Here is also an interesting article about Wal-Mart and its influence on its suppliers... Globalization seems to be pushed forward by a few, for the benefits of a few....
I'm very pleased to announce that a majority of the XFree86 core team has voted in favour of my proposal to disband the core team.
I believe that this is an acknowlegement that the core team was no longer representative of the active, experienced and skilled XFree86 developers, or a place where technical discussion happens.
Happy New Year to all!
David -- David Dawes developer/release engineer The XFree86 Project www.XFree86.org/~dawes
So, this means that XFree86 is not disbanding, simply that the core group has recognized it was not really needed anymore.
That is a relief, as I almost thought for a second that XFree86 was going to disappear... *eek*
I don't want spammers to pay to have the right to send spam... I want them to stop sending spam!!
I seriously don't think this will work as (a) spammer won't use Microsoft products to send their wares or (b) because they will find a way to crack the security of this system (I mean, come on, this is Microsoft we are talking about here!).
Which is that both sides of a "fork" actually adopt the best practices and best code/functionalities of each other.
Imagine there are two projects: "A" and its fork "B". If "B" programmers are smart, they'll keep on tracking the changes brought to "A" and incorporate the best features and patches from the original project.
In the same way, "A" programmers will keep an eye on "B" and take the code they need to improve "A".
And there are many examples of this in the open-source world: NetBSD and OpenBSD, Emacs and XEmacs, etc...
Forking does not necessarily means a loss of quality or incompatible programs. In the worst possible case, if one side of the fork is clearly better, it will eventually replace the other.
why punish the person who investigated his purchase first and already accounted for soundproofing in his expenditures.
Maybe I was not clear enough in my answer. What I was trying to point out is that a lot of buildings in Europe are old to very old and never incorporated sound-proofing at all.
It's not a stupid decision to buy an old house or a flat in an old building: sometimes, it's just really hard to find a modern building, either downtown or in the suburbs.
In any case, giving a tax break to X to put sound-proofing materials is not "punishing" Y for purchasing a sound-proofed home. It just means that X now has enough money to sound-proof his/her home, while Y has lost nothing.
This is not a case of the government bailing out someone who has made a bad decision: this is a case of the government recognizing that some cities are too noisy (because they are/were not designed with cars in mind) and giving citizens incentives to sound-proof their homes. It sounds to me like a good investment.
Finally, please remember that taxes are very high in Europe. So giving tax breaks to promote certain beneficial policies makes sense...
Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?
It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing.
If you add to this situation the fact that a lot of streets in large European cities are small and not made for cars (meaning medieval streets, not US-Grid-Style streets/boulevard), you have a recipe for a lot of noise and pollution, which many European cities are/were not designed to take into account.
Also, if you are lucky enough to find a cheap place to live in one of those cities (London and Paris -- for instance -- are among the most expensive places on Earth), noise control is going to be the least of your worries -- rent is a killer in those cities. And forget about space, since having more than one bedroom is going to deplete your bank account for the next 10 years or so.
Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners.
Full-scale Drexler assemblers may or may not happen (though IMHO the real question is "how large will they be?", not "are they even theoretically possible?"), but nanotechnology marches onward, even though it can't jump to the ultimate conclusion of the technology instantaneously.
Thank you, this was exactly the point I am trying to make: people are talking about nanotech as though it's going to happen tomorrow and change the world. My point is: it's not going to happen any time soon.
People who are yakking about a technology that is totally unproven, untested and (for the most part) un-created are simply dreaming.
(Yes, I'm sure you're referring to the way it isn't in "common usage", but the reasons for that are largely economic, not technological. The benefits of superconductivity simply aren't large enough to matter. It's certainly possible, though!)
And what makes you think that nanotech will ever get past the stage where it starts to be interesting economically? Maybe producing nano-machines and nano-factories will always be too costly to be really interesting, except in some very limited cases. Just like the supra-conductivity ring at ITER (or the expert system I talked about in another post), nanotech may be confined to some specialized, expensive, niche for many years.
Yes. Your ignorance of them does not negate them. We're only at the beginning of the flood here.
one application I can remember is using carbon nanotubes as probes for scanning tunneling microscopes instead of conventional tungsten tips - greatly increases resolution.
OK. But this is not "Nanotech" as it is presented in the article (meaning: nano-factories churning out useful products and transforming the world). This is a very limited application of nanotech.
Read the other response I have posted in this thread, please, it goes deeper into my main question.
just because YOU don't know about or understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You've seen those pants that liquids just roll right off, right? Nanofibres make that possible. So we're not making assemblers yet, but we're already finding commercial uses for really small things.
That's exactly my point: you are comparing apples and oranges here. Nanofibres are not Nano-Assemblers.
I have said, in my previous message, that there may be applications for some parts or nanotech... Just like there are applications, right now, for limited AI and limited supraconductivity.
But I think that Nanotechnology, and especially the kind of applications that are pushed forward -- such as machines that will cure you of cancer or create a new car each morning out of thin air -- are a pure fantasy.
IMHO, they will not exist for the next hundred years.
if you'd asked me 15 years if I expected to see a computer that could fit completely in my lap with a gigabyte of RAM within my lifetime I'd have laughed at you.
Bingo! You are simply proving my point: this is the difference between Moore's Law and vaporware.
Let us say computers were invented in the 1950s (I know, I know, this is open to debate). When the first models came out, the CEO of IBM at the time famously said that the potential market for computers was "a dozen machines" worldwide.
Twenty years later -- the 1970s: the mini-computer came out and everyone agreed that computers were a good thing. The potential market for computers was in the millions of units.
Twenty years later -- the 1990s: the micro-computer has come of age and there are dozens and dozens of millions of computers worldwide. Almost a computer on every desk in major countries.
Moore's Law is now firmly entrenched in our consciousness, and computers have created unprecedented wealth and opportunities all over the world. Add the Internet to this mix, and you have a very potent technology, indeed.
If Nano-Technology (or AI, or supraconductivity, or cold fusion, or...) had followed the same path/growth, we should now see the very first large-scale applications of Nanotech. Where are these applications? Nowehere to be seen.
Don't misunderstand me: Nanotech may be a true force in the future. But I think it will be like electricity, which took close to an entire century to take off. Volta, after all, invented the battery in the 1800s... By this type of time-line, we may see the first interesting applications of Nanotech around... Well... 2080.
Just think about this for a second: Alan Turing created his famous test in... what? The 1930s? The 1950s? How many computers have you seen that could pass the test? Simple answer: none.
How many computers have you seen that actually could perform what HAL performed in "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Simple answer: none.
Scientists have been talking about NanoTech for what? Twenty+ years? Have you already seen an application of NanoTech in real life? Where are the real-life NanoTech billionaires? Where is the Bill Gates of nanotech?
I believe that nanotech, just like AI and superconductivity, is a pipe dream. This is simply because solving the technical/scientific problems are simply too large for our current technology.
Don't misunderstand me: nanotech can be useful. Dumb computers are useful right now. Things like micro-mechanical machines may be useful. Limited, one-task-only, expert system can be useful. But real intelligence? Real nanotech? I don't think so.
Oh, and if you think you can steal market shares from, let us say, Sun, without them making a fuss, I think you are mistaken too. Last time I checked, Sun is still worth more money than Red Hat...
Pay low-life a lot of money to catch other low-lifes. Yeah right.
Imagine this: your little sister sits in front of her computer, ready to send the latest pix of her little doggy to your grandma.
Five cops burst through the door and arrest her for spreading that noxious "I love goatse.cx!" virus. Yes, that virus. The one that installs a spambot on your Windows machine.
Her crime? She clicked on that little "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer e-postcard" that was sent to her by the nice girl she chatted with yesterday.
End result? '000s of $$$ spent in legal fees and millions of dumb IIS/Exchange servers crashed all over the world. And one very rich bastard, laughing all the way to the bank for denouncing an innocent.
Thank you, The Economist. Great idea.
Here is my offer: banish Microsoft products everywhere. Replace with medium- (Linux) to high-security (OpenBSD)OS everywhere and watch the [virus|worm] problems disappear. Oh, and make spamming a crime punishable by public castration. That should do the trick.
Because somebody, somewhere, especially in developing countries (think China, here) will realize they could make a mint seeling computers that are not DRM-compliant, or with a DRM compliance that can be circumvented easily by the user.
Here is a true example: when DVDs came out, they were all locked by geographical zones. Then an economic cirisi struck asian countries.
Pressed for cash, enterprising Korean chaebol decided it was more profitable to turn a blind eye when users published work-arounds. Soon, every DVD player company was doing the same.
The result? These days, every DVD player on display in shops proudly display a little tag saying that zoning can be removed officially or circumvented unofficially.
Using Google, it took me about 10 minutes to locate the infortmation I needed to remove the zoning setting on my (Korean) DVD player. It now happily plays DVDs from Europe, the USA and Japan.
These DRM-compliant BIOSes will follow the same path. Within 5 years, I confidently predict they will be a thing of the past... which is about when I'll have to buy a new computer... =)
While T-Online is profitable, Deutsche Telekom is not... I wonder (a) if T-Online has enough cash to buy AOL and (b) if European Authorities won't try to block this operation, given the size of the two companies...
Of course, if there are German Slashdot readers who have better info, I am ready to stand corrected!
Buying an Archos instead of an iPod was probably the best decision I made recently. At first, I was kind of wondering "Why did I buy this thing?", but these days it's mostly: "How did I do when I did not have one?".
[Script #1] go to Netcraft. Compile stats on each OS usage. If you don't want to write a script for this, just enroll a couple of MBA students to click repeatedly on all the links and call it "market research"...;-)
Compile a list of the top 20+ vendors of OS used on the Internet, including the relevant web sites . For instance: HP, Sun, SGI, IBM, Microsoft, Linux distros, BSDs, etc...
[Script #2] Using the list defined on step B, compile stats on each specific vendor vulnerabilities, security advisories, and patch response time.
[Script #3] Here is the tricky part. Compile stats on "open" security problems, including well-known/infrastructure software such as BIND, Sendmail, etc. In other words: scan as many hosts as possible, trying to find vulnerable machines. For each OS, try to compile rough, worst case scenario stats on the number of hosts that are actually vulnerable right now.
For each OS, install several machines: one with a "secure" install (best-case scenario), one for an "insecure" install (worst-case scenario -- no patches, open ports, etc.), one for middle ground scenarios, and several to run vulnerable infrastructure programs. Finally, install a separate network to simulate zombie machines and attack points
Test the different networks with potential attacks (viruses, DDoS, known vulnerabilities, etc). Using [Script #4], compile stats on the effectiveness of each attack. For instance, if foobar Linux represents 5% of all hosts on the Internet, a successful attack on the most secure install of said foobar Linux just took down 5% of the 'net. Try simulating the effects on the rest of the Internet.
Profit?? No, sorry, this was already paid for by the US Gov. If some money is left, try sponsoring your favourite Open Source OS to make it more secure.
I actually think this would make a nice little project... Ceratinly not worth US$ 5 million, though, unless you intend to install a huge number of machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Either that or "I love the smell of fresh napalm early in the morning..."
;-)
Need I say more?
I just sent my logo submission to the NetBSD Foundation. I don't think I'll ever win this competition, but I felt like sending something!
Here is also an interesting article about Wal-Mart and its influence on its suppliers... Globalization seems to be pushed forward by a few, for the benefits of a few....
That is a relief, as I almost thought for a second that XFree86 was going to disappear... *eek*
I don't want spammers to pay to have the right to send spam... I want them to stop sending spam!!
I seriously don't think this will work as (a) spammer won't use Microsoft products to send their wares or (b) because they will find a way to crack the security of this system (I mean, come on, this is Microsoft we are talking about here!).
OK, this one goes out to all of you BSD trolls out there:
;-)
It's dying!
It's dying!
It's dying!
It's dying!
There... feeling better, little trolls? I know you would!
This being out of the way, kudos to all the FreeBSD developers for all the good work -- it's a nice Christmas present!
Anybody else thinks that, if encrypted file-sharing becomes a reality, the RIAA will simply implode?
From the article:
to a first approximation, every PC owner under the age of 35 is now a felon.
Now remember what the Cypherpunks said a few years ago?
If crypto is outlawed,
only outlaws will have encryption
There you have it: goodbye RIAA. We hardly knew ya. You made us all felons, and by doing so, you opened the floodgate that were going to drown you.
Where 31 billion e-mails are sent every day, you think that systems might need to be updated to handle such volume
Since 29 billion out of these 31 billion emails are spam, feel free to install and operate SpamAssassin.
This program, in my experience, greatly reduces the level of email I receive each day...
(Yes, this is said in a very cheeky way!)
Which is that both sides of a "fork" actually adopt the best practices and best code/functionalities of each other.
Imagine there are two projects: "A" and its fork "B". If "B" programmers are smart, they'll keep on tracking the changes brought to "A" and incorporate the best features and patches from the original project.
In the same way, "A" programmers will keep an eye on "B" and take the code they need to improve "A".
And there are many examples of this in the open-source world: NetBSD and OpenBSD, Emacs and XEmacs, etc...
Forking does not necessarily means a loss of quality or incompatible programs. In the worst possible case, if one side of the fork is clearly better, it will eventually replace the other.
why punish the person who investigated his purchase first and already accounted for soundproofing in his expenditures.
Maybe I was not clear enough in my answer. What I was trying to point out is that a lot of buildings in Europe are old to very old and never incorporated sound-proofing at all.
It's not a stupid decision to buy an old house or a flat in an old building: sometimes, it's just really hard to find a modern building, either downtown or in the suburbs.
In any case, giving a tax break to X to put sound-proofing materials is not "punishing" Y for purchasing a sound-proofed home. It just means that X now has enough money to sound-proof his/her home, while Y has lost nothing.
This is not a case of the government bailing out someone who has made a bad decision: this is a case of the government recognizing that some cities are too noisy (because they are/were not designed with cars in mind) and giving citizens incentives to sound-proof their homes. It sounds to me like a good investment.
Finally, please remember that taxes are very high in Europe. So giving tax breaks to promote certain beneficial policies makes sense...
Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?
It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing.
If you add to this situation the fact that a lot of streets in large European cities are small and not made for cars (meaning medieval streets, not US-Grid-Style streets/boulevard), you have a recipe for a lot of noise and pollution, which many European cities are/were not designed to take into account.
Also, if you are lucky enough to find a cheap place to live in one of those cities (London and Paris -- for instance -- are among the most expensive places on Earth), noise control is going to be the least of your worries -- rent is a killer in those cities. And forget about space, since having more than one bedroom is going to deplete your bank account for the next 10 years or so.
Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners.
Full-scale Drexler assemblers may or may not happen (though IMHO the real question is "how large will they be?", not "are they even theoretically possible?"), but nanotechnology marches onward, even though it can't jump to the ultimate conclusion of the technology instantaneously.
Thank you, this was exactly the point I am trying to make: people are talking about nanotech as though it's going to happen tomorrow and change the world. My point is: it's not going to happen any time soon.
People who are yakking about a technology that is totally unproven, untested and (for the most part) un-created are simply dreaming.
(Yes, I'm sure you're referring to the way it isn't in "common usage", but the reasons for that are largely economic, not technological. The benefits of superconductivity simply aren't large enough to matter. It's certainly possible, though!)
And what makes you think that nanotech will ever get past the stage where it starts to be interesting economically? Maybe producing nano-machines and nano-factories will always be too costly to be really interesting, except in some very limited cases. Just like the supra-conductivity ring at ITER (or the expert system I talked about in another post), nanotech may be confined to some specialized, expensive, niche for many years.
Yes. Your ignorance of them does not negate them. We're only at the beginning of the flood here.
Please supply examples. Real-life examples.
one application I can remember is using carbon nanotubes as probes for scanning tunneling microscopes instead of conventional tungsten tips - greatly increases resolution.
;-)
OK. But this is not "Nanotech" as it is presented in the article (meaning: nano-factories churning out useful products and transforming the world). This is a very limited application of nanotech.
Read the other response I have posted in this thread, please, it goes deeper into my main question.
just because YOU don't know about or understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Well, I have read about nanotech, and I think I understand it a little bit. I have even submitted a story to Slashdot about nanotech
don't attack things just because you're ignorant of them.
Don't make assumptions about someone you don't know...
You've seen those pants that liquids just roll right off, right? Nanofibres make that possible. So we're not making assemblers yet, but we're already finding commercial uses for really small things.
...) had followed the same path/growth, we should now see the very first large-scale applications of Nanotech. Where are these applications? Nowehere to be seen.
That's exactly my point: you are comparing apples and oranges here. Nanofibres are not Nano-Assemblers.
I have said, in my previous message, that there may be applications for some parts or nanotech... Just like there are applications, right now, for limited AI and limited supraconductivity.
But I think that Nanotechnology, and especially the kind of applications that are pushed forward -- such as machines that will cure you of cancer or create a new car each morning out of thin air -- are a pure fantasy.
IMHO, they will not exist for the next hundred years.
if you'd asked me 15 years if I expected to see a computer that could fit completely in my lap with a gigabyte of RAM within my lifetime I'd have laughed at you.
Bingo! You are simply proving my point: this is the difference between Moore's Law and vaporware.
Let us say computers were invented in the 1950s (I know, I know, this is open to debate). When the first models came out, the CEO of IBM at the time famously said that the potential market for computers was "a dozen machines" worldwide.
Twenty years later -- the 1970s: the mini-computer came out and everyone agreed that computers were a good thing . The potential market for computers was in the millions of units.
Twenty years later -- the 1990s: the micro-computer has come of age and there are dozens and dozens of millions of computers worldwide. Almost a computer on every desk in major countries.
Moore's Law is now firmly entrenched in our consciousness, and computers have created unprecedented wealth and opportunities all over the world. Add the Internet to this mix, and you have a very potent technology, indeed.
If Nano-Technology (or AI, or supraconductivity, or cold fusion, or
Don't misunderstand me: Nanotech may be a true force in the future. But I think it will be like electricity, which took close to an entire century to take off. Volta, after all, invented the battery in the 1800s... By this type of time-line, we may see the first interesting applications of Nanotech around... Well... 2080.
Just think about this for a second: Alan Turing created his famous test in... what? The 1930s? The 1950s? How many computers have you seen that could pass the test? Simple answer: none.
How many computers have you seen that actually could perform what HAL performed in "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Simple answer: none.
Scientists have been talking about NanoTech for what? Twenty+ years? Have you already seen an application of NanoTech in real life? Where are the real-life NanoTech billionaires? Where is the Bill Gates of nanotech?
I believe that nanotech, just like AI and superconductivity, is a pipe dream. This is simply because solving the technical/scientific problems are simply too large for our current technology.
Don't misunderstand me: nanotech can be useful. Dumb computers are useful right now. Things like micro-mechanical machines may be useful. Limited, one-task-only, expert system can be useful. But real intelligence? Real nanotech? I don't think so.
Reality check, Red Hat:
We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft.
Too bad for you, because Microsoft certainly thinks that Linux is its number one competitor. And don't kid yourself: they will do whatever is needed to crush you.
Oh, and if you think you can steal market shares from, let us say, Sun, without them making a fuss, I think you are mistaken too. Last time I checked, Sun is still worth more money than Red Hat...
Pay low-life a lot of money to catch other low-lifes. Yeah right.
Imagine this: your little sister sits in front of her computer, ready to send the latest pix of her little doggy to your grandma.
Five cops burst through the door and arrest her for spreading that noxious "I love goatse.cx!" virus. Yes, that virus. The one that installs a spambot on your Windows machine.
Her crime? She clicked on that little "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer e-postcard" that was sent to her by the nice girl she chatted with yesterday.
End result? '000s of $$$ spent in legal fees and millions of dumb IIS/Exchange servers crashed all over the world. And one very rich bastard, laughing all the way to the bank for denouncing an innocent.
Thank you, The Economist. Great idea.
Here is my offer: banish Microsoft products everywhere. Replace with medium- (Linux) to high-security (OpenBSD)OS everywhere and watch the [virus|worm] problems disappear. Oh, and make spamming a crime punishable by public castration. That should do the trick.
Why is DRM doomed?
Because somebody, somewhere, especially in developing countries (think China, here) will realize they could make a mint seeling computers that are not DRM-compliant, or with a DRM compliance that can be circumvented easily by the user.
Here is a true example: when DVDs came out, they were all locked by geographical zones. Then an economic cirisi struck asian countries.
Pressed for cash, enterprising Korean chaebol decided it was more profitable to turn a blind eye when users published work-arounds. Soon, every DVD player company was doing the same.
The result? These days, every DVD player on display in shops proudly display a little tag saying that zoning can be removed officially or circumvented unofficially.
Using Google, it took me about 10 minutes to locate the infortmation I needed to remove the zoning setting on my (Korean) DVD player. It now happily plays DVDs from Europe, the USA and Japan.
These DRM-compliant BIOSes will follow the same path. Within 5 years, I confidently predict they will be a thing of the past... which is about when I'll have to buy a new computer... =)
bill g4t3z takes credit!
This should read "Bi11 g4T3z". Please respect the proper "3l33t" spelling. Thank you.
Another public-service message from your friendly spelling nazi. Or N4zi.
AT&T tried. They lost their case: it turned out that AT&T had copied a lot of BSD code.
Oh, and just one more thing: AT&T had way more money than SCO ever had. They still lost.
Good Luck SCO, and may God be on your side... Because none of us ever will.
Etc... Etc... Etc...
(All this is said firmly tongue-in-cheek, of course...)
If I remember correctly, T-Online is owned by Deutsche Telekom ( Some financial info here).
While T-Online is profitable, Deutsche Telekom is not... I wonder (a) if T-Online has enough cash to buy AOL and (b) if European Authorities won't try to block this operation, given the size of the two companies...
Of course, if there are German Slashdot readers who have better info, I am ready to stand corrected!
Let me list some reasons:
Buying an Archos instead of an iPod was probably the best decision I made recently. At first, I was kind of wondering "Why did I buy this thing?", but these days it's mostly: "How did I do when I did not have one?".
(A very satisfied Archos customer)
I actually think this would make a nice little project... Ceratinly not worth US$ 5 million, though, unless you intend to install a huge number of machines.
... this means WAR!. Go FSF, go!