From the article: "Such a shift toward open-source software for CRM and other business software applications, such as enterprise resource planning, is now beginning at corporations across the globe."
I've got three questions about this, from my experience in a manufacturing environment.
1) Where is this open source software that so easily replaces the commercial software?
2) How can I convince a corporation that has been dealing with a vendor for a particular product for many years that it is worth the pain of switching, even if the end result is good?
3) At what point is a piece of software "safe" and when is better to be more open? Take for example OpenMFG. They could be considered more "safe" than other solutions because they seem to have everything together in a well-supported way. However, their license is unacceptable for anyone who respects the open source ideology. The product isn't free as in beer and only partially free as in speech.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of choice in ERP/MRP, from what I see. Unless the manufacturers start programming a lot of code themselves and don't mind giving up their work to competitors, there will always be restrictions on what open source solutions are available. I would love to see a completely free MRP that does everything needed without a lot of hassle, and still lets my company customize it to save ourselves time and money.
Linux or any BSD is hardly a commodity OS. It runs on everything because there is a geek somewhere with every piece of hardware imaginable who has nothing better to do than make that operating system work.
Meanwhile OS X has to run because the people who want to use their computers, aren't the kinds of people who have time to make every single piece of hardware work.
Very true. Linux is open source, and it's about the only one that people generally agree is nice to develop on so it has been getting lots of attention (vs the varied opinions on other systems such as Solaris, SCO, AIX, etc). Mac OS X isn't completely open source; most people don't need to hack together drivers to get devices to work because there is "enterprise support" either from Apple or the device vendor. However, with the increasing number of hackers using OS X we'll see a lot more OS development going on. Many of Apple's low-level drivers (kernel extensions) are already open source. I wouldn't be surprised to see a significant shift in development expenditures from Windows to OS X by the time Vista is released, and linux will reap many of the benefits right along with it.
It would be interesting to get the inside history behind it, but I think Apple doesn't want to spend valuable resources making drivers for this, that, and the other thing. They've endured years and years of shitty or absent drivers from companies that really ought to know better (if they'd look at potential sales numbers - printer makers especially). So the Apple dev team decided years ago that they'd rather spend a little more time on their existing drivers and get them to support a wider array of devices, rather than program lots of specialized drivers that'd be buggier and soon outdated. Today you can load up pretty much any USB keyboard, mouse, or storage device, any Firewire camera, hard drive, or midi device. It is what the whole Windows plug-n-play mantra was supposed to be about, except that it actually works and you don't need to click 'next' 6 times in an installer (+reboot) every time you plug in somebody's digital camera.
So what you end up with is a system that's poised to get a lot of development on a really good starting base. Unless Apple really tries hard to tie the whole system down to an encrypted, hardware-checking authentication system, we're only going to see the list of devices supporting OS X grow.
Forget the NetBSD toaster, I want a cell phone with iPhoto.
"You can create enterprise-level web services backed by robust business logic and relational databases -- using visual tools to reverse-engineer your JDBC or JNDI data sources and object-oriented frameworks to transparently handle data persistence."
"* Reverse-engineers your database, modeling all tables, columns and relationships * Generates Java objects from JDBC and JNDI data sources, transparently handling data persistence * Offers database independence and simultaneous access to multiple databases"
In other words, yes, it supports most databases that you have, and it also provides access to different data handling frameworks and non-traditional data sources.
That assumes that the president would want to run for reelection in the first place. Two terms in office are often enough to tire a guy out.
Secondly, I don't believe that this 'lame duck' idea really holds much merit in a full presidential term. There are some burdens that are alleviated, such as campaigning while you are still in office, but it won't change the character of a person just to know that his retirement is coming in 3.5 years. That 3.5 years is a hell of a long time to live with a mistake you really regret, or waning popularity from your lack of effort, and anybody in their right mind will want to go out with some dignity and respect. It's amazing that Clinton's media posse managed to keep him from slaughter during the failed military actions, misuse of the Oval Office and subsequent perjury, and the dot-bomb end of his career.
The truth is that it's a fight *every day* to keep your nose above water in the political world, and the job of the President doesn't get any easier in the second term.
It is already known that the Doom III code simply wasn't designed to be multi-threaded. However, it should be relatively easy to split well-defined functions such as the audio and the AI because they probably aren't all muxed in the same thread.
I just think it's disappointing that they spent years working on a game but didn't consider speed like they used to with previous games. Quake 3 was a popular benchmarking application, and it became really great on the Mac when the porting company (don't remember who) added vector optimizations (imagine that!) and it ran 3x as fast. It may be true that id was just trying to save money by not developing those features in Doom III, but they didn't remember one of the basic coding rules: reuse good code whenever possible. Reuse knowledge, at the very least!
Anyway, my previous point was meant to be that software developers ought to start thinking about dual cores. They've been caught up in various vector units and instruction set optimizations for some time, and the focus is about to shift.
considering that they're claiming that the PS3 will run 5-10 faster than this
The numbers include the operations from all chips on the motherboard, which includes the massive video chips. Besides, these are all preliminary numbers.
I've been trying to ignore everybody's outspoken assumptions about the Cell being a graphics chip which can't do general processing for a desktop computer. The fact is that it's rightly a multi-core chip with loads of vector processing capacity. It might not be as fast on a single-threaded task, but the software world is going to adapt quickly for this type of setup because it's where the hardware is going. No semiconductor lab can (cost) effectively compete in a megahertz race anymore, so more power = more transistors (more cores).
Server programs are ahead of the curve at this point because they've had multiple CPUs in abundance for a long time. However, even today it doesn't make sense for games like Doom III to avoid taking advantage of this hardware when possible (for instance, the G4/G5 systems have had dual processors for YEARS but Id won't use them properly). For petessake, calculate audio on one processor and AI on the other...
However, it's good enough for 85% of the users out there, who will almost never run anything more intensive than Word, IE, and the occasional Flash-based game.
85% of all computers out there are running Windows, and it turns out they aren't being used for playing high-end games!
Maybe this 2-year-old Mac will never handle Doom 3, but I now have this overwhelming feeling of acceptance in my life...
to the effect that we will program a demonstration of the damaging action and make it available to Apple
This seems to imply that it has not yet been done. Any hardware changes that I have done (Open Firmware changes, DVD region set) have needed an admin password.
However, in the article it basically says that the machine has to compromised PRIOR to startup (when the security extension loads). If someone already has access to your machine with an admin password, I really don't see the point in locking the drive. There are easier ways to pull a prank or cause damage.
Also an OS X user, I enjoy the occasional use of Linux (to have a headless machine without the GUI eating RAM).
However, your arguments are that some people are "committed to Linux" and that's about it. I know plenty of people that are "committed to Windows". It would be better if you could tell us how Linux is *better* rather than OS X.
For me, AirPort Extreme would be a big issue, and although there is an issue with disclosing interface specs, I really can't understand why there aren't at least 10 different 802.11g drivers for Linux already. I guess all the developers are busy hacking their 5.25" floppy drivers for more speed (I kid, I kid).
About the only big thing from the Linux side that isn't workable on OS X is glibc (for compatibility as a software porter/hacker), and that's only because it's so dependent on the Linux kernel. There's really very little practical difference for a developer as long as they aren't completely ignoring code portability.
To the average consumer it's not iTunes that's proprietary, it's anything that can't play on an iPod that's considered incompatible.
Exactly. How many times has anybody walked into a typical office and heard: "Ahhh! You can't run that here, that only runs on the proprietary Windows OS!"
This story could almost go into the politics section. Ms. Neff is complaining about the incumbent carriers and their slow, impartial approach to providing universal access. It may very well be that the incumbent carriers aren't handling things the way they should, but that doesn't mean the alternative is any better.
Options: 1) Competitors move in to provide different/better service: prices fall slightly and the poor still don't have access. 2) The city takes charge: prices rise (inevitable with government-owned enterprises in a position of monopoly), and capacity becomes a big problem as the city struggles to build their own infrastructure or share with the ILECs. Everybody pays based on income/per-person/whatever. The poor get their mediocre service, and everybody else pays extra on top of the municipal cost because they want better (alternative) service than what the city provides. It boils down to the middle class paying for internet access for the poor. I've seen it happen... wireless doesn't mean necessarily mean high-speed, it's just a different way to hook up.
It doesn't matter whether holographic storage is here now, or ever. I have a large collection of CDs on spindles that will surely go bad within the next 3-5 years, but I'm not going to sweat it. If you figure that at least 50 CDs fit onto a single high-capacity DVD (e.g. blu-ray), there's no way I'm going to worry about it.
However, the same doesn't apply for everyone. Many information-intensive companies are constantly struggling to keep up with the latest technology, spending big $$ on data retrieval. Thousands of tape backups aren't quite as easy to read and consolidate as a bunch of personal CDs. I guess the story here is that most people think CDs are a permanent storage medium.
There were different amounts of traffic to all three sites, so a comparison is probably irrelevant.
But as far as the OS comparison goes, store.apple.com was running Solaris during the unavailability period. The article was probably written before the automatic scan took place.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article: "Such a shift toward open-source software for CRM and other business software applications, such as enterprise resource planning, is now beginning at corporations across the globe."
I've got three questions about this, from my experience in a manufacturing environment.
1) Where is this open source software that so easily replaces the commercial software?
2) How can I convince a corporation that has been dealing with a vendor for a particular product for many years that it is worth the pain of switching, even if the end result is good?
3) At what point is a piece of software "safe" and when is better to be more open? Take for example OpenMFG. They could be considered more "safe" than other solutions because they seem to have everything together in a well-supported way. However, their license is unacceptable for anyone who respects the open source ideology. The product isn't free as in beer and only partially free as in speech.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of choice in ERP/MRP, from what I see. Unless the manufacturers start programming a lot of code themselves and don't mind giving up their work to competitors, there will always be restrictions on what open source solutions are available. I would love to see a completely free MRP that does everything needed without a lot of hassle, and still lets my company customize it to save ourselves time and money.
I, for one, welcome our new barred spiral overlords.
It would be interesting to get the inside history behind it, but I think Apple doesn't want to spend valuable resources making drivers for this, that, and the other thing. They've endured years and years of shitty or absent drivers from companies that really ought to know better (if they'd look at potential sales numbers - printer makers especially). So the Apple dev team decided years ago that they'd rather spend a little more time on their existing drivers and get them to support a wider array of devices, rather than program lots of specialized drivers that'd be buggier and soon outdated. Today you can load up pretty much any USB keyboard, mouse, or storage device, any Firewire camera, hard drive, or midi device. It is what the whole Windows plug-n-play mantra was supposed to be about, except that it actually works and you don't need to click 'next' 6 times in an installer (+reboot) every time you plug in somebody's digital camera.
So what you end up with is a system that's poised to get a lot of development on a really good starting base. Unless Apple really tries hard to tie the whole system down to an encrypted, hardware-checking authentication system, we're only going to see the list of devices supporting OS X grow.
Forget the NetBSD toaster, I want a cell phone with iPhoto.
Sir, you owe me a coffee, a new keyboard, and a dry pencil.
"You can create enterprise-level web services backed by robust business logic and relational databases -- using visual tools to reverse-engineer your JDBC or JNDI data sources and object-oriented frameworks to transparently handle data persistence."
"* Reverse-engineers your database, modeling all tables, columns and relationships
* Generates Java objects from JDBC and JNDI data sources, transparently handling data persistence
* Offers database independence and simultaneous access to multiple databases"
In other words, yes, it supports most databases that you have, and it also provides access to different data handling frameworks and non-traditional data sources.
That assumes that the president would want to run for reelection in the first place. Two terms in office are often enough to tire a guy out.
Secondly, I don't believe that this 'lame duck' idea really holds much merit in a full presidential term. There are some burdens that are alleviated, such as campaigning while you are still in office, but it won't change the character of a person just to know that his retirement is coming in 3.5 years. That 3.5 years is a hell of a long time to live with a mistake you really regret, or waning popularity from your lack of effort, and anybody in their right mind will want to go out with some dignity and respect. It's amazing that Clinton's media posse managed to keep him from slaughter during the failed military actions, misuse of the Oval Office and subsequent perjury, and the dot-bomb end of his career.
The truth is that it's a fight *every day* to keep your nose above water in the political world, and the job of the President doesn't get any easier in the second term.
It is already known that the Doom III code simply wasn't designed to be multi-threaded. However, it should be relatively easy to split well-defined functions such as the audio and the AI because they probably aren't all muxed in the same thread.
I just think it's disappointing that they spent years working on a game but didn't consider speed like they used to with previous games. Quake 3 was a popular benchmarking application, and it became really great on the Mac when the porting company (don't remember who) added vector optimizations (imagine that!) and it ran 3x as fast. It may be true that id was just trying to save money by not developing those features in Doom III, but they didn't remember one of the basic coding rules: reuse good code whenever possible. Reuse knowledge, at the very least!
Anyway, my previous point was meant to be that software developers ought to start thinking about dual cores. They've been caught up in various vector units and instruction set optimizations for some time, and the focus is about to shift.
considering that they're claiming that the PS3 will run 5-10 faster than this
The numbers include the operations from all chips on the motherboard, which includes the massive video chips. Besides, these are all preliminary numbers.
I've been trying to ignore everybody's outspoken assumptions about the Cell being a graphics chip which can't do general processing for a desktop computer. The fact is that it's rightly a multi-core chip with loads of vector processing capacity. It might not be as fast on a single-threaded task, but the software world is going to adapt quickly for this type of setup because it's where the hardware is going. No semiconductor lab can (cost) effectively compete in a megahertz race anymore, so more power = more transistors (more cores).
Server programs are ahead of the curve at this point because they've had multiple CPUs in abundance for a long time. However, even today it doesn't make sense for games like Doom III to avoid taking advantage of this hardware when possible (for instance, the G4/G5 systems have had dual processors for YEARS but Id won't use them properly). For petessake, calculate audio on one processor and AI on the other...
Well, it was Mars-shattering... All the Martians applauded and drank martinis in celebration. There's just no satisfying some people.
However, it's good enough for 85% of the users out there, who will almost never run anything more intensive than Word, IE, and the occasional Flash-based game.
85% of all computers out there are running Windows, and it turns out they aren't being used for playing high-end games!
Maybe this 2-year-old Mac will never handle Doom 3, but I now have this overwhelming feeling of acceptance in my life...
to the effect that we will program a demonstration of the damaging action and make it available to Apple
This seems to imply that it has not yet been done. Any hardware changes that I have done (Open Firmware changes, DVD region set) have needed an admin password.
However, in the article it basically says that the machine has to compromised PRIOR to startup (when the security extension loads). If someone already has access to your machine with an admin password, I really don't see the point in locking the drive. There are easier ways to pull a prank or cause damage.
Also an OS X user, I enjoy the occasional use of Linux (to have a headless machine without the GUI eating RAM).
However, your arguments are that some people are "committed to Linux" and that's about it. I know plenty of people that are "committed to Windows". It would be better if you could tell us how Linux is *better* rather than OS X.
For me, AirPort Extreme would be a big issue, and although there is an issue with disclosing interface specs, I really can't understand why there aren't at least 10 different 802.11g drivers for Linux already. I guess all the developers are busy hacking their 5.25" floppy drivers for more speed (I kid, I kid).
About the only big thing from the Linux side that isn't workable on OS X is glibc (for compatibility as a software porter/hacker), and that's only because it's so dependent on the Linux kernel. There's really very little practical difference for a developer as long as they aren't completely ignoring code portability.
CDs in a music shop: $16.95 + tax
Same album on the iTMS: $9.99
Using your Mastercard to purchase the album and download it in 30 seconds...
To the average consumer it's not iTunes that's proprietary, it's anything that can't play on an iPod that's considered incompatible.
Exactly. How many times has anybody walked into a typical office and heard: "Ahhh! You can't run that here, that only runs on the proprietary Windows OS!"
This story could almost go into the politics section. Ms. Neff is complaining about the incumbent carriers and their slow, impartial approach to providing universal access. It may very well be that the incumbent carriers aren't handling things the way they should, but that doesn't mean the alternative is any better.
Options:
1) Competitors move in to provide different/better service: prices fall slightly and the poor still don't have access.
2) The city takes charge: prices rise (inevitable with government-owned enterprises in a position of monopoly), and capacity becomes a big problem as the city struggles to build their own infrastructure or share with the ILECs. Everybody pays based on income/per-person/whatever. The poor get their mediocre service, and everybody else pays extra on top of the municipal cost because they want better (alternative) service than what the city provides. It boils down to the middle class paying for internet access for the poor. I've seen it happen... wireless doesn't mean necessarily mean high-speed, it's just a different way to hook up.
It doesn't matter whether holographic storage is here now, or ever. I have a large collection of CDs on spindles that will surely go bad within the next 3-5 years, but I'm not going to sweat it. If you figure that at least 50 CDs fit onto a single high-capacity DVD (e.g. blu-ray), there's no way I'm going to worry about it.
However, the same doesn't apply for everyone. Many information-intensive companies are constantly struggling to keep up with the latest technology, spending big $$ on data retrieval. Thousands of tape backups aren't quite as easy to read and consolidate as a bunch of personal CDs. I guess the story here is that most people think CDs are a permanent storage medium.
There were different amounts of traffic to all three sites, so a comparison is probably irrelevant.
But as far as the OS comparison goes, store.apple.com was running Solaris during the unavailability period. The article was probably written before the automatic scan took place.