Dell has been Intel's kiss ass for decades. Can you begin to imagine how their commercial relationship would be rotting if they switched to AMD for *some* of their products? All technical matters aside, seriously: how could they do that? If they did, I'm sure someone would even be fearing for his own life...
You're right about code complexity. Generally speaking, it's an almost obvious matter of fact that the less complex your code is, the less prone it is to errors.
That being said, you're talking about automated testing. This is also what I was referring to earlier. But automated testing is not a formal proof.
Cutting on code complexity is a double-edged sword though. Usually (but not always), the less complex your code, the less efficient and the bigger it tends to get. If you want to keep it simple, you have to make a lot of trade-offs.
The critical parts of your code should always be totally independent, self-sufficient, as much as possible. This is what makes it easy to test and validate.
This is a very good point. Anyway, the guy who thinks that every single path of code has to be proven by the developer in some critical environment settings is just daydreaming. It doesn't work this way. And as Knuth insightfully says, it can't even work. If engineers were really required to do this, nothing would get accomplished at all, or very little. And all the proofs would just guarantee that something has been overlooked anyway - and that it will fail at some point. Proper, intensive testing is the only way to go. And certainly not by the same people that wrote the code. That won't work either. This is also why I think a developer's proof on their own code wouldn't be worth much. You can't be on both sides. Granted mathematicians do this, but this is very different: they usually don't have any real time constraint, most of their work is not "practical" in any way and last but not least, their work has to be peer reviewed a lot before being validated. This is how it works in the academic world. It can't work this way in the industrial world, because obviously it would take too much time and it would pose IP issues as well. Open source is a bit like this - but the day when safety-critical, commercial devices will be open-sourced for the good of all is still very, very far away.
One friend has a Dell PDA, and the darn thing uses Windows CE. Anyway, it just gets stuck and needs rebooting all the time! I've never seen such an annoying device.
Anyway, to the point: it's very obvious that this kind of "deal" is always made between non-technical people. Always like that. A non-tech from MS convinced a non-tech from Nokia. Then engineers have to do with it. There also might be some hidden cash in between, but shoosh. What do we know...
How to make money off something others give away for free?
There is almost nothing worth the buy compared to another "desktop-oriented" distro. Slick look? You can have thousands of "looks" for your KDE or Gnome desktop for free. From the screenshots, Linspire obviously uses KDE. They could have at least developed a new desktop environment if they wanted to sell something "different". As for security and overall "up-to-date-ness", I'm pretty sure you're well better off with one of the major distros out there.
And last but not least, the very fact that they strive hard to get people to like them because they are trying to be close to Windows enough to interest them is a failure, in my opinion, right from the start. People who like Windows, well, they just want the real thing. Everyone knows, let's not deny it, that even the ones who can't afford Windows but like it - they will use pirated copies instead of using Linux or another OS.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against selling service around a Linux distro - but Linspire? Seems like you don't get much aside from marketing. Which is better for them than it is for you.
I already said that not long ago, but absolutely *nothing* beats the Mac Mini for the time being in terms of processing power and smallest form factor. Ok, that and the price: a Mac Mini is rather cheap. Oh, and some people like challenge and like to "make things happen" instead of just gobbling up what they're being given. So there, there is every reason why someone would want to run Linux on a Mac Mini. Of course, I could also mention that a recent Linux kernel is more advanced that the OS X kernel. We could go on... Anyway, why would you want to see a "main factor" or even a philosophy behind a simple purchase. There is not necessarily. But as I said, find me one single device that is as small and as powerful as the Mac Mini. I bet you you can't.
Good point here. Exactly. But like others have said, the entertainment industry in its whole is really what controls our lives even more so that governments. Or at least, this is the way it's heading.
I don't know about PostgreSQL, but with MySQL you can. I guess you'll still need to buy a license (see http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/), but it's definitely much cheaper than Oracle and some users say it's much better too.
But what wouldn't we do for more money? Why not license software according to the number of pipeline stages too? Or MIPS? Or the hard drive size it's installed on? Imagination is the limit.:D
Oh yeah? Like communism ever promoted freedom? Collectivism is the very opposite of freedom! If you share freely with one another, it's anything but communism. If you're forced to share and have no freedom of speech, that's communism.
Have you never helped out a neighbor or family for free? And you knew you could ask for a favor later on? Does that make you a communist? Dear Lord!
Ultimately, I think you're right: what all this is really about, is control over people. They want to control what you do with what they sell: something that would never have been credible even 10 years ago. Today, you can still buy a CD and lend it to a friend (let's not talk about pirating anything, just friendly lending stuff!). Tomorrow, you might no be able to. Heck, you might not even be able to listen to it yourself anymore if the editor decides so. Everyone will agree that "stealing is bad". If you rob someone you deprive them of their property, which is a prejudice. The problem that purely digital content is facing is that you're not depriving anyone of anything by copying the content: copying the content doesn't deprive the content of anything. Of course, if nobody buys, there won't be anything to copy anymore. We all agree on that one too. But the issues around digital content are major ones, and they need to be addressed in a serious way. But not the way they are now: what seems like a very serious difficulty for the music and movie industry is actually a potential gold mine. If they "win" their way over digital content, they'll be able to control everyone, every second of the day. Because obviously pretty much everything we deal with will be digital content sooner or later, and total control over all media content means total control over people using it. To regain our privacy, we might have one day to go back to living in caves.
Oh wait, their so-called "metric" is hilarious. They claim Windows is more secure because they have released less fixes. How much funnier can it get? In the time it takes for this "interview", millions of Windows boxes get infected.;-)
Microsoft seems totally obsessive about claiming Windows is more secure than Linux. They just keep saying that. It's getting old. Don't they have anything else to say?
Of course, not only is that claim not true, but it also doesn't mean squat when you know what Microsoft means when they say "security". Maybe what they need, after all, is a dictionary.
I don't care about "rewarding" anyone for supporting or even using Firefox. I use it because it's open, maintained by a bunch of clever guys, it lets me do everything I want to do and more... That's the only reward it needs. And the last thing it needs is certainly those commercial, binary-only, and prone to spyware toolbars and other applets. You can find anything you need amongst the non-commercial extensions. At any rate, I would maybe use a "Yahoo thing" if and only if they open the source code. If not, they can choke with it.
Initially, the main rationale behind X.org was license issues with Xfree86 - which, apparently, was not all that "free". But because many have quickly switched to X.org, I'm not sure Xfree86 has still a future. I don't know. Anyway, it seems to still be maintained: see http://xfree86.org/.
Isn't that exactly what Microsoft has been claiming about security? "Hide everything so we're safe". What they actually mean is that their software is not safe, but THEY at Microsoft (or here, Symantec) are safe because no one knows it's their fault.;-)
Of course, a classic FPGA architecture wouldn't cut it. But there are some more advanced architectures that are being tested already, that allow extremely fast reprogramming. Imagine if some areas of your processor could be reprogrammed in the time it takes for, say, a context switch. And of course the underlying OS needs to be written so as to optimize the processor's use at any given time.
You make a good point here. To add to what you said, I think we don't really need more "raw power" (at least, not for general use), but we need more "intelligent" use of the available power. We are a few who think the future is some kind of "soft core" where the available cells could perform different functions over time. Kind of like a super-scalar, on-the-fly reprogrammable FPGA. Think of how much of a "classic" processor is just a huge waste of ressources, most of the time. We need to improve on that.
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Dell has been Intel's kiss ass for decades. Can you begin to imagine how their commercial relationship would be rotting if they switched to AMD for *some* of their products? All technical matters aside, seriously: how could they do that? If they did, I'm sure someone would even be fearing for his own life...
You're right about code complexity. Generally speaking, it's an almost obvious matter of fact that the less complex your code is, the less prone it is to errors.
That being said, you're talking about automated testing. This is also what I was referring to earlier. But automated testing is not a formal proof.
Cutting on code complexity is a double-edged sword though. Usually (but not always), the less complex your code, the less efficient and the bigger it tends to get. If you want to keep it simple, you have to make a lot of trade-offs.
The critical parts of your code should always be totally independent, self-sufficient, as much as possible. This is what makes it easy to test and validate.
This is a very good point. Anyway, the guy who thinks that every single path of code has to be proven by the developer in some critical environment settings is just daydreaming. It doesn't work this way. And as Knuth insightfully says, it can't even work. If engineers were really required to do this, nothing would get accomplished at all, or very little. And all the proofs would just guarantee that something has been overlooked anyway - and that it will fail at some point. Proper, intensive testing is the only way to go. And certainly not by the same people that wrote the code. That won't work either. This is also why I think a developer's proof on their own code wouldn't be worth much. You can't be on both sides. Granted mathematicians do this, but this is very different: they usually don't have any real time constraint, most of their work is not "practical" in any way and last but not least, their work has to be peer reviewed a lot before being validated. This is how it works in the academic world. It can't work this way in the industrial world, because obviously it would take too much time and it would pose IP issues as well. Open source is a bit like this - but the day when safety-critical, commercial devices will be open-sourced for the good of all is still very, very far away.
I'm thinking maybe Google should "cute thing out". They're not that pretty as it is.
I wish we wouldn't call that "journalism".
And of course, Windows CE is reliable. Uh huh yeah. That's right people.
I'm so eager to discover how many security holes they have added to IE 7...
One friend has a Dell PDA, and the darn thing uses Windows CE. Anyway, it just gets stuck and needs rebooting all the time! I've never seen such an annoying device.
Anyway, to the point: it's very obvious that this kind of "deal" is always made between non-technical people. Always like that. A non-tech from MS convinced a non-tech from Nokia. Then engineers have to do with it. There also might be some hidden cash in between, but shoosh. What do we know...
How to make money off something others give away for free?
There is almost nothing worth the buy compared to another "desktop-oriented" distro. Slick look? You can have thousands of "looks" for your KDE or Gnome desktop for free. From the screenshots, Linspire obviously uses KDE. They could have at least developed a new desktop environment if they wanted to sell something "different". As for security and overall "up-to-date-ness", I'm pretty sure you're well better off with one of the major distros out there.
And last but not least, the very fact that they strive hard to get people to like them because they are trying to be close to Windows enough to interest them is a failure, in my opinion, right from the start. People who like Windows, well, they just want the real thing. Everyone knows, let's not deny it, that even the ones who can't afford Windows but like it - they will use pirated copies instead of using Linux or another OS.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against selling service around a Linux distro - but Linspire? Seems like you don't get much aside from marketing. Which is better for them than it is for you.
I already said that not long ago, but absolutely *nothing* beats the Mac Mini for the time being in terms of processing power and smallest form factor. Ok, that and the price: a Mac Mini is rather cheap. Oh, and some people like challenge and like to "make things happen" instead of just gobbling up what they're being given. So there, there is every reason why someone would want to run Linux on a Mac Mini. Of course, I could also mention that a recent Linux kernel is more advanced that the OS X kernel. We could go on... Anyway, why would you want to see a "main factor" or even a philosophy behind a simple purchase. There is not necessarily. But as I said, find me one single device that is as small and as powerful as the Mac Mini. I bet you you can't.
Good point here. Exactly. But like others have said, the entertainment industry in its whole is really what controls our lives even more so that governments. Or at least, this is the way it's heading.
I don't know about PostgreSQL, but with MySQL you can. I guess you'll still need to buy a license (see http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/), but it's definitely much cheaper than Oracle and some users say it's much better too.
But what wouldn't we do for more money? Why not license software according to the number of pipeline stages too? Or MIPS? Or the hard drive size it's installed on? Imagination is the limit. :D
Just because he would earn 10 times more money than he would in a scientific/engineering job.
Oh yeah? Like communism ever promoted freedom? Collectivism is the very opposite of freedom! If you share freely with one another, it's anything but communism. If you're forced to share and have no freedom of speech, that's communism.
Have you never helped out a neighbor or family for free? And you knew you could ask for a favor later on? Does that make you a communist? Dear Lord!
Not wasting hours to get rid of virii and spyware makes Firefox light years faster than IE too. ;-)
Ultimately, I think you're right: what all this is really about, is control over people. They want to control what you do with what they sell: something that would never have been credible even 10 years ago. Today, you can still buy a CD and lend it to a friend (let's not talk about pirating anything, just friendly lending stuff!). Tomorrow, you might no be able to. Heck, you might not even be able to listen to it yourself anymore if the editor decides so. Everyone will agree that "stealing is bad". If you rob someone you deprive them of their property, which is a prejudice. The problem that purely digital content is facing is that you're not depriving anyone of anything by copying the content: copying the content doesn't deprive the content of anything. Of course, if nobody buys, there won't be anything to copy anymore. We all agree on that one too. But the issues around digital content are major ones, and they need to be addressed in a serious way. But not the way they are now: what seems like a very serious difficulty for the music and movie industry is actually a potential gold mine. If they "win" their way over digital content, they'll be able to control everyone, every second of the day. Because obviously pretty much everything we deal with will be digital content sooner or later, and total control over all media content means total control over people using it. To regain our privacy, we might have one day to go back to living in caves.
... the concept of security holes. :D
Oh wait, their so-called "metric" is hilarious. They claim Windows is more secure because they have released less fixes. How much funnier can it get? In the time it takes for this "interview", millions of Windows boxes get infected. ;-)
Microsoft seems totally obsessive about claiming Windows is more secure than Linux. They just keep saying that. It's getting old. Don't they have anything else to say?
Of course, not only is that claim not true, but it also doesn't mean squat when you know what Microsoft means when they say "security". Maybe what they need, after all, is a dictionary.
I don't care about "rewarding" anyone for supporting or even using Firefox. I use it because it's open, maintained by a bunch of clever guys, it lets me do everything I want to do and more... That's the only reward it needs. And the last thing it needs is certainly those commercial, binary-only, and prone to spyware toolbars and other applets. You can find anything you need amongst the non-commercial extensions. At any rate, I would maybe use a "Yahoo thing" if and only if they open the source code. If not, they can choke with it.
Initially, the main rationale behind X.org was license issues with Xfree86 - which, apparently, was not all that "free". But because many have quickly switched to X.org, I'm not sure Xfree86 has still a future. I don't know. Anyway, it seems to still be maintained: see http://xfree86.org/.
Isn't that exactly what Microsoft has been claiming about security? "Hide everything so we're safe". What they actually mean is that their software is not safe, but THEY at Microsoft (or here, Symantec) are safe because no one knows it's their fault. ;-)
Of course, a classic FPGA architecture wouldn't cut it. But there are some more advanced architectures that are being tested already, that allow extremely fast reprogramming. Imagine if some areas of your processor could be reprogrammed in the time it takes for, say, a context switch. And of course the underlying OS needs to be written so as to optimize the processor's use at any given time.
You make a good point here. To add to what you said, I think we don't really need more "raw power" (at least, not for general use), but we need more "intelligent" use of the available power. We are a few who think the future is some kind of "soft core" where the available cells could perform different functions over time. Kind of like a super-scalar, on-the-fly reprogrammable FPGA. Think of how much of a "classic" processor is just a huge waste of ressources, most of the time. We need to improve on that.