I believe the powerful music and movie industries will succeed in forcing the US government to crack down on ISPs (not just individuals and web-sites). Then, eMule and it's network will go away, at least for us in the US. The ISPs will be happy to comply, since this will eliminate much of their traffic. It probably would have already happened had these industries not POed the GOP by donating generously to Democrats for years, and if the government weren't working so hard to be budy-budy with backbone carriers so they can get their secret data taps, and if the baby Bells weren't such grand GOP supporters.
One the bright side: legal digital music and video distribution should get cheaper. Those of us who actually pay for our stuff will see a benefit.
My memory is infamous for errors. I was at Hewlett Packard in 1988 and 1989. I found this:
John A. Young was president of Hewlett-Packard Company from 1977 to 1992, and chief executive officer from 1978 to 1992.
Bill and David were getting old, and letting Young run the place. I don't see specific events in the history, but Young was replaced in 1992, and David took a stronger hand in the company. Things didn't improve until then, after I'd left.
I worked at HP in 1988-1989. I wont bother to look up his name, but some business-school schmuck was ruining the "HP Way". No more weekly donuts. No more team-spirit.
David Packard apparently was very concerned. He came out of retirement for a while to run the company. Everything got good again, fast.
Some other examples: Bill Gates, Sony's dead founder/CEO, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs. Like them or hate them, they leave a mark. Once their gone, multi-billion-dollar corporations can fade into irrelevance. We simply haven't found a way to identify these guys and put them in the top jobs. Unless they build the company themselves, they never get there.
Er... hate to be a typical/. geek, but didn't you mean "what is the difference between a/. moderator and a battery?" A magnet has no positive or negative side.
We do have a built-in gyroscope, though not a compass. I'm pretty sure guys have a stronger sense of it then girls. Makes sense... hunting and all.
I have a good sense of direction, but now and then I get all messed up. It's a really strange feeling when I realize this has happened, and the internal gyro has to flip 180 degrees. There's a sense of the world shifting, almost like motion.
You're probably right. In EDA, most of our customers run old version of RedHat. I don't even mention Ubuntu or Fedora to customers.
However, what we run in our development team is up to us. Everyone else runs RedHat, except for one guy running Fedora. I run Ubuntu to help increase coverage of the user-space, but it's probably fairly pointless.
Good point. Businesses are adopting Linux rapidly. That's why I'm using it - as an EDA developer for work.
However, a major problem for Linux is the natural tension between businesses and the free software movement. OSS is threatening big software money. See:
Oddly enough, business managers don't like using stuff that threatens business. Funny how that works.
The name "Ubunutu" is unfortunate. Managers naturally ask me what it means when I recommend it, and the feel-good granola-crunchy meaning reinforces their feeling that I'm a granola-crunchy sort of guy promoting software written by acid-inspired junkies.
The home market is MUCH more promising, since most of those kids at home are busy downloading free stuff illegally anyway. They are on the side of free stuff, and love to stick it to the man. An OS for free? Sure thing! Kill Microsoft? Sign me up! It wont run the latest first-person shooter? Um... maybe not.
So, neither the business nor the home markets are truely open to Linux. Solving the game problem would do the trick for the home market, but that's not likely to happen. How can we ever get businesses to buy into anti-business software? It may be doable, but moving that mountain will take time.
I'm getting suckered into every anonymous coward troll bait...
There is exactly one remaining MAJOR application area where Windows still rules, unchallenged. Without it, I think Linux of some flavor (probably Ubuntu), would be taking over the desktop right now.
Games.
It's as simple as that. There is no other major high-volume application that Linux doesn't do well. Games are not only good news for Microsoft, but Intel as well. Who the heck needs a Core Duo to run Word? It seems very strange that the top two US technology companies owe their monopolies to games. It's as if God consults with Dilbert regularly.
However, I agree that Linux will not take over the desktop in the next 10 years. I see no reason for the game companies to suddenly embrace Linux.
Just in the super-unlikely case that you haven't actually ever worked on commercial software, I thought I'd give you the link that best describes the real world:
There's a good reason geeks who love code development do so much of it for free. In general, I'd say that OSS projects are better run and executed than commercial projects. They just aren't as well funded:-)
Re:the second and now third worlding of the US
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Reverse Off-Shoring
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I think we agree that illegal immigration is bad. We basically get some other country's uneducated peasants, and have the burden of turning them and their kids into middle class Americans. Our economy has to create a job for them, our schools have to educate them, and our health care has to deal with them.
We probably also agree that stopping them from getting here in the first place is the right thing to do. Build that fence. Defend it.
On the subject of the ones who are already here, we have at least three choices:
- Kick them out. Seems hash, but if you don't want illegals here, that's what you'd have to do. - Legalize them. Yeah, it sends the wrong message, but I hope you'd agree that it's better to start turning them into Americans rather than keeping them as outlaws. - Ignore it, and keep things the same. Of course, that's what we will actually do.
IMO, the third alternative, doing nothing, is the worse by far. I'd be OK with either of the other two. Just pick one and solve the problem. If it were up to me, I'd legalize them, since that's just a lot easier. I think we should control illegal imigration at the boarder, and reward those resourceful enough to make it here anyway with a path to citizenship. But, that's just me. I'd go with any solution over doing nothing.
Sounds like you know a lot more about Vtiger than me. I've noticed information is not as easily cross-accessed as I would like. Ancient versions of Act had that problem, too. For some reason, just about anybody who can write code seems to think they can design a database.
No kidding... houses around here near Raleigh, NC are amazingly cheap. If you can nail down a steady job, you can probably afford a house. That's one reason I started my company here. In silicon valley, even at outragous salaries, my employees could never afford raise families (unless we went IPO).
Re:With dirtroad main streets and cow dung everywh
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· Score: 1
Many countries seem to allow much of their population to live in conditions we don't usually tolerate in the US: with no government supported clean water, sewage, roads, electricity, and telephone (to name just a few). People continue to live much as they have for thousands of years, in a very primitive lifestyle. I think this segment of their economies is fundamentally different than India's high-tech sector.
I live in North Carolina, where for a couple hundred years now we've taken pride in making quality furniture. Most of our furniture and textile jobs are being lost to super-low-cost labor in China. I've heard that factories in China list labor costs in the same section of their budget that we list electricity. It's almost free.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, other than feeling bad about all the good people here who lost jobs. I've talked to people from primitive villages, and I was told that people there seem happy. It's entirely possible that countries like China will continue to use villagers to manufacture the world's goods with nearly free labor indefinitely. Somehow, it seems a lot like slavery, but I don't hear the villagers complaining. Even as these villages become cheap labor sources for factories, I doubt they'll get good roads, healthcare, electricity, water, or any other significant benefit.
Is it exploitation, or just poor people getting work they want?
One thing I'm sure of... I don't want poor uneducated villagers here in the US. That's why I'm for having a high minimum wage, and feel we should legalize illegal immigrants. There's no room for second-class-citizens here.
Anybody here old enough to remember Japan's rise to a respectable engineering powerhouse? Any of you guys remeber when "Made in Japan" meant it would break in 10 minutes of use?
There's a natural cycle seem to countries go through when they finally get their act together in engineering:
- Growth from low-cost outsourcing - Growth due to home-grown businesses exporting good IP - Imposition of copyright and patent protection - Growth due home-grown businesses selling IP locally, and the death of outsourcing
I think in 1980's, an Indian programmer cost about $2K/year. Now that the outsourcing companies have run out of good local talent in places like Bangalore, salaries are rising to the point that it makes less sense to outsource engineering and programming to India. Countries like Romania look better.
To continue growth, innovators in India will need to create their own businesses to compete with Silicon Valley startups. To some extent, they seem to be started at this. For example, the customer-relationship software I'm using at the moment, VtigerCRM, is a shameless copy of opensource software from SugarCRM, and it's shamelessly copying Salesforce.com functionality. Indian investors are funding the Vtiger opensource alternative, betting they can beat SugarCRM and Salesforce.com at their own game. Maybe they're right.
However, the exported software market is only so big. As programmers in India tire of making money from foreign countries where software is actually worth something, they'll force their government to crack down on IP theft. This will create a local market for programmers, greatly fueling high-tech business growth. It also will mostly kill their outsourcing business, since salaries will then be able to rise above the threshold where outsourcing to India makes sense.
I hope for a similar cycle to be followed in China. When China and India are done with the outsourcing business, we can move to other countries that need to come forward into the new millenium. Outsourcing our jobs is massively painful, but at least we're helping make the world a better place.
is it's super-low up-front costs, not for the hand-sets, but for an operator to offer initial coverage.
With wired service, you have to invest up-front, burying cable throughout a population center before you can acquire your first customer. With wireless, you put up one tower, set it for maximum range, and open shop.
A single WiMax tower can reach 40 miles in radius. After Katrina, Intel donated $5M in hardware, and was basically able to cover the Gulf Coast. Bell South says they'll needs between $700M and $900M, and they're still not done with repairs. That cost might be fair, but it shows the advantages in bringing in wireless cheaply. Here's an Intel link:
I think we should be using cheap wireless technology for IP based emergency communications, enabling people to help each other so they wont have to wait for FEMA to arrive. Check out what hams do for free:
A system built on the Internet model might enable neighbors to help each other, which is basically required after a mass disaster, since any emergency response team will be overwhelmed. Do you know how you'd find your neighbors after a disaster? How would they find you?
While it may be useful, it's clearly a software patent, the kind that only limits innovation in the US. Microsoft is trying VERY hard to kill any edge we have.
Thanks for the info... these sound like good books.
As for all the replies, well thanks! I'm obviously not qualified to talk much about encryption. As for hardware random number generators, yes I am qualified, having done it well. It's a rather trivial problem in comparison to encryption, though you gotta love that lava-lamp based rng.
On most forums I wouldn't post my ill-informed opinions, but this is slashdot:-D
Something pretty good! Do you guys keep getting the same Core Duo adds I get whenever I go to/.? They're working... I really want one.
I'm waiting to see AMD's 65nm product. Until then, I'm sitting on the side-lines. That's probably why AMD is keeping their progress hush-hush. Just in case you missed it before, here's some good rumors about AMD coming out this month with 65nm products:
When the bulk of baby-boomers hit their 70's, I suspect we'll find that they tend not to retire, partly because they can't afford to, and partly because onone wants them to (including themselves). Then, I suspect we'll find all kinds of age-related discrimination and preconceptions will fade from our culture.
Er... well, yes. I hate to compare Shuttleworth, who I respect greatly, to GW, who makes me wish I were Canadian. I doubt Debian would like to be compared to the EU, but that's kind of where I was going.
As I grow older (I'm 42), and gain more experience, one thing I've come to appreciate is the impact of strong individual leaders. Linus for Linux, Shuttleworth for Ubuntu, Regan for the Republicans, etc. When it's important to get things done quickly, there's no substitute for a strong leader.
The downside is you can't always trust a strong leader. I'm stuck with GW running (and ruining) the US. I would never trust our free OS, or our democratic government to a single individual. Let Debian insure software freedom, and let Ubuntu lead the charge against Windows.
That's a darned good idea... I hope the Ubuntu guys read it! If I were in charge of Ubuntu, I'd put up the splash and do what I could to encourage everyone to have an attitude of respect for Debian.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the powerful music and movie industries will succeed in forcing the US government to crack down on ISPs (not just individuals and web-sites). Then, eMule and it's network will go away, at least for us in the US. The ISPs will be happy to comply, since this will eliminate much of their traffic. It probably would have already happened had these industries not POed the GOP by donating generously to Democrats for years, and if the government weren't working so hard to be budy-budy with backbone carriers so they can get their secret data taps, and if the baby Bells weren't such grand GOP supporters.
One the bright side: legal digital music and video distribution should get cheaper. Those of us who actually pay for our stuff will see a benefit.
My memory is infamous for errors. I was at Hewlett Packard in 1988 and 1989. I found this:
John A. Young was president of Hewlett-Packard Company from 1977 to 1992, and chief executive officer from 1978 to 1992.
Bill and David were getting old, and letting Young run the place. I don't see specific events in the history, but Young was replaced in 1992, and David took a stronger hand in the company. Things didn't improve until then, after I'd left.
P.S. I'm one of those guys, but no-one believes me! :-O
I worked at HP in 1988-1989. I wont bother to look up his name, but some business-school schmuck was ruining the "HP Way". No more weekly donuts. No more team-spirit.
David Packard apparently was very concerned. He came out of retirement for a while to run the company. Everything got good again, fast.
Some other examples: Bill Gates, Sony's dead founder/CEO, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs. Like them or hate them, they leave a mark. Once their gone, multi-billion-dollar corporations can fade into irrelevance. We simply haven't found a way to identify these guys and put them in the top jobs. Unless they build the company themselves, they never get there.
I bet you would have made a great drummer in a band.
Er... hate to be a typical /. geek, but didn't you mean "what is the difference between a /. moderator and a battery?" A magnet has no positive or negative side.
We do have a built-in gyroscope, though not a compass. I'm pretty sure guys have a stronger sense of it then girls. Makes sense... hunting and all.
I have a good sense of direction, but now and then I get all messed up. It's a really strange feeling when I realize this has happened, and the internal gyro has to flip 180 degrees. There's a sense of the world shifting, almost like motion.
I hope they don't get too confused:
1 5/1544240g _South_
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/
http://digg.com/general_sciences/North_Pole_Movin
No wonder those latent genes are turned off.
You're probably right. In EDA, most of our customers run old version of RedHat. I don't even mention Ubuntu or Fedora to customers.
However, what we run in our development team is up to us. Everyone else runs RedHat, except for one guy running Fedora. I run Ubuntu to help increase coverage of the user-space, but it's probably fairly pointless.
Good point. Businesses are adopting Linux rapidly. That's why I'm using it - as an EDA developer for work.
However, a major problem for Linux is the natural tension between businesses and the free software movement. OSS is threatening big software money. See:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1
Oddly enough, business managers don't like using stuff that threatens business. Funny how that works.
The name "Ubunutu" is unfortunate. Managers naturally ask me what it means when I recommend it, and the feel-good granola-crunchy meaning reinforces their feeling that I'm a granola-crunchy sort of guy promoting software written by acid-inspired junkies.
The home market is MUCH more promising, since most of those kids at home are busy downloading free stuff illegally anyway. They are on the side of free stuff, and love to stick it to the man. An OS for free? Sure thing! Kill Microsoft? Sign me up! It wont run the latest first-person shooter? Um... maybe not.
So, neither the business nor the home markets are truely open to Linux. Solving the game problem would do the trick for the home market, but that's not likely to happen. How can we ever get businesses to buy into anti-business software? It may be doable, but moving that mountain will take time.
I'm getting suckered into every anonymous coward troll bait...
There is exactly one remaining MAJOR application area where Windows still rules, unchallenged. Without it, I think Linux of some flavor (probably Ubuntu), would be taking over the desktop right now.
Games.
It's as simple as that. There is no other major high-volume application that Linux doesn't do well. Games are not only good news for Microsoft, but Intel as well. Who the heck needs a Core Duo to run Word? It seems very strange that the top two US technology companies owe their monopolies to games. It's as if God consults with Dilbert regularly.
However, I agree that Linux will not take over the desktop in the next 10 years. I see no reason for the game companies to suddenly embrace Linux.
I, too, am suckered into feeding the troll...
e x.html
:-)
Just in the super-unlikely case that you haven't actually ever worked on commercial software, I thought I'd give you the link that best describes the real world:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ind
There's a good reason geeks who love code development do so much of it for free. In general, I'd say that OSS projects are better run and executed than commercial projects. They just aren't as well funded
I think we agree that illegal immigration is bad. We basically get some other country's uneducated peasants, and have the burden of turning them and their kids into middle class Americans. Our economy has to create a job for them, our schools have to educate them, and our health care has to deal with them.
We probably also agree that stopping them from getting here in the first place is the right thing to do. Build that fence. Defend it.
On the subject of the ones who are already here, we have at least three choices:
- Kick them out. Seems hash, but if you don't want illegals here, that's what you'd have to do.
- Legalize them. Yeah, it sends the wrong message, but I hope you'd agree that it's better to start turning them into Americans rather than keeping them as outlaws.
- Ignore it, and keep things the same. Of course, that's what we will actually do.
IMO, the third alternative, doing nothing, is the worse by far. I'd be OK with either of the other two. Just pick one and solve the problem. If it were up to me, I'd legalize them, since that's just a lot easier. I think we should control illegal imigration at the boarder, and reward those resourceful enough to make it here anyway with a path to citizenship. But, that's just me. I'd go with any solution over doing nothing.
Sounds like you know a lot more about Vtiger than me. I've noticed information is not as easily cross-accessed as I would like. Ancient versions of Act had that problem, too. For some reason, just about anybody who can write code seems to think they can design a database.
Is there a better free alternative?
No kidding... houses around here near Raleigh, NC are amazingly cheap. If you can nail down a steady job, you can probably afford a house. That's one reason I started my company here. In silicon valley, even at outragous salaries, my employees could never afford raise families (unless we went IPO).
Many countries seem to allow much of their population to live in conditions we don't usually tolerate in the US: with no government supported clean water, sewage, roads, electricity, and telephone (to name just a few). People continue to live much as they have for thousands of years, in a very primitive lifestyle. I think this segment of their economies is fundamentally different than India's high-tech sector.
I live in North Carolina, where for a couple hundred years now we've taken pride in making quality furniture. Most of our furniture and textile jobs are being lost to super-low-cost labor in China. I've heard that factories in China list labor costs in the same section of their budget that we list electricity. It's almost free.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, other than feeling bad about all the good people here who lost jobs. I've talked to people from primitive villages, and I was told that people there seem happy. It's entirely possible that countries like China will continue to use villagers to manufacture the world's goods with nearly free labor indefinitely. Somehow, it seems a lot like slavery, but I don't hear the villagers complaining. Even as these villages become cheap labor sources for factories, I doubt they'll get good roads, healthcare, electricity, water, or any other significant benefit.
Is it exploitation, or just poor people getting work they want?
One thing I'm sure of... I don't want poor uneducated villagers here in the US. That's why I'm for having a high minimum wage, and feel we should legalize illegal immigrants. There's no room for second-class-citizens here.
Anybody here old enough to remember Japan's rise to a respectable engineering powerhouse? Any of you guys remeber when "Made in Japan" meant it would break in 10 minutes of use?
There's a natural cycle seem to countries go through when they finally get their act together in engineering:
- Growth from low-cost outsourcing
- Growth due to home-grown businesses exporting good IP
- Imposition of copyright and patent protection
- Growth due home-grown businesses selling IP locally, and the death of outsourcing
I think in 1980's, an Indian programmer cost about $2K/year. Now that the outsourcing companies have run out of good local talent in places like Bangalore, salaries are rising to the point that it makes less sense to outsource engineering and programming to India. Countries like Romania look better.
To continue growth, innovators in India will need to create their own businesses to compete with Silicon Valley startups. To some extent, they seem to be started at this. For example, the customer-relationship software I'm using at the moment, VtigerCRM, is a shameless copy of opensource software from SugarCRM, and it's shamelessly copying Salesforce.com functionality. Indian investors are funding the Vtiger opensource alternative, betting they can beat SugarCRM and Salesforce.com at their own game. Maybe they're right.
However, the exported software market is only so big. As programmers in India tire of making money from foreign countries where software is actually worth something, they'll force their government to crack down on IP theft. This will create a local market for programmers, greatly fueling high-tech business growth. It also will mostly kill their outsourcing business, since salaries will then be able to rise above the threshold where outsourcing to India makes sense.
I hope for a similar cycle to be followed in China. When China and India are done with the outsourcing business, we can move to other countries that need to come forward into the new millenium. Outsourcing our jobs is massively painful, but at least we're helping make the world a better place.
is it's super-low up-front costs, not for the hand-sets, but for an operator to offer initial coverage.
a tions/hurricane-relief-1105.htm
With wired service, you have to invest up-front, burying cable throughout a population center before you can acquire your first customer. With wireless, you put up one tower, set it for maximum range, and open shop.
A single WiMax tower can reach 40 miles in radius. After Katrina, Intel donated $5M in hardware, and was basically able to cover the Gulf Coast. Bell South says they'll needs between $700M and $900M, and they're still not done with repairs. That cost might be fair, but it shows the advantages in bringing in wireless cheaply. Here's an Intel link:
http://www.intel.com/technology/magazine/communic
I think we should be using cheap wireless technology for IP based emergency communications, enabling people to help each other so they wont have to wait for FEMA to arrive. Check out what hams do for free:
http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html
A system built on the Internet model might enable neighbors to help each other, which is basically required after a mass disaster, since any emergency response team will be overwhelmed. Do you know how you'd find your neighbors after a disaster? How would they find you?
While it may be useful, it's clearly a software patent, the kind that only limits innovation in the US. Microsoft is trying VERY hard to kill any edge we have.
But why would someone go out of their way to continue to use it?
Are you kidding? Obviously, because the hottest geek chick on the planet is into them! See:
"Super-hot super-smart geek-chick"
Thanks for the info... these sound like good books.
:-D
As for all the replies, well thanks! I'm obviously not qualified to talk much about encryption. As for hardware random number generators, yes I am qualified, having done it well. It's a rather trivial problem in comparison to encryption, though you gotta love that lava-lamp based rng.
On most forums I wouldn't post my ill-informed opinions, but this is slashdot
Something pretty good! Do you guys keep getting the same Core Duo adds I get whenever I go to /.? They're working... I really want one.
I'm waiting to see AMD's 65nm product. Until then, I'm sitting on the side-lines. That's probably why AMD is keeping their progress hush-hush. Just in case you missed it before, here's some good rumors about AMD coming out this month with 65nm products:
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/
When the bulk of baby-boomers hit their 70's, I suspect we'll find that they tend not to retire, partly because they can't afford to, and partly because onone wants them to (including themselves). Then, I suspect we'll find all kinds of age-related discrimination and preconceptions will fade from our culture.
/.-ing? :-O
Where will you be at 70? Still
Er... well, yes. I hate to compare Shuttleworth, who I respect greatly, to GW, who makes me wish I were Canadian. I doubt Debian would like to be compared to the EU, but that's kind of where I was going.
As I grow older (I'm 42), and gain more experience, one thing I've come to appreciate is the impact of strong individual leaders. Linus for Linux, Shuttleworth for Ubuntu, Regan for the Republicans, etc. When it's important to get things done quickly, there's no substitute for a strong leader.
The downside is you can't always trust a strong leader. I'm stuck with GW running (and ruining) the US. I would never trust our free OS, or our democratic government to a single individual. Let Debian insure software freedom, and let Ubuntu lead the charge against Windows.
That's a darned good idea... I hope the Ubuntu guys read it! If I were in charge of Ubuntu, I'd put up the splash and do what I could to encourage everyone to have an attitude of respect for Debian.