I won't hold my breath, and I certainly wouldn't move country for it!
And let's not forget the joys of metered internet access! 1.65p a minute + 5p to connect + 6 quid a month for line rental. I just can't wait till they get their act together and give us unmetered access on a normal 56K modem. This LocalHell freak show makes me very tired indeed.
I don't get your point really. How can you say that they will end the legacy support hell if their primary target with Crusoe is x86?
They are promoting Crusoe as a x86 emulator for a reason. They claim that it's only because of the advantage of large software base but I find it quite hard to believe. Why? Because if Crusoe really is that flexible they should have released code morphing code for at least a few of the major chips out there: PowerPC, Mips, Sparc. why not have a competitive advantage? Why not grab the whole market with one big sweep?
Instead they decided to release x86 instructions. Duh! How is that freeing us from the legacy loophole? software that can run on Crusoe must be written as if it's an Intel chip because they won't publish the internal opcodes. If they really wanted to be innovative then at least they could have come up with some nice modern instruction set that would not be a pain to code with. In other words create a "native" Crusoe platform. I suspect that this whole code morphing business is just blowing hot air! If it's so flexible show me some alternative emulations. Yes, I know it handles Java bytecodes but they were designed by Sun so they are very straightforward to implement in hardware (think Sun's Java chips).
So I think the concept behind the Crusoe is an extremely powerful idea, much more powerful than the whole Java business or the mobile fad that's going on. I feel that Transmeta either bastardized their own market by not supplying additional code morphing software or they simply can't techincally do it because their focus on x86 compromised the flexibilty of Crusoe's design.
Hate posting "me too" replies but this is exactly what I'm doing. I really can't grasp how so many slashdot readers don't feel disappointed. I wonder how those replies would look like if Linus wasn't involved in that company. They offer no real edge in terms of performance and the power saving benefits seem dubious to say the least. Everyone realises that it's not just the processor that's power hugry in portable devices.
Just like yourself I feel that resuccitating x86 is a big mistake. Though they claim they can emulate _any_ instruction set they seem to be suspiciously slanted towards x86. I wonder if they actually have any other set emulated successfully.
Everyone must realise that what we saw was an interesting approach to cloning the Intel Pentium processor and nothing more. They are surely trying to catch the wave of incredible hype they managed to generate but the merits of Crusoe are not obvious to me at all. Can anyone explain what this huge wave of optimism is all about?
Re:Don't blame open source for browser stagnancy
on
Free Be
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· Score: 1
I must defend my point a little here. I don't search for Open Software because I see the benefits in having the source. I probably wouldn't expand it or enhance it anyway. I look for a free lunch when I search freshmeat. And it appears to be a free lunch. But the inherent cost of giving stuff away may be very high indeed. How many times have you purchased an open source package?
MS did beat Netscape by giving away Internet Explorer. By the time they started bundling IE with Windows Netscape was pretty much dead and buried.
I use both Borland and g++. How could you possibly compare these two?
There is a flavour of gcc called mingw32 which does _most_ of the stuff that Borland compilers do. Get FLTK or GTK+ for free and you have a similar development environment. Not as polished as the commercial offerings but good enough for students to fiddle with.
The vital difference between commercial and open source software is that the latter is dedicated to code quality, while the former is dedicated to their bottom line. Commercial venders knowingly ship software with hundreds of bugs--and they usually never intend to fix them. If you report a bug to an open Source project, it will eventually be fixed.
This is insulting. I develop commercial software for living and we DO NOT stick bugs in it do get people to buy upgrades and we are always honest about our bugs and shortcomings. We are very quality oriented and have some of the best developers on the team I ever had a chance to work with. No commercial software needn't be bad or expensive. It is all a matter of managers' attitudes.
The point I am finally meandering to is that open source will not be the death of commercial software. Not likely.
Let us see about that.
Re:Don't blame open source for browser stagnancy
on
Free Be
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· Score: 1
Don't want to post a "me too" reply but you can count me in. The problem with the whole idea of Free Software is that most of the time it simply is based on the idea of cloning existing proprietary software.
In fact my suspicion is that most of those who keep posting on slashdot on how wonderful Free Software is/will be are not out of their schools yet. And they don't really care about their freedom. To the vast majority the beerwise freedom counts much more than the speechwise one. Lets face it. The majority of those posters are students who are cashless. So they want free software and they want in NOW. The problem with that attitude will emerge when they themselves become professional programmers/managers/directors. They will be managing companies struggling to break even because some hippie coder has "cut off their air supply" by releasing a free clone of their flagship product. I wonder if they will be so enthusiastic about Free Software then.
Also your argument about people not wanting to buy commercial software when free alternatives are available hits the nail on the head. I catch _myself_ these days looking for free software (as in speech or beer I don't care) BEFORE even considering a software purchase. It's a dangerous attitude. It eventually develops towards demanding that no software be charged for. Take GNU c++ for example. It is a standard c++ compiler. Not terribly advanced (in terms of optimizations) and not terribly c++ compliant. But I use it because I'm too greedy to buy myself a better one. Frankly it gets me where I need to go. It comes with some form of STL and templated iostreams which is good enought 99% of the time. But when the companies like KAI get driven out of business what choice will we have and who is going to employ all those who become redundant. It seems like a distant perspective right now but it is not that far off really. MS with their IE proved how easy it is to drive a healthy company out of buisness by giving software away. Now the Linux Community has (unconciously) done the same to BE Inc. Who is next? My bet is that compiler companies (Borland, KAI etc.) will be the next ones to "benefit" the Free Software movement. And then who knows it might just be _your_ software house that finds itself competing against an alternative with a $0 price tag. Beware!!!!
From _my_ experience having n number of makefiles (where n indicates the number of platforms) is an extremely bad idea. Why? Because it is a straight road to a maintainance nightmare. Adding a single source file requires you to edit n makefiles and same goes for removing them, changing directory structure etc. Your daily routines with makefiles are multiplied by n.
What's the ultimate solution then? Forget IDEs and use gmake. Gmake is available for most common platforms (*nix, NT/95) and you can maintain one set of makefiles for every platform. We adopted this approach in our company around 2 years ago and it is a brilliant setup. We have a common makefile that defines platform specific variables at the 'root' level which is pulled in by the compiler specific makefile(contains compiler/linker flags etc) which in turn gets loaded by the application/library specific makefile (which contains source files and directory settings). So we have n compiler specific makefiles one root makefile and m app specific makefiles where m indicates the number of projects. This way we usually have to modify the application specific makefiles only.
I might be the only one who disagrees with you on this issue.
...because it is still the de facto standard. Breaking up the company doesn't help here at all. "
It is still the defacto standard but software gets obsolete very quickly. As soon as a viable alternative emerges I would expect the stranglehold MS have to last for a couple of versions at most. Thats why I'm egarly awaiting KOffice 1.0!
Besides, look at what happened with the AT&T breakup. The seperate companies each went ahead to become market leaders in their own segment. It was hardly of any benefit to AT&T's direct competitors.
I think the crucial difference here is that a telecom company requires loads of costly infrastructure whereas software company's main source of revenue is its employees creativity and current market-share. Garage development will not work if you want to set up an AT&T competitor but it's perfectly feasible for a bunch of enthusiasts to write software that competes with commercial offerings.
In short: I'm not getting up my hopes that this will seriously threaten MS's dominant position on the global market.
I have both games and prefer SMAC. The reason I prefer it is mainly a much more developed social and economic system and the ability to design your units is quite cool. I'm not really an expert player in either of these games but I find SMAC more challenging overall.
I will probably buy SMAC for Linux then because I enjoy it more.
To be honest though I also feel that the use of the 'Civilization' brand name in case of CTP was a form of theft so my view is probably not 100% objective.
However you may want to hold your horses because CivIII is being worked on by Firaxis.
While it's true that M$ probably had little chance in front of the jury after the Finding of Facts it comes as a real shock that Caldera actually accepted the deal. it sounds like they would be ten times better off by going ahead with the trial and ripping 1.5 bilion from Microsoft.
Without sounding like a troll it looks to me as if though Caldera's "cause" was purely to get a nice cheque out of it all.
I would imagine that being the problem. However, there is an even more serious problem behind a blind use of technology in teaching. I see it in UK's secondary and tertiary education system. That is to use programmable calculators/computers in classrooms and during exams. While it makes sense when you teach people about Laplace transform and you assume that the have the basic algebra mastered and they can do the same calculations WITHOUT any aid the same can't be applied to high scool or college students (in the UK sense of the word). Being a college lecturer myself for a while I came across many students who were taught concepts like integrals and differentiation but their basic algerbra skills just weren't there. They had trouble in proper understanding of calculus basics such as logarithms. To them a logarithm was simply that button on the calculator. "Plug in the numbers and here pops the answer" was a generally practiced method of teaching. Now the government has realised their mistake and they are trying to discourage use of calculators too early on in the education process. However with a whole generation of students brought up in such system these practices cannot be easily reverted anymore. While those devices are great they can seriously impair one's depth of understanding if their use in classrooms gets out of control. On the other hand there is a definite need for subjects such as Microprocessor Design or Analogue Electronics early on to prepare young people to become useful Engineers/Programmers in their future careers. I feel that in Poland (my home country) and in Germany a much stronger emphasis is placed on the "techie" subjects (In Poland you can actually choose to pursue Electronics/CS when you are about 14). In the UK however, engineering subjects are still grossly mistreated in the High Schools' education programmes. I always wondered though how this is addressed in North America (US, Canada). I don't think anybody believes that four years of university education is long enough to teach someone all aspects of modern engineering.
You share my conviction that computing in the eighties was fun and these days it's no longer the case. What are the reasons for it? Is it because the hardware and software are getting progressively more complex? Or is it to do with the quality problems in modern hardware/software? How could we make it fun again?
Even though Sinclair machines are closer to my heart I very much admire your achievments in the 'golden' era of computing. Long live the eighties!
Nice to hear someone saying some good stuff about Toronto as I'm planning to settle there (I'm currently in the UK). I'm still wondering whether to go to Toronto or Calgary since some people told me that Toronto is prohibitively expensive to live in.
I may be wrong too but I think that Alberta enjoys lower taxation than Ontario, right?
I'd be interested to learn what you think of Calgary as a place for a high tech job hunter. And how does Vancouver shape up (besides the weather)?
I can't speak for Denmark but I'm currently in the UK and not so happy with it (no I don't come from the US). The reasons are many:
Everything here is expensive - food, housing, cars just everything
The public transport actually sucks even comparing to most Eastern Europe countries
The internet is expensive (although it starts getting cheaper now)
Taxation in Europe is on the edge of madness (I give away around 36% of my income to the state and I'm not exactly a high earner)
THE COUNCIL TAX (for those who left the UK many years ago it's the new name for the poll tax)
Scottish weather is as bad as they say it is
Glasgow is ugly, it is just verry very ugly. Gosh I just can't describe to you how ugly it is
Lack of space. Properties are small because prices of land are high because there is no space. In fact everything in Europe is downsized (houses, cars) to squeeze it to such small space with so many inhabitants.
All in all it is not a place for a geek to be in. That doesn't mean that the UK will suck for everyone. If you want free health care, low crime and low prejudice and don't mind being taxed like hell you may be very content with living in Europe. But if you want space and more freedom in locating your earnings Europe begins to feel a bit claustrophobic.
Ok so I guesss you've figured by now that I don't want to spend the rest of my days in the UK. Where then? Well, the choices are actually limited unless you have $1M burning a hole in your pocket to buy a passport of your desire. The choices narrow down to Canada, Australia and New Zaeland and possibly South Africa. Only those four countries have active immigration programmes to attract foreigners. Most other governments treat any external labour force influx with a tremendous amount of hostility (I know a bit about this - I had to get a work permit to be able to work in the UK).
Let us consider the choices: Australia: perfect if you like it hot. If you are an exploring dude you will find yourself right at home. However, a typical nerd that's in front of his/her screen for most of their spare time will find little appeal in Australia. Its poor communication infrastructure and their recent string of anti-internet laws make it less than a perfect option for a typical slashdot reader.
South Africa: This country is trying to rebuild its image after many years of appartheid (spelling errors excepted!). But it's finding hard to cope with its soaring crime and the wounds of many decades will not heal in a short time. I know nothing about their internet infrastructure though.
New Zaeland: I guess it's much like Australia in many respects with perhaps more sensible laws. However to get to NZ you have to have a job offer first but realistically you can only get a job offer if you're already a NZ resident. I just can't see the logic in their immigration policy. Can someone enlighten me how this is supposed to work?
Canada: They have a vigorous immigration programme and they are quite open about giving priority to high tech people. They get a lot of slack for high taxes but at least their health service is free (and unlike NHS quite good supposedly). I'm not sure what their internet infrastructure's like but I'd bet any money on it being miles better than anything one can experience in Europe.
On average Canada seems like the only sensible option for a non-US nerd to go to with some realistic chance of actually getting there... And that's where I'm headed.
...if you have a border with Russia. This guy represents the dark side of Russia. The side we all want to forget about very quickly. However, Zyrinowski's party just got 25 seats in Duma (approx. 5.5%) He made some headlines in Poland when he threatened to nuke Warsaw if Poland ever dared joining NATO. Imagine what is going to happen if he ever gets a majority vote. In a democratic country with a stable economy this guy would be considered a harmless lunatic and probably end up in an institution. In a country that's effectively in an economic turmoil where the business, politicians and even the law enforcement is constantly suspected of corruption and democracy is widely confused with anarchy such demagogs have a rich basis for planting their propaganda. Now that EU is actively trying to elbow-out the US forces from Europe by trying to create a European equivalent of NATO it could be the perfect timing to convince at least some Russians that there never was a better time to restore the former areas of influence... Russia is in turmoil but that doesn't necessarily mean that its military force is weak. With the lack of prospects for decent living a lot of citizens will be more and more frustrated and generally become more prone to any extremist ideas. The victimizing of minorities, and politics of accusation will work in Russia's politicians favour (Mr Putin being the prime example). Given that the majority of seats were won by the communist party and the pro-Chechnya-war 'Unity' coming close second it is clear that Russia is missing its communist past. Beware.
you can BET that there will be a Redhat distro for it the same month (if not the same day).
I don't know much about the Linux kernel but I imagine a fair amount of it is either written in assembly or is heavily x86 dependent (you have to wirte some things in such way). Thus I'd expect a fair amount of porting to be necessary to get Linux ported. I don't know much about the Merced either but I suppose that the segmentation system will be totally revamped and will force os makers to completely rewrite the memory management code (that applies to Linux as much as Windoze).
I think you hit the nail on the head here SurfsUp. We know seem to have all sorts of people hit the headlines and see their balance multiply by x100000 on average but the person who could easily claim himself _the_ free software leader is marginalised by self proclaimed Open Source Initiative leaders. Obviously I'm refering here to Eric Raymond primarily but it is quite sickening that none of those new-rich is willing to financialy contribute to the Free Software Foundation. To put my money where my mouth is I'm intending to donate some cash to FSF and I hope that one day all those who are now getting ridiculous amounts of money off of free software will follow suit and begin to take Richard Stallman and his Foundation a little more seriously. After all if it wasn't for RMS and Linus Torvalds the big mouthed Eric Raymond would have nothing to brag about.
To Bruce Perens: It sounds that you are a good friend of Richard Stallman and I believe you won't do anything to hurt him or his foundation but how about contributing _actively_? It sounds like from now on you should have more possibility than ever to support FSF.
Talking about jupiter... Does anyone know if it is feasible to land on the surface of Jupiter _itself_? I think we still have no pictures of the surface of any of those giant planets in our system. I know this is a bit off-topic but I'm quite curious what we might find there...
Slashdot Mirror
And let's not forget the joys of metered internet access! 1.65p a minute + 5p to connect + 6 quid a month for line rental. I just can't wait till they get their act together and give us unmetered access on a normal 56K modem. This LocalHell freak show makes me very tired indeed.
support CUT
They are promoting Crusoe as a x86 emulator for a reason. They claim that it's only because of the advantage of large software base but I find it quite hard to believe. Why? Because if Crusoe really is that flexible they should have released code morphing code for at least a few of the major chips out there: PowerPC, Mips, Sparc. why not have a competitive advantage? Why not grab the whole market with one big sweep?
Instead they decided to release x86 instructions. Duh! How is that freeing us from the legacy loophole? software that can run on Crusoe must be written as if it's an Intel chip because they won't publish the internal opcodes. If they really wanted to be innovative then at least they could have come up with some nice modern instruction set that would not be a pain to code with. In other words create a "native" Crusoe platform. I suspect that this whole code morphing business is just blowing hot air! If it's so flexible show me some alternative emulations. Yes, I know it handles Java bytecodes but they were designed by Sun so they are very straightforward to implement in hardware (think Sun's Java chips).
So I think the concept behind the Crusoe is an extremely powerful idea, much more powerful than the whole Java business or the mobile fad that's going on. I feel that Transmeta either bastardized their own market by not supplying additional code morphing software or they simply can't techincally do it because their focus on x86 compromised the flexibilty of Crusoe's design.
I really can't grasp how so many slashdot readers don't feel disappointed. I wonder how those replies would look like if Linus wasn't involved in that company. They offer no real edge in terms of performance and the power saving benefits seem dubious to say the least. Everyone realises that it's not just the processor that's power hugry in portable devices.
Just like yourself I feel that resuccitating x86 is a big mistake. Though they claim they can emulate _any_ instruction set they seem to be suspiciously slanted towards x86. I wonder if they actually have any other set emulated successfully.
Everyone must realise that what we saw was an interesting approach to cloning the Intel Pentium processor and nothing more.
They are surely trying to catch the wave of incredible hype they managed to generate but the merits of Crusoe are not obvious to me at all. Can anyone explain what this huge wave of optimism is all about?
MS did beat Netscape by giving away Internet Explorer. By the time they started bundling IE with Windows Netscape was pretty much dead and buried.
There is a flavour of gcc called mingw32 which does _most_ of the stuff that Borland compilers do. Get FLTK or GTK+ for free and you have a similar development environment. Not as polished as the commercial offerings but good enough for students to fiddle with. This is insulting. I develop commercial software for living and we DO NOT stick bugs in it do get people to buy upgrades and we are always honest about our bugs and shortcomings. We are very quality oriented and have some of the best developers on the team I ever had a chance to work with. No commercial software needn't be bad or expensive. It is all a matter of managers' attitudes. Let us see about that.In fact my suspicion is that most of those who keep posting on slashdot on how wonderful Free Software is/will be are not out of their schools yet. And they don't really care about their freedom. To the vast majority the beerwise freedom counts much more than the speechwise one. Lets face it. The majority of those posters are students who are cashless. So they want free software and they want in NOW. The problem with that attitude will emerge when they themselves become professional programmers/managers/directors. They will be managing companies struggling to break even because some hippie coder has "cut off their air supply" by releasing a free clone of their flagship product. I wonder if they will be so enthusiastic about Free Software then.
Also your argument about people not wanting to buy commercial software when free alternatives are available hits the nail on the head. I catch _myself_ these days looking for free software (as in speech or beer I don't care) BEFORE even considering a software purchase. It's a dangerous attitude. It eventually develops towards demanding that no software be charged for. Take GNU c++ for example. It is a standard c++ compiler. Not terribly advanced (in terms of optimizations) and not terribly c++ compliant. But I use it because I'm too greedy to buy myself a better one. Frankly it gets me where I need to go. It comes with some form of STL and templated iostreams which is good enought 99% of the time. But when the companies like KAI get driven out of business what choice will we have and who is going to employ all those who become redundant. It seems like a distant perspective right now but it is not that far off really. MS with their IE proved how easy it is to drive a healthy company out of buisness by giving software away. Now the Linux Community has (unconciously) done the same to BE Inc. Who is next? My bet is that compiler companies (Borland, KAI etc.) will be the next ones to "benefit" the Free Software movement. And then who knows it might just be _your_ software house that finds itself competing against an alternative with a $0 price tag. Beware!!!!
What's the ultimate solution then? Forget IDEs and use gmake. Gmake is available for most common platforms (*nix, NT/95) and you can maintain one set of makefiles for every platform. We adopted this approach in our company around 2 years ago and it is a brilliant setup.
We have a common makefile that defines platform specific variables at the 'root' level which is pulled in by the compiler specific makefile(contains compiler/linker flags etc) which in turn gets loaded by the application/library specific makefile (which contains source files and directory settings). So we have n compiler specific makefiles one root makefile and m app specific makefiles where m indicates the number of projects. This way we usually have to modify the application specific makefiles only.
It is still the defacto standard but software gets obsolete very quickly. As soon as a viable alternative emerges I would expect the stranglehold MS have to last for a couple of versions at most. Thats why I'm egarly awaiting KOffice 1.0!
Besides, look at what happened with the AT&T breakup. The seperate companies each went ahead to become market leaders in their own segment. It was hardly of any benefit to AT&T's direct competitors.
I think the crucial difference here is that a telecom company requires loads of costly infrastructure whereas software company's main source of revenue is its employees creativity and current market-share. Garage development will not work if you want to set up an AT&T competitor but it's perfectly feasible for a bunch of enthusiasts to write software that competes with commercial offerings.
In short: I'm not getting up my hopes that this will seriously threaten MS's dominant position on the global market.
I hope you're seriously wrong here ;-).
I will probably buy SMAC for Linux then because I enjoy it more.
To be honest though I also feel that the use of the 'Civilization' brand name in case of CTP was a form of theft so my view is probably not 100% objective.
However you may want to hold your horses because CivIII is being worked on by Firaxis.
Without sounding like a troll it looks to me as if though Caldera's "cause" was purely to get a nice cheque out of it all.
I would imagine that being the problem. However, there is an even more serious problem behind a blind use of technology in teaching. I see it in UK's secondary and tertiary education system. That is to use programmable calculators/computers in classrooms and during exams. While it makes sense when you teach people about Laplace transform and you assume that the have the basic algebra mastered and they can do the same calculations WITHOUT any aid the same can't be applied to high scool or college students (in the UK sense of the word).
Being a college lecturer myself for a while I came across many students who were taught concepts like integrals and differentiation but their basic algerbra skills just weren't there. They had trouble in proper understanding of calculus basics such as logarithms. To them a logarithm was simply that button on the calculator. "Plug in the numbers and here pops the answer" was a generally practiced method of teaching.
Now the government has realised their mistake and they are trying to discourage use of calculators too early on in the education process. However with a whole generation of students brought up in such system these practices cannot be easily reverted anymore. While those devices are great they can seriously impair one's depth of understanding if their use in classrooms gets out of control.
On the other hand there is a definite need for subjects such as Microprocessor Design or Analogue Electronics early on to prepare young people to become useful Engineers/Programmers in their future careers. I feel that in Poland (my home country) and in Germany a much stronger emphasis is placed on the "techie" subjects (In Poland you can actually choose to pursue Electronics/CS when you are about 14). In the UK however, engineering subjects are still grossly mistreated in the High Schools' education programmes. I always wondered though how this is addressed in North America (US, Canada). I don't think anybody believes that four years of university education is long enough to teach someone all aspects of modern engineering.
Do you know how to properly pronunce it?
Even though Sinclair machines are closer to my heart I very much admire your achievments in the 'golden' era of computing. Long live the eighties!
I may be wrong too but I think that Alberta enjoys lower taxation than Ontario, right?
I'd be interested to learn what you think of Calgary as a place for a high tech job hunter. And how does Vancouver shape up (besides the weather)?
- Everything here is expensive - food, housing, cars just everything
- The public transport actually sucks even comparing to most Eastern Europe countries
- The internet is expensive (although it starts getting cheaper now)
- Taxation in Europe is on the edge of madness (I give away around 36% of my income to the state and I'm not exactly a high earner)
- THE COUNCIL TAX (for those who left the UK many years ago it's the new name for the poll tax)
- Scottish weather is as bad as they say it is
- Glasgow is ugly, it is just verry very ugly. Gosh I just can't describe to you how ugly it is
- Lack of space. Properties are small because prices of land are high because there is no space. In fact everything in Europe is downsized (houses, cars) to squeeze it to such small space with so many inhabitants.
All in all it is not a place for a geek to be in. That doesn't mean that the UK will suck for everyone. If you want free health care, low crime and low prejudice and don't mind being taxed like hell you may be very content with living in Europe. But if you want space and more freedom in locating your earnings Europe begins to feel a bit claustrophobic.Ok so I guesss you've figured by now that I don't want to spend the rest of my days in the UK.
Where then? Well, the choices are actually limited unless you have $1M burning a hole in your pocket to buy a passport of your desire. The choices narrow down to Canada, Australia and New Zaeland and possibly South Africa. Only those four countries have active immigration programmes to attract foreigners. Most other governments treat any external labour force influx with a tremendous amount of hostility (I know a bit about this - I had to get a work permit to be able to work in the UK).
Let us consider the choices:
Australia: perfect if you like it hot. If you are an exploring dude you will find yourself right at home. However, a typical nerd that's in front of his/her screen for most of their spare time will find little appeal in Australia. Its poor communication infrastructure and their recent string of anti-internet laws make it less than a perfect option for a typical slashdot reader.
South Africa: This country is trying to rebuild its image after many years of appartheid (spelling errors excepted!). But it's finding hard to cope with its soaring crime and the wounds of many decades will not heal in a short time. I know nothing about their internet infrastructure though.
New Zaeland: I guess it's much like Australia in many respects with perhaps more sensible laws. However to get to NZ you have to have a job offer first but realistically you can only get a job offer if you're already a NZ resident. I just can't see the logic in their immigration policy. Can someone enlighten me how this is supposed to work?
Canada: They have a vigorous immigration programme and they are quite open about giving priority to high tech people. They get a lot of slack for high taxes but at least their health service is free (and unlike NHS quite good supposedly). I'm not sure what their internet infrastructure's like but I'd bet any money on it being miles better than anything one can experience in Europe.
On average Canada seems like the only sensible option for a non-US nerd to go to with some realistic chance of actually getting there... And that's where I'm headed.
You say it vacuums then... The real question is whether it's bagless of course.
...if you have a border with Russia. This guy represents the dark side of Russia. The side we all want to forget about very quickly. However, Zyrinowski's party just got 25 seats in Duma (approx. 5.5%)
He made some headlines in Poland when he threatened to nuke Warsaw if Poland ever dared joining NATO. Imagine what is going to happen if he ever gets a majority vote. In a democratic country with a stable economy this guy would be considered a harmless lunatic and probably end up in an institution.
In a country that's effectively in an economic turmoil where the business, politicians and even the law enforcement is constantly suspected of corruption and democracy is widely confused with anarchy such demagogs have a rich basis for planting their propaganda.
Now that EU is actively trying to elbow-out the US forces from Europe by trying to create a European equivalent of NATO it could be the perfect timing to convince at least some Russians that there never was a better time to restore the former areas of influence...
Russia is in turmoil but that doesn't necessarily mean that its military force is weak. With the lack of prospects for decent living a lot of citizens will be more and more frustrated and generally become more prone to any extremist ideas. The victimizing of minorities, and politics of accusation will work in Russia's politicians favour (Mr Putin being the prime example).
Given that the majority of seats were won by the communist party and the pro-Chechnya-war 'Unity' coming close second it is clear that Russia is missing its communist past. Beware.
No they won't skip Pentuim XXX. In fact it will come with a built-in hardware support for mpeg7 ;-)
Thus I'd expect a fair amount of porting to be necessary to get Linux ported.
I don't know much about the Merced either but I suppose that the segmentation system will be totally revamped and will force os makers to completely rewrite the memory management code (that applies to Linux as much as Windoze).
Obviously I'm refering here to Eric Raymond primarily but it is quite sickening that none of those new-rich is willing to financialy contribute to the Free Software Foundation.
To put my money where my mouth is I'm intending to donate some cash to FSF and I hope that one day all those who are now getting ridiculous amounts of money off of free software will follow suit and begin to take Richard Stallman and his Foundation a little more seriously.
After all if it wasn't for RMS and Linus Torvalds the big mouthed Eric Raymond would have nothing to brag about.
To Bruce Perens:
It sounds that you are a good friend of Richard Stallman and I believe you won't do anything to hurt him or his foundation but how about contributing _actively_? It sounds like from now on you should have more possibility than ever to support FSF.
Talking about jupiter...
Does anyone know if it is feasible to land on the surface of Jupiter _itself_?
I think we still have no pictures of the surface of any of those giant planets in our system. I know this is a bit off-topic but I'm quite curious what we might find there...