If you live in VA, you might have already done your part depending on how you voted! VA has some awesomely strict anti-spam laws which even make it illegal to route spam through VA, even if the spammer and recipient don't reside anywhere in VA. Do a search for "Virginia Computer Crimes Act", or just click here for VA Codes and Laws. As always, the EFF is a good place to look around too.
Contrary to recent political trends, United States citizens actually have a right to privacy, and the last time I checked, having rights was a good thing. Upholding or making use of your right to privacy in no way means that you have something sinister to hide. The fact is that without privacy, many people would not be able to live their lives as they want, such as not having the freedom to practice their preferred religious beliefs or not being able to marry the spouse of their choosing. What the right to privacy defends is your right to live a lifestyle that may be different than your neighbors or somehow different than social norms, which isn't in itself illegal. In this society of mixed cultural and religious beliefs, privacy is necessary for a person's livelihood, and our laws were designed to uphold this. Thus, making use of one's right to privacy is nothing that anyone should have to worry about.
Actually, the article states that Google's market value is nearing that of IBM's, but let me answer your question with another question: Why shouldn't Google's market value be in the same ballpark as IBM, Coca-Cola, or Disney? In only 12 years, the Internet has become a global phenomenon, and Google is now standing pretty much at the center of it. What has Disney done that has been so outrageously popular in the last 12 years? The most notable thing I can think of was Disney lobbying hard for copyright extension, so their empire wouldn't vanish in a puff of public-domain smoke (at least, not for another 20 years). Given Google's current position, I see no reason why their market value shouldn't be competing with the likes of IBM, Coca-Cola, and Disney.
Running a non-homogeneous network is not quite security through obscurity. I was implying that the Navy's network is most likely comprised of many different platforms, so if a bug gets loose, it will be isolated to a smaller portion of the network. I more think of security through obscurity putting plaintext passwords in a hidden file, but a non-homogeneous network provides damage control in case the shit ever hits the fan.
Also, just because PPC Linux has a smaller userbase than x86 Linux doesn't mean than PPC Linux is less secure. By your logic, MS Windows should be the most secure desktop platform because it has the highest desktop userbase. Plenty of brilliant people are working on PPC Linux, and you may have noticed a while back that even Torvalds is running Linux on PPC. So it's not the size of the userbase that matters; it's the caliber of the people writing the code.
And don't be so quick to rule out G5s for sonar work on a boat or submarine. I'm sure their power requirements are fairly strict, but while a G4 is consumes less power than a G5, the G5 doesn't consume that much more power. The G4 is rated at 10 watts, and the G5 consumes between 20 and 40 watts. Even a G5 is worlds better than a Pentium 4, which consumes over 100 watts. I agree that the G4 consumes less power, but both the G4 and G5 are energy efficient, and unless you know the Navy's requirements, you can only speculate as to which CPU they're using.
Maybe the Navy realized the security risks involved with a homogeneous network. That's at least one great reason to seek out a non-standard (yet reliable and efficient) platform, such as Linux on PPC.
Actually, the consumers were the ones screwed the first time, since Apple passed the levy along to them. So Apple is only getting screwed once (unless you count the lost sales resulting from the levy).
Also since it was the Canadian Private Copying Coalition (CPCC) who received the money from the levy, it would make sense that they should be the ones to refund the money instead of the Canadian government. But good luck getting it out of them.
Would just like to point out that the same memory is also available
from Dell for $1049
.
Memory seems to be overpriced from any name brand computer vendor, and in general it's much better to buy memory from a general hardware vendor like newegg.
The Eclipse IDE project is open source and sponsored by IBM. However, IBM makes good money from Eclipse by repackaging it with all the Websphere and DB2 integration (think it's renamed as Websphere Developer Studio).
IBM, among others like Google, Apple, etc., are showing us some great open source business models, and as far as I can see, these models almost always involve some way to package open source software as a comprehensive service or solution. It's not enough to just burn the software to disk and stuff it in a cardboard box (or at least, not anymore).
Not at all. Although advertising is still a major source of revenue, Google makes plenty of business offering enterprise solutions. For example, Amazon's new search engine is Google powered (previously reported here). I believe Yahoo's search engine has been powered by Google for a while now too, although I could stand to be corrected.
Offshoring is actually a bad move for clients who need software development, since it puts so much distance between the software engineer and the customer (plus a possible language barrier). If the engineer and customer can't communicate efficiently and effectively, then the product will suffer in both quality and release date. Most likely, software companies which offshore development tasks will suffer in the not-so-long term, while others, who hire developers close to home, will release better products faster. However, other tasks like nighttime telephone tech support are easily offshored with no consequences.
Corporates who need to upgrade to a new server for performance, yet can't afford to spend huge amounts of money upgrading the applications to suit the newer OSes.
Yes, there will always be a need for legacy application support for exactly the reason you stated. But you can get your backwards compatibility with software emulators these days while still getting excellent performance and reliability. My guess is that those legacy apps were designed to run as efficient as possible on hardware that by today's standards we would consider junk, so with modern hardware, these apps should still run really well even in emulation. So really, where's the problem with getting rid of DOS compatibility in hardware? This is too small of a niche to be keeping back the rest of the industry.
Something else I haven't seen anyone mention yet is FreeDOS.
is that Intel hasn't provided a Linux driver for their Centrino PRO/Wireless adapter. This is one of the main reasons I went with a PowerBook instead of a Centrino.
Slashdot Mirror
If you live in VA, you might have already done your part depending on how you voted! VA has some awesomely strict anti-spam laws which even make it illegal to route spam through VA, even if the spammer and recipient don't reside anywhere in VA. Do a search for "Virginia Computer Crimes Act", or just click here for VA Codes and Laws. As always, the EFF is a good place to look around too.
Now if VA would just get rid of UCITA... *sigh*
Even George W. Bush uses Internets to look at the Google Maps! It's number ones, baby!
Contrary to recent political trends, United States citizens actually have a right to privacy, and the last time I checked, having rights was a good thing. Upholding or making use of your right to privacy in no way means that you have something sinister to hide. The fact is that without privacy, many people would not be able to live their lives as they want, such as not having the freedom to practice their preferred religious beliefs or not being able to marry the spouse of their choosing. What the right to privacy defends is your right to live a lifestyle that may be different than your neighbors or somehow different than social norms, which isn't in itself illegal. In this society of mixed cultural and religious beliefs, privacy is necessary for a person's livelihood, and our laws were designed to uphold this. Thus, making use of one's right to privacy is nothing that anyone should have to worry about.
Actually, the article states that Google's market value is nearing that of IBM's, but let me answer your question with another question: Why shouldn't Google's market value be in the same ballpark as IBM, Coca-Cola, or Disney? In only 12 years, the Internet has become a global phenomenon, and Google is now standing pretty much at the center of it. What has Disney done that has been so outrageously popular in the last 12 years? The most notable thing I can think of was Disney lobbying hard for copyright extension, so their empire wouldn't vanish in a puff of public-domain smoke (at least, not for another 20 years). Given Google's current position, I see no reason why their market value shouldn't be competing with the likes of IBM, Coca-Cola, and Disney.
Running a non-homogeneous network is not quite security through obscurity. I was implying that the Navy's network is most likely comprised of many different platforms, so if a bug gets loose, it will be isolated to a smaller portion of the network. I more think of security through obscurity putting plaintext passwords in a hidden file, but a non-homogeneous network provides damage control in case the shit ever hits the fan.
Also, just because PPC Linux has a smaller userbase than x86 Linux doesn't mean than PPC Linux is less secure. By your logic, MS Windows should be the most secure desktop platform because it has the highest desktop userbase. Plenty of brilliant people are working on PPC Linux, and you may have noticed a while back that even Torvalds is running Linux on PPC. So it's not the size of the userbase that matters; it's the caliber of the people writing the code.
And don't be so quick to rule out G5s for sonar work on a boat or submarine. I'm sure their power requirements are fairly strict, but while a G4 is consumes less power than a G5, the G5 doesn't consume that much more power. The G4 is rated at 10 watts, and the G5 consumes between 20 and 40 watts. Even a G5 is worlds better than a Pentium 4, which consumes over 100 watts. I agree that the G4 consumes less power, but both the G4 and G5 are energy efficient, and unless you know the Navy's requirements, you can only speculate as to which CPU they're using.
Maybe the Navy realized the security risks involved with a homogeneous network. That's at least one great reason to seek out a non-standard (yet reliable and efficient) platform, such as Linux on PPC.
Don't forget about DrPython and DrJava.
Doesn't C++ ask more of a programmer to learn the finer points of the language than languages like Python, Lisp, Scheme, or Haskell?
Actually, the consumers were the ones screwed the first time, since Apple passed the levy along to them. So Apple is only getting screwed once (unless you count the lost sales resulting from the levy).
Also since it was the Canadian Private Copying Coalition (CPCC) who received the money from the levy, it would make sense that they should be the ones to refund the money instead of the Canadian government. But good luck getting it out of them.
Would just like to point out that the same memory is also available from Dell for $1049 .
Memory seems to be overpriced from any name brand computer vendor, and in general it's much better to buy memory from a general hardware vendor like newegg.
Here's a good comparison of UPnP and Zeroconf. Zeroconf is the base of Apple's Bonjour.
Yes, Bonjour is Rendezvous renamed. Here's some info on that.
We've taken nature's perfect killing machine and needlessly turned it into a robot!
IBM, among others like Google, Apple, etc., are showing us some great open source business models, and as far as I can see, these models almost always involve some way to package open source software as a comprehensive service or solution. It's not enough to just burn the software to disk and stuff it in a cardboard box (or at least, not anymore).
Not at all. Although advertising is still a major source of revenue, Google makes plenty of business offering enterprise solutions. For example, Amazon's new search engine is Google powered (previously reported here). I believe Yahoo's search engine has been powered by Google for a while now too, although I could stand to be corrected.
Offshoring is actually a bad move for clients who need software development, since it puts so much distance between the software engineer and the customer (plus a possible language barrier). If the engineer and customer can't communicate efficiently and effectively, then the product will suffer in both quality and release date. Most likely, software companies which offshore development tasks will suffer in the not-so-long term, while others, who hire developers close to home, will release better products faster. However, other tasks like nighttime telephone tech support are easily offshored with no consequences.
And after I start running Windows on my Mac, I think I'll outfit my Fiat with chrome wheels, spoiler, and a fart pipe!
Yes, there will always be a need for legacy application support for exactly the reason you stated. But you can get your backwards compatibility with software emulators these days while still getting excellent performance and reliability. My guess is that those legacy apps were designed to run as efficient as possible on hardware that by today's standards we would consider junk, so with modern hardware, these apps should still run really well even in emulation. So really, where's the problem with getting rid of DOS compatibility in hardware? This is too small of a niche to be keeping back the rest of the industry.
Something else I haven't seen anyone mention yet is FreeDOS.
is that Intel hasn't provided a Linux driver for their Centrino PRO/Wireless adapter. This is one of the main reasons I went with a PowerBook instead of a Centrino.