I have tried many different flavors of Linux. Fedora, Slackware, Debian, Mandrake and my new favorite Suse 9.2. I have to say that my subjective impression of Mandrake is that it is just odd. This doesn't surprise me then that they would make some odd business decisions.
Many of the distros features seemed like they had been thrown in with the basic intent of trying to be like Windows and now this naming scheme seems to remind me of the same thing.
I think we are starting to realize that after the.com boom, bust and now resurgence these businesses are just like all other businesses. You will find the rebel upstarts who do rocket to fame and fortune, the solid business model, and the Enron type corruption.
During the boom it seemed the.coms were beyond real business....almost "magical". The sector is maturing and along with this comes all the problems that have plagued business since time began because behind all the slick tech are people, common ordinary imperfect people (sorta like Soylent Green----IT"S PEOPLE!!!)
I do think that there will be good times to come in the tech sector, but this will need to be founded on the same fundamentals that all successful businesses require.
This goes back to the days of "Bait and Switch" advertising in newspapers back in the 70's. Certainly, if the restaurant posted prices, then they do have a legitimate responsibility to keep that sort of "Time Sensitive" information up to date.
"The complaining customer had notified both the restaurant and the Restaurant Association of New Zealand that the website menu was out of date and misleading, but the operator, despite knowing about the issue, had done nothing to correct the website."
This sends a good message to commercial web site operators and e-commerce sites that they have to maintain current and correct information and can't just say "We didn't have time to update things.....so not our problem"
I don't think I need to worry about my blog I set up one weekend a couple months ago and haven't touched since......do I ???
This is just another example of how the DRM mind set values profit over innovation. Expect to see more of this type of thing as the DRM philosophy permeates society and business culture.
Was it random or did it use strategy?
on
Machine Learns Games
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· Score: 2, Funny
I am not sure there is any strategy involved in rock-paper-scissor?
It would need to decide what type of person it was playing against. A male would probably be more inclined to "Rock". Unless it thought that it's opponenent would be thinking that and would therefore choose "Paper" . Unless it's opponent would think that the computer would know that and would choose "Rock" because that would be the obvious choice and would know that the computer would know so.......
I think this Article includes some points that I see developing.
"Both FOSS and commercial versions may coexist, but commercial forces usually dominate the innovative process at this point."
As Corporate America embraces the OSS culture it will take what was once an "IDEAL" and find ways of turning it into something that is good for the Corporation.
I think a great example is in the Music Industry. A genre of music will develop in some obscure place creating something living and evolving and vibrant. Then the big record companies will discover it and then it starts. They milk it for every cent available until that great sound becomes lost in the watered down mass of "product" that they churn out. Soon the creative subculture has been bought and sold and cloned so many times it losses everything that was good about it. Could this be starting to happen with OSS. Red Hat has become a corporate entity. Suse is on it's way. When the cash offers becomes so large that OSS developers start to sweat and their knees get weak....will the "IDEAL" be enough any more? Will the culture survive or will it sell out?
I don't see, even basic computer users, wanting to give up local control of their computers. My IT department is looking to roll out a Terminal Server as a way of saving IT budget. This will run the OS and applications on Thin Clients from a centralized Terminal Server. Many of the users immediately balk at losing control of their local computer. Even those who aren't very computer literate. It is just a normal human reaction to someone taking away control.
Into this add the current distrust of anything being done over the internet. How many people do you know who refuse to do "X" over the internet? With "X" being: home banking, shopping with a credit card, give out personal info, etc. I know quite a few and they are mostly the less informed users. I understand what an SSL encrypted connection is and basic internet security where as average users don't.
This entire concept just goes against too many facets of basic human nature to take off. In my opinion people would rather have a spyware infested mess of a computer of their own that allow some one from outside to take control away from them
The really big advances can't be put into a list spanning a year. Propably the biggest acheivement is the mapping of the Genome, which took years and is still being added to and made more complete. Not to mention the foundation of scientific advances that the project built itself on. I am sure there are a few "Eureka!" moments in science, but really this can't be looked at with an "MTV" short attention span perspective. It makes an end of year list but that is realy all that it is.
Thanks for the reply. This single workstation is my limited experience with Solaris. It came as a work station with an expensive piece of scientific equipment (500 mhz NMR). It runs the instruments hardware and the instruments applications for data analysis. Unfortunately, we were required to use Solaris 9 because the applications won't run on Solaris 10. I didn't realize that there was such a significant change between 9 and 10. I just found it personally funny that the packaged Browser as installed couldn't load a JAVA web page.
At least you replied with a reasonable remark to my post rather than just hurling insults like the other "holier than thou" schmucks that replied.
Thanks for all the "kind words". I was just making the point that if you install Linux, it comes packaged with a wonderful browser - Konqueror- that is up to date and handles anything you throw at it. The install of Solaris came with a browser that is basically obsolete and can't even handle SUN's own JAVA. This is coming from a company that is trying to gain ground against Linux. "Yes" you can install a different web browser and "NO" that isn't the only thing to use to judge an OS. It was just an observation comparing the TWO. Even the FREE distros of Linux manage to do better than SUN.
We received a Sun Blade 2500 running Solaris 9 with an NMR that our company bought. I thought it would be cool to learn some Solaris. I was very disappointed. The software seems to make no sense, the provided applications are old ( it comes with Netscape 4.7x as the only provided browser). I was surprised to have been so under whelmed.
Sun seems to be SO conservative in regards to their software that they seem to be paralyzed. I fired up Netscape 4.7x to find some answers on questions I had about the OS and when I hit a site that used JAVA the browser told me that the version of Netscape I was running didn't support the version of JAVA the Webpage was using!! This is what came with a standard install of Solaris?
I am much more comfortable with Linux and so understand I am a bit biased, but I just don't see SUN and Solaris being a threat to Linux unless they really put out a better product bundled with more current software.
It is nice to see FireFox getting some well deserved press. It needs as much as it can get because it has a huge hurdle to overcome. It isn't pre-installed on computers. This means that it requires people to do something./. readers enjoy improving their computers with great software, where as your average computer user wants to point and click with as little extra effort as possible. Some how the average pperson needs to be convinced that there is a greater benefit in installing FireFox than in taking no action at all.
Along with this hurdle, sit down with an IE user and install FireFox.....then watch them use it. They have no idea how to use tabbed browsing and will open browser window after browser window, because they don't know any better. And the extensions are great, but well beyond 90% of users ability to understand.
So....Remember....Don't just tell your family and friends about FireFox. Istall it for them(along with Flash, Shockwave and Java} and show them how to open multiple tabs. Install a couple extensions for them. This will take maybe 30 minutes, but it will create a FireFox user. Don't just spread the word...Show people first hand!
Once DMR is embedded into operating systems and hardware firmware this little problem will be solved. Ever since the printing press became the technology of mass communication, we have been dealing with finding a way to put this cat back into the bag. Finally, the large corporations are on the verge of getting control over a situation that has run rampant as newer technologies have developed. I, for one, will be happy when I won't have all these complex choices to make and can sit back and enjoy what I am told to consume, when and how I am told to, with out having to worry if I am somehow taking food out of starving artist mouths. Soon my computer,DVD player, CD player, etc will make those decisions obsolete and I can sleep with out worry.
Thanks Corporate America. Don't change your business model to take advantage of new technology. It is so much better to just take those decisions away from your customers and keep on producing what you always have!
BLEH! I feel sick now!
This sounds like a perfect solution for those parents who have let the TV babysit their kids for years. They rely on content filters to monitor the kids internet usage and only gauge what the kids listen to and watch based upon the current rating system. Now they don't even have to ask where the kids are going.
This sounds like another tool for un-involved, distant and lazy parents to pretend like they care about their kids, but it only sends the message that "we don't trust you".
What happened to talking and communicating to kids, teaching them right from wrong and then trusting them to do the right thing.
It is really in the BitTorrent communities best interest to try and police itself. BitTorrent is not anonymous and is in fact easier for authorities to track down abusers than certian other P2P programs. Maybe a disclaimer or notice needs to be added to the installer and GUI saying this. If the P2P crowd realized there are better alternatives to BitTorrent for the downloading of Copy Protected materials (which will never be stopped) then BitTorrent can go back to being a great way of distributing legal content.
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I have tried many different flavors of Linux. Fedora, Slackware, Debian, Mandrake and my new favorite Suse 9.2. I have to say that my subjective impression of Mandrake is that it is just odd. This doesn't surprise me then that they would make some odd business decisions.
Many of the distros features seemed like they had been thrown in with the basic intent of trying to be like Windows and now this naming scheme seems to remind me of the same thing.
'Limited Edition 2005'= 'Windows ME'Just sounds too similar for my taste!
I think we are starting to realize that after the .com boom, bust and now resurgence these businesses are just like all other businesses. You will find the rebel upstarts who do rocket to fame and fortune, the solid business model, and the Enron type corruption.
During the boom it seemed the .coms were beyond real business....almost "magical". The sector is maturing and along with this comes all the problems that have plagued business since time began because behind all the slick tech are people, common ordinary imperfect people (sorta like Soylent Green----IT"S PEOPLE!!!)
I do think that there will be good times to come in the tech sector, but this will need to be founded on the same fundamentals that all successful businesses require.
This goes back to the days of "Bait and Switch" advertising in newspapers back in the 70's. Certainly, if the restaurant posted prices, then they do have a legitimate responsibility to keep that sort of "Time Sensitive" information up to date.
"The complaining customer had notified both the restaurant and the Restaurant Association of New Zealand that the website menu was out of date and misleading, but the operator, despite knowing about the issue, had done nothing to correct the website."
This sends a good message to commercial web site operators and e-commerce sites that they have to maintain current and correct information and can't just say "We didn't have time to update things.....so not our problem"
I don't think I need to worry about my blog I set up one weekend a couple months ago and haven't touched since......do I ???This is just another example of how the DRM mind set values profit over innovation. Expect to see more of this type of thing as the DRM philosophy permeates society and business culture.
It would need to decide what type of person it was playing against. A male would probably be more inclined to "Rock". Unless it thought that it's opponenent would be thinking that and would therefore choose "Paper" . Unless it's opponent would think that the computer would know that and would choose "Rock" because that would be the obvious choice and would know that the computer would know so.......
That is rock-paper-scissor strategy??
I think of a beach full of middle aged German men all wearing their favorite Speedo swim wear.....I think I will pass.
"Both FOSS and commercial versions may coexist, but commercial forces usually dominate the innovative process at this point."
As Corporate America embraces the OSS culture it will take what was once an "IDEAL" and find ways of turning it into something that is good for the Corporation.
I think a great example is in the Music Industry. A genre of music will develop in some obscure place creating something living and evolving and vibrant. Then the big record companies will discover it and then it starts. They milk it for every cent available until that great sound becomes lost in the watered down mass of "product" that they churn out. Soon the creative subculture has been bought and sold and cloned so many times it losses everything that was good about it. Could this be starting to happen with OSS. Red Hat has become a corporate entity. Suse is on it's way. When the cash offers becomes so large that OSS developers start to sweat and their knees get weak....will the "IDEAL" be enough any more? Will the culture survive or will it sell out?
I don't see, even basic computer users, wanting to give up local control of their computers. My IT department is looking to roll out a Terminal Server as a way of saving IT budget. This will run the OS and applications on Thin Clients from a centralized Terminal Server. Many of the users immediately balk at losing control of their local computer. Even those who aren't very computer literate. It is just a normal human reaction to someone taking away control. Into this add the current distrust of anything being done over the internet. How many people do you know who refuse to do "X" over the internet? With "X" being: home banking, shopping with a credit card, give out personal info, etc. I know quite a few and they are mostly the less informed users. I understand what an SSL encrypted connection is and basic internet security where as average users don't. This entire concept just goes against too many facets of basic human nature to take off. In my opinion people would rather have a spyware infested mess of a computer of their own that allow some one from outside to take control away from them
The really big advances can't be put into a list spanning a year. Propably the biggest acheivement is the mapping of the Genome, which took years and is still being added to and made more complete. Not to mention the foundation of scientific advances that the project built itself on. I am sure there are a few "Eureka!" moments in science, but really this can't be looked at with an "MTV" short attention span perspective. It makes an end of year list but that is realy all that it is.
This is just what I need for that transparent Lucite(tm) computer case. A transparent MOBO!!!
It may not have been a crime, but I am sure his Karma went down.
Thanks for the reply. This single workstation is my limited experience with Solaris. It came as a work station with an expensive piece of scientific equipment (500 mhz NMR). It runs the instruments hardware and the instruments applications for data analysis. Unfortunately, we were required to use Solaris 9 because the applications won't run on Solaris 10. I didn't realize that there was such a significant change between 9 and 10. I just found it personally funny that the packaged Browser as installed couldn't load a JAVA web page. At least you replied with a reasonable remark to my post rather than just hurling insults like the other "holier than thou" schmucks that replied.
Thanks for all the "kind words". I was just making the point that if you install Linux, it comes packaged with a wonderful browser - Konqueror- that is up to date and handles anything you throw at it. The install of Solaris came with a browser that is basically obsolete and can't even handle SUN's own JAVA. This is coming from a company that is trying to gain ground against Linux. "Yes" you can install a different web browser and "NO" that isn't the only thing to use to judge an OS. It was just an observation comparing the TWO. Even the FREE distros of Linux manage to do better than SUN.
We received a Sun Blade 2500 running Solaris 9 with an NMR that our company bought. I thought it would be cool to learn some Solaris. I was very disappointed. The software seems to make no sense, the provided applications are old ( it comes with Netscape 4.7x as the only provided browser). I was surprised to have been so under whelmed. Sun seems to be SO conservative in regards to their software that they seem to be paralyzed. I fired up Netscape 4.7x to find some answers on questions I had about the OS and when I hit a site that used JAVA the browser told me that the version of Netscape I was running didn't support the version of JAVA the Webpage was using!! This is what came with a standard install of Solaris? I am much more comfortable with Linux and so understand I am a bit biased, but I just don't see SUN and Solaris being a threat to Linux unless they really put out a better product bundled with more current software.
It is nice to see FireFox getting some well deserved press. It needs as much as it can get because it has a huge hurdle to overcome. It isn't pre-installed on computers. This means that it requires people to do something. /. readers enjoy improving their computers with great software, where as your average computer user wants to point and click with as little extra effort as possible. Some how the average pperson needs to be convinced that there is a greater benefit in installing FireFox than in taking no action at all.
Along with this hurdle, sit down with an IE user and install FireFox.....then watch them use it. They have no idea how to use tabbed browsing and will open browser window after browser window, because they don't know any better. And the extensions are great, but well beyond 90% of users ability to understand.
So....Remember....Don't just tell your family and friends about FireFox. Istall it for them(along with Flash, Shockwave and Java} and show them how to open multiple tabs. Install a couple extensions for them. This will take maybe 30 minutes, but it will create a FireFox user. Don't just spread the word...Show people first hand!
Use FireFox!! There is even an extension called Spoof Stick.
Once DMR is embedded into operating systems and hardware firmware this little problem will be solved. Ever since the printing press became the technology of mass communication, we have been dealing with finding a way to put this cat back into the bag. Finally, the large corporations are on the verge of getting control over a situation that has run rampant as newer technologies have developed. I, for one, will be happy when I won't have all these complex choices to make and can sit back and enjoy what I am told to consume, when and how I am told to, with out having to worry if I am somehow taking food out of starving artist mouths. Soon my computer,DVD player, CD player, etc will make those decisions obsolete and I can sleep with out worry. Thanks Corporate America. Don't change your business model to take advantage of new technology. It is so much better to just take those decisions away from your customers and keep on producing what you always have! BLEH! I feel sick now!
witty retort!!
You sound like a 'wonderful' parent. You must really help your kids self-esteem and make them feel loved. No wonder you posted Anonymous!
This sounds like a perfect solution for those parents who have let the TV babysit their kids for years. They rely on content filters to monitor the kids internet usage and only gauge what the kids listen to and watch based upon the current rating system. Now they don't even have to ask where the kids are going. This sounds like another tool for un-involved, distant and lazy parents to pretend like they care about their kids, but it only sends the message that "we don't trust you". What happened to talking and communicating to kids, teaching them right from wrong and then trusting them to do the right thing.
It is really in the BitTorrent communities best interest to try and police itself. BitTorrent is not anonymous and is in fact easier for authorities to track down abusers than certian other P2P programs. Maybe a disclaimer or notice needs to be added to the installer and GUI saying this. If the P2P crowd realized there are better alternatives to BitTorrent for the downloading of Copy Protected materials (which will never be stopped) then BitTorrent can go back to being a great way of distributing legal content.