That's the first I heard that theory of why it failed.. Do you have any references to support that?
Everything I have read said that once News Corp / Murdoch came into the picture, they were either going to lowball Tivo's cut of the subscription fees or move to the DVR product that News Corp owned (thus keeping all the $$ for themselves). Considering the fact that Tivo never made a profit during that time, and have only briefly been in the black, I tend to think it was more of an attempt to keep his business running than greed.
Another plausible theory expressed at the time was that News Corp tried to take a larger stake in Tivo (they already owned 10%) and were denied, because Tivo feared it would eliminate their possibility of working with cable companies.
Now that News Corp is selling off (has sold?) their stake in DirecTV, there are rumors of renewing the Tivo relationship: http://www.tvpredictions.com/tivo060507.htm That clearly points to it being a News Corp issue.
ATI Needs to produce better Linux drivers --> ATI announces they really like Linux --> ATI never produces drivers
keep exciting everyone enough to cause this constant hand wringing?
They are not going to ever really support Linux well. If that's not clear after 12 years of the above cycle, then you haven't been paying attention. Move on.. Get a board with an Intel integrated GPU if you want totally open. Get an Nvidia card if you don't care about open, but want working accelerated drivers.
If ATI does somehow produce open specs or drivers, great.. think about buying one then. In the mean time, vote with your dollars, buy something else.
Bullshit. There are already restrictions on pornography in other aspects of life. You can't just display hardcore porn on the street so that any passing child is exposed to it. Magazines are placed in restricted areas, or have covers hiding explicit images. etc. etc.
An innocent search, or malicious apps, can quickly lead to porn sites -- with no adult verifications, it just jumps right into hardcore porn, often many popups of hardcore porn.
Yes, the parents have the ultimate responsibility for their child's well-being. But, protecting against porn is easier said than done. One aspect of that parental response is to write their congressional rep's and say "we need some regulation on this junk".
Of course, with the current administration, we're at risk for zealots trying to save us all and make sure that we're never exposed to anything as awful as a naked breast. But, hopefully it would instead lead to a reasonable solution enabling protection of children while leaving the rest of us alone.
> Yeah, they sure didn't understand the 700,000 (!) customers who bought the phone on the first weekend.
The point is, the product could have been better. I like Apple because they don't shoot for "good enough". They try to refine the product, and produce something that meets customers needs more than anything else.
The Apple software in the phone is better than any competitor product. I don't know about 700K, but I'm sure they sold a lot of them. I bought one. But, that doesn't mean it was perfect. It just means that it was good enough to justify the purchase, in spite of the limitations.
If Apple had an iPhone SDK, many of the deficiencies of the product could be solved already (e.g. a simple note organizer -- Yojimbo for iPhone, would make it a much better product. Or, a To-Do manager, etc..)
Sure, some were asking for an iPod SDK.. But, for something with a wheel as an input device, your development options are pretty limited.
The iPhone is much different, because
- It has full input capabilities -- pointer, selection, keyboard input and more.
- It's a much more powerful device (cpu/ram) than the iPods
- Apple positioned it as a "smart phone", directly comparing it to the competitive smartphones, which do offer SDKs.
- Apple represented it as running "True OS X". They even mentioned it supporting Cocoa. Why the hell would you talk about the programming interface if you don't intend to give your developers access?
After watching the initial iPhone introduction, I just assumed developers would have access (based on the OS X / Cocoa stuff). Just after that annoyance of finding they were NOT making an SDK wore off, Apple came back with the "you don't need an SDK, just write web pages" bullshit, which re-opened the wound. That episode was the farthest off I have seen Apple in understanding their developers/customers. Hopefully they remedy it soon.
That's up to the cable company. I don't know if this has happened yet, but last year Comcast and Tivo came to an agreement to provide STB for comcast customers.
I think the main issue comes down to the provider giving up a portion of the $$. DirecTV used to have Tivo boxes as an option, but they are phasing them out in favor of their own box, for which they can keep 100% of the revenue (and not require an additional monthly fee for their customers, such as Tivo requires).
Charter uses the Moxi DVR box, comcast previously (still?) used a crappy DVR from motorola.
That just means that the ISP's next step is to use a more sophisticated gateway for IRC traffic, one that inspects the content within the session (well within the capabilities of current technology). They would just scan the client request portion, looking for connections to the known botnet channels, and hijack only those connections -- minimizing the intrusion on normal customer traffic.
if (PROTO == irc)// This could also be done on the router, to only vector off IRC for deeper inspection.
if ( bot = light_scan( client_requests, "join", botnet_channels ) )
hijack_session( REMOVE, bot );
Of course, the botnet response to this is to sign or encrypt the payload, use IRC over SSL, or switch to a new protocol. And so continues the arms race.
Yes, but half the attraction on that machine is the low power CPU. The C7 is very low power, 12Watts max according to the VIA www site, probably much less on average for normal usage and with Linux power savings features. A "pretty fast P4" could easily take 10x the power, which adds up for a server machine running 24x7.
Another benefit of the low power is low heat, which translates into low noise. A system using only 12W could run with a passive heat sink (no loud fan). Another plus for a server.
As others have mentioned, there are cheaper places to buy C7's (although, after adding RAM and disk, they aren't much cheaper). But, for server usage, low power is important -- P4's are the opposite of low power.
Good link. The C7 @ 1.5 GHz looks like it's even lower power -- 12Watts, vs 20Watts @ 2GHz.
Anyone have links to real world benchmark information (not performance per Watt, raw application performance)? This would make a nice Linux server.. my only hesitation is raw power for the few CPU intensive tasks my server performs. For example, MythTV commercial flagging. With my 1.6GHz Athlon64, it does commflagging quite well. I'm wondering if going to a C7 would slow that down a lot.
Also, this box could possibly be an interesting Myth frontend. The integrated GPU has an MPEG2 accelerator function, which (when everything is working well) can make decoding HD video very low overhead. But, there are several issues that would probably get in the way
- Driver support. The OpenChrome project is a bit iffy.. They may not support this new chipset, and may not have full functionality if they do. - XvMC VLD support - If it does work, the XvMC API is not always reliable. - HD support -- depending on the chipset, it may or may not support HD resolutions. Many VIA GPUs are limited to 1024x1024, which makes them fairly useless.
It's not totally crapware free. From the Specs: Norton Internet Security(TM) 2007 (90-day subscription included)
They could have chosen a free AV package, like they chose a free office suite (or even a free operating system). But, they went with the try-now buy-later package.
I agree.. They could see this as a way to battle piracy and/or compete with open source. Some people just aren't going to pay for their software, which propagates all kinds of problems in policy, enforcement, updates, and viruses. But, even those people would make rather download a legitimate, supported, update-able OS rather than questionable pirated junk. This would let MS milk some advertising revenue from those leeches, and improve the OS/Internet security situation for everyone else.
Or, it could just be one of the tons of defensive patents they file. There is a lot of incentive for companies to sit around brainstorming, then patent any wacky idea they come up with -- to protect against patent trolls, and have patent offense against other companies.
Of course, that's the optimistic view.. If they tried to pull this crap in a mainstream OS, they would be widely reviled -- pushing more people to Mac OS and to a lesser extent Linux. So, I really hope this is their next great innovation.. offering their customers highly targeted advertisements within their OS. Bring it on.
I went to one of the BeOS traveling road shows, in Ann Arbor MI, way back when. I was blown away by it.. it was way beyond anything else at the time. I didn't buy a BeBox, but I did get BeOS when it was available for Intel boxes. It's a real shame for that codebase to be lost for practical use.
The same thing almost happened to NeXTStep. They were bleeding money, and not making much progress in the market. If Apple hadn't screwed up so many of their efforts at creating their next-gen OS, NeXTStep surely would have died. (Of course, Apple almost chose BeOS anyway. And, NeXT had some open-ness in OpenStep).
But, it just makes me wonder, what would it take for a competitor OS to make it? MS can suffocate any commercial competitor. But, one as advanced as BeOS surely would have lived on if they were Open Sourced. There would have been many people interested in developing the OS or apps for it. But, then again, without a core organization providing direction, the project would probably run off into the weeds - lacking a customer/usability orientation like 95% of all open source projects.
It seems that Apple bought the code and now control the license to the CUPS source code, giving them control of the direction (of at least that fork) and protection from licensing changes that hurt them.
But, a question for this situation, and many others in the Open Source community is: "What about the code contributed by other people to the project?"
Does the GPL define how this is handled? E.G. does the original author retain full copyright over the codebase and the contributor is in effect donating code to him? Or, does the copyright fragment, and each individual owns the copyright to the pieces they created?
Or, is this not covered by the GPL, and is negotiated among the contributors?
> the standard mythology is that cameras everywhere is all about the government controlling you. but with google maps, with cell phone cameras, etc., we are actually seeing the rodney king effect: that governments suddenly have to get used to a new democratic form of transparency that they never had to deal with before
While, this is partly true.. "Little Brother" in the form of ubiquitous camera phones provide evidence of a lot of things private, governmental, and natural. But, I don't think orbiting satellites run by governments or wealthy corporations fall into this same category.
Especially this example in the article.. superpower military vs. superpower military. The reality is that the Chinese submarine must not be considered too secret these days, or they would have built a simple roof structure for it. The Chinese are very aware of the satellite spying capabilities of the U.S. military, which we can safely assume is a whole lot more detailed than the pictures from Google Maps.
But, I would prefer to have a standard cordless phone handset(s) option too. I would definitely get rid of my land line if I could replace it with a VoIP handset that integrated into my cell account.
Multiple handsets might be tougher for their service.. People at home could be using VoIP all day, while I was using my handset on the road.
Probably the same reason Vonage charges for their service and calls into the phone network are no longer free on Skype.. It costs them money to connect calls from VoIP into the telephone system. There are obviously big savings for them, but it still costs them money. And, it's a big customer benefit. $10 per month seems like a great price for a way to do unlimited calling.
In commercial software companies I've worked for, this sort of thing is typical. But, that structure is quite different from open source.
Once the product / project grows, the early gurus are needed to lead the direction of the larger group of developers brought in as the company expands. The new guys don't have the understanding of the big picture, so they focus on a specific area, and the best of them bubble up as they get more experience.
In open source, you don't have the same strict reporting relationship, where the leader can order people to go do X,Y,Z. So, the dynamic is a bit different in the Linux kernel model. There is seems to be more of a review process. The guys at the top of that heap are making sure the right things get included in the kernel.
I had a similar bad experience with AT&T and good experience with Apple:
Executive summary - AT&T Mgr. refused to give basic information (do you have enough iPhones for all 20 people in line?) - AT&T Mgr. lied about availability (iPhones are sold out all through the city) - AT&T Mgr. intentionally tries to hide Apple Store availability to get more sales for his store. - AT&T screwed up the order for the first guy in line, who had been waiting for hours. By the time he realized they gave him a 4GB phone, there were no 8GB units left. - Apple store had many iPhones. Completed quick, easy, efficient transaction.
The long version:
I wasn't about to wait in lines for more than 15-30 minutes, but I headed up to the closest AT&T/Cingular store which was in an area I thought might not get a lot of traffic (Kalamazoo Rd & Hwy 6, Grand Rapids, MI). There were about 20 people waiting in line at 5:55PM, so I joined in.
The AT&T rep came out and asked for a show of hands on how many people wanted 4GB vs 8GB. Almost everyone wanted 8GB, and by his grimace I saw that was going to be a problem. I asked him how many phones they had, and he said "I can't tell you that". I persisted, asking if it was worth while for those of us near the end to wait. He said "if we run out, we can process the order and direct ship to your home". So, now his intention was obvious.. keep as many people there as possible, and try to get more sales even after running out of phones. There were 4 or 5 employees, but for some reason they only allowed two people to enter the store at a time, and the transactions seemed to take forever.
Against my better judgment, I stayed in line. About 45 minutes later, they had slowly processed 10-15 people ahead of me. One of the earlier people came out and said they had run out. Shortly after that, the first guy in line returned. He had bought an 8GB iPhone and later found that they had given him a 4GB unit. Now all the 8GB units were gone.. The manager came out and asked if anyone in the line was paying cash and wanted a 4GB unit. One guy jumped at this, and they took his money, gave it to the first guy, and gave the cash guy the iPhone. Kinda shady to avoid a return..
The AT&T people said that no other stores in the city had iPhones left. (I had already tried to call the Apple store to see their status, but couldn't get through.) And they said they would do free next day shipping, and claimed that ordering in the store would be faster than online. I am in Eastern time zone, and I thought the online purchases might be closed until 6PM Pacific. So, I went ahead and ordered it there. The guy taking my order seemed like he had never used the sales system before, and it took 5+ minutes to complete my sale.
Shortly before I got in the AT&T store, some guy walked up and asked why we (the four remaining laggards) were waiting in line. He said "there's no lines at the Apple store at the mall, and they have plenty left". We had all seen coverage of the campers at the Apple store on last night's news, so we thought he was messing with us, or trying to get us to give up our spots in line.
On the off chance he was telling the truth, I drove over to the mall. There were a lot of people milling around the store, fondling the iPhones on display. I asked an employee if they had any left, and he pointed to the rows of iPhone bags behind the genius desk and registers.. there were over a hundred there on the floor. I picked up an 8GB iPhone, the Apple employees were plentiful, helpful, and efficient. The purchase took all of 40 seconds. Ithen zipped back over to the AT&T store to void my earlier transaction.
They voided my iPhone order without argument (I was a bit surprised at that). I explained to the manager that he was incorrect when he told me that there were no more iPhones in the city, and told him of the hundreds at the Apple store. He quickly called another AT&T store and began comparing notes with someone there.
Thanks for the info. I'll try the mouse change. But, these solutions are a good illustration of the difference between VMWare and Xen.. In VMWare, these things either work without modification, or are easily done via the GUI.
The core of Xen is great, and it will be fantastic if some good GUI management tools are available. But, in general, open source and easy to use GUIs don't often go together.
Also, on the disk issue, that config file change works for booting from the CD. But, after I reboot without the CD, and boot from the hard drive re-attaching an ISO is not so easy. I think the command was "xm attach...." and I never got the ISO to work, but pointing it to my CD-ROM device did work. Removing attached disks was also a challenge. Not rocket science, but not something I want to mess with either.
"Just Works" is overstating it quite a bit. Based on my experience, and looking at the other comments here, it's more like Xen "mostly works, after a great deal of learning, googling, and experimenting". Maybe once you've ramped up on it it works well. But, saying it "Just Works" is clearly not the case.
The Xen experience has improved a lot. In Fedora 7, I just had to select the Xen kernel+apps for a package install, and the Xen infrastructure was pretty easily installed. But, getting client VMs running, figuring out the command-line tools and their parameters, and working around quirks too a good deal of effort.
I have been trying to use Xen at home to test it out and compare it to VMWare, which I've used at work. Once you manage to get Xen clients working, it's fine. It does a good job of running VMs, and can be used to partition resources on a powerful machine.
But, the main problem is the steep learning curve for getting Xen running in the first place. The (python based) management GUIs included with Fedora or Ubuntu are weak at best (although, slowly improving.. the UI in Fedora 7 does manage to make setup easier than the command-line alternative). The ongoing management / monitoring of VMs is okay, but weak in comparison to VMWare.
There are also a lot of little quirks in Xen. Installing Win2k in a client VM required a lot of searching for how to attach an ISO image to a running VM (it's not a simple GUI operation like in VMWare/Parallels/VirtualPC, it requires a terminal command with unintuitive options, which never worked for me.. I finally dug out my CD and got the physical CD drive to attach to the VM). Windows VMs have an odd issue where the mouse pointer is offset form the actual pointer (it's a known issue, and is helped by turning off mouse acceleration in Windows preferences, but it is still a problem). Installing client VMs can be challenging.. Ubuntu feisty wouldn't install until I set the VM as a Solaris client, and after a few other tweaks it finally installed and worked fairly well.
Most of the Xen problems are solvable, after playing with command-line tools, figuring out poorly documented parameters, and lots of googling. At the end of the day, it's one of those "Xen is free, if your time has no value" type things. VMWare Server is probably a better option if you just want it to work for home/free uses. For commercial use, VMWare ESX Server is the way to go. It has simple VM setup for many client OS's, excellent management of large groups os Hypervisors and virtual machines.
The commercial alternative from XenSource (free to use, but limited to 4 VMs; or less restricted versions for increasing $$) offer a better management UI, but are too restricted for my taste. The management app is much better, but not as good as VMWare.. If I'm going to pay for one, I'll go for the best option.
This doesn't change for wired or wireless. But, with wireless there may be even more temptation to do it cheaply because everyone has it at home and thinks it's simple. Clearly it wasn't just a technological problem, because the IT guy said he sometimes told people to connect to their neighbor's WiFi. It seems that his WiFi was just unusually poorly implemented.
Step back, look at the network, assess where wired ports are needed and where wireless is the best/only option. Then buy some decent gear that is reliable and manageable (No, not $50 D-Link/Linksys stuff at OfficeMax).
It's not that hard. It just takes a plan, and some effort to do it right.
I don't know about the DVD, but I was happy to see it broadcast in High Definition on HDNet Movies. Seeing those old movies in HD format, in their original aspect ratio, it the next best thing to seeing them on the big screen (or, maybe even better.. in the controlled environment of your own home).
For some of those movies I originally saw in a butchered 4:3 VHS version, the Hi-Def widescreen presentation is like seeing another movie.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the first I heard that theory of why it failed.. Do you have any references to support that?
Everything I have read said that once News Corp / Murdoch came into the picture, they were either going to lowball Tivo's cut of the subscription fees or move to the DVR product that News Corp owned (thus keeping all the $$ for themselves). Considering the fact that Tivo never made a profit during that time, and have only briefly been in the black, I tend to think it was more of an attempt to keep his business running than greed.
Another plausible theory expressed at the time was that News Corp tried to take a larger stake in Tivo (they already owned 10%) and were denied, because Tivo feared it would eliminate their possibility of working with cable companies.
Now that News Corp is selling off (has sold?) their stake in DirecTV, there are rumors of renewing the Tivo relationship:
http://www.tvpredictions.com/tivo060507.htm That clearly points to it being a News Corp issue.
Why does the never ending cycle of
ATI Needs to produce better Linux drivers --> ATI announces they really like Linux --> ATI never produces drivers
keep exciting everyone enough to cause this constant hand wringing?
They are not going to ever really support Linux well. If that's not clear after 12 years of the above cycle, then you haven't been paying attention. Move on.. Get a board with an Intel integrated GPU if you want totally open. Get an Nvidia card if you don't care about open, but want working accelerated drivers.
If ATI does somehow produce open specs or drivers, great.. think about buying one then. In the mean time, vote with your dollars, buy something else.
Bullshit. There are already restrictions on pornography in other aspects of life. You can't just display hardcore porn on the street so that any passing child is exposed to it. Magazines are placed in restricted areas, or have covers hiding explicit images. etc. etc.
An innocent search, or malicious apps, can quickly lead to porn sites -- with no adult verifications, it just jumps right into hardcore porn, often many popups of hardcore porn.
Yes, the parents have the ultimate responsibility for their child's well-being. But, protecting against porn is easier said than done. One aspect of that parental response is to write their congressional rep's and say "we need some regulation on this junk".
Of course, with the current administration, we're at risk for zealots trying to save us all and make sure that we're never exposed to anything as awful as a naked breast. But, hopefully it would instead lead to a reasonable solution enabling protection of children while leaving the rest of us alone.
> Yeah, they sure didn't understand the 700,000 (!) customers who bought the phone on the first weekend.
The point is, the product could have been better. I like Apple because they don't shoot for "good enough". They try to refine the product, and produce something that meets customers needs more than anything else.
The Apple software in the phone is better than any competitor product. I don't know about 700K, but I'm sure they sold a lot of them. I bought one. But, that doesn't mean it was perfect. It just means that it was good enough to justify the purchase, in spite of the limitations.
If Apple had an iPhone SDK, many of the deficiencies of the product could be solved already (e.g. a simple note organizer -- Yojimbo for iPhone, would make it a much better product. Or, a To-Do manager, etc..)
Sure, some were asking for an iPod SDK.. But, for something with a wheel as an input device, your development options are pretty limited.
The iPhone is much different, because
- It has full input capabilities -- pointer, selection, keyboard input and more.
- It's a much more powerful device (cpu/ram) than the iPods
- Apple positioned it as a "smart phone", directly comparing it to the competitive smartphones, which do offer SDKs.
- Apple represented it as running "True OS X". They even mentioned it supporting Cocoa. Why the hell would you talk about the programming interface if you don't intend to give your developers access?
After watching the initial iPhone introduction, I just assumed developers would have access (based on the OS X / Cocoa stuff). Just after that annoyance of finding they were NOT making an SDK wore off, Apple came back with the "you don't need an SDK, just write web pages" bullshit, which re-opened the wound. That episode was the farthest off I have seen Apple in understanding their developers/customers. Hopefully they remedy it soon.
That's up to the cable company. I don't know if this has happened yet, but last year Comcast and Tivo came to an agreement to provide STB for comcast customers.
I think the main issue comes down to the provider giving up a portion of the $$. DirecTV used to have Tivo boxes as an option, but they are phasing them out in favor of their own box, for which they can keep 100% of the revenue (and not require an additional monthly fee for their customers, such as Tivo requires).
Charter uses the Moxi DVR box, comcast previously (still?) used a crappy DVR from motorola.
And, you've always got MythTV.. roll your own.
That just means that the ISP's next step is to use a more sophisticated gateway for IRC traffic, one that inspects the content within the session (well within the capabilities of current technology). They would just scan the client request portion, looking for connections to the known botnet channels, and hijack only those connections -- minimizing the intrusion on normal customer traffic.
// This could also be done on the router, to only vector off IRC for deeper inspection.
if (PROTO == irc)
if ( bot = light_scan( client_requests, "join", botnet_channels ) )
hijack_session( REMOVE, bot );
Of course, the botnet response to this is to sign or encrypt the payload, use IRC over SSL, or switch to a new protocol. And so continues the arms race.
Yes, but half the attraction on that machine is the low power CPU. The C7 is very low power, 12Watts max according to the VIA www site, probably much less on average for normal usage and with Linux power savings features. A "pretty fast P4" could easily take 10x the power, which adds up for a server machine running 24x7.
Another benefit of the low power is low heat, which translates into low noise. A system using only 12W could run with a passive heat sink (no loud fan). Another plus for a server.
As others have mentioned, there are cheaper places to buy C7's (although, after adding RAM and disk, they aren't much cheaper). But, for server usage, low power is important -- P4's are the opposite of low power.
Good link. The C7 @ 1.5 GHz looks like it's even lower power -- 12Watts, vs 20Watts @ 2GHz.
Anyone have links to real world benchmark information (not performance per Watt, raw application performance)?
This would make a nice Linux server.. my only hesitation is raw power for the few CPU intensive tasks my server performs. For example, MythTV commercial flagging. With my 1.6GHz Athlon64, it does commflagging quite well. I'm wondering if going to a C7 would slow that down a lot.
Also, this box could possibly be an interesting Myth frontend. The integrated GPU has an MPEG2 accelerator function, which (when everything is working well) can make decoding HD video very low overhead. But, there are several issues that would probably get in the way
- Driver support. The OpenChrome project is a bit iffy.. They may not support this new chipset, and may not have full functionality if they do.
- XvMC VLD support - If it does work, the XvMC API is not always reliable.
- HD support -- depending on the chipset, it may or may not support HD resolutions. Many VIA GPUs are limited to 1024x1024, which makes them fairly useless.
At $300, it's hard to beat.
The VIA C7 is a nice low-power CPU, with enough kick for most server tasks. At only 20 Watts power, it's well below any of the Intel/AMD options.
Too bad there isn't a version without the Windows tax.. this box at $250 would be even better.
It's not totally crapware free. From the Specs: Norton Internet Security(TM) 2007 (90-day subscription included)
They could have chosen a free AV package, like they chose a free office suite (or even a free operating system). But, they went with the try-now buy-later package.
I agree.. They could see this as a way to battle piracy and/or compete with open source. Some people just aren't going to pay for their software, which propagates all kinds of problems in policy, enforcement, updates, and viruses. But, even those people would make rather download a legitimate, supported, update-able OS rather than questionable pirated junk. This would let MS milk some advertising revenue from those leeches, and improve the OS/Internet security situation for everyone else.
Or, it could just be one of the tons of defensive patents they file. There is a lot of incentive for companies to sit around brainstorming, then patent any wacky idea they come up with -- to protect against patent trolls, and have patent offense against other companies.
Of course, that's the optimistic view.. If they tried to pull this crap in a mainstream OS, they would be widely reviled -- pushing more people to Mac OS and to a lesser extent Linux. So, I really hope this is their next great innovation.. offering their customers highly targeted advertisements within their OS. Bring it on.
I went to one of the BeOS traveling road shows, in Ann Arbor MI, way back when. I was blown away by it.. it was way beyond anything else at the time. I didn't buy a BeBox, but I did get BeOS when it was available for Intel boxes. It's a real shame for that codebase to be lost for practical use.
The same thing almost happened to NeXTStep. They were bleeding money, and not making much progress in the market. If Apple hadn't screwed up so many of their efforts at creating their next-gen OS, NeXTStep surely would have died. (Of course, Apple almost chose BeOS anyway. And, NeXT had some open-ness in OpenStep).
But, it just makes me wonder, what would it take for a competitor OS to make it? MS can suffocate any commercial competitor. But, one as advanced as BeOS surely would have lived on if they were Open Sourced. There would have been many people interested in developing the OS or apps for it. But, then again, without a core organization providing direction, the project would probably run off into the weeds - lacking a customer/usability orientation like 95% of all open source projects.
Didn't Palm Source buy BeOS, and claim to be releasing their next generation of PalmOS based on BeOS?
That was years ago, and obviously never happened. But, did any part of BeOS make it into a Palm product?
Is there anything left of BeOS, any chance of some life for that codebase?
It seems that Apple bought the code and now control the license to the CUPS source code, giving them control of the direction (of at least that fork) and protection from licensing changes that hurt them.
But, a question for this situation, and many others in the Open Source community is: "What about the code contributed by other people to the project?"
Does the GPL define how this is handled? E.G. does the original author retain full copyright over the codebase and the contributor is in effect donating code to him? Or, does the copyright fragment, and each individual owns the copyright to the pieces they created?
Or, is this not covered by the GPL, and is negotiated among the contributors?
> the standard mythology is that cameras everywhere is all about the government controlling you. but with google maps, with cell phone cameras, etc., we are actually seeing the rodney king effect: that governments suddenly have to get used to a new democratic form of transparency that they never had to deal with before
While, this is partly true.. "Little Brother" in the form of ubiquitous camera phones provide evidence of a lot of things private, governmental, and natural. But, I don't think orbiting satellites run by governments or wealthy corporations fall into this same category.
Especially this example in the article.. superpower military vs. superpower military. The reality is that the Chinese submarine must not be considered too secret these days, or they would have built a simple roof structure for it. The Chinese are very aware of the satellite spying capabilities of the U.S. military, which we can safely assume is a whole lot more detailed than the pictures from Google Maps.
Wifi from the cell phone is a nice option..
But, I would prefer to have a standard cordless phone handset(s) option too. I would definitely get rid of my land line if I could replace it with a VoIP handset that integrated into my cell account.
Multiple handsets might be tougher for their service.. People at home could be using VoIP all day, while I was using my handset on the road.
Probably the same reason Vonage charges for their service and calls into the phone network are no longer free on Skype.. It costs them money to connect calls from VoIP into the telephone system. There are obviously big savings for them, but it still costs them money. And, it's a big customer benefit. $10 per month seems like a great price for a way to do unlimited calling.
In commercial software companies I've worked for, this sort of thing is typical. But, that structure is quite different from open source.
Once the product / project grows, the early gurus are needed to lead the direction of the larger group of developers brought in as the company expands. The new guys don't have the understanding of the big picture, so they focus on a specific area, and the best of them bubble up as they get more experience.
In open source, you don't have the same strict reporting relationship, where the leader can order people to go do X,Y,Z. So, the dynamic is a bit different in the Linux kernel model. There is seems to be more of a review process. The guys at the top of that heap are making sure the right things get included in the kernel.
I had a similar bad experience with AT&T and good experience with Apple:
Executive summary
- AT&T Mgr. refused to give basic information (do you have enough iPhones for all 20 people in line?)
- AT&T Mgr. lied about availability (iPhones are sold out all through the city)
- AT&T Mgr. intentionally tries to hide Apple Store availability to get more sales for his store.
- AT&T screwed up the order for the first guy in line, who had been waiting for hours. By the time he realized they gave him a 4GB phone, there were no 8GB units left.
- Apple store had many iPhones. Completed quick, easy, efficient transaction.
The long version:
I wasn't about to wait in lines for more than 15-30 minutes, but I headed up to the closest AT&T/Cingular store which was in an area I thought might not get a lot of traffic (Kalamazoo Rd & Hwy 6, Grand Rapids, MI). There were about 20 people waiting in line at 5:55PM, so I joined in.
The AT&T rep came out and asked for a show of hands on how many people wanted 4GB vs 8GB. Almost everyone wanted 8GB, and by his grimace I saw that was going to be a problem. I asked him how many phones they had, and he said "I can't tell you that". I persisted, asking if it was worth while for those of us near the end to wait. He said "if we run out, we can process the order and direct ship to your home". So, now his intention was obvious.. keep as many people there as possible, and try to get more sales even after running out of phones. There were 4 or 5 employees, but for some reason they only allowed two people to enter the store at a time, and the transactions seemed to take forever.
Against my better judgment, I stayed in line. About 45 minutes later, they had slowly processed 10-15 people ahead of me. One of the earlier people came out and said they had run out. Shortly after that, the first guy in line returned. He had bought an 8GB iPhone and later found that they had given him a 4GB unit. Now all the 8GB units were gone.. The manager came out and asked if anyone in the line was paying cash and wanted a 4GB unit. One guy jumped at this, and they took his money, gave it to the first guy, and gave the cash guy the iPhone. Kinda shady to avoid a return..
The AT&T people said that no other stores in the city had iPhones left. (I had already tried to call the Apple store to see their status, but couldn't get through.) And they said they would do free next day shipping, and claimed that ordering in the store would be faster than online. I am in Eastern time zone, and I thought the online purchases might be closed until 6PM Pacific. So, I went ahead and ordered it there. The guy taking my order seemed like he had never used the sales system before, and it took 5+ minutes to complete my sale.
Shortly before I got in the AT&T store, some guy walked up and asked why we (the four remaining laggards) were waiting in line. He said "there's no lines at the Apple store at the mall, and they have plenty left". We had all seen coverage of the campers at the Apple store on last night's news, so we thought he was messing with us, or trying to get us to give up our spots in line.
On the off chance he was telling the truth, I drove over to the mall. There were a lot of people milling around the store, fondling the iPhones on display. I asked an employee if they had any left, and he pointed to the rows of iPhone bags behind the genius desk and registers.. there were over a hundred there on the floor. I picked up an 8GB iPhone, the Apple employees were plentiful, helpful, and efficient. The purchase took all of 40 seconds. Ithen zipped back over to the AT&T store to void my earlier transaction.
They voided my iPhone order without argument (I was a bit surprised at that). I explained to the manager that he was incorrect when he told me that there were no more iPhones in the city, and told him of the hundreds at the Apple store. He quickly called another AT&T store and began comparing notes with someone there.
Thanks for the info. I'll try the mouse change. But, these solutions are a good illustration of the difference between VMWare and Xen.. In VMWare, these things either work without modification, or are easily done via the GUI.
...." and I never got the ISO to work, but pointing it to my CD-ROM device did work. Removing attached disks was also a challenge. Not rocket science, but not something I want to mess with either.
The core of Xen is great, and it will be fantastic if some good GUI management tools are available. But, in general, open source and easy to use GUIs don't often go together.
Also, on the disk issue, that config file change works for booting from the CD. But, after I reboot without the CD, and boot from the hard drive re-attaching an ISO is not so easy. I think the command was "xm attach
"Just Works" is overstating it quite a bit. Based on my experience, and looking at the other comments here, it's more like Xen "mostly works, after a great deal of learning, googling, and experimenting". Maybe once you've ramped up on it it works well. But, saying it "Just Works" is clearly not the case.
The Xen experience has improved a lot. In Fedora 7, I just had to select the Xen kernel+apps for a package install, and the Xen infrastructure was pretty easily installed. But, getting client VMs running, figuring out the command-line tools and their parameters, and working around quirks too a good deal of effort.
I have been trying to use Xen at home to test it out and compare it to VMWare, which I've used at work. Once you manage to get Xen clients working, it's fine. It does a good job of running VMs, and can be used to partition resources on a powerful machine.
But, the main problem is the steep learning curve for getting Xen running in the first place. The (python based) management GUIs included with Fedora or Ubuntu are weak at best (although, slowly improving.. the UI in Fedora 7 does manage to make setup easier than the command-line alternative). The ongoing management / monitoring of VMs is okay, but weak in comparison to VMWare.
There are also a lot of little quirks in Xen. Installing Win2k in a client VM required a lot of searching for how to attach an ISO image to a running VM (it's not a simple GUI operation like in VMWare/Parallels/VirtualPC, it requires a terminal command with unintuitive options, which never worked for me.. I finally dug out my CD and got the physical CD drive to attach to the VM). Windows VMs have an odd issue where the mouse pointer is offset form the actual pointer (it's a known issue, and is helped by turning off mouse acceleration in Windows preferences, but it is still a problem). Installing client VMs can be challenging.. Ubuntu feisty wouldn't install until I set the VM as a Solaris client, and after a few other tweaks it finally installed and worked fairly well.
Most of the Xen problems are solvable, after playing with command-line tools, figuring out poorly documented parameters, and lots of googling. At the end of the day, it's one of those "Xen is free, if your time has no value" type things. VMWare Server is probably a better option if you just want it to work for home/free uses. For commercial use, VMWare ESX Server is the way to go. It has simple VM setup for many client OS's, excellent management of large groups os Hypervisors and virtual machines.
The commercial alternative from XenSource (free to use, but limited to 4 VMs; or less restricted versions for increasing $$) offer a better management UI, but are too restricted for my taste. The management app is much better, but not as good as VMWare.. If I'm going to pay for one, I'll go for the best option.
This doesn't change for wired or wireless. But, with wireless there may be even more temptation to do it cheaply because everyone has it at home and thinks it's simple. Clearly it wasn't just a technological problem, because the IT guy said he sometimes told people to connect to their neighbor's WiFi. It seems that his WiFi was just unusually poorly implemented.
Step back, look at the network, assess where wired ports are needed and where wireless is the best/only option. Then buy some decent gear that is reliable and manageable (No, not $50 D-Link/Linksys stuff at OfficeMax).
It's not that hard. It just takes a plan, and some effort to do it right.
I don't know about the DVD, but I was happy to see it broadcast in High Definition on HDNet Movies. Seeing those old movies in HD format, in their original aspect ratio, it the next best thing to seeing them on the big screen (or, maybe even better.. in the controlled environment of your own home).
For some of those movies I originally saw in a butchered 4:3 VHS version, the Hi-Def widescreen presentation is like seeing another movie.