-supervised a guy who's into chicken teryaki. Funny how so many articles present Gates as "tetchy" or "frustrated". I wonder if a key to him could be something as straightforward as acute haemorrhoids. Perhaps on his incessant business trips abroad, Ballmer is instructed to search for the magic salve.
There's an almost elegaic quality to these posts, as if Slashdotters realize that the old Beast is looking green about the gills these days and may not even be around in its present form to celebrate forty years. Getting into their present situation must have taken Microsoft some hard work, ho ho. They have a vast monopoly, 50-60 billion in cash and annal profits of around 12 billion, but everyone says they are a lost jumbo in crisis. Don't be so sure. Even a small percentage of that, properly targeted around some bright and savvy people, could cut a swathe through the IT industry, so I guess Microsoft shouldn't be written off just yet.
Interesting that the article opined that an offshoot of Microsoft's dominance is that it has helped English to become the world's undisputed common language. No more poncing from French-speaking diplomats.
So Yahoo offers a better desktop experience than Google, in the writer's opinion. As if it matters. I wonder what kind of experience the Chinese citizens are having whom Yahoo betrayed to the Chinese government to secure commercial advantage. Yahoo won't be getting my custom while it continues to offer "experiences" like that.
Web services aren't going to fly if consumers (and business consumers) don't like the idea. Has anyone got around to asking them? For a start, web services presuppose a level of infrastructure and sophistication that only the very wealthy currently enjoy. That isn't likely to change for decades, so what are Microsoft going to do until then? I guess web services may just turn out to mean a subscription model for MS Windows. Sigh.
Meanwhile... out in the boonies, all over the world... folks are doing very nicely without infrastructure or gadgets. Pop one Ubuntu CD (or several other Linux single-CD distributions) into an old PC, half an hour later you have a completely modern operating system and scores of programs, including Open Office, coding environments, whatever. At nil cost. You can't compete with that. And what you can't compete with strikes me as a lot scarier than folks you can compete with (like Google) because they follow the same business rules that you do. But what do you do when it's a case of "Charlie don't surf"?
This doesn't bode well for the future of Debian. Leaving aside squalid arguments about whether a local user group is entitled to use the term "Debian" when organizing a whip round for a barbeque (yes, a real example from the Debian mailing lists), the real question is how and whether Debian reacts to the commercial pressures now being placed on it from other software outfits (some of whose guiding lights are themselves long-time Debian players).
For example, the new DCC Alliance seems to have gone right ahead as it pleased, helping themselves to Debian's good name with a contemptous "and what are you gonna do about it?" Not much, it would appear (or, at least, not much that's been made public).
Debian has a great deal of responsibility vested in it, and that's a responsibility to uphold and foster the founding charter and the idea of a universal operating system, freely available to anyone without fear or favour. Many thousands of people all over the world use and respect Debian on this basis and they trust Debian's project leaders to protect that interest vigorously.
In this regard, Branden Robinson's grand response isn't exactly encouraging. It's like the response of a householder who, after being burgled, calls for an intense debate about the ethics of theft rather briefing the cops so that they can apprehend the bad boys before they turn over half a dozen other premises.
Simple answer: don't use Skype if security is an issue. Plenty of other providers. Now that Ebay have got their hands on Skype, chances are it will be sent right downmarket anyway.
So it's an AOL survey, very reassuring for AOL members. Science, Politics, Current Affairs - Norma, I'm scared. But, for only an extra $9.99 monthly, AOL can guide you safely to such delights as "AOLTechnorati: How to fix that incontinence pad", "AOLInstapundit: Brad and Jennifer - is it really over?", "AOLAndrewsullivan: How I made the sauce for Paul Newman's sausage al dente" and "AOLBoingboing: I laughed till I cried - Bob Hope's one-line golfing classics".
There's nothing wrong with what Google are proposing providing it's on the basis of a clearly defined legal contract with the holder of the reproduction rights in question.
In many, perhaps most cases the rights holder will not be the author but the publisher to whom the author has assigned publication and reproduction rights, in this case electronic reproduction rights, for the legal term of copyright (if it's a standard book deal).
Google are miles from establishing that their intended use of the material is "fair use" of any kind, an extremely tenuous concept that varies wildly depending on who you are and where you are.
Authors are surely right to worry that while today Google may have no underhand motive, this cannot be said of the future by which time the company may have a few million books under their belt and ideas of flowing lots of cash from them.
In the meantime, this leaves Google facing off with the book publishing industry (among others) at some stage, thousands and thousands of seedy, impecunious outfits desperate for a bit of grab grab grab. The actual authors will be lucky to see 10 per cent of any money by the time the publishers have got hold of it, siphoned off massive commissions and then sat on it for six months or a year. I'd rather be dipped in shit than have to negotiate my way through that lot and in time Google may well decide the same.
OK commie-watchers, maybe best to leave the guy alone. He's ploughing a lonely furrow. The pressures of leading a double life get to them before very long, at which point their thinking becomes screwy and they give themselves away - although what they actually have to say ceased to be interesting a while before the scrips for prozac start to be issued.
Anyways, if you were Chairman Bi er er Mao you'd probably figure that it's best to let the occasional canary sing. You can send it down the mines any time you choose. The point with canaries being that they never know they are already inside the cage. So let the world hang on every detail of what the Politburo really had for breakfast. Meanwhile, the important stuff continues behind the arras.
I think Robert X. Cringely has already floated this idea. It doesn't make much sense, though. They'd have to pay way over value to secure Apple and would risk the ire of the regulators anyway. And all this would really give them is what they have already: a monopoly with an $44 billion mp3 player tacked on. Er, no, prolly.
Microsoft have much more of a battle and a bigger slice to secure in the server/enterprise sphere. They could buy, say, Red Hat or Sun at, probably, a very good price. At which point they could play divide and rule to their heart's content with nix and foss.
However, I suspect they see themselves are more of a content provider/controller than a heavy-duty engineering shop. Suppose, say, Rupert Murdoch keeled over and his company started to fall apart. Hmmn, an outstanding and fully encrypted satellite media operation up for grabs, with a smart box already in a few million homes. Perhaps a bit more interesting than mp3 players.
Perhaps we've moved a bit beyond this stuff, though NASA hasn't yet gotten the message or is worried about its future funding. For a start it looks as if unmanned missions could achieve the same at far less cost. Second, missions like this are really about the future good of all mankind, unless you're some crazed tycoon who wants to own space, the planets, etc. So perhaps the other major power blocks in the world could be induced to cooperate and to spread the cost. Who knows, they might even come up with some good ideas or tasty new technology. The US is financially overstretched as it is.
Your points are a wee bit pretentious, I think. First, "tipping point" is a favourite cliche du jour but tipping points in real life are surprising rare. In the second place, we're simply talking about computers here - no big deal. For the most part they are big and seriously dumb; compared to a living cell computers are the crudest of crude crud.
As for computer security: a huge amount to improve it could be done tomorrow, but won't be so long as the big IT companies are allowed to behave like irresponsible robber barons.
This isn't simply a matter of closed vs open source. I'm thinking of stuff like a) actively pursuing spam rings, phishing rings and the like just as vigorously as companies who flout international trading agreements are pursued; b) forcing ISPs to do a great deal more by way of securing themselves as consumer gateways and alerting users whose traffic patterns suggest they have been compromised; c) making it illegal to ship operating systems without secure defaults (like a firewall and, if appropriate, AV software). And, until such time as security does improve, d) imposing a profits tax to fund some of this on the egregious money made by the likes of MS or Dell. In some ways, it's not surprising that security is so poor when the funds to improve it are being siphoned off by monopolies.
Of course, none of this will happen. The IT industry weeps crocodile tears and claims the problem is largely out of their hands, being a matter of law enforcement for the authorities. And the politicians nod sagely and say that computer troubles are unstoppable and probably all to do with illegal file sharing, while pocketing their "lobby contributions" from the suits and booking their tables at the best restaurants.
I'd like to go Apple but I'm worried that I might turn into Steve Jobs and have to wear black all day and do stuff like eat sushi for breakfast and consult a feng shui master whenever I need to use the john. I couldn't live up to these standards, especially as I wouldn't have any money after going Apple and would have to rely for my sushi on stealing the neighbour's goldfish. Though I guess I might be able to train my cat to steal them for me, so then I could start to save for a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux by renting him out for his fishing skills.
I think I'll stick to Debian which has the one standard that trumps all others: a universal operating system, freely available to anyone anywhere, that respects the needs of its users.
The LSB isn't so very important compared to this.
Bear in mind that the writer is writing on the British Computer Society site about the British software industry. As he says in his closing paragraphs:
"The UK government's recently introduced policy on the use of OSS recommends that OSS solutions be considered alongside proprietary ones for public sector IT purchases.... my fear is that a further move towards OSS could result in the nightmare scenario of OSS at one extreme and Microsoft at the other with nothing else in between. Where would our freedom of choice be then?"
So this needs to be seen in context - as a shot in the war for zillions of bucks' worth of new UK government software contracts over the next few years. Oh course, you could argue that the writer's "nightmare scenario" is precisely the one we've been enduring for rather a long time now.
Now, here's the kicker: The UK government has a catastrophic record with big software projects developed in alliance with large corporations. Huge installations worth hundreds of millions have had to be cancelled or redone because they didn't work properly and in some cases will probably never work properly (the UK's Child Support Agency's IT disaster is a celebrated example).
So here is this writer merrily suggesting that the best way forward is more of the same. We can't risk trying something else, still less entangling ourselves with loonies in beards and sandals, oh no siree. Run Debian? Well that must mean you are a) a tenth-rate programmer, b) dangerously idealistic and c) completely unreliable.
Sigh, this is typical of the current level of debate on the internet. One article of four pages of which two and a half pages are about the company's history, leaving only a page and a half for comment and analysis. The article just reprises what 1001 other articles have said: Microsoft is too big to be a growth stock any more and these days it has some competition, although despite both alleged handicaps it is still makes stupendous profits.
No one seems to ask whether these vast sums sucked out of the IT industry could be put to better use. It would be interesting to add up the annual profits of the top six IT companies and then see how much they spend annually on fighting spam, phishing and malware. Probably a fraction of one per cent of their profits? I guess if you're a top IT exec then worrying about malware and spam is what the little people do.
"The whole concept of Mono is somewhat confounding to me... It's already been over a year since Mono 1.0 and I can't name one commonly used cross platform Mono/.NET app"
I guess that's what they might be saying in the Novell boardroom whenever someone digs out the old invoices for the purchase of Ximian.
This sounds excellent news. Yes it might be a ploy to give Dell more traction with Microsoft, but there again it might be sincere. It also goes to show that you don't have to be SuSE or Red Hat to score well, either. Mandriva has very firm markets in France and Brazil and in fact could make a very good living if it never went all that far outside them. This too shows that you don't have to take on the world to succeed in Linux, just do what you know as well as you can. By trying to span the world and appeal to everyone, SuSE and Red Hat might end up by appealing to no one.
The article makes clear that this is vaporware. Microsoft haven't got further than "scoping this out" and in any case it won't be part of the first Vista release. Besides, it could be a few years before someone works out how to stuff a 6800GT into a Nokia cellphone.
Unless... the borg is stirring... the mere threat of Vistarizing your watch, phone, toaster, camera, alarm clock, yay, the great globe itself, with dinky beeping sounds, natty symbols and rich interactive content from doubleclick.net... I surrender, master.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess the acid test for KDE 4 (as for KDE 3) will be KBear, then - the strangely named fpt client with the strange user interface that seems to come with each release whether you want it or not.
Will it run this time? Or will it revert to its lovable self and crash shortly after starting up, taking the kicker down with it?
Madames et Messieurs, faites vos jeux!
Hmmn, another "news item" that's really just a PR puff from the marketing flaks. You need to stick to real news, guys, and avoid the free publicity crack even if our national press can't get off the stuff.
In the UK, independent operators have been able to install equipment allowing such speeds in only a tiny, tiny number of telephone exchanges. That's because the exchanges are controlled by the local monopoly, British Telecom, which has fought tooth and nail to make it as difficult as possible for third parties to move into their turf. So, 24-meg connections will only be available to a very, very small number of well-heeled consumers fortunate enough to live near an enabled exchange. The standard speed on a BT connection is limited to 512/256, now being upgraded gradually to 2megs/256. And if you throw increasingly stringent usage caps into the mix, broadband in the UK is not cheaper either.
Second, the last company to offer fast adsl, Bulldog, got itself into such a mess that it's been the subject of hundreds of complaints to the regulator, mostly from folks who after signing up found that they had no telephone phone service at all let alone adsl as well.
So these are not serious, well-funded operations - more wide boys on the make with all the problems that swiftly arise from under-investment, lack of capacity and taking on too many users to service properly. Why? Because any first-league player is going to keep well clear, knowing that the road to installation and expansion nationwide is very thoroughly blocked by British Telecom. Technically, BT aren't entitled to do this, of course. But that means nothing. Among big corporations, the UK isn't known as "treasure island" by accident. Our regulators here make a dead wombat look vigorous. Indeed, if they were ever asked to check over Microsoft, they would almost certainly conclude that it wasn't a monopoly and its prices were extremely reasonable.
Job burnout due to an unsatisfactory emotional and/or intellectual dynamic may be important but it is also something of a Western luxury.
Across the world, the reasons for job burnout are likely the same they have always been. Such as choking to death on coal dust down the mines, dying in accidents, getting worn out before your time through hard physical labour without a decent diet to support yourself or a proper roof over your head, and working on through illness until your immunue system collapses because you can't afford not to earn and/or such medicines as may exist are way beyond your purchasing power. In Western offices we can chuck in gloomy lighting, poor monitors that shaft your eyesight, bad posture leading to RSI, lack of natural light, junk-based diet grabbed at your desk, a nasty soup that passes for air made up of plastics, ozone, air con and 1001 other chemicals in modern buildings, lack of exercise and constant stress from a noisy, unsettled environment.
Such things are going to burn you out all the way to the cemetery a darn sight mure surely than an unsympathetic boss. They just take a little longer, that's all. If the boss is an asshole, move on and thank your lucky stars you don't have to live inside their head.
Not sure your guess is right. Yes, there may well be an element of fashion/kewl kred driving Ubuntu's ratings, leading to folks soon leaving it or perhaps not even installing it. However, it's hard to think that Ubuntu's success is a kind of accident. They've been darn canny in the way they've set up the whole outfit and in following through on all the details, not just a few of them.
Ubuntu is the first distro to stick to the KISS principle the whole way down the chain - from a single install CD, single best of breed app per task, sensible defaults all done for you right through to an online support system which is as strong as any at building their brand and actually helping people. Other distros can match or exceed some of these aspects, but imho Ubuntu is the only one that features all of them.
Believe me, it makes a real difference being able to give someone that nicely designed official CD and know that it contains all of the above. I mean, I like Debian and am typing this on it, but Ubuntu's ability to get things down to essentials that might put Joe Sixpack at ease is pretty awesome whether you use it or not.
Many thanks for taking the time to clarify some points.
OK, I apologize for being rude which undoubtedly I was. I guess it comes from a sense of frustration that so many folks just shrug when the word Debian is mentioned, anticipating a lot of jaw-jaw and not much else. That, and a lack of tools for the job. For example, it's fairly easy to show people the fruits of desktop Linux - pop in just one Ubuntu (or Mepis or whatever) CD and leave an hour later with a machine humming away nicely and in the case of Ubuntu very good online user forums to help with the many questions. The user doesn't know it's all based on Debian and may never know. Debian will be mentioned, but probably not that visibly unless you dig around for it.
How nice it would be to be able to do the same for a new user or small outfit using Debian Debian, but it is far, far more complicated and by comparison takes forever. The DCC Alliance still hasn't changed their website, so far as I can tell. I wonder if it's worth taking a bet that they will before the end of the month.
Exactly, and trust Sun to climb on the publicity bandwagon after a few days of stuff about web services being the next big thing, etc. Where's the evidence that users will flock to web services when they see all the usual tricks being promulgated - lock in, handing over personal data, costs much more than the companies like to pretend, etc.
If Sun were really committed to change, then they could make a decent fist of opening up OpenSlolaris instead of releasing it and then making it as much of a pain as possible to go anywhere with it. Oh well, I guess if life is discovered on Mars, Sun will pop up a few days later claiming they've sold 600,000 seats for Sun Java Desktop Linux to the Martian government.
Herd mentality to a large degree. The received wisdom is that China is the next boom time, so every thinks it will be. Everyone then thinks they can't afford not to be in the Chinese market because all their competitors will be. It's surprising that it's taken so long for dirty deeds among IT companies to float into view. Press barons like Rupert Murdoch were bending over before the Chinese government a decade ago.
So adopt a contrarian view. The Chinese banking system is known to be flakey as hell. Corruption is rampant. The Chinese have not, so far, shown themselves adept at setting up on a large scale in other countries. And the more wealthy parts of China become, so the more they will start to contempate secession into a state of their own. This next big thing could easily implode and become the next big nightmare.
So keep away from the Yahoos of this world. No one has to use them. I wonder where Saint Google fits into this.
Interesting ... a couple of days ago, crazed press speculation on the MS restructuring had Mr Allchin marked down as a loser and on the way out. This excellent article has him as a quietly spoken hero who saved the day against the initial wishes of his boss, and who is now going at a time of his own choosing.
If Gates had had his way, according to the article, MS would even now be launching a 96,000-ton flying spaghetti code monster instead of a rewritten product that's based much more on Lego lines, part-supervised a guy who's into chicken teryaki. Funny how so many articles present Gates as "tetchy" or "frustrated". I wonder if a key to him could be something as straightforward as acute haemorrhoids. Perhaps on his incessant business trips abroad, Ballmer is instructed to search for the magic salve.
There's an almost elegaic quality to these posts, as if Slashdotters realize that the old Beast is looking green about the gills these days and may not even be around in its present form to celebrate forty years. Getting into their present situation must have taken Microsoft some hard work, ho ho. They have a vast monopoly, 50-60 billion in cash and annal profits of around 12 billion, but everyone says they are a lost jumbo in crisis. Don't be so sure. Even a small percentage of that, properly targeted around some bright and savvy people, could cut a swathe through the IT industry, so I guess Microsoft shouldn't be written off just yet.
Interesting that the article opined that an offshoot of Microsoft's dominance is that it has helped English to become the world's undisputed common language. No more poncing from French-speaking diplomats.
So Yahoo offers a better desktop experience than Google, in the writer's opinion. As if it matters. I wonder what kind of experience the Chinese citizens are having whom Yahoo betrayed to the Chinese government to secure commercial advantage. Yahoo won't be getting my custom while it continues to offer "experiences" like that.
Web services aren't going to fly if consumers (and business consumers) don't like the idea. Has anyone got around to asking them? For a start, web services presuppose a level of infrastructure and sophistication that only the very wealthy currently enjoy. That isn't likely to change for decades, so what are Microsoft going to do until then? I guess web services may just turn out to mean a subscription model for MS Windows. Sigh.
... out in the boonies, all over the world ... folks are doing very nicely without infrastructure or gadgets. Pop one Ubuntu CD (or several other Linux single-CD distributions) into an old PC, half an hour later you have a completely modern operating system and scores of programs, including Open Office, coding environments, whatever. At nil cost. You can't compete with that. And what you can't compete with strikes me as a lot scarier than folks you can compete with (like Google) because they follow the same business rules that you do. But what do you do when it's a case of "Charlie don't surf"?
Meanwhile
This doesn't bode well for the future of Debian. Leaving aside squalid arguments about whether a local user group is entitled to use the term "Debian" when organizing a whip round for a barbeque (yes, a real example from the Debian mailing lists), the real question is how and whether Debian reacts to the commercial pressures now being placed on it from other software outfits (some of whose guiding lights are themselves long-time Debian players).
For example, the new DCC Alliance seems to have gone right ahead as it pleased, helping themselves to Debian's good name with a contemptous "and what are you gonna do about it?" Not much, it would appear (or, at least, not much that's been made public).
Debian has a great deal of responsibility vested in it, and that's a responsibility to uphold and foster the founding charter and the idea of a universal operating system, freely available to anyone without fear or favour. Many thousands of people all over the world use and respect Debian on this basis and they trust Debian's project leaders to protect that interest vigorously.
In this regard, Branden Robinson's grand response isn't exactly encouraging. It's like the response of a householder who, after being burgled, calls for an intense debate about the ethics of theft rather briefing the cops so that they can apprehend the bad boys before they turn over half a dozen other premises.
Simple answer: don't use Skype if security is an issue. Plenty of other providers. Now that Ebay have got their hands on Skype, chances are it will be sent right downmarket anyway.
So it's an AOL survey, very reassuring for AOL members. Science, Politics, Current Affairs - Norma, I'm scared. But, for only an extra $9.99 monthly, AOL can guide you safely to such delights as "AOLTechnorati: How to fix that incontinence pad", "AOLInstapundit: Brad and Jennifer - is it really over?", "AOLAndrewsullivan: How I made the sauce for Paul Newman's sausage al dente" and "AOLBoingboing: I laughed till I cried - Bob Hope's one-line golfing classics".
There's nothing wrong with what Google are proposing providing it's on the basis of a clearly defined legal contract with the holder of the reproduction rights in question.
In many, perhaps most cases the rights holder will not be the author but the publisher to whom the author has assigned publication and reproduction rights, in this case electronic reproduction rights, for the legal term of copyright (if it's a standard book deal).
Google are miles from establishing that their intended use of the material is "fair use" of any kind, an extremely tenuous concept that varies wildly depending on who you are and where you are.
Authors are surely right to worry that while today Google may have no underhand motive, this cannot be said of the future by which time the company may have a few million books under their belt and ideas of flowing lots of cash from them.
In the meantime, this leaves Google facing off with the book publishing industry (among others) at some stage, thousands and thousands of seedy, impecunious outfits desperate for a bit of grab grab grab. The actual authors will be lucky to see 10 per cent of any money by the time the publishers have got hold of it, siphoned off massive commissions and then sat on it for six months or a year. I'd rather be dipped in shit than have to negotiate my way through that lot and in time Google may well decide the same.
OK commie-watchers, maybe best to leave the guy alone. He's ploughing a lonely furrow. The pressures of leading a double life get to them before very long, at which point their thinking becomes screwy and they give themselves away - although what they actually have to say ceased to be interesting a while before the scrips for prozac start to be issued.
Anyways, if you were Chairman Bi er er Mao you'd probably figure that it's best to let the occasional canary sing. You can send it down the mines any time you choose. The point with canaries being that they never know they are already inside the cage. So let the world hang on every detail of what the Politburo really had for breakfast. Meanwhile, the important stuff continues behind the arras.
I think Robert X. Cringely has already floated this idea. It doesn't make much sense, though. They'd have to pay way over value to secure Apple and would risk the ire of the regulators anyway. And all this would really give them is what they have already: a monopoly with an $44 billion mp3 player tacked on. Er, no, prolly.
Microsoft have much more of a battle and a bigger slice to secure in the server/enterprise sphere. They could buy, say, Red Hat or Sun at, probably, a very good price. At which point they could play divide and rule to their heart's content with nix and foss.
However, I suspect they see themselves are more of a content provider/controller than a heavy-duty engineering shop. Suppose, say, Rupert Murdoch keeled over and his company started to fall apart. Hmmn, an outstanding and fully encrypted satellite media operation up for grabs, with a smart box already in a few million homes. Perhaps a bit more interesting than mp3 players.
Perhaps we've moved a bit beyond this stuff, though NASA hasn't yet gotten the message or is worried about its future funding. For a start it looks as if unmanned missions could achieve the same at far less cost. Second, missions like this are really about the future good of all mankind, unless you're some crazed tycoon who wants to own space, the planets, etc. So perhaps the other major power blocks in the world could be induced to cooperate and to spread the cost. Who knows, they might even come up with some good ideas or tasty new technology. The US is financially overstretched as it is.
Your points are a wee bit pretentious, I think. First, "tipping point" is a favourite cliche du jour but tipping points in real life are surprising rare. In the second place, we're simply talking about computers here - no big deal. For the most part they are big and seriously dumb; compared to a living cell computers are the crudest of crude crud.
As for computer security: a huge amount to improve it could be done tomorrow, but won't be so long as the big IT companies are allowed to behave like irresponsible robber barons.
This isn't simply a matter of closed vs open source. I'm thinking of stuff like a) actively pursuing spam rings, phishing rings and the like just as vigorously as companies who flout international trading agreements are pursued; b) forcing ISPs to do a great deal more by way of securing themselves as consumer gateways and alerting users whose traffic patterns suggest they have been compromised; c) making it illegal to ship operating systems without secure defaults (like a firewall and, if appropriate, AV software). And, until such time as security does improve, d) imposing a profits tax to fund some of this on the egregious money made by the likes of MS or Dell. In some ways, it's not surprising that security is so poor when the funds to improve it are being siphoned off by monopolies.
Of course, none of this will happen. The IT industry weeps crocodile tears and claims the problem is largely out of their hands, being a matter of law enforcement for the authorities. And the politicians nod sagely and say that computer troubles are unstoppable and probably all to do with illegal file sharing, while pocketing their "lobby contributions" from the suits and booking their tables at the best restaurants.
I'd like to go Apple but I'm worried that I might turn into Steve Jobs and have to wear black all day and do stuff like eat sushi for breakfast and consult a feng shui master whenever I need to use the john. I couldn't live up to these standards, especially as I wouldn't have any money after going Apple and would have to rely for my sushi on stealing the neighbour's goldfish. Though I guess I might be able to train my cat to steal them for me, so then I could start to save for a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux by renting him out for his fishing skills.
I think I'll stick to Debian which has the one standard that trumps all others: a universal operating system, freely available to anyone anywhere, that respects the needs of its users. The LSB isn't so very important compared to this.
Bear in mind that the writer is writing on the British Computer Society site about the British software industry. As he says in his closing paragraphs:
... my fear is that a further move towards OSS could result in the nightmare scenario of OSS at one extreme and Microsoft at the other with nothing else in between. Where would our freedom of choice be then?"
"The UK government's recently introduced policy on the use of OSS recommends that OSS solutions be considered alongside proprietary ones for public sector IT purchases.
So this needs to be seen in context - as a shot in the war for zillions of bucks' worth of new UK government software contracts over the next few years. Oh course, you could argue that the writer's "nightmare scenario" is precisely the one we've been enduring for rather a long time now.
Now, here's the kicker: The UK government has a catastrophic record with big software projects developed in alliance with large corporations. Huge installations worth hundreds of millions have had to be cancelled or redone because they didn't work properly and in some cases will probably never work properly (the UK's Child Support Agency's IT disaster is a celebrated example).
So here is this writer merrily suggesting that the best way forward is more of the same. We can't risk trying something else, still less entangling ourselves with loonies in beards and sandals, oh no siree. Run Debian? Well that must mean you are a) a tenth-rate programmer, b) dangerously idealistic and c) completely unreliable.
Oh well, I guess there is one born every minute.
Sigh, this is typical of the current level of debate on the internet. One article of four pages of which two and a half pages are about the company's history, leaving only a page and a half for comment and analysis. The article just reprises what 1001 other articles have said: Microsoft is too big to be a growth stock any more and these days it has some competition, although despite both alleged handicaps it is still makes stupendous profits.
No one seems to ask whether these vast sums sucked out of the IT industry could be put to better use. It would be interesting to add up the annual profits of the top six IT companies and then see how much they spend annually on fighting spam, phishing and malware. Probably a fraction of one per cent of their profits? I guess if you're a top IT exec then worrying about malware and spam is what the little people do.
"The whole concept of Mono is somewhat confounding to me ... It's already been over a year since Mono 1.0 and I can't name one commonly used cross platform Mono/.NET app"
I guess that's what they might be saying in the Novell boardroom whenever someone digs out the old invoices for the purchase of Ximian.
This sounds excellent news. Yes it might be a ploy to give Dell more traction with Microsoft, but there again it might be sincere. It also goes to show that you don't have to be SuSE or Red Hat to score well, either. Mandriva has very firm markets in France and Brazil and in fact could make a very good living if it never went all that far outside them. This too shows that you don't have to take on the world to succeed in Linux, just do what you know as well as you can. By trying to span the world and appeal to everyone, SuSE and Red Hat might end up by appealing to no one.
The article makes clear that this is vaporware. Microsoft haven't got further than "scoping this out" and in any case it won't be part of the first Vista release. Besides, it could be a few years before someone works out how to stuff a 6800GT into a Nokia cellphone.
... the borg is stirring ... the mere threat of Vistarizing your watch, phone, toaster, camera, alarm clock, yay, the great globe itself, with dinky beeping sounds, natty symbols and rich interactive content from doubleclick.net ... I surrender, master.
Unless