OSS, almost by its very nature, has attracted, and will continue to attract very good technical brains.
Also, though this is something that OSS pundits have been harping on for years (and something I agree with), there will be a fixed percentage of good programmers in any given randomly-selected pool. Given that, large software teams are what, around 50-100 programmers, whereas the Internet will connect literally millions of programmers. There's no real comparison; there is much more developer resource out there.
There is also something I see and hear (and hear myself utter as well) in a business environment: "we're looking for someone with more experience". Yes, it's a well-established knowledge to those who study human-factors that TOT (Time-On-Task) generally means higher quality in a given task, everything else being equal. However, this completely ignores other, intangible, factors, such as motivation, aptitude, and compatibility with the rest of the team. In an OSS environment, the person's past experiences are relatively irrelevent; a team will not exclude a developer based on his/her resume, but will do so on the aforementioned "intangible" assets.
In addition, in a business environment, invariably, we're trained to cover our collective arses by meeting someone else's deadlines, resulting in a code that works, but not necessarily elegantly or efficiently. In an OSS project, the only thing that matters is the quality of the code that the developer ships out. There are no external deadlines, allowing even the most mediocre of developers to produce quality code. Therefore, the ratio of good-poor programmers rise, because now the developers who are slightly slower can also hope to produce quality code. The also-rans can become superstars, because of a much longer timespan
In examining the OSS community further, I also agree with the original poster. I have had the fortunate opportunity to work with very talented developers in my relatively short career. Those who are exceptionally talented almost always read others' code regularly. The large portion of these code come from the various OSS projects; many, including myself, admit that they will not be where they are today if it were not for OSS.
Star Wars is like Shakespeare: everyone loves it, and nobody wants to admit what derivative tripe it is.
Isn't it great? *laugh*. Seriously, though, the original Star Wars, regardless of its quality, was among the first SF movie to actually become "mainstream". But then, IANversed in popular culture; all my favourite authors and playwrights have been dead for centuries:-)
They could, presumably, use a set of mirrors in geosynch orbit, or something. Of course, then the focusing of the laser becomes a huge issue.
Of course, it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about; I have no idea how a mirror, hit with a high-powered light source, will behave. --
My Celeron/466 Linux box boots in less than three minutes, and that's with Apache, Samba, Sendmail, and MySQL all starting up. Move the OS into ROM or flash, and you've got yourself a winner -- even without custom-tweaked drivers and hardware
My N64 console is ready for play in less than 10 seconds. Granted, a PSX takes *much* longer to boot (probably even a minute or two, but that's why I don't own a PSX), but you get the idea. Even when booting, I seriously doubt that the bottleneck is/will be the processor. Mind you, you're correct, a console would (hopefully:-) ) not have things like Apache, sendmail, and MySQL running. However, I will not want to wait for the bloody thing to boot if it takes more than a minute or two, regardless of the games involved. Hopefully, they will be able to overcome these issues.
the system trials planned for 2003
"will not involve lasers with sufficient power to affect the debris"
Those systems trials most likely deal with the aiming and tracking system for the laser, and not the lasers themselves. I seriously doubt that the technology to produce high-power laser that is focused enough to take out 10cm metal/ceramic targets in orbit exists today.
They will most likely use a fairly low-power laser, and have a shiny object up there to see if the laser has "hit"
But then you won't be able to output a broken version of all the file formats available! Besides, then an empty document (19k, with Word 97) would take up entirely too large of a portion of the binary release.
I wonder if the uptake on Transmeta's products has been slow enough that their venture capital is drying up
Well.... The uptake on the products doesn't have to be slow. They merely need to appear slow. Just look at 3dfx about a year ago. They almost lost all of their venture capital for R&D, because their VSA-100 seemed slow. In retrospect, we know that had they shipped their products in time, the Voodoo[45] series would've been among the fastest product out there. Of course, they survived, and has seemed to get the product cycle headaches sorted out to an extent (or have they?).
It doesn't matter how good the company performs in the good times. It only matters how well the company survives when the times turn sour. All companies, large and small, had to go through this phase. If Transmeta is indeed hurting for venture capital, it just seems that they're going through the "growing pains" sooner rather than later.
Of course, this also may be a bid to increase their cash reserves so they can seriously invest in something infrastructure-related. $200million won't buy you a fab, but possibly some space in one? They've been having issues with IBM's fabbing costs, and they've been courting TSMC and others, but perhaps they want to do it on their own?
Of course, the yahoo listing was full of the usual drivel; claiming that the Crusoe processor "gives laptops Internet access performance similar to that of desktop computers". A 1GHz T-bird will be slower than a 300MHz PII if the PII had been mated to a T3 while the T-bird was connected via a modem. *sigh*
Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) announced that they will be porting Office to Linux today, assuring that every processor will be able to run Office.
"Not only will desktop computers be able to run office, but now we can run Office on anything from web servers to toaster ovens. This is a great day for the consumer, and great day for businesses. Imagine, while you wait for your bagel to toast, you can be working on the latest version of your financial analysis," quipped Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
However, he declined to comment whether this constituted a tacit admission that Microsoft's own IIS server was losing ground to Linux-based servers running Apache. --
But can it be used on a processor without an MMU? Motorola Dragonball processors don't have MMU's, so you have to emulate that functionality in the OS somehow, which is nontrivial. Just how nontrivial it is is left as an exercise to the reader.
Oops. I forgot to change the topic. At first, I was going to write what you filled in (Thank you!), but then I realised that I didn't feel like dredging up my past OS theory books to confirm what you just said.
Anyway, I liked VMS. The VAXen I worked with were pretty decent machines too. I will miss them.
--
the bulk of the work is being done by a company that had existed to port MS's DCOM architecture to Unix.
Is this the same company/team that made the Slowaris and HP-SUX port of the Internet Exploder? The same team that said that NT is more advanced in terms of process threading? (Heavy Weight Processes, not LWP's)
Seriously, though. If you look here, you'll find that MS worked on a Win32 layer for various UNIX platforms, when building their IE 4.0 port. Using this, it shouldn't be too bad to do a port of Office to UN*X.
Ahhhh VAX. I'm really sad to see these go. I remember having one at my friend's uni (SUNY Plattsburgh), and playing around with it for a while. Of course, by this time, we were porting from UNIX to VMS and not usually the other way around.
Well, it's more that the Chinese and Japanese languages forked in pronounciation. Japanese schools teach how to read "Kanbun", or Chinese sentences, as part of the curriculum, but it does not do it extensively enough for the children to actually be literate in Chinese. Oh, well.
The Elantra, by Hyundai, is a Korean car. At least with quite a few models, Japenese cars for export have different names than Japanese cars for domestic use.
Windam (Toyota) - Lexus ES300
Fairlady Z (Nissan) - 260/280/300 ZX (Nissan)
and so on. --
Linux DV won't take off as a console platform until the following happens:
Boot-up times slashed from the current implementations. Noone will want to wait minutes for the console to boot up, as most consoles go with the "boot for each game" approach. Will this approach be any different with the Linux-based console? Will it have "load game" and "exit to OS" functionalities?
Of course, having a unified and standardised hardware base will do wonders wrt the drivers probing hardware, dropping the bootup times a bit.
A mature 3D driver/library support for the graphics hardware becoming released.
Currently, the Linux versions of the nVidia drivers lagg behind the Windows implementations. Can anyone comment on the 3Dfx side?
Is there an OpenGL implementation that is stable and fast? Without such a library, it will make ports difficult at best.
Ease of programming will be paramount. Sega Saturn was legendary in its difficulty to program for, and we all know how successful that platform was. Sega learned its lesson with the Dreamcast, and subsequently, it became one of the most straight-forward consoles to program for. Yes, UNIX is easy to program for, but how about the graphics? Are they fast and easy to work with? Will there be accelerated libraries?
I'm not saying that the X-box will be easy, but it will at least be easier for MS to port all the crap needed to the X-box's OS, seeing as it's basically a stripped-down Windows (9x? NT?)-based OS.
I run a Uni network with 15,000 regular users. We've got 30+ NW4.11 servers.
Our 300-ish network is/was being served off of one NW box and one NT box, running exchange. 300 * 30 = 9000, which is almost the ballpark of your 15,000 figure:-)
Seriously, I figure that the Compaq box that the thing runs off of can probably handle about 500 clients easily.
It's actually a decent solution for a client base of about 300 or so, if you absolutely have to have NT on the desktops. My last client had such a setup, where all the authentication, whatever, were handled by a Novel Netware box. It, and it alone (the Exchange server died horriably), survived the stupid I love you virus fiasco there.
However, at the same time, I really don't see Novell bringing IBM much value. As another poster had suggested, is IBM that strapped for office space?
The article/press release/marketing FUD does not lend itself well to peer review, which is as important to technical journalism as it is in the scientific circles.
Here are the questions that came to my mind:
Were the DB's administered by a competent DBA? Oracle 8i can scream or crawl, depending on the amount of tuning you do. So can most other database products. An RDBMS is not a bloody spreadsheet; it requires a *ton* of tuning to optimally perform.
What version(s) of the "properietary" databases were they using? They never mentioned that they were using the latest versions of the databases, which could mean that they were comparing the latest versions of PostgreSQL to Oracle 6.
What server hardware/network hardware/client hardwares were the benchmarkers using? "Same Computers" could mean that they were benchmarking PostgreSQL on a GB switched ethernet, and the rest of the RDBMS on a $10 10Mbps hub. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison
Of course, they may not want to reveal these informations for fear of peer review. *sigh*.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, though this is something that OSS pundits have been harping on for years (and something I agree with), there will be a fixed percentage of good programmers in any given randomly-selected pool. Given that, large software teams are what, around 50-100 programmers, whereas the Internet will connect literally millions of programmers. There's no real comparison; there is much more developer resource out there.
There is also something I see and hear (and hear myself utter as well) in a business environment: "we're looking for someone with more experience". Yes, it's a well-established knowledge to those who study human-factors that TOT (Time-On-Task) generally means higher quality in a given task, everything else being equal. However, this completely ignores other, intangible, factors, such as motivation, aptitude, and compatibility with the rest of the team. In an OSS environment, the person's past experiences are relatively irrelevent; a team will not exclude a developer based on his/her resume, but will do so on the aforementioned "intangible" assets.
In addition, in a business environment, invariably, we're trained to cover our collective arses by meeting someone else's deadlines, resulting in a code that works, but not necessarily elegantly or efficiently. In an OSS project, the only thing that matters is the quality of the code that the developer ships out. There are no external deadlines, allowing even the most mediocre of developers to produce quality code. Therefore, the ratio of good-poor programmers rise, because now the developers who are slightly slower can also hope to produce quality code. The also-rans can become superstars, because of a much longer timespan
In examining the OSS community further, I also agree with the original poster. I have had the fortunate opportunity to work with very talented developers in my relatively short career. Those who are exceptionally talented almost always read others' code regularly. The large portion of these code come from the various OSS projects; many, including myself, admit that they will not be where they are today if it were not for OSS.
--
Isn't it great? *laugh*. Seriously, though, the original Star Wars, regardless of its quality, was among the first SF movie to actually become "mainstream". But then, IANversed in popular culture; all my favourite authors and playwrights have been dead for centuries :-)
--
Of course, it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about; I have no idea how a mirror, hit with a high-powered light source, will behave.
--
Ooops, my bad. Thanks for the update.
--
"nothing sucks more than a VAX"
-- from the Hacker's Jargon Dictionary
--
My N64 console is ready for play in less than 10 seconds. Granted, a PSX takes *much* longer to boot (probably even a minute or two, but that's why I don't own a PSX), but you get the idea. Even when booting, I seriously doubt that the bottleneck is/will be the processor. Mind you, you're correct, a console would (hopefully :-) ) not have things like Apache, sendmail, and MySQL running. However, I will not want to wait for the bloody thing to boot if it takes more than a minute or two, regardless of the games involved. Hopefully, they will be able to overcome these issues.
--
Those systems trials most likely deal with the aiming and tracking system for the laser, and not the lasers themselves. I seriously doubt that the technology to produce high-power laser that is focused enough to take out 10cm metal/ceramic targets in orbit exists today.
They will most likely use a fairly low-power laser, and have a shiny object up there to see if the laser has "hit"
--
But then you won't be able to output a broken version of all the file formats available! Besides, then an empty document (19k, with Word 97) would take up entirely too large of a portion of the binary release.
--
Well.... The uptake on the products doesn't have to be slow. They merely need to appear slow. Just look at 3dfx about a year ago. They almost lost all of their venture capital for R&D, because their VSA-100 seemed slow. In retrospect, we know that had they shipped their products in time, the Voodoo[45] series would've been among the fastest product out there. Of course, they survived, and has seemed to get the product cycle headaches sorted out to an extent (or have they?).
It doesn't matter how good the company performs in the good times. It only matters how well the company survives when the times turn sour. All companies, large and small, had to go through this phase. If Transmeta is indeed hurting for venture capital, it just seems that they're going through the "growing pains" sooner rather than later.
Of course, this also may be a bid to increase their cash reserves so they can seriously invest in something infrastructure-related. $200million won't buy you a fab, but possibly some space in one? They've been having issues with IBM's fabbing costs, and they've been courting TSMC and others, but perhaps they want to do it on their own?
Of course, the yahoo listing was full of the usual drivel; claiming that the Crusoe processor "gives laptops Internet access performance similar to that of desktop computers". A 1GHz T-bird will be slower than a 300MHz PII if the PII had been mated to a T3 while the T-bird was connected via a modem. *sigh*
--
Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) announced that they will be porting Office to Linux today, assuring that every processor will be able to run Office.
"Not only will desktop computers be able to run office, but now we can run Office on anything from web servers to toaster ovens. This is a great day for the consumer, and great day for businesses. Imagine, while you wait for your bagel to toast, you can be working on the latest version of your financial analysis," quipped Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
However, he declined to comment whether this constituted a tacit admission that Microsoft's own IIS server was losing ground to Linux-based servers running Apache.
--
But can it be used on a processor without an MMU? Motorola Dragonball processors don't have MMU's, so you have to emulate that functionality in the OS somehow, which is nontrivial. Just how nontrivial it is is left as an exercise to the reader.
--
(They) use an unusual RISC processor for the CPU
MIPS Processor is hardly unusual. See the spec at http://www.agendacomputing.com/products/system.jsp #spec.
--
(Why) not just port Linux to existing PDAs? ... what about for PalmOS?
There is a Palm port of Linux. Actually, the CLinux is for CPU's without a memory management unit, like the Motorola Dragonball processor.
Didn't this get reported earlier?
--
It was posted on Ars a few days ago. I subsequently reported it, but got rejected. Figures.
--
Oops. I forgot to change the topic. At first, I was going to write what you filled in (Thank you!), but then I realised that I didn't feel like dredging up my past OS theory books to confirm what you just said.
Anyway, I liked VMS. The VAXen I worked with were pretty decent machines too. I will miss them.
--
Is this the same company/team that made the Slowaris and HP-SUX port of the Internet Exploder? The same team that said that NT is more advanced in terms of process threading? (Heavy Weight Processes, not LWP's)
Seriously, though. If you look here, you'll find that MS worked on a Win32 layer for various UNIX platforms, when building their IE 4.0 port. Using this, it shouldn't be too bad to do a port of Office to UN*X.
--
Ahhhh VAX. I'm really sad to see these go. I remember having one at my friend's uni (SUNY Plattsburgh), and playing around with it for a while. Of course, by this time, we were porting from UNIX to VMS and not usually the other way around.
c, are you still around? ;p
--
Agreed. Though, I hope they figure these (and other) issues out before they ship, and ship in a timely manner.
--
Well, it's more that the Chinese and Japanese languages forked in pronounciation. Japanese schools teach how to read "Kanbun", or Chinese sentences, as part of the curriculum, but it does not do it extensively enough for the children to actually be literate in Chinese. Oh, well.
--
That's why it's not unreasonable for a Japanese person to know what the newly-encountered word means without necessarily knowing its pronounceation
--
The Elantra, by Hyundai, is a Korean car. At least with quite a few models, Japenese cars for export have different names than Japanese cars for domestic use.
Windam (Toyota) - Lexus ES300
Fairlady Z (Nissan) - 260/280/300 ZX (Nissan)
and so on.
--
Linux DV won't take off as a console platform until the following happens:
I'm not saying that the X-box will be easy, but it will at least be easier for MS to port all the crap needed to the X-box's OS, seeing as it's basically a stripped-down Windows (9x? NT?)-based OS.
--
Our 300-ish network is/was being served off of one NW box and one NT box, running exchange. 300 * 30 = 9000, which is almost the ballpark of your 15,000 figure :-)
Seriously, I figure that the Compaq box that the thing runs off of can probably handle about 500 clients easily.
A question, though. Does NW support clustering?
--
It's actually a decent solution for a client base of about 300 or so, if you absolutely have to have NT on the desktops. My last client had such a setup, where all the authentication, whatever, were handled by a Novel Netware box. It, and it alone (the Exchange server died horriably), survived the stupid I love you virus fiasco there.
However, at the same time, I really don't see Novell bringing IBM much value. As another poster had suggested, is IBM that strapped for office space?
--
The article/press release/marketing FUD does not lend itself well to peer review, which is as important to technical journalism as it is in the scientific circles.
Here are the questions that came to my mind:
Of course, they may not want to reveal these informations for fear of peer review. *sigh*.
--