I disagree that overpopulation is the problem, at least in the medium term. I think the problem is overconsumption, especially by Americans, and that is the issue addressed by the original article.
I doubt many people would want to live in 800 square foot houses if given a choice. Most people who make money like to build big gigantic houses. Some even like to go into well established neighborhoods, buy an older smaller house, tear it down, and build their McMansion.
I think the real problem humanity will face is over population.
The problem isn't so much overpopulation. The problem is that a small segment of the world's population has acquired a taste for a lifestyle that uses a disproportionate amount of resources.
People need to start choosing to live in a smaller house, driving a smaller car.
The real change will require social engineering on a massive scale.
Imagine if it was considered patriotic (instead of crazy/granola) to use fewer/alternate resources!
EXACT same machine (1.4GHz Duron/512MB RAM)running mandrake, fedora,suse or debian is over 2 times slower to the point that popcap java games are all herky-jerky, you no longer can play DVD's and there is no way in hell you can play Unreal Tournament on it (yet it plays wunderfully in slackware on the same machine.
Hmmm... my Debian Sarge running on a 1.1GHz Thunderbird plays DVD's just fine (always did, even with RH 7.x and 256 MB RAM)! Anecdotes don't prove the general case either way.
What I will give you is that the distros you mention tend to load tons of stuff you don't need, and that can bog things down. I haven't installed Slack in years, but I suspect that has to do with what is included in the "standard" install options (ie., "Desktop", "Office", "Server", etc.). If you carefully pick and choose only what you need, just about any distribution will perform well. It's all Linux, the main differences between distributions are more about package management and install options.
All the time if you are doing astrophotography and stack images. If you are shooting 10-15 raw photos at a time, you can only get 12 series of exposures on a 1 GB card.
But once you're set up, you're set up for good. You can't afford to "waste a whole day", but it's not like you are going to have to "waste a whole day" every day, just once. It is called "learning".
"Development support", in my experience, rarely comes into play on a working network. The last thing the network's owners want is to bother with development. They want their software to work out of the box. They don't want to maintain inhouse developers to fix other people's software or to write their own. They want to acquire software once, install it, use it, and forget about it.
Ah yes, you sound like a system administrator. Your attitude is quite understandable.
In my experience the "network's owner" (not administrator, but rather whoever pays the bills/makes the decisions), wants the software to do what they want it to do. Rarely does it do that out of the box. Managers (rightly) see the technology as an enabler, that needs to be flexible enough to handle the Real World. Every company's RW is just a little bit different, that's where comptetition happens.
This drives the people who administer and support the systems crazy! (I should know...)
Development support is where the business or government can build the competitive edge, and development support is where, in general, I have observed FOSS to be more responsive and enabling to the customer than commercial software.
Please keep in mind the context of this topic - developing nations, trying to build low-cost, sustainable infrastructure from the ground up.
You didn't answer my questions. You talk about a sysadmin. OK, if you use free software, you have to have sysadmins. If you use commercial software, you have to have sysadmins.
No difference between the two there.
You talk about "fixing a server". OK, if you use free software, you're going to have to "fix servers". If you use commercial software, you are going to have to "fix servers".
Hmm, still no difference between free software and commercial software.
My point is that if you are going to set up an IT infrastructure, you are going to have to support it, whether or not you use free software. Oracle doesn't come out and fix or admin your servers just because you bought their software.
Denigrating free software developers as "Linux hobbyists" misses the point entirely.
I am not talking about "commercial support" vs. "free support" at the operational level, that is asinine. That is something you have to pay for somehow, no matter what product you choose.
The difference I am talking about is development support (ie., bug-fixing, feature enhancement, etc.).
In this case, there is no difference between commercial products and free products.
The sort of support you are referring to has to come from somewhere, and has nothing to do with free/non-free.
The type of support that adds value to the product is the kind of support I referred to in the parent, getting added functionality, or getting broken functionality fixed.
I guess the question I pose is: what exactly is the "support" that the original post refers to? What is the support that you refer to? What value are vendors of commercial software adding beyond what is available for free?
In my experience, commercial vendor "support" doesn't mean jack.
Since the summary isn't very informative, and the servers are rapidly slowing down, it is the International Obsfucated C Code Contest. About all that is (was?) on their page is the list of winners...
The problem with meta-tags is that they have to get populated somehow. Only the anal fill in meta-data, everyone else either blows it off or takes the defaults.
The real breakthrough happens when the system can decode and parse the file accurately to provide "automagic" meta-data. Otherwise meta-tags are a nice academic exercise that is either ignored or misused in practice.
My point about support costs, as I said, is that MS is in a postion to both lower the cost of acquiring its software and of lowering the cost of buying its support, if it chooses to do that. The free software community cannot do that, because its product is already free and it provides no direct support.
I am getting so tired of hearing this old canard.
I spend a lot of time supporting commercial software, and I support my own FOSS system, so I think I am in a position to argue this.
Commercial software support (even paid support) in general is no better than FOSS support. In fact, FOSS support is usually better. If you know how to ask, you can usually at least get a dialog with the actual developer of a FOSS product. If he says "fix it yourself", you can usually get someone with the capability to fix/enhance it at a fraction of the cost of a commercial support contract that doesn't provide anything beyond idiot help desk stuff. With a commercial product, you usually get the outsourced idiot help line, or even with a company that keeps that in house, you get third-line lackeys who can't/won't give you the straight story or real support. And customization? No comparison, with commercial software, this is a pipe dream, with FOSS, it is a concrete possibility.
My experience with developing countries is that there are a lot of young, smart people who are eager to do the coding that needs to be done. These countries don't have the resources to put into the abstracted RIP-OFF that most commercial "support" actually is.
A friend's daughter (13 years old) was at our house this weekend, and wanted to "play on the computer", which is loaded with straight-up Debian.
She watched me click on the menus to pull up a couple of games, and then she was good to go. She played and had a good time all afternoon, exploring the selection of games (Frozen Bubbles and Defenguin were her favorites).
Her comment at the end of the day was "you sure have a cool computer to play on". I think inexperience actually -helps-, as there is nothing to unlearn. Clicking on icons is clicking on icons, I have watched a lot of people sit down on my Deb system and just start "doing stuff". I have noticed that the hard-core Windows users have the hardest time, but the casual users really have no problem.
But the effect is that my vote doesn't count at all.
If my state goes one way and my vote goes the other way, then -all- of my state's EC votes go for the winner, even though a (perhaps) large minority voted for someone else.
This gives politicians the illusion of an overwhelming "mandate" when the populace could well be very close to evenly divided.
It is not a democratic system, and like I said previously, it effectively disenfranchises a lot of voters. It is analagous to the old story of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner...
An election is a measurement. When you take a measurement, you always end up dealing with the S/N ratio. Mostly the punch cards were fine, we got a good enough measurement to be confident of the results. The last election was close enough in Florida that the measurement was down in the noise, and it was hard to get an accurate reading.
I guess part of the problem is the "winner-take-all" Electoral College system, which has done a lot do disenfranchise a lot of voters.
Take me for instance. I am from a state that -always- goes for one of the parties. So the minority in that state never gets represented. If I happen to not agree with the majority of people in my state, I effectively don't have a vote.
It does free me up to (cynically) vote for a third party, FWIW...
And what's the problem if it does take a week to make sure that we have a fairly counted election? It seems like the "need" for the television networks to have instant results has made us lose sight of fairness and accuracy.
Since they found indications of lots of frozen water near the surface in the south polar region, I wonder if there are any plans to send a probe/rover there?
They found "copius hydrogen" in the area, and "Researchers interpret the hydrogen as frozen water", but can we be sure without taking a look on the ground?
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree that overpopulation is the problem, at least in the medium term. I think the problem is overconsumption, especially by Americans, and that is the issue addressed by the original article.
I doubt many people would want to live in 800 square foot houses if given a choice. Most people who make money like to build big gigantic houses. Some even like to go into well established neighborhoods, buy an older smaller house, tear it down, and build their McMansion.
I think the real problem humanity will face is over population.
The problem isn't so much overpopulation. The problem is that a small segment of the world's population has acquired a taste for a lifestyle that uses a disproportionate amount of resources.
People need to start choosing to live in a smaller house, driving a smaller car.
The real change will require social engineering on a massive scale.
Imagine if it was considered patriotic (instead of crazy/granola) to use fewer/alternate resources!
I think the interesting thing here is that they went for a house that is much smaller than the average American house.
Compared to Europeans, Americans live in -huge- houses, which have to be heated/cooled/cleaned, etc.
A smaller house is cheaper to run and takes a heck of a lot fewer resources than a big house.
EXACT same machine (1.4GHz Duron/512MB RAM)running mandrake, fedora,suse or debian is over 2 times slower to the point that popcap java games are all herky-jerky, you no longer can play DVD's and there is no way in hell you can play Unreal Tournament on it (yet it plays wunderfully in slackware on the same machine.
Hmmm... my Debian Sarge running on a 1.1GHz Thunderbird plays DVD's just fine (always did, even with RH 7.x and 256 MB RAM)! Anecdotes don't prove the general case either way.
What I will give you is that the distros you mention tend to load tons of stuff you don't need, and that can bog things down. I haven't installed Slack in years, but I suspect that has to do with what is included in the "standard" install options (ie., "Desktop", "Office", "Server", etc.). If you carefully pick and choose only what you need, just about any distribution will perform well. It's all Linux, the main differences between distributions are more about package management and install options.
I think the main issues of feature comparison between distributions, in the context of widespread desktop adoption, are (in order of importance):
But really, how often do you need that many pics?
All the time if you are doing astrophotography and stack images. If you are shooting 10-15 raw photos at a time, you can only get 12 series of exposures on a 1 GB card.
But once you're set up, you're set up for good. You can't afford to "waste a whole day", but it's not like you are going to have to "waste a whole day" every day, just once. It is called "learning".
How about comparing AbiWord to MS Works, that's what most folks at least used to get on their OEM installation...
Just get a "review" posted on /.
"Development support", in my experience, rarely comes into play on a working network. The last thing the network's owners want is to bother with development. They want their software to work out of the box. They don't want to maintain inhouse developers to fix other people's software or to write their own. They want to acquire software once, install it, use it, and forget about it.
Ah yes, you sound like a system administrator. Your attitude is quite understandable.
In my experience the "network's owner" (not administrator, but rather whoever pays the bills/makes the decisions), wants the software to do what they want it to do. Rarely does it do that out of the box. Managers (rightly) see the technology as an enabler, that needs to be flexible enough to handle the Real World. Every company's RW is just a little bit different, that's where comptetition happens.
This drives the people who administer and support the systems crazy! (I should know...)
Development support is where the business or government can build the competitive edge, and development support is where, in general, I have observed FOSS to be more responsive and enabling to the customer than commercial software.
Please keep in mind the context of this topic - developing nations, trying to build low-cost, sustainable infrastructure from the ground up.
You didn't answer my questions. You talk about a sysadmin. OK, if you use free software, you have to have sysadmins. If you use commercial software, you have to have sysadmins.
No difference between the two there.
You talk about "fixing a server". OK, if you use free software, you're going to have to "fix servers". If you use commercial software, you are going to have to "fix servers".
Hmm, still no difference between free software and commercial software.
My point is that if you are going to set up an IT infrastructure, you are going to have to support it, whether or not you use free software. Oracle doesn't come out and fix or admin your servers just because you bought their software.
Denigrating free software developers as "Linux hobbyists" misses the point entirely.
I am not talking about "commercial support" vs. "free support" at the operational level, that is asinine. That is something you have to pay for somehow, no matter what product you choose.
The difference I am talking about is development support (ie., bug-fixing, feature enhancement, etc.).
That is where the difference lies.
In this case, there is no difference between commercial products and free products.
The sort of support you are referring to has to come from somewhere, and has nothing to do with free/non-free.
The type of support that adds value to the product is the kind of support I referred to in the parent, getting added functionality, or getting broken functionality fixed.
I guess the question I pose is: what exactly is the "support" that the original post refers to? What is the support that you refer to? What value are vendors of commercial software adding beyond what is available for free?
In my experience, commercial vendor "support" doesn't mean jack.
Since the summary isn't very informative, and the servers are rapidly slowing down, it is the International Obsfucated C Code Contest. About all that is (was?) on their page is the list of winners...
That was my first thought. I guess that's the point of going with Transmeta...
The problem with meta-tags is that they have to get populated somehow. Only the anal fill in meta-data, everyone else either blows it off or takes the defaults.
The real breakthrough happens when the system can decode and parse the file accurately to provide "automagic" meta-data. Otherwise meta-tags are a nice academic exercise that is either ignored or misused in practice.
My point about support costs, as I said, is that MS is in a postion to both lower the cost of acquiring its software and of lowering the cost of buying its support, if it chooses to do that. The free software community cannot do that, because its product is already free and it provides no direct support.
I am getting so tired of hearing this old canard.
I spend a lot of time supporting commercial software, and I support my own FOSS system, so I think I am in a position to argue this.
Commercial software support (even paid support) in general is no better than FOSS support. In fact, FOSS support is usually better. If you know how to ask, you can usually at least get a dialog with the actual developer of a FOSS product. If he says "fix it yourself", you can usually get someone with the capability to fix/enhance it at a fraction of the cost of a commercial support contract that doesn't provide anything beyond idiot help desk stuff. With a commercial product, you usually get the outsourced idiot help line, or even with a company that keeps that in house, you get third-line lackeys who can't/won't give you the straight story or real support. And customization? No comparison, with commercial software, this is a pipe dream, with FOSS, it is a concrete possibility.
My experience with developing countries is that there are a lot of young, smart people who are eager to do the coding that needs to be done. These countries don't have the resources to put into the abstracted RIP-OFF that most commercial "support" actually is.
A friend's daughter (13 years old) was at our house this weekend, and wanted to "play on the computer", which is loaded with straight-up Debian.
She watched me click on the menus to pull up a couple of games, and then she was good to go. She played and had a good time all afternoon, exploring the selection of games (Frozen Bubbles and Defenguin were her favorites).
Her comment at the end of the day was "you sure have a cool computer to play on". I think inexperience actually -helps-, as there is nothing to unlearn. Clicking on icons is clicking on icons, I have watched a lot of people sit down on my Deb system and just start "doing stuff". I have noticed that the hard-core Windows users have the hardest time, but the casual users really have no problem.
But the effect is that my vote doesn't count at all.
If my state goes one way and my vote goes the other way, then -all- of my state's EC votes go for the winner, even though a (perhaps) large minority voted for someone else.
This gives politicians the illusion of an overwhelming "mandate" when the populace could well be very close to evenly divided.
It is not a democratic system, and like I said previously, it effectively disenfranchises a lot of voters. It is analagous to the old story of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner...
An election is a measurement. When you take a measurement, you always end up dealing with the S/N ratio. Mostly the punch cards were fine, we got a good enough measurement to be confident of the results. The last election was close enough in Florida that the measurement was down in the noise, and it was hard to get an accurate reading.
I guess part of the problem is the "winner-take-all" Electoral College system, which has done a lot do disenfranchise a lot of voters.
Take me for instance. I am from a state that -always- goes for one of the parties. So the minority in that state never gets represented. If I happen to not agree with the majority of people in my state, I effectively don't have a vote.
It does free me up to (cynically) vote for a third party, FWIW...
And what's the problem if it does take a week to make sure that we have a fairly counted election? It seems like the "need" for the television networks to have instant results has made us lose sight of fairness and accuracy.
Since they found indications of lots of frozen water near the surface in the south polar region, I wonder if there are any plans to send a probe/rover there?
They found "copius hydrogen" in the area, and "Researchers interpret the hydrogen as frozen water", but can we be sure without taking a look on the ground?
Seems like the next logical step...
I was supposed to do a major network re-configuration tomorrow, damn, now I'll get the blame for bringing down the whole internet!
The point is to look at -distributed- solutions. Produce the energy close to where it is used. It makes sense on several levels...
QEMU...
Red/Blue, Conservative/Liberal, Democrat/Republican, I call bullshit.
It's all a Punch 'n Judy show to keep the masses hypnotized.
Think about it. The U.S. is only one party away from a dictatorship...