I personally don't mind my government (US) tracing my whereabouts and my purchases because I don't feel they can use that information against me. Mainly because I do nothing that they would conceive as harmful to them.
I take it that you don't sit too far from the center of the political spectrum. You're probably not a third party supporter (Communist, Green, Libertarian, etc.). You're probably not Muslim. You're probably not gay or lesbian. By your statements, you don't strike me as an activist for social justice or civil liberties. It might surprise you to learn that our country has quite a lot of folks who, for some reason or other, are currently or will eventually be persecuted for being different, holding different political or religious beliefs, or pissing off the wrong elected official. Think about the journalists--what happens when their every move is known in advance? This is a power that the government should not have, not without warrants and the traditional Constitutional protections given to our people by the Bill of Rights.
Head over to Wikipedia and read the article on CAPPS (disclosure: I wrote it a few months ago) and CAPPS II. There are so many problems with this system, besides the big one--it won't work.
In my opinion, the most disheartening aspect of this debacle is that a syndicate of large corporations lied to the public, lied to their customers, and undermined the Constitution. But there will be no reckoning. This is a burning example of our corporate "citizens" escaping responsibility.
Well, we weren't (and still aren't) a big organized LUG when we did the ESR talk. There were at the time about 30 dedicated people involved. Over 100 people showed for the talk, and they were all kinds of people, some from the LUG, some from the university, some from other New York LUGs, etc.
Like I said, if you can catch one of the "famous" speakers while he is in your area, they are usually quite friendly and more than willing to accomodate. The main thing is to take care of ALL of the details for them, because they aren't usually getting paid big bucks to talk to your group.
I emailed ESR a year and a half ago after noticing (from his speaking schedule on his web page) that he would be on the East Coast in the next couple months. He responded promptly, and after a couple emails coordinating travel arrangements between a Massachusetts university and here (Columbia University in New York), arrangements were settled and he came in for one day, spoke, and left that night after we treated him to dinner in Korea-town. I found it particularly easy to get all this together, and people like ESR and RMS are usually very easy to work with on speaking events.
RMS also spoke here, but I didn't organize it. I'm sure the experience on that engagement was similar to my own.
Another thing worth considering is contacting large technology companies. Or even big companies in general. For example, right now I work for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter IT, and they have a research department that does cutting-edge clustering and operating system research with Linux, Solaris, IRIX, and other stuff. Big companies may be willing to send a knowledgeable someone to your LUG, possibly as part of a recruitment event. I find that things like this can give you a real perspective on how Linux and other projects pan out in the non-academic world.
RTcmix - a real time sound synthesis/processing language/library. RTcmix is dope. I don't think the newest version (2.1), which adds really good Linux support, is publicly available yet, but it should be out the door real soon if it isn't yet. RTcmix can be easily interfaced with applications, because it can listen for commands on a TCP/IP socket. Trust me, it's very cool, and much easier to use/learn than CSOUND. Dave Topper (topper@virginia.edu) is the primary maintainer or RTcmix, as far as I know.
Max - jMax was released by IRCAM under the GPL recently, but it needs crazy work in order to get to the state that the Mac version is in. Max is probably the coolest music application ever written. For those of you who don't know, it is a visual programming environment for real time control of anything MIDI controllable. Work is underway, as far as I know, to hook up RTcmix to Max as a signal processing engine (similar to MSP).
Rt - Paul Lansky's real-time digital mixing program is a fabulous tool for mixing sounds. I haven't used it for performances yet, but it is damn good for constructing certain kinds of pieces. Several attempts at porting to Linux are in progress, but none of them are terribly stable yet. Check out Dave Phillips' page for more info.
Maybe companies like Napster, and radio/TV stations, should be commissioning these works of art. Hell, they are profiting off them, and ask any artist how much money artists make from radio stations playing their music. It's practically nothing. And we all know that Napster isn't paying anyone.
That's not to say that artists should be selling away the rights to their own work, which is effectively what is happening under the current model. But perhaps some responsible investment in the musicians is in order. What a good idea.
This is not sarcasm, I'm genuinely excited by this idea.
That's one thing that I've been thinking lately about the Open Source movement, that it seems to be something of a leveling force, akin to pure capitalism in a way. Take Red Hat for instance. They don't, and almost certainly never will, have the ridiculous market share that Microsoft has. But what they are doing is making money, good money, off of a good product, and giving Microsoft one hell of a run for their money. It's competition, and the end result is not a bunch of starving programmers, but better software and an end, hopefully, to the kind of exploitative degenerative capitalism that has sprung up in the software industry.
How does this relate to music? Simple. Open standards. The RIAA, not the artists, is the group that is freaking out over this. Ask Adam Duritz from the Counting Crows about how his whole band was starving while they had a number one album sometime. But open standards pave the way for entirely digital distribution of music, and that effectively ends the need for record labels (and ends the ridiculous profit that they have been making from the exploitation of artists).
That's why the RIAA is so shaken up over MP3s, because the party (or gang-rape, depending on which side you are on) is over. I doubt that we'll see anyone making as much money as Puff Daddy in the near future, but that's a good thing.
First of all, it doesn't look like you read the article in question.
Second, I ran Win95 for about a year total, and let me tell you, it crashed every single day, sometimes more than once. I don't have any odd hardware, just an NE2000 ethernet card, an SB AWE32, and an ATI video card. If that's not standard hardware, supported by just about every OS, then I don't know what is.
And I did run NT for a time. What drove me nuts (other than the weird, super hard crashes that occurred every couple of weeks or so) was the configuration. Every little thing required a reboot--that doesn't drive you insane? And I bet the specs on NT uptime wouldn't be what they are (and they are pretty poor to begin with) without the constant rebooting.
But back to Linux. Since I have installed Linux, my computer has been like a well trained puppy--always doing exactly what I want it to do, and never shitting on the rug, if you know what I mean.
Whether or not medical software is open or closed doesn't matter to much. What does matter is that it works 100%.
But opening the code makes it a hell of a lot easier to determine if the code works at all. I'm not saying we should all sit down and start writing a GPL replacement for all the hospital firmware out there--frankly, I have better things to do and you probably do too. But think of it this way: we all know that open code works better, and that peer review is the world's best debugging process. Shouldn't our most mission critical applications have that security?
Now, there are a few ideas in that last statement that need to be expanded a bit. I think we can all realistically say that there won't be a flock of programmers rushing over to write hospital software, so let's think about how open source ideas can be implemented here.
No open source software can pay for FDA Approval - but a standards body could. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be funded by the doctors themselves. See number 2.
That leaves the AMA liable - if the doctors as a whole take the time and spend the resources to insure that open code works as it should, then that leaves the doctors, all of them, liable. That's a whole lot better for the developers, and it puts the blame (IMO) back where it belongs.
AMA should clamor for proprietary code to be opened - this clears up the issue of "who will write it?" The GPL is certainly not applicable here, but maybe some other license would be (God, I hate to contribute to the proliferation of licenses, but I think we really need a new one here). Maybe this is where the government should get involved (ouch, that hurts, I'm a Libertarian).
To me it looks like it is in the best interests of the medical community to regulate itself, following the above guidelines. It's the classic case of the private sector taking up regulation for both the benefit of itself and the benefit of the customer (with the side benefit of taking up some of the responsibility that the government once assumed).
OK, just my opinions of course. And I just rolled out of bed...
Windows only appears to be easy to use and administration free because of several factors including this naivete and, of course, pre-installation.
Thank you. I don't know how many times I've said this before to everyone who says "But you can't expect the average user to use Linux--they couldn't even install it."
Most "average" users couldn't even install windows. Really. I've seen them try.
Oooh I was waiting for this! I work full time and have a family-- I don't have the time to write and maintain a driver. My wife gets upset when I spend too much time using the computer as it is.
Anyway is that the answer we want to give the newbie who barely knows how to install Linux, and has probably never coded? Write a driver?
No, that's not the answer. But let's look at it this way: you're talking about the symptom, not the problem. The problem is idiot hardware manufacturers don't provide specs to their hardware, and they don't provide linux drivers. I don't really care about them not providing their own linux drivers, but I really mind about them not providing specs. That is the problem. We need to apply pressure there.
On the whole, I liked this article. I just have a few things to comment on.
What if the Linux community continues to do things like change the C/C++ libraries and compilers, as they did recently, which triggered so many compatibility problems?
Now, I don't consider myself an elite hacker or anything, (I do write and compile a lot of software though) but I haven't noticed any compatibility problems on either of my machines. But maybe that's because, like most of the world, I don't try to be bleeding edge. Neither will the mainstream. Companies like Red Hat are terribly concerned with compatibility issues, and because their money is on the line, they make sure that compatibility will be a matter of upgrading x number of packages. The cooperative and open nature of the open source community makes the turnaround time on fixing broken stuff much shorter, we all know that. But why? Because if someone with a large stake in Linux needs compatibility with new libraries or compilers, they can easily
fix it themselves
use their resources to aid the developers in charge of the project(s) in bringing it up to date
History seems to show that Linux companies usually choose the second option, since that is the fastest and most efficient way to go.
What if someone decides to do something you hate with your program, such as make changes that preserve compatibility with prior versions and break compatibility with your latest release, and then spend millions of dollars to promote their version?
This is the new Coke dilemma. Sorry, I just had to say that. Seriously though, this does happen. It's the problem best exemplified by EGCS. EGCS was a split from the main development track of GCC, but eventually it proved to be more promising than its predecessor and it was brought back into the fold. Our community is better for it.
Like our mythical political party, the community has to learn to compromise and be more understanding and accommodating of the mainstream.
To a point. The Linux community, through projects like GNOME and KDE, has made the important changes that the mainstream will want. But as a partisan, I have to say this: Let's not forget our Free Software roots. It's terribly important that we focus on the ideals that got us this far, like unabashed source availability and respect for the owners of open source projects (go here if any of this is new to you). These are the ideas that have protected and nurtured the movement this far, and they will continue to do so in the future.
"And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good--Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Every once in a while, someone out there in the Real World tells me "Oh Linux is great, but the corporations and the masses aren't buying into it." I can talk until I'm blue in the face, and I usually do a pretty good job of showing why Linux really can take the server/desktop space, but recently I realized that what we should focus on, more than anything else, is actually doing the work. Not talking about doing the work, but actually doing it--writing the code, providing the support and documentation, and helping others install and use Linux.
Linux has gotten damn far on these principles, and as long as millions of people are using Linux and developing Linux, it will continue to surprise the naysayers.
No, it's CMIX. Most of you probably haven't heard of CMIX. It's a simple language for the processing and production of sound. It was written by a guy named Paul Lansky way back in the day, and the place where CMIX got its first real break was under the NeXTSTEP OS.
And we all know what happened to NeXTSTEP. It died. It died hard, to the point that just about the only people still using NeXTs were CMIX hackers.
So what happened then? A guy named Brad Garton (a former student of Paul Lansky; now currently a professor at the Columbia Computer Music Center) decided to port the entire CMIX source to another technically promising fledgling OS called IRIX.
And we all know what's happening to IRIX. It's on the way out. No one can use it for anything (partially because IRIX and network security are mutually exclusive terms).
just as some blacks in the united states have reclaimed the word "nigger" for their own use, i believe that we should reclaim the word "hacker" for our use. we all know the denotations and connotations. i don't mind being negatively identified if, as was said by someone else who replied to this posting, that gives me the opportunity to point out and correct someone's misconceptions and/or ignorance.
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I take it that you don't sit too far from the center of the political spectrum. You're probably not a third party supporter (Communist, Green, Libertarian, etc.). You're probably not Muslim. You're probably not gay or lesbian. By your statements, you don't strike me as an activist for social justice or civil liberties. It might surprise you to learn that our country has quite a lot of folks who, for some reason or other, are currently or will eventually be persecuted for being different, holding different political or religious beliefs, or pissing off the wrong elected official. Think about the journalists--what happens when their every move is known in advance? This is a power that the government should not have, not without warrants and the traditional Constitutional protections given to our people by the Bill of Rights.
Head over to Wikipedia and read the article on CAPPS (disclosure: I wrote it a few months ago) and CAPPS II. There are so many problems with this system, besides the big one--it won't work.
In my opinion, the most disheartening aspect of this debacle is that a syndicate of large corporations lied to the public, lied to their customers, and undermined the Constitution. But there will be no reckoning. This is a burning example of our corporate "citizens" escaping responsibility.
Aho (of AWK fame) also taught at Columbia for quite a while.
Like I said, if you can catch one of the "famous" speakers while he is in your area, they are usually quite friendly and more than willing to accomodate. The main thing is to take care of ALL of the details for them, because they aren't usually getting paid big bucks to talk to your group.
Good luck.
RMS also spoke here, but I didn't organize it. I'm sure the experience on that engagement was similar to my own.
Another thing worth considering is contacting large technology companies. Or even big companies in general. For example, right now I work for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter IT, and they have a research department that does cutting-edge clustering and operating system research with Linux, Solaris, IRIX, and other stuff. Big companies may be willing to send a knowledgeable someone to your LUG, possibly as part of a recruitment event. I find that things like this can give you a real perspective on how Linux and other projects pan out in the non-academic world.
That's a good idea!
Maybe companies like Napster, and radio/TV stations, should be commissioning these works of art. Hell, they are profiting off them, and ask any artist how much money artists make from radio stations playing their music. It's practically nothing. And we all know that Napster isn't paying anyone.
That's not to say that artists should be selling away the rights to their own work, which is effectively what is happening under the current model. But perhaps some responsible investment in the musicians is in order. What a good idea.
This is not sarcasm, I'm genuinely excited by this idea.
That's one thing that I've been thinking lately about the Open Source movement, that it seems to be something of a leveling force, akin to pure capitalism in a way. Take Red Hat for instance. They don't, and almost certainly never will, have the ridiculous market share that Microsoft has. But what they are doing is making money, good money, off of a good product, and giving Microsoft one hell of a run for their money. It's competition, and the end result is not a bunch of starving programmers, but better software and an end, hopefully, to the kind of exploitative degenerative capitalism that has sprung up in the software industry.
How does this relate to music? Simple. Open standards. The RIAA, not the artists, is the group that is freaking out over this. Ask Adam Duritz from the Counting Crows about how his whole band was starving while they had a number one album sometime. But open standards pave the way for entirely digital distribution of music, and that effectively ends the need for record labels (and ends the ridiculous profit that they have been making from the exploitation of artists).
That's why the RIAA is so shaken up over MP3s, because the party (or gang-rape, depending on which side you are on) is over. I doubt that we'll see anyone making as much money as Puff Daddy in the near future, but that's a good thing.
First of all, it doesn't look like you read the article in question.
Second, I ran Win95 for about a year total, and let me tell you, it crashed every single day, sometimes more than once. I don't have any odd hardware, just an NE2000 ethernet card, an SB AWE32, and an ATI video card. If that's not standard hardware, supported by just about every OS, then I don't know what is.
And I did run NT for a time. What drove me nuts (other than the weird, super hard crashes that occurred every couple of weeks or so) was the configuration. Every little thing required a reboot--that doesn't drive you insane? And I bet the specs on NT uptime wouldn't be what they are (and they are pretty poor to begin with) without the constant rebooting.
But back to Linux. Since I have installed Linux, my computer has been like a well trained puppy--always doing exactly what I want it to do, and never shitting on the rug, if you know what I mean.
It is the best OS for the desktop.
-k
A confused Win98 user, discussing the random "shutdowns" experienced under Win98 SE:
She sounded mildly surprised!
-k
Arandir wrote:
But opening the code makes it a hell of a lot easier to determine if the code works at all. I'm not saying we should all sit down and start writing a GPL replacement for all the hospital firmware out there--frankly, I have better things to do and you probably do too. But think of it this way: we all know that open code works better, and that peer review is the world's best debugging process. Shouldn't our most mission critical applications have that security?
Now, there are a few ideas in that last statement that need to be expanded a bit. I think we can all realistically say that there won't be a flock of programmers rushing over to write hospital software, so let's think about how open source ideas can be implemented here.
To me it looks like it is in the best interests of the medical community to regulate itself, following the above guidelines. It's the classic case of the private sector taking up regulation for both the benefit of itself and the benefit of the customer (with the side benefit of taking up some of the responsibility that the government once assumed).
OK, just my opinions of course. And I just rolled out of bed...
-k
Sun Tzu wrote:
Thank you. I don't know how many times I've said this before to everyone who says "But you can't expect the average user to use Linux--they couldn't even install it."Most "average" users couldn't even install windows. Really. I've seen them try.
-k
About the driver issue:
No, that's not the answer. But let's look at it this way: you're talking about the symptom, not the problem. The problem is idiot hardware manufacturers don't provide specs to their hardware, and they don't provide linux drivers. I don't really care about them not providing their own linux drivers, but I really mind about them not providing specs. That is the problem. We need to apply pressure there.
-k
On the whole, I liked this article. I just have a few things to comment on.
Now, I don't consider myself an elite hacker or anything, (I do write and compile a lot of software though) but I haven't noticed any compatibility problems on either of my machines. But maybe that's because, like most of the world, I don't try to be bleeding edge. Neither will the mainstream. Companies like Red Hat are terribly concerned with compatibility issues, and because their money is on the line, they make sure that compatibility will be a matter of upgrading x number of packages. The cooperative and open nature of the open source community makes the turnaround time on fixing broken stuff much shorter, we all know that. But why? Because if someone with a large stake in Linux needs compatibility with new libraries or compilers, they can easily
- fix it themselves
- use their resources to aid the developers in charge of the project(s) in bringing it up to date
History seems to show that Linux companies usually choose the second option, since that is the fastest and most efficient way to go.This is the new Coke dilemma. Sorry, I just had to say that. Seriously though, this does happen. It's the problem best exemplified by EGCS. EGCS was a split from the main development track of GCC, but eventually it proved to be more promising than its predecessor and it was brought back into the fold. Our community is better for it.
To a point. The Linux community, through projects like GNOME and KDE, has made the important changes that the mainstream will want. But as a partisan, I have to say this: Let's not forget our Free Software roots. It's terribly important that we focus on the ideals that got us this far, like unabashed source availability and respect for the owners of open source projects (go here if any of this is new to you). These are the ideas that have protected and nurtured the movement this far, and they will continue to do so in the future.
-k
How about:
Every once in a while, someone out there in the Real World tells me "Oh Linux is great, but the corporations and the masses aren't buying into it." I can talk until I'm blue in the face, and I usually do a pretty good job of showing why Linux really can take the server/desktop space, but recently I realized that what we should focus on, more than anything else, is actually doing the work. Not talking about doing the work, but actually doing it--writing the code, providing the support and documentation, and helping others install and use Linux.
Linux has gotten damn far on these principles, and as long as millions of people are using Linux and developing Linux, it will continue to surprise the naysayers.
-k
Yeah but watch out, Bill Gates could very easily acquire TIME.
Or he could just use Back Orifice 2000 to crack their servers and modify the results himself. It sure is a crazy world we're livin' in.
-k
Until I see Linus above Ronald Reagan I'm going to tell everyone I know to vote for Linus. Is that so wrong?
-k
No, it's CMIX. Most of you probably haven't heard of CMIX. It's a simple language for the processing and production of sound. It was written by a guy named Paul Lansky way back in the day, and the place where CMIX got its first real break was under the NeXTSTEP OS.
And we all know what happened to NeXTSTEP. It died. It died hard, to the point that just about the only people still using NeXTs were CMIX hackers.
So what happened then? A guy named Brad Garton (a former student of Paul Lansky; now currently a professor at the Columbia Computer Music Center) decided to port the entire CMIX source to another technically promising fledgling OS called IRIX.
And we all know what's happening to IRIX. It's on the way out. No one can use it for anything (partially because IRIX and network security are mutually exclusive terms).
And what have the CMIX people done now? They've ported CMIX to Linux, and several other promising operating systems! Run! Hide your favorite OS!
For those of you who couldn't tell, this is a joke.
-k
just as some blacks in the united states have reclaimed the word "nigger" for their own use, i believe that we should reclaim the word "hacker" for our use. we all know the denotations and connotations. i don't mind being negatively identified if, as was said by someone else who replied to this posting, that gives me the opportunity to point out and correct someone's misconceptions and/or ignorance.
i'm just gonna drink straight out of the bottle.
-k