It would probably be fair to say that none of us would be talking about open source or any of this stuff without him. I suppose there's always the perennial complaint about the "monolithic kernel" and the bazaar method of development, but as ESR effectively argues in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the highly polished engineering represented by the Cathedral approach comes at the price of a snail like pace of development.
In today's technology market, rapid development is essentially to short AND long term success. Now while Alan Cox might have liked a better API for hardware drivers or an architecture more in line with the "microkernel" concept so popular amongst academics, it's just not the way to succeed in the open source world. This is what has made the.NET platform so popular: Its focus on rapid development using the latest in aspect oriented programming technologies makes it an indispensible business asset for shops with relatively small programming teams.
But I digress. The issue here is overengineering. It's been shown that creating working kernel based on a register machine like most modern microprocessors is NP hard. What this means is that there is an inherent degree of complexity that cannot be swept under the rug via APIs and microkernels or any of the other academic fads that come and go year by year. You have to make a choice somewhere along the line and Linus chose a path with a proven history, with tremendous success I might add.
In short, it's time for people to stop the backbiting and recognize that the monolithic kernel, ugly though it may be, is the best we got and we should be thankful for it.
It's nice to be able to get free stuff online. I've been known to grab my share of free movies and music from time to time myself, but when it comes to things that are so critical to the security of my servers, I'm a little more careful.
That is not to say that the particular people in the article are crooked -- I'm sure they're on the level. I'm just saying that as this kind of thing becomes popular, you can be sure some computer hackers out there will try to co-opt the good name of services like these so they can give out compromised certificates and steal information from you and your customers.
The bottom line is: When it's free, you just never know. A thousand eyes only get you so far. This is why I tend to stick to software backed by a solid corporate history on my own production servers. It's just not worth the risk to skimp on costs when the fact is your entire business is on the line there.
You just have to know who you're dealing with when you get into this kind of thing. Are you dealing with someone honest or are you dealing with some sort of shady basement operation that moved to Canada to avoid cryptography laws? When mission critical information is at stake, this stuff counts.
PHP is a great language for web applications as many here can attest. While it's true there's some vulnerabilities, there's always going to be a few. The good thing about the open approach is that we know about it and there will be patches in short order.
For my part, I am very interested in the hardened PHP product. As a purveyor of pornographic materials, such hardened security is a must. Given the way hackers constantly try to hack my authentication servers and post passwords on their "warez" sites, security is critical.
The fact is, some information doesn't want to be free. My information wants to be paid for. I hope the hardened PHP project keeps hackers out of my servers for years to come.
Call me a luddite, but I find the hype around "new and neat" technologies a bit worrying. To me, the obvious problem of having to disassemble an entire block of these things just to get to one failed device is an indication of flawed design.
It's a neat idea just like hotswapping was, but it's going to be a while before it's affordable and reliable. I'll wait for that, I think. Until then, I'll just try to imagine a beowulf cluster of these things and stick to my tried and true server setup, sans bricks.
Could someone please explain why the government feels the need to have pictures of people on file like this? This is crazy.
I'm reminded of Aldous Huxley's 1984. This is the first step toward telescreens!
As tech savvy people, we need to get the word out about this and put these sorts of invasions of privacy to a stop. Making the citizen the object of state knowledge is the first step toward subjugation and elimination of freedom.
As an open source programmer, gun owner, and opponent of the current political order, I see this as a direct attack on my civil liberties that must be dealt with at once. The government has already tried to take our constitutionally protected rights to bear arms. Give them a couple years and Microsoft will be using their own private telescreens to weed out dissident hackers and sending them to "reprogramming camps" in the Carribean.
Well, I'll pass on the rum drink thank you! Get out there and stop these fascists!
There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.
It's hard to say what impact netizens like SOLLOG will have in the end. On one level, you might say his predictions would provide Wikipedia with yet another dimension of informative content -- the fourth dimension: time. That is, while Wikipedia can say something about the past, and now with Wikinews, the present, maybe SOLLOG will provide needed insight into the future.
On the other hand, such atrocious formatting can only damage the credibility and readability of Wikimedia. Editors will have to handle this issue carefully and balance these considerations. In the end, I'm confident the open model of editing will strike the right compromise between compelling content and responsible formatting.
It's disconcerting to see Microsoft paying attention to the sort of features available in Firefox and Opera. We all know what happens when Microsoft starts "addressing" the competition.
Personally, I find Firefox's community oriented approach to extensions and plugins refreshing, but it's hard to compete with a paid team of guys who managed to pass Microsoft's crazy hiring tests. As a Linux user, I fear this will mean my web browsing experience will fall yet farther behind that of my friends and co-workers.
Developers should see this as a call-to-arms. If Microsoft pursues feature extensions in earnest, it may well overrun open source efforts. That would be a disaster given the progress Firefox has made in terms of marketshare and acceptance so far.
It's good to see IBM's continued interest in improving and enriching the open source community through its business initiative. Equally so on Red Hat's count, though we shouldn't be surprised by it. In time, I suspect this sort of certification process will win Linux the mainstream acceptance it needs to make waves in the desktop market.
There is a danger, though. As corporate certification and such becomes a necessity for developers, there will be a corresponding dependence on such higher powers. In the effort to pander to certification boards, innovation and free pursuit of new application and programming paradigms may be squelched.
We have to keep in mind that initiatives like this one can be a mixed bag. I am reminded, somewhat chillingly, of stories of the end times in which a world government, or perhaps a huge corporate monopoly as IBM may become (with the help of Linux, ironically). It is disconcerting to think that these sort of certification programs may ultimately lead to the sort of domination and monopolization the applications were made to fight.
In the meantime, however, let's be sure no open source application is left behind.
Well my little brother is a bit of a budding hacker. He's really into Blender and Python right now. He probably doesn't really need this CD since he's got his own setup already, but it's always good to encourage kids to get into this stuff at an early age.
With Microsoft and recently and more chillingly the government itself constantly chipping away at our freedoms, it's crucial to make sure we bring up a new generation of programmers who understand their civic responsibility to protect freedom of speech, whether its political or digital.
If we don't keep the ranks of young hackers swelling, we can expect Microsoft to take over. Without a constant stream of competitive free GPL's software and other viruses, their ascendency is just a matter of time. Give the the gift of resistance!
It's strange they'd suddenly cut their losses like this, but with the pressure from Linux and the Open Source world on the unix market, one would expect HP and others to abandon projects like this in favor of projects where the competition isn't literally giving it away.
Ultimately, manufacturers like HP and Sun are increasingly pushed into niche and legacy markets as PCs get faster and Linux and BSD become more capable. I would expect more withdrawals like this in the future rather than less.
More than that, HP has seen considerable pressure from younger webmasters who see their business practices as inequitous and dangerous. Admittedly such efforts are probably scattered and short lived, but they seem to have some sympathy amongst conservative culture warriors as well. Ultimately, only time will tell whether these efforts have any effect on HP's bottom line.
I suppose you also "meant to do that" when Iraq turned out to be the disaster anticipated.
W isn't up to anything and Greenspan is actually worried about this state of affairs. Perhaps he should also seek professional help. W is a political idiot and an economic one too. He's running the country into the ground the same way he did his oil companies. The falling dollar is a symptom of his fiscal incompetence and it will have serious implications for the American worker in the next few years.
Of course, corporations and rich investors will be able to move their holdings into Euros and Yen so they will dodge much of the inflationary and devaluing effect of a quickly dropping currency. That's good news for bourgeois sycophants like yourself: Your boys in the ownership class will get off scott-free after taking the country for all it's worth.
Meanwhile, you'll have an especially Merry Christmas knowing you won't have any homosexual marriages in your state this season. Enjoy!
A sharply falling dollar will mean our labor prices will go down compared to those in China and India and eventually manufacturing will start flowing back. In other words, we will be getting that inshoring stuff they always talk about -- that is to say, marginal jobs in manufacturing and low-end computer maintenance.
Still, this will all come at significant costs in terms of standard of living. A lot of our thinkgeek wishlists will fill up, but not empty. No Playstation 3 for little Billy. Indeed, we on a one-way train to becoming the Argentina of North America. Such frills will take a back seat to food and shelter.
Indeed, with the dollar *tanking* like it is, the cost of Christmas can be expected to take a sharp upturn even in terms of currencies like True Love and Monopoly Money.
I'd be a lot more inclined to laugh if this weren't so serious. The financial security of our country is at serious risk given the astonishing rate of decline in the dollar since the election. With the Chinese selling off dollars like hotcakes, costs of toys made in the Orient, such as DVD players, PDAs, and iPods, will be just a little higher this year and the trend will only continue.
I hope everyone can eek out a Merry Christmas this year. It may be your last in while. With the mercantilist economic policies of the Bush Administration only likely to continue and with confidence in US financial institutions at an all time low and dropping, everyone should just make sure this is a Christmas to remember. Next year, you may not be able to give your kids anything more than a hug and an yellow onion.
indeed. competitor lockout is probably the key element preventing a harmonious postindustrial economy. all the hurly-burly of trying to beat the other guy is just obscuring what's really important: giving the customer what he wants.
i envision a future in which services like music match find one's soul-product, much like dating services purport to find soul mates. obviously, music is the natural place to start this sort of thing since most music has considerable soul to begin with.
in time, companies will realize the value of harmony (or "synergy" as they might call it today). instead of planned obsolesence and incompatibility, we will see a parsimonious consumer universe full of interoperation, interaction, and interpenetration of form and function.
and the platform that will bring these modern marvels into being: linux. and probably some python here and there.
the drive toward better, more sensible distribution of digital content is finally catching on in the commercial world. in fact, they've even taken it a step further by coupling simple downloads with a system to seek out new music for you based on your musical preferences, much like a dating service.
i'm continually astonished by the resiliency of the dating service concept. it works for slashdot, it works for yahoo. as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, i think we can expect to see much more like this in the future. perhaps they'll even cross-reference between services, so that, for example, one's tastes in music could be correlated with one's taste in books, movies, or dining establishments.
Slashdot Mirror
It would probably be fair to say that none of us would be talking about open source or any of this stuff without him. I suppose there's always the perennial complaint about the "monolithic kernel" and the bazaar method of development, but as ESR effectively argues in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the highly polished engineering represented by the Cathedral approach comes at the price of a snail like pace of development.
.NET platform so popular: Its focus on rapid development using the latest in aspect oriented programming technologies makes it an indispensible business asset for shops with relatively small programming teams.
In today's technology market, rapid development is essentially to short AND long term success. Now while Alan Cox might have liked a better API for hardware drivers or an architecture more in line with the "microkernel" concept so popular amongst academics, it's just not the way to succeed in the open source world. This is what has made the
But I digress. The issue here is overengineering. It's been shown that creating working kernel based on a register machine like most modern microprocessors is NP hard. What this means is that there is an inherent degree of complexity that cannot be swept under the rug via APIs and microkernels or any of the other academic fads that come and go year by year. You have to make a choice somewhere along the line and Linus chose a path with a proven history, with tremendous success I might add.
In short, it's time for people to stop the backbiting and recognize that the monolithic kernel, ugly though it may be, is the best we got and we should be thankful for it.
With winters getting warmer every year, it's only a matter of time before we are up to our necks in industrially poisoned ocean.
It's interesting, though, that with all the talk from liberal groups like the Sierra Club about how industry is the culprit, that we come to find out that it might be the SUN ITSELF that's depleting the ozone layer! In the wake of the recent CBS debacle, maybe it's time we started viewing such activists with a more suspicious eye.
Maybe it's time we stopped looking for more problems on earth, and start looking to controlling threats from outer space -- threats like solar storms and asteroids. With our current level of intercelestial preparedness, it would take only one oversized meteor or a solar storm to fry this intergalactic backwater we call earth to a crisp. We need to step up efforts to expand orbital missile defense and lunar and martian defense outposts or we'll have only ourselves to blame when some freak cosmic event destroys life as we know it.
It's nice to be able to get free stuff online. I've been known to grab my share of free movies and music from time to time myself, but when it comes to things that are so critical to the security of my servers, I'm a little more careful.
That is not to say that the particular people in the article are crooked -- I'm sure they're on the level. I'm just saying that as this kind of thing becomes popular, you can be sure some computer hackers out there will try to co-opt the good name of services like these so they can give out compromised certificates and steal information from you and your customers.
The bottom line is: When it's free, you just never know. A thousand eyes only get you so far. This is why I tend to stick to software backed by a solid corporate history on my own production servers. It's just not worth the risk to skimp on costs when the fact is your entire business is on the line there.
You just have to know who you're dealing with when you get into this kind of thing. Are you dealing with someone honest or are you dealing with some sort of shady basement operation that moved to Canada to avoid cryptography laws? When mission critical information is at stake, this stuff counts.
PHP is a great language for web applications as many here can attest. While it's true there's some vulnerabilities, there's always going to be a few. The good thing about the open approach is that we know about it and there will be patches in short order.
For my part, I am very interested in the hardened PHP product. As a purveyor of pornographic materials, such hardened security is a must. Given the way hackers constantly try to hack my authentication servers and post passwords on their "warez" sites, security is critical.
The fact is, some information doesn't want to be free. My information wants to be paid for. I hope the hardened PHP project keeps hackers out of my servers for years to come.
Call me a luddite, but I find the hype around "new and neat" technologies a bit worrying. To me, the obvious problem of having to disassemble an entire block of these things just to get to one failed device is an indication of flawed design.
It's a neat idea just like hotswapping was, but it's going to be a while before it's affordable and reliable. I'll wait for that, I think. Until then, I'll just try to imagine a beowulf cluster of these things and stick to my tried and true server setup, sans bricks.
Could someone please explain why the government feels the need to have pictures of people on file like this? This is crazy.
I'm reminded of Aldous Huxley's 1984. This is the first step toward telescreens!
As tech savvy people, we need to get the word out about this and put these sorts of invasions of privacy to a stop. Making the citizen the object of state knowledge is the first step toward subjugation and elimination of freedom.
As an open source programmer, gun owner, and opponent of the current political order, I see this as a direct attack on my civil liberties that must be dealt with at once. The government has already tried to take our constitutionally protected rights to bear arms. Give them a couple years and Microsoft will be using their own private telescreens to weed out dissident hackers and sending them to "reprogramming camps" in the Carribean.
Well, I'll pass on the rum drink thank you! Get out there and stop these fascists!
There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.
It's hard to say what impact netizens like SOLLOG will have in the end. On one level, you might say his predictions would provide Wikipedia with yet another dimension of informative content -- the fourth dimension: time. That is, while Wikipedia can say something about the past, and now with Wikinews, the present, maybe SOLLOG will provide needed insight into the future.
On the other hand, such atrocious formatting can only damage the credibility and readability of Wikimedia. Editors will have to handle this issue carefully and balance these considerations. In the end, I'm confident the open model of editing will strike the right compromise between compelling content and responsible formatting.
It's disconcerting to see Microsoft paying attention to the sort of features available in Firefox and Opera. We all know what happens when Microsoft starts "addressing" the competition.
Personally, I find Firefox's community oriented approach to extensions and plugins refreshing, but it's hard to compete with a paid team of guys who managed to pass Microsoft's crazy hiring tests. As a Linux user, I fear this will mean my web browsing experience will fall yet farther behind that of my friends and co-workers.
Developers should see this as a call-to-arms. If Microsoft pursues feature extensions in earnest, it may well overrun open source efforts. That would be a disaster given the progress Firefox has made in terms of marketshare and acceptance so far.
It's good to see IBM's continued interest in improving and enriching the open source community through its business initiative. Equally so on Red Hat's count, though we shouldn't be surprised by it. In time, I suspect this sort of certification process will win Linux the mainstream acceptance it needs to make waves in the desktop market.
There is a danger, though. As corporate certification and such becomes a necessity for developers, there will be a corresponding dependence on such higher powers. In the effort to pander to certification boards, innovation and free pursuit of new application and programming paradigms may be squelched.
We have to keep in mind that initiatives like this one can be a mixed bag. I am reminded, somewhat chillingly, of stories of the end times in which a world government, or perhaps a huge corporate monopoly as IBM may become (with the help of Linux, ironically). It is disconcerting to think that these sort of certification programs may ultimately lead to the sort of domination and monopolization the applications were made to fight.
In the meantime, however, let's be sure no open source application is left behind.
Well my little brother is a bit of a budding hacker. He's really into Blender and Python right now. He probably doesn't really need this CD since he's got his own setup already, but it's always good to encourage kids to get into this stuff at an early age.
With Microsoft and recently and more chillingly the government itself constantly chipping away at our freedoms, it's crucial to make sure we bring up a new generation of programmers who understand their civic responsibility to protect freedom of speech, whether its political or digital.
If we don't keep the ranks of young hackers swelling, we can expect Microsoft to take over. Without a constant stream of competitive free GPL's software and other viruses, their ascendency is just a matter of time. Give the the gift of resistance!
Ultimately, manufacturers like HP and Sun are increasingly pushed into niche and legacy markets as PCs get faster and Linux and BSD become more capable. I would expect more withdrawals like this in the future rather than less.
More than that, HP has seen considerable pressure from younger webmasters who see their business practices as inequitous and dangerous. Admittedly such efforts are probably scattered and short lived, but they seem to have some sympathy amongst conservative culture warriors as well. Ultimately, only time will tell whether these efforts have any effect on HP's bottom line.
I suppose you also "meant to do that" when Iraq turned out to be the disaster anticipated.
W isn't up to anything and Greenspan is actually worried about this state of affairs. Perhaps he should also seek professional help. W is a political idiot and an economic one too. He's running the country into the ground the same way he did his oil companies. The falling dollar is a symptom of his fiscal incompetence and it will have serious implications for the American worker in the next few years.
Of course, corporations and rich investors will be able to move their holdings into Euros and Yen so they will dodge much of the inflationary and devaluing effect of a quickly dropping currency. That's good news for bourgeois sycophants like yourself: Your boys in the ownership class will get off scott-free after taking the country for all it's worth.
Meanwhile, you'll have an especially Merry Christmas knowing you won't have any homosexual marriages in your state this season. Enjoy!
A sharply falling dollar will mean our labor prices will go down compared to those in China and India and eventually manufacturing will start flowing back. In other words, we will be getting that inshoring stuff they always talk about -- that is to say, marginal jobs in manufacturing and low-end computer maintenance.
Still, this will all come at significant costs in terms of standard of living. A lot of our thinkgeek wishlists will fill up, but not empty. No Playstation 3 for little Billy. Indeed, we on a one-way train to becoming the Argentina of North America. Such frills will take a back seat to food and shelter.
Indeed, with the dollar *tanking* like it is, the cost of Christmas can be expected to take a sharp upturn even in terms of currencies like True Love and Monopoly Money.
I'd be a lot more inclined to laugh if this weren't so serious. The financial security of our country is at serious risk given the astonishing rate of decline in the dollar since the election. With the Chinese selling off dollars like hotcakes, costs of toys made in the Orient, such as DVD players, PDAs, and iPods, will be just a little higher this year and the trend will only continue.
I hope everyone can eek out a Merry Christmas this year. It may be your last in while. With the mercantilist economic policies of the Bush Administration only likely to continue and with confidence in US financial institutions at an all time low and dropping, everyone should just make sure this is a Christmas to remember. Next year, you may not be able to give your kids anything more than a hug and an yellow onion.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
indeed. competitor lockout is probably the key element preventing a harmonious postindustrial economy. all the hurly-burly of trying to beat the other guy is just obscuring what's really important: giving the customer what he wants.
i envision a future in which services like music match find one's soul-product, much like dating services purport to find soul mates. obviously, music is the natural place to start this sort of thing since most music has considerable soul to begin with.
in time, companies will realize the value of harmony (or "synergy" as they might call it today). instead of planned obsolesence and incompatibility, we will see a parsimonious consumer universe full of interoperation, interaction, and interpenetration of form and function.
and the platform that will bring these modern marvels into being: linux. and probably some python here and there.
the drive toward better, more sensible distribution of digital content is finally catching on in the commercial world. in fact, they've even taken it a step further by coupling simple downloads with a system to seek out new music for you based on your musical preferences, much like a dating service.
i'm continually astonished by the resiliency of the dating service concept. it works for slashdot, it works for yahoo. as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, i think we can expect to see much more like this in the future. perhaps they'll even cross-reference between services, so that, for example, one's tastes in music could be correlated with one's taste in books, movies, or dining establishments.
what a time to be alive.