While information in books can last for decades, computer technology is outdated within 3 years. You have misfocused on the form of the information rather than the information itself. After all, a book about computer technology will obsolesce as fast as the technology itself. What I think you are really pushing for is a better grounding in basics such as philosophy, math and critical thinking. Learning these things from (say) a hyperlinked set of webpages is not fundamentally different than learning them from a book.
Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home?
A better question would be, Do I want to spend an hour a day driving to and from work? It's interesting that, in all the things I hear about technology and information having the ability to decrease the quality of life, I never hear anything about commuting. A significant percentage of the population of Los Angeles (where I live) spends one to two hours a day on jam-packed freeways. This is not quality time no matter what else technology lets me do at the same time.
As someone who has considerable experience with various Unices and has no compunction about (re-)formatting and (re-)partitioning my drives, partition setup proved to be the single biggest barrier there was for me to install Linux. The Red Hat documentation was very clear about *how* to partition, but *nowhere* was I able to find any advice about the size and number of partitions to create. The very fact that this is necessary is somewhat irritating -- why can't I just create a single partition and use it for everything? Now, if I run out of space in (say)/usr but I still have plenty of space in/home, I've got to go through contortions to rectify the situation.
1) Sun may have been the platform for a large amount of free software to have been developed on, but they can't be credited for this. Oh, I'm sure that there were a few piddly donations to the FSF over the years, but the main reason that their hardware served as a common development platform was its ubiquity. 2) SunOS used to be BSD-based. Then, after Sun entered into an unholy alliance with AT&T, they shifted over to the SysVish Solaris -- a considerably less-open, less-accessible platform. I'm sure this had nothing to do with the Sun clones that started coming out at the time. 3) Sun's licensing for Java is at least as much "embrace-and-extend" of Open Source concepts as Microsoft's attempt to subvert that language.
As a side note, anyone who thinks Sun is "really cool" and not just another corporate entity that has absurd notions of, well, just about everything, feel free to peruse these terms, which you must agree to if you want to post one of their logos on your site.. even if its simply as a supporter of Sun's technology.
Ultimately, the goal of a publically-held business is to create value for its shareholders, just like the role of a defense attorney is to do everything legally permissible to defend their client. Both happen without regard to truth, aesthetics or the public interest, except to the extent that those things affect the primary goal. Furthermore, in both cases, demonstrable failure to pursue the primary goal, even for "good" reasons, can result in the entity being sued in court for a failure to meet their responsibility. So even if scottm or billg wanted to "do the right thing" (and I believe that neither of them do), their hands are tied by stockholders.
Isn't Sun's "Community License" just an "embrace and extend" of Open Source?
Also, remember Microsoft is NOT on trial based on what will happen in the future, but their activities in the past.
Yes, but if they are found "guilty" (or whatever the appropriate legal term is in this case), then the remedies will depend very much on the judge's perception of what will happen in the future. If he sees a reasonable amount of future competition, the judge will be loathe to break up MS simply as a punitive measure.
Every now and then, I slip into a conspiracy frame of mind and have this thought: What if Microsoft (or at least elements inside of MS) wants to be broken up? The company has clearly hit a wall in terms of the exponential growth of billg's net worth. It's hard to imagine that the stock price can continue to grow at anything approaching the rate of the last few years. But what if Microsoft was broken up? Doesn't this solve several problems at once? The resulting baby bills (bbs) could change their names (reducing the stigma that the MS name increasingly carries). They could focus on profits more tightly, without taking the other bbs into account. They could pare down the amount of infighting that surely occupies significant resources at today's MS. There would be opportunities for downsizing. At least in the short term, Wall Street would probably love it.
But then, I hear things like the Ballmer "Web Office" announcement and realize that no, this is still the same stupid, bandwagon-jumping MS we've come to know and, well, know. It's disheartening to me -- I confess, I'm in that minority of/. readers that actually enjoys quite a few of the MS products -- to see how MS has been reacting to recent "threats" against it. Rather than learn from what's going on, they seem to have chosed to retrench and even to move backwards.
I know this is completely off-topic, but I have a $2.56 check from Knuth and it's one of my only prized possessions. His attempts to bring varying types of aesthetics to programming are sorely needed. Read _Literate_Programming_.
I can't imagine that getting Java and Linux to play nicely with each other is nearly as difficult as getting Java users and Linux users to be friends. Computer technology tends to fall into top-down and bottom-up categories. Linux, Perl, C and TCP/IP are all bottom-up phenomena. Java, NCs, CORBA and OSI are top-down technologies. Although there are exceptions, techies from one side of the tracks generally disdain the products from the other side.
Java is very much an Ivory Tower language that appeals to the same purists who previously were gung-ho over Smalltalk. These are not the sort of people that regularly recompile their kernels.
Only A- level security prevents you from being hooked up to a network.
I believe you've been confused by the fact that Windows NT is only C2-secure when it is not networked. This is an issue with NT and not with C2 certification.
I agree that the article has flaws, but I think that people are missing some of the key interesting points, particularly in regard to the idea of "equal participants."
The average Internet user does not have the technical skills to evaluate things like the risk involved with various patterns of usage. Would you keep your daily schedule online, on some company's server? Many people do. There are other companies working on Internet-based storage. You store your files on their computer and then you don't have to worry about things like backups and disk space. They'll take care of that for you.
For people who don't understand the difference between disk capacity and RAM capacity, or between a local drive and a network drive, how can they be expected to understand all the ramifications of a scheme like this? The car analogy *is* a good analogy: we don't have to know how the motor works because there are a lot of laws and precedents that protect us from poorly-designed motors. (And I think the percentage of people who *can't* change a blown tire is surprisingly high.)
The average Slashdot reader is undoubtedly an order of magnitude more sophisticated about computers and the Net than the average Net user. (Don't congratulate yourself; it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with what's important to you. Someone is not stupid just because the difference between RAM and a hard drive is not important to them.) It's easy to forget that the world is generally set up for them and not for "us". And it should be.
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a secure digital format, and it's time that some of these legal-types realize that the most compelling reason to pay for music is a desire to support the musicians we love.
Oh, they get that all right. It's the record companies that they think we don't want to support. They may be right.;)
...and once the big, bad Microsoft dragon was slain, the fair America Online released its specification from captivity, and we all lived open-sourcely ever after. And there was much rejoicing.
How exactly does this make MS different from other businesses? All successful corporations make decisions for business reasons. What we want to create is a situation where companies realize that open source *is* the best business decision.
Slashdot Mirror
While information in books can last for decades, computer technology is outdated within 3 years. You have misfocused on the form of the information rather than the information itself. After all, a book about computer technology will obsolesce as fast as the technology itself. What I think you are really pushing for is a better grounding in basics such as philosophy, math and critical thinking. Learning these things from (say) a hyperlinked set of webpages is not fundamentally different than learning them from a book.
A better question would be, Do I want to spend an hour a day driving to and from work? It's interesting that, in all the things I hear about technology and information having the ability to decrease the quality of life, I never hear anything about commuting. A significant percentage of the population of Los Angeles (where I live) spends one to two hours a day on jam-packed freeways. This is not quality time no matter what else technology lets me do at the same time.
It's as bad as partitioning a drive under DOS.
I gotta disagree with a bit of this.
1) Sun may have been the platform for a large amount of free software to have been developed on, but they can't be credited for this. Oh, I'm sure that there were a few piddly donations to the FSF over the years, but the main reason that their hardware served as a common development platform was its ubiquity.
2) SunOS used to be BSD-based. Then, after Sun entered into an unholy alliance with AT&T, they shifted over to the SysVish Solaris -- a considerably less-open, less-accessible platform. I'm sure this had nothing to do with the Sun clones that started coming out at the time.
3) Sun's licensing for Java is at least as much "embrace-and-extend" of Open Source concepts as Microsoft's attempt to subvert that language.
Ultimately, the goal of a publically-held business is to create value for its shareholders, just like the role of a defense attorney is to do everything legally permissible to defend their client. Both happen without regard to truth, aesthetics or the public interest, except to the extent that those things affect the primary goal. Furthermore, in both cases, demonstrable failure to pursue the primary goal, even for "good" reasons, can result in the entity being sued in court for a failure to meet their responsibility. So even if scottm or billg wanted to "do the right thing" (and I believe that neither of them do), their hands are tied by stockholders.
Isn't Sun's "Community License" just an "embrace and extend" of Open Source?
Yes, but if they are found "guilty" (or whatever the appropriate legal term is in this case), then the remedies will depend very much on the judge's perception of what will happen in the future. If he sees a reasonable amount of future competition, the judge will be loathe to break up MS simply as a punitive measure.
But then, I hear things like the Ballmer "Web Office" announcement and realize that no, this is still the same stupid, bandwagon-jumping MS we've come to know and, well, know. It's disheartening to me -- I confess, I'm in that minority of /. readers that actually enjoys quite a few of the MS products -- to see how MS has been reacting to recent "threats" against it. Rather than learn from what's going on, they seem to have chosed to retrench and even to move backwards.
I know this is completely off-topic, but I have a $2.56 check from Knuth and it's one of my only prized possessions. His attempts to bring varying types of aesthetics to programming are sorely needed. Read _Literate_Programming_.
Even better, NSAKEY happens to be an anagram for SNEAKY.
Java is very much an Ivory Tower language that appeals to the same purists who previously were gung-ho over Smalltalk. These are not the sort of people that regularly recompile their kernels.
... a case for meta-moderation if there ever was one. How did this ever get marked as "Funny?"
Only A- level security prevents you from being hooked up to a network.
I believe you've been confused by the fact that Windows NT is only C2-secure when it is not networked. This is an issue with NT and not with C2 certification.
The average Internet user does not have the technical skills to evaluate things like the risk involved with various patterns of usage. Would you keep your daily schedule online, on some company's server? Many people do. There are other companies working on Internet-based storage. You store your files on their computer and then you don't have to worry about things like backups and disk space. They'll take care of that for you.
For people who don't understand the difference between disk capacity and RAM capacity, or between a local drive and a network drive, how can they be expected to understand all the ramifications of a scheme like this? The car analogy *is* a good analogy: we don't have to know how the motor works because there are a lot of laws and precedents that protect us from poorly-designed motors. (And I think the percentage of people who *can't* change a blown tire is surprisingly high.)
The average Slashdot reader is undoubtedly an order of magnitude more sophisticated about computers and the Net than the average Net user. (Don't congratulate yourself; it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with what's important to you. Someone is not stupid just because the difference between RAM and a hard drive is not important to them.) It's easy to forget that the world is generally set up for them and not for "us". And it should be.
Can you say flame-bait? I thought so!
...and once the big, bad Microsoft dragon was slain, the fair America Online released its specification from captivity, and we all lived open-sourcely ever after. And there was much rejoicing.
How exactly does this make MS different from other businesses? All successful corporations make decisions for business reasons. What we want to create is a situation where companies realize that open source *is* the best business decision.