But then again, you are making money by SELLING A SERVICE not by making a program.
Unless that service is customising the OSS for a particular business? It's still programming. Written a great bug tracking system? Businesses will pay to have it integrate seamlessly into their corporate intranet or ldap server. Written some call management software? They will want a module that reads callerID to pop up a browser window with the person's contact details when the phone rings.
You need to get out of the shrink-wrap software mind-set. Every company works differently and has their own special needs. Customising to fit *their* work-flow is where the money is.
Which will happen when you set up an environment where anything goes as long as it increases shareholder value. For a funny satire on this, try reading Jennifer Nation.
* All governments are corrupt
I don't think the British government is corrupt, even though I don't agree with many of their policies. I guess with governments it doesn't matter how many bad apples there are, just how high up they get?
* Individuals are powerless when the two get together, unless they get together, too
Some look at the Internet today as some kind of lucky accident, but one has to wonder if nature was trying to find some kind of balance;-)
* Resistance is not futile, but is bloody
And produces some unlikely heros. Take for instance the McLibel case.
* You will be assimilated quicker if you buy Nikes, eat at McD's, use MS products...
...Microsoft deserves the price they set. However, no one said you had to buy it.
Certain US and EU high courts would disagree with this, as they set their price according to an illegally gained monopoly. Even other governments don't agree, as they use the threat of moving to OSS to negotiate huge discounts on MS software.
As for no one said you have to buy it... how many PC manufacturers give you the choice of not having Windows pre-installed?
Why not forever? A bad patent doesn't instantly become a good one after it's been a patent for 9 months.
Indeed. In fact why bother having the legislation at all if nothing changes but the patent holder waits 9 months before doing exactly what he was going to do anyway? With the avalanche of patents, no-one is going to find out if a patent affects them until the holder hits them with a law suit. If anything it's going to make patents even more 'submarine' than before.
Quite simply, Intel no longer uses CISC. Sure the instruction set is CISC, but it's all microcode reduced to RISC instructions underneath the hood (which was done WAAAY back with the Pentium II and may have partially been implemented on the original Pentium).
It's been a long time since I've studied micro-processor design, but since x86 is CISC this has a huge impact on the chip design. Instructions can take between 1 and a dozen clock cycles (more for certain obscure instructions) and the on-chip translator between the CISC and the micro-code used to take up most of the silicon and bumps up considerably the power requirements (last time I looked). There is very little the compiler can do about this. Hence the fact real RISC chips can blow any x86 chip out of the water at a much lower clock speed. As I say, my knowledge is few years old so corrections welcome.
How on EARTH did the parent get modded insightful? Ignoring even the fact the battery arguement has been rehashed a million times (I guess Eivind missed the dozens of posts on Slashdot about hydrogen fuel cells) but a next-gen electric motor that can extend the range of battery vehicles including the electric component of hybrid vehicles is great news. The extra acceleration is also important as this will help SELL clean-fuel cars.
RiscOS computers (previously called Acorn computers) have had the OS on a ROM for the last 16 years, but it doesn't stop you from running Linux on it.
In the UK it is already legislated that you can't mess with your hardware, and trying to mod a PS2 can land you in jail. You make a good point about the xbox, even though they failed, but if a 3rd party is making the machine then they don't have much incentive to lock it to Windows unless bribed by M$.
Operating systems are complex... Patches sometimes install new functionality... some commercial software is badly written... expensive hardware is usually more reliable than cheap hardware.. Are any of these actually news to anyone?
All important points. OS X manages to mask the complexity, unlike Windows. Just because the code underneath is complex doesn't mean it needs to be complex to use.
Patches that disrupt the user experience are also a big minus. For example the auto-update saturating the network in another post. Service packs that move functionality causing tech support headaches, mentioned in another post.
Commercial software being badly written is bad enough, but if it happens to be a driver installed under XP the whole OS becomes chronically unstable.
Inexpensive hardware being unreliable is also important. If Apple vets hardware better, but box shifters use unreliable hardware to shift cheap Wintel PCs, then the consumer pays their money and makes their choice.
The real indicator that he doesn't have a clue is that he could have saved $2000+ dollars by just installing Linux on his existing machine, rather than buying a new Mac.
Which distro? Easy to install such as Fedora or Manrake? Easy to update such as Gentoo or Debian? Be able to test is as a LiveCD first such as Mepis or Knoppix? Should it be KDE based or Gnome based? Where does he find out which distro suits his needs best?
It's not as easy as "just install Linux". Time is money.
I've seen some people trying to compare this to the Mac Mini. It's difficult to compare directly.
400MHz Samsung ARM9 processor
This will be blazingly fast as the OS is written in assembler, and is stored entirely in ROM so does not need to load from disc. My old 200MHz RiscPC used to be able to boot into windows from cold in well under half a second.
128M SDRAM
As the OS (and entire windowing system) is running from ROM you get more of that memory for your applications. The applications are far more tightly written. AFAICR the main DTP application, much like Framemaker, weighed in at around 400k.
8M VRAM
Any VRAM not used for graphics can be used as normal RAM.
RS232 serial
Nice touch as this is useful for anyone that wants to use it for Home Automation projects.
5V power supply, 20W power
Unlike the 85W 'brick' used by the Mac Mini.
Overall this is a nice system but due to the lack of economies of scale expensive.
It's like saying that Linus is going to patent Linux and stop everyone from using it for free.
Er, not it's not. Linux is under the GPL and it can be forked at any time. Java is closed source and proprietry and the rug can be pulled out from under it whenever Sun feel like it.
PS - The dork who compared a 40-year old car to a modern vehicle just doesn't get it. Modern vehicles meet modern safety standards, including such luxuries as airbags, enhanced structures that help prevent serious bodily injuries, and a little more leg room. Yes, if I built a go-cart, I could probably also get 50-60 MPG. But I wouldn't be stupid enough to drive it on I-95.
Au contraire, imho you are the dork that does not get it. If a 40 year old car can outperform its modern equivalent he is right to point out that there is something wrong, especially in a world where gas prices have only gone up. We now have lighter and stronger materials, embedded computers for tuning efficiency, computer modelling for aerodynamics, and yet this 40 years of development still can't compensate for those little 'luxuries' without killing the performance below that of half a century before?
Fortunately the modern equivalents in Europe are even better these days. The Toyota Yaris sells well over here, and it gets 50-60mpg. It comes with airbags, and is very safe. The Smart also gets 50-60mpg and is known for being a safe car (as it would, being built by Mercedes).
It would be more honest if you admitted that the majority of buyers in your country are fat, lazy and don't care, instead of throwing up the straw man of 'safety'.
When I was at school we used such computers as commodore PETs, BBC Micro Bs and Masters, Acorns and the occasional spectrum or Dragon32. I didnt use a 'Windows PC' until college (17 years old) and even then its not what folk use these days (being pre Windows 3.11!) and that was only when I couldnt get onto an Acorn Archimedes 3010! what harm did 'not using microsoft' do me? none. I am far more computer literate than someone who has been stuck in front of a Win2k box for 4 years and been taught 'computers'.
Hear hear. At my school all those that used Acorn computers went on to do CompSci degrees, and those that used RM Nimbus (exclusive contract to provide all Windows machines to our schools) went on to do Arts degrees.
With Acorn computers you are ENCOURAGED to experiment with the machine. The OS in in ROM so you can't do anything a reboot won't fix. One keypress drops you into built-in BASIC, which is fast enough to run windows (small w) applications. You can even type assembler directly in and just type RUN.
Those who used Windows mostly learned to play Patience or Solitaire.
I think not only ditching microsoft at schools but also ditching x86 PC's is the best way to go. lets get an eductional machine back into the schools. lets allow our children...future generations of the human race..what computers mean and how they work. NOT just to move the mouse to select icons and how to type a basic spreadsheet in. I WROTE a spreadsheet program when I was at school. do children learn that sort of skill now at school?
An educational machine that doesn't need to be locked down, and in fact encourages people to look under the hood. With different types of windowing systems and with multiple languages you can program in. Schools are for teaching, not training. The includes teaching that computers are tools to be understood and not feared.
Before reading the article I thought it may be a joke. But it seems quite reasonable.
Going through three firewalls: I assume one is on his router and one on his PC. The router firewall is invulnerable to M$ attacks, and if some spyware or a virus gets installed then the PC firewall will warn him when he transmits unauthorised data. Not sure where 3rd one comes in.
Needing 5 passwords from boot to reading email: guessing that the first is the BIOS password, this stops someone putting in a LiveCD and reading his hard drive. Next comes the Windows login. Third is the POP3 password that the email client asks for. Fourth is the 50 character password (probably a sentence from his favourite novel or a line from a song lyric) which decodes his PGP key. Possibly the 5th is to mount an encrypted filesystem.
Browsing from account with no admin rights: sounds sensible to me. I have friends who work in Windows but use a linux LiveCD to browse for safety.
Deleting unused services and blocking unused ports: sensible stuff again.
Install hotfixes the day Microsoft releases them: if you don't then you may get hit by latest worm, if you do then you will get shafted by the occasional bad patch. No right or wrong on this one, question of personal preference.
As for regularly changing passwords, he is sensible in doing what most of us are just too lazy to do. I wouldn't say he is over paranoid, on the contrary he has learned good habits.
Even if the password is not case-sensitive eight characters allows for more than 2.8 trillion passwords using the 26 letters and 10 digits...32 years to search entire key space...
Or you can use a dictionary based cracker and have the password in an hour or two.
In other words, BitMover Inc. spent money and did research to determine what features were needed. Now Andrew Tridgell will simply implement thoses features.
I feel this is a little misleading. Andrew Tridgell only wrote a client that emulated only a tiny subset of the already free client. This is only a tiny scratch in making a full client/server BitKeeper clone.
I'm sorry, but wasn't the whole idea of Vint Cerf inventing HTML to make the data application independent? Glad you are excited about the bells and whistles. I hear they've invented something called the 'blink' tag.
Man, you're like one of those people who turns the football (soccer) player that misses a penalty into the villain of the piece. So Linus makes a small mistake in rashly defending his friend, and in the long term he will see Tridge was right despite the fact he suddenly found his life a little more difficult with the Bitkeeper rug pulled from under his feet. The fact is that he is a star player and is a major asset to the team. And is human. The whole McVoy/Linus/Tridge argument will quickly be forgotten but the actions of Bitkeeper as a company won't, it will stand as a lesson of the perils of relying on proprietary software.
Surprised you didn't get modded +5. Programmers are not game designers. Most OSS games come from programmers who love a game and decide to write their own version which they can then expand on to try and make the gameplay a little different with extra rules or flashier graphics. ie give it a new lease of life. They aren't there to devote their lives to creating games for freeloaders.
There are game designers prepared to contribute their time for free, look at all the Half Life mods such as Counterstrike and Day of Defeat. However seldom do they have the patience to join a project where their work will be usable in around a years time.
If the original poster wants to be a project manager, tying together the work of a group of programmers, game designers, artists and game testers, and to have the patience to see this through over many months until the game can reach a 1.0 release, then please feel free to do so. Until there are such people we won't see original large slick free OSS games.
Slashdot Mirror
But then again, you are making money by SELLING A SERVICE not by making a program.
Unless that service is customising the OSS for a particular business? It's still programming. Written a great bug tracking system? Businesses will pay to have it integrate seamlessly into their corporate intranet or ldap server. Written some call management software? They will want a module that reads callerID to pop up a browser window with the person's contact details when the phone rings.
You need to get out of the shrink-wrap software mind-set. Every company works differently and has their own special needs. Customising to fit *their* work-flow is where the money is.
Phillip.
* Most corporations are corrupt
;-)
...
Which will happen when you set up an environment where anything goes as long as it increases shareholder value. For a funny satire on this, try reading Jennifer Nation.
* All governments are corrupt
I don't think the British government is corrupt, even though I don't agree with many of their policies. I guess with governments it doesn't matter how many bad apples there are, just how high up they get?
* Individuals are powerless when the two get together, unless they get together, too
Some look at the Internet today as some kind of lucky accident, but one has to wonder if nature was trying to find some kind of balance
* Resistance is not futile, but is bloody
And produces some unlikely heros. Take for instance the McLibel case.
* You will be assimilated quicker if you buy Nikes, eat at McD's, use MS products
See book mentioned at top of post...
Phillip.
Microsoft - Free as in stolen
You mean "Free as in having their copyright infringed"?
Phillip.
...Microsoft deserves the price they set. However, no one said you had to buy it.
Certain US and EU high courts would disagree with this, as they set their price according to an illegally gained monopoly. Even other governments don't agree, as they use the threat of moving to OSS to negotiate huge discounts on MS software.
As for no one said you have to buy it... how many PC manufacturers give you the choice of not having Windows pre-installed?
Phillip.
Why not forever? A bad patent doesn't instantly become a good one after it's been a patent for 9 months.
Indeed. In fact why bother having the legislation at all if nothing changes but the patent holder waits 9 months before doing exactly what he was going to do anyway? With the avalanche of patents, no-one is going to find out if a patent affects them until the holder hits them with a law suit. If anything it's going to make patents even more 'submarine' than before.
Phillip.
Quite simply, Intel no longer uses CISC. Sure the instruction set is CISC, but it's all microcode reduced to RISC instructions underneath the hood (which was done WAAAY back with the Pentium II and may have partially been implemented on the original Pentium).
It's been a long time since I've studied micro-processor design, but since x86 is CISC this has a huge impact on the chip design. Instructions can take between 1 and a dozen clock cycles (more for certain obscure instructions) and the on-chip translator between the CISC and the micro-code used to take up most of the silicon and bumps up considerably the power requirements (last time I looked). There is very little the compiler can do about this. Hence the fact real RISC chips can blow any x86 chip out of the water at a much lower clock speed. As I say, my knowledge is few years old so corrections welcome.
Phillip.
How on EARTH did the parent get modded insightful? Ignoring even the fact the battery arguement has been rehashed a million times (I guess Eivind missed the dozens of posts on Slashdot about hydrogen fuel cells) but a next-gen electric motor that can extend the range of battery vehicles including the electric component of hybrid vehicles is great news. The extra acceleration is also important as this will help SELL clean-fuel cars.
I suggest Eivind reads:
http://futureenergies.com/
Phillip.
At a speed where it can render the entire earth. at the string theory level at 80 FPS?
Only then will we find out the question to which the answer is 42.
Phillip.
RiscOS computers (previously called Acorn computers) have had the OS on a ROM for the last 16 years, but it doesn't stop you from running Linux on it.
In the UK it is already legislated that you can't mess with your hardware, and trying to mod a PS2 can land you in jail. You make a good point about the xbox, even though they failed, but if a 3rd party is making the machine then they don't have much incentive to lock it to Windows unless bribed by M$.
Phillip.
Operating systems are complex... Patches sometimes install new functionality... some commercial software is badly written... expensive hardware is usually more reliable than cheap hardware.. Are any of these actually news to anyone?
All important points. OS X manages to mask the complexity, unlike Windows. Just because the code underneath is complex doesn't mean it needs to be complex to use.
Patches that disrupt the user experience are also a big minus. For example the auto-update saturating the network in another post. Service packs that move functionality causing tech support headaches, mentioned in another post.
Commercial software being badly written is bad enough, but if it happens to be a driver installed under XP the whole OS becomes chronically unstable.
Inexpensive hardware being unreliable is also important. If Apple vets hardware better, but box shifters use unreliable hardware to shift cheap Wintel PCs, then the consumer pays their money and makes their choice.
The real indicator that he doesn't have a clue is that he could have saved $2000+ dollars by just installing Linux on his existing machine, rather than buying a new Mac.
Which distro? Easy to install such as Fedora or Manrake? Easy to update such as Gentoo or Debian? Be able to test is as a LiveCD first such as Mepis or Knoppix? Should it be KDE based or Gnome based? Where does he find out which distro suits his needs best?
It's not as easy as "just install Linux". Time is money.
Phillip.
Then you subtract the value he bought in marketing and publicity, which is the only reason he did it in the first place.
Phillip.
oooh, tv on a inch square screen! leave the TV to the TVs.
Sounds like those poor souls having to watch video using Windows 3.1 during the 90s.
an RSS feed would be much better.
As Peter Griffin would say, "Without being there it's only radio".
Phillip.
I've seen some people trying to compare this to the Mac Mini. It's difficult to compare directly.
400MHz Samsung ARM9 processor
This will be blazingly fast as the OS is written in assembler, and is stored entirely in ROM so does not need to load from disc. My old 200MHz RiscPC used to be able to boot into windows from cold in well under half a second.
128M SDRAM
As the OS (and entire windowing system) is running from ROM you get more of that memory for your applications. The applications are far more tightly written. AFAICR the main DTP application, much like Framemaker, weighed in at around 400k.
8M VRAM
Any VRAM not used for graphics can be used as normal RAM.
RS232 serial
Nice touch as this is useful for anyone that wants to use it for Home Automation projects.
5V power supply, 20W power
Unlike the 85W 'brick' used by the Mac Mini.
Overall this is a nice system but due to the lack of economies of scale expensive.
Phillip.
If you go to http://www.google.co.uk/ig/customize then try to set and save your settings, you'll find that it's pretty broken...
It seems to send the page into a loop...in IE you will just receive continuous warnings that you are being redirected to an nonsecure page.
It's broken under Firefox too. It loops until Firefox reports that redirection limit has been exceeded.
Phillip.
It's like saying that Linus is going to patent Linux and stop everyone from using it for free.
Er, not it's not. Linux is under the GPL and it can be forked at any time. Java is closed source and proprietry and the rug can be pulled out from under it whenever Sun feel like it.
Phillip.
PS - The dork who compared a 40-year old car to a modern vehicle just doesn't get it. Modern vehicles meet modern safety standards, including such luxuries as airbags, enhanced structures that help prevent serious bodily injuries, and a little more leg room. Yes, if I built a go-cart, I could probably also get 50-60 MPG. But I wouldn't be stupid enough to drive it on I-95.
Au contraire, imho you are the dork that does not get it. If a 40 year old car can outperform its modern equivalent he is right to point out that there is something wrong, especially in a world where gas prices have only gone up. We now have lighter and stronger materials, embedded computers for tuning efficiency, computer modelling for aerodynamics, and yet this 40 years of development still can't compensate for those little 'luxuries' without killing the performance below that of half a century before?
Fortunately the modern equivalents in Europe are even better these days. The Toyota Yaris sells well over here, and it gets 50-60mpg. It comes with airbags, and is very safe. The Smart also gets 50-60mpg and is known for being a safe car (as it would, being built by Mercedes).
It would be more honest if you admitted that the majority of buyers in your country are fat, lazy and don't care, instead of throwing up the straw man of 'safety'.
Phillip.
When I was at school we used such computers as commodore PETs, BBC Micro Bs and Masters, Acorns and the occasional spectrum or Dragon32. I didnt use a 'Windows PC' until college (17 years old) and even then its not what folk use these days (being pre Windows 3.11!) and that was only when I couldnt get onto an Acorn Archimedes 3010! what harm did 'not using microsoft' do me? none. I am far more computer literate than someone who has been stuck in front of a Win2k box for 4 years and been taught 'computers'.
Hear hear. At my school all those that used Acorn computers went on to do CompSci degrees, and those that used RM Nimbus (exclusive contract to provide all Windows machines to our schools) went on to do Arts degrees.
With Acorn computers you are ENCOURAGED to experiment with the machine. The OS in in ROM so you can't do anything a reboot won't fix. One keypress drops you into built-in BASIC, which is fast enough to run windows (small w) applications. You can even type assembler directly in and just type RUN.
Those who used Windows mostly learned to play Patience or Solitaire.
I think not only ditching microsoft at schools but also ditching x86 PC's is the best way to go. lets get an eductional machine back into the schools. lets allow our children...future generations of the human race..what computers mean and how they work. NOT just to move the mouse to select icons and how to type a basic spreadsheet in. I WROTE a spreadsheet program when I was at school. do children learn that sort of skill now at school?
An educational machine that doesn't need to be locked down, and in fact encourages people to look under the hood. With different types of windowing systems and with multiple languages you can program in. Schools are for teaching, not training. The includes teaching that computers are tools to be understood and not feared.
Phillip.
A company should however have the exclusive use of, say, the word 'fedora'.
I think a more appropriate common household word that would be ridiculous to trademark is the word 'apple'.
Phillip.
Before reading the article I thought it may be a joke. But it seems quite reasonable.
Going through three firewalls: I assume one is on his router and one on his PC. The router firewall is invulnerable to M$ attacks, and if some spyware or a virus gets installed then the PC firewall will warn him when he transmits unauthorised data. Not sure where 3rd one comes in.
Needing 5 passwords from boot to reading email: guessing that the first is the BIOS password, this stops someone putting in a LiveCD and reading his hard drive. Next comes the Windows login. Third is the POP3 password that the email client asks for. Fourth is the 50 character password (probably a sentence from his favourite novel or a line from a song lyric) which decodes his PGP key. Possibly the 5th is to mount an encrypted filesystem.
Browsing from account with no admin rights: sounds sensible to me. I have friends who work in Windows but use a linux LiveCD to browse for safety.
Deleting unused services and blocking unused ports: sensible stuff again.
Install hotfixes the day Microsoft releases them: if you don't then you may get hit by latest worm, if you do then you will get shafted by the occasional bad patch. No right or wrong on this one, question of personal preference.
As for regularly changing passwords, he is sensible in doing what most of us are just too lazy to do. I wouldn't say he is over paranoid, on the contrary he has learned good habits.
Phillip.
Even if the password is not case-sensitive eight characters allows for more than 2.8 trillion passwords using the 26 letters and 10 digits...32 years to search entire key space...
Or you can use a dictionary based cracker and have the password in an hour or two.
Phillip.
In other words, BitMover Inc. spent money and did research to determine what features were needed. Now Andrew Tridgell will simply implement thoses features.
I feel this is a little misleading. Andrew Tridgell only wrote a client that emulated only a tiny subset of the already free client. This is only a tiny scratch in making a full client/server BitKeeper clone.
Phillip.
IE still is still the best supported out there.
I'm sorry, but wasn't the whole idea of Vint Cerf inventing HTML to make the data application independent? Glad you are excited about the bells and whistles. I hear they've invented something called the 'blink' tag.
Phillip.
...for everytime negative reviews came out for a movie I ended up loving....I won't be sitting here at work surfing the internet right now....
You'd be doing a paper round to earn the ten bucks it costs you to get in?
Phillip.
Man, you're like one of those people who turns the football (soccer) player that misses a penalty into the villain of the piece. So Linus makes a small mistake in rashly defending his friend, and in the long term he will see Tridge was right despite the fact he suddenly found his life a little more difficult with the Bitkeeper rug pulled from under his feet. The fact is that he is a star player and is a major asset to the team. And is human. The whole McVoy/Linus/Tridge argument will quickly be forgotten but the actions of Bitkeeper as a company won't, it will stand as a lesson of the perils of relying on proprietary software.
Phillip.
Surprised you didn't get modded +5. Programmers are not game designers. Most OSS games come from programmers who love a game and decide to write their own version which they can then expand on to try and make the gameplay a little different with extra rules or flashier graphics. ie give it a new lease of life. They aren't there to devote their lives to creating games for freeloaders.
There are game designers prepared to contribute their time for free, look at all the Half Life mods such as Counterstrike and Day of Defeat. However seldom do they have the patience to join a project where their work will be usable in around a years time.
If the original poster wants to be a project manager, tying together the work of a group of programmers, game designers, artists and game testers, and to have the patience to see this through over many months until the game can reach a 1.0 release, then please feel free to do so. Until there are such people we won't see original large slick free OSS games.
Phillip.