While there are certainly people who are clearly depressed, most people I know who are on anti-depressants are perfectly normal. They mistake the occasional lack of motivation or bad day for depression, and it seems doctors love to write prescriptions for antidepressants with little or no questioning if they are needed (kickbacks?). My frame of comparison for "normal" is a person I know who is truly bipolar (it's unmistakable, and medication is necessary).
Does no one buy any of the enormous quantity of shrink-wrapped software at your local store?
The availability of third-party software for Linux desktops is increasing. There are a number of modern games released for Linux. Moneydance is a personal finance manager that is a Quicken replacement. Of course, there is little room for Norton and McAffee, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to make money on Linux/UNIX. Anything written in Java should work in Linux, too.
While those piles of $3 junkware at dollar stores are probably useless, the other domains of Windows-only software are slowly shrinking, I think. The ultimate verification of this trend will be when companies like Adobe cave in (beyond Acrobat Reader).
Desktop Linux is actually quite good. Good enough that Novell, Sun, Linspire, Xandros, etc. are selling, right now, products directed towards home users and regular business users.
For a much much lower per-seat licensing cost than Microsoft can offer, a business can equip their employees with a good well-integrated GUI, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox, and tons of other stuff. Seriously, what do businesses really need beyond StarOffice/OO.org, Evolution, and Firefox, especially when they can save hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in expenses?
Microsoft's strategic advantage is waning pretty quickly, IMO.
The article above is clearly biased against Sun. Sun has said openly they are not out to sue anyone, and that their intents with the CDDL and patent grant is to actually prevent lawsuits. Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of interest in the matter, so his opinions should be read in context. For example, he works for OSRM, which is an insurance company who stands to make money from inflating the perceived risk regarding patents. He will say otherwise, but the timing and veracity of his comments surrounding the announcement of OpenSolaris are quite a coincidence. He also has vested interests in two or more Linux distributions, so of course he sides with the Linux fanboys on issues beyond patents.
Groklaw has been more balanced, in that they at least posted articles following up their initial set of questions about the CDDL. Of course, people commenting on the articles at Groklaw generally sound like JFK conspiracy theorists, so don't take them too seriously, either.
Let Sun prove themselves in their actions over the next year. OpenSolaris should be out around June or July, so they need a good year for people to get a feel for how all that will work. If Jonathan Schwartz were to ever pull off a mask revealing a big green patent ogre, then you can say I was wrong. But the likelihood of that is nil.
For the second one, a hard link points to the inode for the actual file, while a soft link points to the file's directory entry. Soft links simply become invalid when the file is deleted. All hard links have to be deleted for the file to actually be deleted from the filesystem.
Why isn't OpenBoot more popular? It's awesome to be able to multi-boot systems with a half dozen operating systems without that Lilo/Grub nonsense. The OpenBoot PROM resides on the motherboard, so you just tell it which hard drive and partition to boot from. Apparently the PROM is also a complete Forth programming environment, but that's beyond my experience with it. My favorite part, for the rare time it is a life saver, is the OS-independent access to the hardware device tree and diagnostic routines.
I've had stack protection for quite some time with Solaris and OpenBSD. The Windows platform is a few years late to the party; doesn't Microsoft realize how much easier their life would be if they acted earlier?
Companies with Windows are like a person persisting to wear worn-out shoes. They're uncomfortable, they cause blisters, they don't keep water out, yet they keep them, because going barefoot is worse, I guess. The software industry still has a lot of growing-up to do.
No, I'm not joking. Groklaw is one-sided. If you read the other information out there (like the link in my sig), the CDDL actually _protects_ all code under the CDDL from patent lawsuits. Sun wants to respond to the reality of "patent terrorists" in a real way, part of which is their grant of the patents in OpenSolaris. They are releasing OpenSolaris as a known _non_infringing_ code base. The comments about lawsuits by Microsoft are FUD, pure and simple.
And, if you read later in groklaw, they actually weakened their stance. You only read their first set of questions about the CDDL, which are perfect for Slashdotters who really like to take things out of context. You also can't ignore that right at the very top of Groklaw's website it says "IANAL"! So why do you have to put so much weight on their opinions?
If Sun fails at anything, it will be in trying to educate people about their open source efforts. People want simple things like, "Me like Jane, me hit Jane with rock!" Instead, the patents issue in software is a bit beyond that. It goes beyond just GPL vs. BSD.
In summary, don't be a Slashdot sheep. If you read around, there is a consensus that the CDDL isn't all bad. There's even a project called ZoneBSD starting, that plans to use CDDL code in a BSD project!
What is so sad about a lot of comments at Slashdot, is they read like right-wing religious wackos. They want to burn open source licenses like banned books. Is it not possible for people to be above this?!?
There are lots of decent-paying jobs in healthcare, for example, that need only two-year degrees. Add in the fact that a two-year degree is more affordable, there's going to be one less bill each month after graduation.
In summary: when IBM and Sun open source something, they do it for real, and when Microsoft does it, they would just as well have not done it.
It took Sun years to produce OpenSolaris. They had their team of lawyers on it, studied the problem, went with the CDDL for many reasons, and, finally, after five years, will release a full open source operating system. And the fruit of their efforts is an OS that should basically be immune from patent lawsuits--this is a good thing.
IBM most definitely went through a similar process with their patent grant and their Linux efforts, with teams of lawyers, and lots of scrutiny. The result is also genuine open source software and generally a positive response all-around.
The basic conclusion, here, is that to do open source properly takes a lot of effort, but once it's done, it's done and can't be taken back. Conversely, Microsoft does little or none of the above, producing a shared source system that is of no use to the OSS communities but is also of no use to Microsoft's customers. It's a marketing buzzword line-item but no substance, apparently.
Right now, there are either OSS operating systems (Linux, BSDs, OpenSolaris) and closed operating systems (Windows, other niche systems). The OSS ones are growing but Windows has nowhere to grow to. I think the result will be Windows being a minority operating system in about a decade, because everyone will see the OSS sytems as the path of least resistence.
I said nothing about planning out your life. How do you feel about the starry-eyed teachers and parents planning out your life several years ago? Was their advice good, in hindsight? How are your finances, now?
I don't consider children (kids) second-class in any measure; it's the schools that treat them as second-class. Zero tolerance policies, for example, are probably the worst cop-out for our kids, ever. The reason I feel most kids don't know what they want, is because what they were spoon fed in public school is largely wrong. With the overall decomposition of families, what do children have to go by? Kids with good strong families seem to be in the minority, today.
Whoever said that the ISAs would condense down to only x86, PowerPC, and SPARC appears to have been correct. Alpha is gone, mostly. MIPS is gone in the desktop/server, mostly. Itanium kinda came and went, it appears. PA-RISC is still popular...but but HP wanted Itanium.
Actually, they spin so fast, they overshoot 180 degrees. Go into a room with a group of chilren with a TV, turn it on (it really doesn't matter what to), and see the reaction. All the kids will drop what they are doing and will be fixed in a gaze towards the TV. It is really sad, IMO.
It would be interesting to see brain scans of kids before and after watching Disney or Nickelodian. I'd bet the "after" scans would probably resemble some guy getting a BJ from a whore (no commitment, all stimulation, no thought).
"Then maybe universities could stop wasting their time training employees and concentrate on training problem solvers."
Ah, but would they willingly give up the tuition income? There is often a duality about what colleges say to prospective students--so it isn't just high school that is the problem.
If you don't like it, the universities don't have to change - you have to find one that suits your desires.
One problem with this is that kids don't know what they desire. All they have is the ideology fed to them in high school. Once committed to a university, it is hard to change, when continuing betting on this path is weighed against the effort of changing paths. Kids get overcommitted too soon, and it is very easy to end up invested so much that change is basically impossible.
Perhaps, if all you want is to make a lot of money, you should skip college and head straight to a trade school that will teach you how to make a lot of money.
The question is, what exactly is it that you value in life?
I basically agree with you. It's just that most kids are taught the opposite. Only the bottom performing people in school are quietly shuffled over to the military sign-up desks and vocational training desks. They make it seem as if the military and vocational training aren't good rewarding choices, when they most certainly can be. It's a sick groupthink centered around college degrees and the illusion of the corporate ladder and that future salaries will cover the debt.
I've also heard that NCLB drives lower-grade teachers to pass underperforming kids on to later-grade teachers, just so they get a better NCLB review. Is it really that terrible?
although I could probably complete it all in a day I am only about a third through, because I get bored and play some games instead.
This is because pretty much all modern kids have attention deficit disorder, IMO. Turn on the TV, and their heads will spin a 360 to watch it. Give them a choice between a novel and video games--they choose the games. Choose between beer and studies--they choose the beer. Is there any discipline, anymore? Zero tolerance policies are not discipline, btw, they are terrorism against children.
I also forgot to mention that people with "lesser" degrees can retrain faster and respond to the job markets easier. Still paying off a degree, especially after a career change to something unrelated, really sucks. Now, that money is merely paying off a past, and not going towards owning a home.
"there seem to be many many people who view a degree as pointless unless it fast tracks you to a job."
The reason for this is that college is expensive! If you would feel comfortable not getting paid more than a nurse with a two-year degree, yet being piled in debt for ten years, all while knowing how to write a critique of Dante's Inferno, then more power to you...I guess.
Probably the worst thing about High School is that it barely resembles the "real world" at all. Only the most bureaucratic corporations resort to standardized testing for employees. Only the most inane HR departments think a degree is worth more than years of work experience. Yet, our schools drive these terrible things right into the skulls of our kids.
Why are kids so stressed out about the SAT and going to college? Because we make them that way!
Quite honestly, telling an average kid that going to college will make them more successful is a lie. Pay-wise, they can easily do better with a two-year degree. Family-wise, they'll probably be better off not being so career driven, anyway, so that their own kids will be better adjusted about what success really is.
Slashdot Mirror
While there are certainly people who are clearly depressed, most people I know who are on anti-depressants are perfectly normal. They mistake the occasional lack of motivation or bad day for depression, and it seems doctors love to write prescriptions for antidepressants with little or no questioning if they are needed (kickbacks?). My frame of comparison for "normal" is a person I know who is truly bipolar (it's unmistakable, and medication is necessary).
Does no one buy any of the enormous quantity of shrink-wrapped software at your local store?
The availability of third-party software for Linux desktops is increasing. There are a number of modern games released for Linux. Moneydance is a personal finance manager that is a Quicken replacement. Of course, there is little room for Norton and McAffee, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to make money on Linux/UNIX. Anything written in Java should work in Linux, too.
While those piles of $3 junkware at dollar stores are probably useless, the other domains of Windows-only software are slowly shrinking, I think. The ultimate verification of this trend will be when companies like Adobe cave in (beyond Acrobat Reader).
Desktop Linux is actually quite good. Good enough that Novell, Sun, Linspire, Xandros, etc. are selling, right now, products directed towards home users and regular business users.
For a much much lower per-seat licensing cost than Microsoft can offer, a business can equip their employees with a good well-integrated GUI, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox, and tons of other stuff. Seriously, what do businesses really need beyond StarOffice/OO.org, Evolution, and Firefox, especially when they can save hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in expenses?
Microsoft's strategic advantage is waning pretty quickly, IMO.
The article above is clearly biased against Sun. Sun has said openly they are not out to sue anyone, and that their intents with the CDDL and patent grant is to actually prevent lawsuits. Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of interest in the matter, so his opinions should be read in context. For example, he works for OSRM, which is an insurance company who stands to make money from inflating the perceived risk regarding patents. He will say otherwise, but the timing and veracity of his comments surrounding the announcement of OpenSolaris are quite a coincidence. He also has vested interests in two or more Linux distributions, so of course he sides with the Linux fanboys on issues beyond patents.
Groklaw has been more balanced, in that they at least posted articles following up their initial set of questions about the CDDL. Of course, people commenting on the articles at Groklaw generally sound like JFK conspiracy theorists, so don't take them too seriously, either.
Let Sun prove themselves in their actions over the next year. OpenSolaris should be out around June or July, so they need a good year for people to get a feel for how all that will work. If Jonathan Schwartz were to ever pull off a mask revealing a big green patent ogre, then you can say I was wrong. But the likelihood of that is nil.
BTW, this is the reason why hard links need to be within the same filesystem, but soft links can go anywhere.
For the second one, a hard link points to the inode for the actual file, while a soft link points to the file's directory entry. Soft links simply become invalid when the file is deleted. All hard links have to be deleted for the file to actually be deleted from the filesystem.
Why isn't OpenBoot more popular? It's awesome to be able to multi-boot systems with a half dozen operating systems without that Lilo/Grub nonsense. The OpenBoot PROM resides on the motherboard, so you just tell it which hard drive and partition to boot from. Apparently the PROM is also a complete Forth programming environment, but that's beyond my experience with it. My favorite part, for the rare time it is a life saver, is the OS-independent access to the hardware device tree and diagnostic routines.
I've had stack protection for quite some time with Solaris and OpenBSD. The Windows platform is a few years late to the party; doesn't Microsoft realize how much easier their life would be if they acted earlier?
Companies with Windows are like a person persisting to wear worn-out shoes. They're uncomfortable, they cause blisters, they don't keep water out, yet they keep them, because going barefoot is worse, I guess. The software industry still has a lot of growing-up to do.
"Alpha is popular too, and still outselling itanium..."
Irony, thy name is Hewlett Packard. PA-RISC is clearly out-selling Itanium, and if Alpha is too...LOL
No, I'm not joking. Groklaw is one-sided. If you read the other information out there (like the link in my sig), the CDDL actually _protects_ all code under the CDDL from patent lawsuits. Sun wants to respond to the reality of "patent terrorists" in a real way, part of which is their grant of the patents in OpenSolaris. They are releasing OpenSolaris as a known _non_infringing_ code base. The comments about lawsuits by Microsoft are FUD, pure and simple.
And, if you read later in groklaw, they actually weakened their stance. You only read their first set of questions about the CDDL, which are perfect for Slashdotters who really like to take things out of context. You also can't ignore that right at the very top of Groklaw's website it says "IANAL"! So why do you have to put so much weight on their opinions?
Sun Begins to Respond to Patent Questions. Sun Responds to Criticism of CDDL. But if you read, a lot of what Groklaw writes is pure opinion--often offered without any real basis. It's seems as if they will say "we don't like green jello", and all of a sudden green jello gets banned at Slashdot.
If Sun fails at anything, it will be in trying to educate people about their open source efforts. People want simple things like, "Me like Jane, me hit Jane with rock!" Instead, the patents issue in software is a bit beyond that. It goes beyond just GPL vs. BSD.
In summary, don't be a Slashdot sheep. If you read around, there is a consensus that the CDDL isn't all bad. There's even a project called ZoneBSD starting, that plans to use CDDL code in a BSD project!
What is so sad about a lot of comments at Slashdot, is they read like right-wing religious wackos. They want to burn open source licenses like banned books. Is it not possible for people to be above this?!?
There are lots of decent-paying jobs in healthcare, for example, that need only two-year degrees. Add in the fact that a two-year degree is more affordable, there's going to be one less bill each month after graduation.
In summary: when IBM and Sun open source something, they do it for real, and when Microsoft does it, they would just as well have not done it.
It took Sun years to produce OpenSolaris. They had their team of lawyers on it, studied the problem, went with the CDDL for many reasons, and, finally, after five years, will release a full open source operating system. And the fruit of their efforts is an OS that should basically be immune from patent lawsuits--this is a good thing.
IBM most definitely went through a similar process with their patent grant and their Linux efforts, with teams of lawyers, and lots of scrutiny. The result is also genuine open source software and generally a positive response all-around.
The basic conclusion, here, is that to do open source properly takes a lot of effort, but once it's done, it's done and can't be taken back. Conversely, Microsoft does little or none of the above, producing a shared source system that is of no use to the OSS communities but is also of no use to Microsoft's customers. It's a marketing buzzword line-item but no substance, apparently.
Right now, there are either OSS operating systems (Linux, BSDs, OpenSolaris) and closed operating systems (Windows, other niche systems). The OSS ones are growing but Windows has nowhere to grow to. I think the result will be Windows being a minority operating system in about a decade, because everyone will see the OSS sytems as the path of least resistence.
I said nothing about planning out your life. How do you feel about the starry-eyed teachers and parents planning out your life several years ago? Was their advice good, in hindsight? How are your finances, now?
I don't consider children (kids) second-class in any measure; it's the schools that treat them as second-class. Zero tolerance policies, for example, are probably the worst cop-out for our kids, ever. The reason I feel most kids don't know what they want, is because what they were spoon fed in public school is largely wrong. With the overall decomposition of families, what do children have to go by? Kids with good strong families seem to be in the minority, today.
Riker Microsystems is #1 in Eunics sales, not servers, specifically.
Whoever said that the ISAs would condense down to only x86, PowerPC, and SPARC appears to have been correct. Alpha is gone, mostly. MIPS is gone in the desktop/server, mostly. Itanium kinda came and went, it appears. PA-RISC is still popular...but but HP wanted Itanium.
Actually, they spin so fast, they overshoot 180 degrees. Go into a room with a group of chilren with a TV, turn it on (it really doesn't matter what to), and see the reaction. All the kids will drop what they are doing and will be fixed in a gaze towards the TV. It is really sad, IMO.
It would be interesting to see brain scans of kids before and after watching Disney or Nickelodian. I'd bet the "after" scans would probably resemble some guy getting a BJ from a whore (no commitment, all stimulation, no thought).
"Then maybe universities could stop wasting their time training employees and concentrate on training problem solvers."
Ah, but would they willingly give up the tuition income? There is often a duality about what colleges say to prospective students--so it isn't just high school that is the problem.
If you don't like it, the universities don't have to change - you have to find one that suits your desires.
One problem with this is that kids don't know what they desire. All they have is the ideology fed to them in high school. Once committed to a university, it is hard to change, when continuing betting on this path is weighed against the effort of changing paths. Kids get overcommitted too soon, and it is very easy to end up invested so much that change is basically impossible.
Perhaps, if all you want is to make a lot of money, you should skip college and head straight to a trade school that will teach you how to make a lot of money.
The question is, what exactly is it that you value in life?
I basically agree with you. It's just that most kids are taught the opposite. Only the bottom performing people in school are quietly shuffled over to the military sign-up desks and vocational training desks. They make it seem as if the military and vocational training aren't good rewarding choices, when they most certainly can be. It's a sick groupthink centered around college degrees and the illusion of the corporate ladder and that future salaries will cover the debt.
I've also heard that NCLB drives lower-grade teachers to pass underperforming kids on to later-grade teachers, just so they get a better NCLB review. Is it really that terrible?
although I could probably complete it all in a day I am only about a third through, because I get bored and play some games instead.
This is because pretty much all modern kids have attention deficit disorder, IMO. Turn on the TV, and their heads will spin a 360 to watch it. Give them a choice between a novel and video games--they choose the games. Choose between beer and studies--they choose the beer. Is there any discipline, anymore? Zero tolerance policies are not discipline, btw, they are terrorism against children.
I also forgot to mention that people with "lesser" degrees can retrain faster and respond to the job markets easier. Still paying off a degree, especially after a career change to something unrelated, really sucks. Now, that money is merely paying off a past, and not going towards owning a home.
"there seem to be many many people who view a degree as pointless unless it fast tracks you to a job."
The reason for this is that college is expensive! If you would feel comfortable not getting paid more than a nurse with a two-year degree, yet being piled in debt for ten years, all while knowing how to write a critique of Dante's Inferno, then more power to you...I guess.
Probably the worst thing about High School is that it barely resembles the "real world" at all. Only the most bureaucratic corporations resort to standardized testing for employees. Only the most inane HR departments think a degree is worth more than years of work experience. Yet, our schools drive these terrible things right into the skulls of our kids.
Why are kids so stressed out about the SAT and going to college? Because we make them that way!
Quite honestly, telling an average kid that going to college will make them more successful is a lie. Pay-wise, they can easily do better with a two-year degree. Family-wise, they'll probably be better off not being so career driven, anyway, so that their own kids will be better adjusted about what success really is.
It would be absolutely hilarious to see a Windows GPF on the screen upon walking into the theatre. Not much RAID 5 can do, then.