An interesting article. I'd love to see the final copy.
Question: Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to release under a viral license than a public licenese? Under the public license there's the risk that a competitor will build on Darwin and not release the source back to Apple. With a viral license a competitor can still build on Darwin, but at least Apple could see some benefit.
This comes back to my personal reason for choosing GPL: I'd like others to build on my work, but I'd like to get something back if they do so.
On a larger scale, we've got IBM, SGI, and Compaq (all competitors) contributing to the Linux kernel. I can't imagine that IBM, for example, would port their JFS to Linux if they thought Compaq could integrate it into Tru64 and use it to poach IBM's customers. The GPL ensures that everybody has to play by the same rules, so there is less risk.
Re:WAP could have been cool
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WAP Bashing
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· Score: 2
I've thought about this too - I think it's a brilliant idea. It would be much more convenient than credit cards.
Aside from that, there are all sorts of ways you could automate this. For example, at a restaurant you give the server your phone number. The cash register automagically sends your bill to you by SMS message, then you respond to the message to pay. (I'm not sure this really needs WAP, the point for me is to be able to use your phone rather than some sort of smart card).
Same thing with toll highways and the cell-phone positioning systems that are now available. As you enter the highway you get a notification. If you want to pay for the ride you respond to the notification. At the exit a very small "cell" notices when a car passes without having paid (ie. there's a car here, but none of the cell-phones inside have accepted payment) and takes a picture (or sets of lights so the cops notice).
Eventually you could take it to extremes and sell movie tickets, plane tickets, etc. this way. As you approach a gate, it opens if you (or rather, your cell phone) has purchased a valid ticket.
That's interesting. I knew they'd released Darwin, but I always thought (ok, assumed) they held on to bits. Are the drivers available? What about the file system changes?
Does that mean you can run an Apple box with Darwin and have everything work except the GUI?
To each his own. The reason I prefer the GPL is that I know that people building on my work have to contribute their improvements back to the community. I think that's fair: they got something for free, they should give something back.
I can see why companies like Apple and AMI might choose to keep their patches to themselves, and I suppose if the BSD people don't mind then that's Ok, but I think that in the long run software under GPL will go further. If the NAS software were released then AMI might lose a competitive edge in the short term, but they also lose out on features that those competitors add to the product.
Similarly with Apple. The BSDs are solid and in some ways better than Linux, but IBM and others are scaling Linux up to massive systems. Now Apple is trying to push OsX into the server market and they're going to miss out on those developments. So they got to keep some enhancements to themselves, but they lose out on other people's technology.
Thus, the "license breaker" could not be
forced to release their own source code.
I don't think anybody implied that the infringer would be forced to release his own code, and I don't really see how that's a problem. The bottom line is that they would be forced to stop infringing. They could choose to release their own code, they could replace the GPL'd code with their own, or they could choose to stop providing the product altogether. Any of these is fine.
Why are you considering this a criminal action instead of the military attack that it effectively was?
What's the difference? It seems to me it's entirely a matter of semantics. In the past (and largely in the present) whoever won the war got to call the other side "criminal". The point is to get away from that and create some sense of fairness in international justice.
Most of the people rebelling against America's involvement overseas are not poor . Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire, as is Saddam, as is Khaddafi. Quite frankly, they are upset that our policies undermine their anti-human and anti-democratic regimes.
The people in these countries are poor, and it's them you have to worry about. That's where the suicide bombers come from.
The UN court is a nice idea, but it is useless without enforcement. Right now, the only truly effective enforcement is through the US and its allies.
You're right. That's why the world court needs the support of the Americans. Without the support of an international body with rules that are followed (even by the U.S.) you can't achieve fairness or even the perception of fairness. It will always be the U.S. making enemies around the world. Of course that means that occasionally the U.S. will have to accept judgements it doesn't like - the law works that way sometimes.
And there is the difference. We fight the bad guys.
That's largely a matter of perception. I think it's more accurate to say that the U.S. fights those who are perceived as a threat its interests. Often they're "bad guys", sometimes they aren't. On the other hand the U.S. often supports bad guys.
To liken military action to terrorist action is absurd. I am sure that whatever the US response is, it will likely *not* include destroying the 6th tallest building in the world and every innocent person inside it, then denying responsibility.
I'm not likening anything to anything and I'm not condoning either. I'm saying that that the motivations are similar. The U.S. uses aircraft carriers and hits military targets because it has the ability to do so. Terrorists hijack planes because it works. I didn't say it was right.
Your attitude towards Americans is part of the problem. You are just as prejudiced as the ones you accuse. The first part of your post says "You suck!" and then the last part says "Give us money!" I think you are ungrateful to the part America plays in the world.
I have no beef with Americans. I've been to New York and I love the city. It's horrible to think what's going on there. Yet somehow you've managed to elect some pretty awful leaders. I didn't say the U.S. should give me (or "us") money - I wouldn't see any of it. I said that if you want to see a proper peace you should contribute to an effective international court instead of trying to police the world unilaterally. If you don't want peace then that's really sad. It means wonderful cities like New York are going to keep being hit.
It's time for Sheriff Uncle Same to ride into town, and kick some bad-guy ass. The cowards who wring their hands over what needs to be done make me sick. Go hide under your bed, and allow the grown-ups to do what needs to be done.
Unfortunately it's that attitude on both sides that caused this mess. The American government regularly "kicks ass" all over the world and creates a lot of resentment among the poor people who suffer because of it.
Now some of those bitter angry people have found a way to strike back. They probably feel exactly the way you do - eager to "kick some ass".
I'm neither American nor Arabic, so I suppose I can't really understand the anger that these groups feel for each other, but I am sad at what looks like an escalation of needless killing. So now you want to bomb some more Arabs. More angry people will join terrorist organizations, and more Americans will be killed. So when does it end? Does one side have to be totally anihilated? That's crazy.
If the U.S. wants justice the answer is to support international organizations like the international court. Give them the mandate and the resources to pursue international criminals. Unfortunately the current administration is following the opposite policy: witholding money from the U.N., and refusing to support the international court. Sad, but that's what happens when you let cowboys into the Whitehouse.
I must say I'm impressed. After all the stupidity being perpetrated by mega-corporations lately, it's great to see a company do something thoughtful and intelligent. The letter was straightforward and reasonable - not threats, no legalese, just a well thought out explanation of their position. I had almost forgotten that corporations are capable of common sense - it feels good to be reminded.
You know, I haven't played with Legos in twenty years, but those Mindstorms do look pretty cool. Maybe I'll go out and buy a box.
HP wants to be in the consumer PC business, then you're probably right. They should dump all the overhead and follow Dell. But it's a tough business and Dell is a tough competitor.
If HP wants to be in the high end, high margin consulting business, then Linux makes a lot of sense. There's no point supporting Digital Unix, Tru64, and HP-UX, especially since _none_ of these offer any real competitive advantage. (Being a little faster on certain classes of hardware or having a slightly better clusting system compared to AIX/Solaris doesn't count except in very limited markets). It makes a lot more sense to improve Linux where needed and gain access to the larger Linux market.
On the other hand, while adopting Linux across the board makes a lot of sense, it still doesn't offer a real compelling reason to use HP products. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help much either.
In the end that's the real challenge for the new HP. Finding something that they really can do better than Dell and IBM. The only thing that comes immediately to mind is printers, but that's not going to support such a massive company.
Politicians make a decent salary, but generally much less than they could make in private industry. You might just as well ask the congressman why he puts his time and energy into public service.
The answer is probably similar for Open Source/Free software people 1) there's a certain satisfaction in doing something you feel is worthwhile, 2) the desire to leave the world a little better than when you found it, 3) recognition by your peers is very motivating, 4) even if you don't make money directly, it can help with your later career.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most of us entered the IT field because we have a passion for the technology. The reality of most corporate work is that we never get to do the really cool stuff that we dreamt about in school - real work is pretty mundane. Working on something more interesting on the side lets us do the stuff we dreamt of doing when we entered the field.
Missing your points 1,2, and 3 are missing 99% of what people use a computer for.
Do you have evidence of this? Even when I was in high school my main use for my computer was writing essays. Today the people I know who are serious gamers have a PlayStation or similar.
My dad 1) Plays games, 2) Sets up education programs for my brothers in school 3) Does his taxes & finances.
The only compelling point I can see here for the Mexican government is the educational angle. But they could use a little of the money saved to develop some games that matched their curriculum. That would be a real win for Mexican kids.
The productivity packages are a joke right now. If you though windows crashed alot, use Koffice for 8 hours during your workday. TRY to use Star office for 8 hours a day.
Actually I use Gnumeric and Abiword most of the time. They don't have all the features of Word or OpenOffice, but they're solid and I like the look & feel. When I do use OpenOffice (people at work send me files) I find it pretty good. Certainly much better than the old Star Office. The interface is kind of annoying (too much like Windows), but that's just a question of what you're used to.
About the mexican government, until they give there citizens freedoms and protection and basic rights i could care less if they're trying to save money on software that is just going to be used to fund some drug warlord or crackheads addiction.
Ok, you've just proven you're a troll. A biggoted comment like this doesn't deserve a response.
Software as freedom is a joke. Freedom ISN'T. I'm free to use Windows, I'm free to use Linux. Linux isn't free, time isn't free, cost doesn't mean squat.
What's your point?
If thecost is several hours a day being a sysadmin to run my applications then that is more then powering up windows, running my applications and then going home and hitting the trails on my mountain bike.
Where did you get the idea that you have to spend several hours a day being a sysadmin? Modern distributions install painlessly and run smoothly all on their own. With Red Carpet you can even keep up-to-date on the latest security patches painlessly.
It's been a while since I've had to mess with Windows, but one of my co-workers was trying to install Windows on his laptop the other day. He was pretty annoyed at the braindead driver install ("insert this disk", "that's the wrong disk - please insert this disk"). Linux actually installs more easily on that particular laptop.
You want to know why windows is less secure? because people running windows could care less about the virtual world of security.
Or could it be that _Windows_ requires you to spend several hours a day playing sysadmin if you want to keep the patches up-to-date, whereas on Linux it's fast and easy.
They want to get the job done and do something meaningfull with there time or they want to get the job done and have FUN doing it at the same time. Amiga, Mac's and Windows PC's all worked at that concept.
GNOME (and probably KDE - I just haven't used it recently) seems to be ahead on that front. I change my desktop themes about once a month. It's fun and I like a little variety in something I spend so much time using.
They all had great games, great looking OS and plenty of support behind them.
I'll concede the games bit, but not the the "great looking OS" or the "support". MS customer support for the consumer is horrible (I'm sure it's better for companies with support contracts) and my GNOME desktop looks a lot better than Windows (I'm sure the KDE users feel the same way).
Linux is just non existant for a desktop os.. and if you believe it is great right now, then you my friend are a die hard command line person and shouldn't be commenting on desktop usability.
It's great for my needs, but there are still lots of people who need the applications that run on Windows. The exciting thing is that if even one of the more populous countries (Brazil, China, India) makes a major move to Linux, the application gap will close _very_ quickly.
free software is great, but i'd rather have VALUE in my software and Value in my VALUES rather then the ultra simplistic value that software has to be free.
Huh? That's a non-sensical statement. You seem to be implying that free software can't have any value. The free software I use (and I use free software almost exclusively) has a lot of value to me, and also to my clients. It's used to enhance productivity and do real work. What other kind of value are you looking for?
RedHat seems unlikely to me. I doubt they'd take a branch and try to stabilize it themselves. IMHO they would just pick a build at run with it. It's just not important enough for their business for them to bother with a separate branch.
Netscape would make a certain amount of sense, but why keep it a secret?
I could see AOL, but I don't think AOL needs to put out a release any time soon. They'd be better off just waiting for 1.0.
OEone? I don't really know much about them. Would they really be called a "major" vendor? Major contributer yes, but major vendor seems like a bit of a stretch.
Somebody like Nokia or Sony (for the PlayStation) might be a possibility. I could imagine them wanting to keep mum about their product, and they would definately count as major.
Does anybody have any clues as to who this mysterious major vendor is? It's pretty obvious that the insiders at Mozilla.org are under NDA or something like that.
The timing of this makes me wonder if maybe Mitchell isn't going to some other Mozilla related company. Even if not, I think it's interesting that the "commercial" Mozilla community is growing beyond just AOL. It makes for a healthier project.
I doubt there's a lot of software that explicitely depends on the date being nine digits. It's not like the Y2K bug, where the most convenient form to manipulate the date was often as a string. People using the Unix time for their date would normally find it easier to manipulate the value as an integer. As long as they stick to that they're fine.
Where there might be problems (and I'm guilty of doing this) is where the developer took advantage of the fact that dates sorted alphabetically also happen to be sorted temperally. Say you save dated information in files and incorperate the timestamp in the file name. When you read the file name back in it's a string. If you need the most recent data, it's tempting to sort it as a string and pick off the last item (especially if you're using Perl which makes this sort of manipulation really easy). Unfortunately string comparisons will stop working on Saturday ("1000000000" 999999999).
Actually it is a decent alternative to M$ on the desktop. I've been using it for years to do my day-to-day work. Really it depends on what you're trying to do.
The only things that Linux is missing today are: 1/high-quality games, 2/quality educational software, 3/a good selection of "niche" productivity applications like tax software. For mainstream everyday use (surfing, word-processing, fiddling with a spreadsheet) Linux is fine.
Also, the productivity packages don't have the maturity of the MS or Corel offerings, but for most people that doesn't matter. The kind of people who would buy and be happy with Microsoft Works should find that OpenOffice meets their needs quite nicely.
If the Mexican government encouraged Linux for home use then they'd find that a lot of the shortcomings solved themselves. A hundred million Mexican Linux users would lead to a lot of specialized software in Spanish: Mexican tax software, educational software, games, etc.
Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. I once refused to use company equipment for exactly this reason. I used my own laptop, my private e-mail (over a secure link), and my own cell-phone. The company didn't like this, but my contract didn't say I had to use their stuff, nor did it say I had to submit to monitoring.
I've contracted for many companies, and I've never had to submit to monitoring. I spend enough of my life (way more than 40 hours/week) at work that I feel quite justified in using some of that time for personal business.
My experience has been that the companies that insist on monitoring employees also tend to be the ones with the worst moral and the least compentent management. Of course that doesn't prove a causal relationship, but I doubt it's a coincidence.
Actually it's more like a really dense server farm.
Possible markets? The only thing that really comes to mind for me is ISPs. This could replace racks of essentially standalone machines quite nicely. But of course that's not the best market to go after right now.
I'm wondering if more conventional companies would go for this. There are lots of companies that have a ridiculous number of little servers floating around. If they had been deployed on a beast like this from the start then they could have saved a lot of money. But now that they have all these little servers, it's hard to imagine them throwing them all out and replacing them with one box.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about how this works. I actually don't have a clue either, but based on the little bit in the article I can speculate. Perhaps a real physicist can correct me:
A pulse in "frequency space" (thinking back to Fourier transforms) is actually composed of an infinite number of frequencies. In other words, to produce a square wave (a pulse) you have to add together a ton of sine waves at different frequencies. The more sine waves you add together, the better your approximation of the pulse. Going the other way, a pulse can be decomposed into sine waves in an analogous fashion.
So, an EM pulse would actually have some effect right accross the radio spectrum (hence the name "Ultra-Wide"), but could properly be said to not use any particular portion of the spectrum.
Is this at all correct? If so, then wouldn't a bunch of these devices pretty much screw up all other forms of radio?
But what are the punitive damages based on? Whatever the damages are, they obviously aren't an effective deterrent. The fine needs to be big enough that the board of directors and shareholders notice.
Note that I don't really feel that the victim should necessarily get all the proceeds. Give it to charity or something like that. If I lose a week's salary (that's a more realistic number for lost Internet access) then I want to be compensated reasonably - lawyers fees, financial losses, maybe a little extra for the trouble. I don't expect to walk away a millionair. But the company that screwed me over should feel some pain - enough to get a few incompetant mangers fired and make sure that they change the way they do business.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting article. I'd love to see the final copy.
Question: Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to release under a viral license than a public licenese? Under the public license there's the risk that a competitor will build on Darwin and not release the source back to Apple. With a viral license a competitor can still build on Darwin, but at least Apple could see some benefit.
This comes back to my personal reason for choosing GPL: I'd like others to build on my work, but I'd like to get something back if they do so.
On a larger scale, we've got IBM, SGI, and Compaq (all competitors) contributing to the Linux kernel. I can't imagine that IBM, for example, would port their JFS to Linux if they thought Compaq could integrate it into Tru64 and use it to poach IBM's customers. The GPL ensures that everybody has to play by the same rules, so there is less risk.
I've thought about this too - I think it's a brilliant idea. It would be much more convenient than credit cards.
Aside from that, there are all sorts of ways you could automate this. For example, at a restaurant you give the server your phone number. The cash register automagically sends your bill to you by SMS message, then you respond to the message to pay. (I'm not sure this really needs WAP, the point for me is to be able to use your phone rather than some sort of smart card).
Same thing with toll highways and the cell-phone positioning systems that are now available. As you enter the highway you get a notification. If you want to pay for the ride you respond to the notification. At the exit a very small "cell" notices when a car passes without having paid (ie. there's a car here, but none of the cell-phones inside have accepted payment) and takes a picture (or sets of lights so the cops notice).
Eventually you could take it to extremes and sell movie tickets, plane tickets, etc. this way. As you approach a gate, it opens if you (or rather, your cell phone) has purchased a valid ticket.
That's interesting. I knew they'd released Darwin, but I always thought (ok, assumed) they held on to bits. Are the drivers available? What about the file system changes?
Does that mean you can run an Apple box with Darwin and have everything work except the GUI?
To each his own. The reason I prefer the GPL is that I know that people building on my work have to contribute their improvements back to the community. I think that's fair: they got something for free, they should give something back.
I can see why companies like Apple and AMI might choose to keep their patches to themselves, and I suppose if the BSD people don't mind then that's Ok, but I think that in the long run software under GPL will go further. If the NAS software were released then AMI might lose a competitive edge in the short term, but they also lose out on features that those competitors add to the product.
Similarly with Apple. The BSDs are solid and in some ways better than Linux, but IBM and others are scaling Linux up to massive systems. Now Apple is trying to push OsX into the server market and they're going to miss out on those developments. So they got to keep some enhancements to themselves, but they lose out on other people's technology.
I don't think anybody implied that the infringer would be forced to release his own code, and I don't really see how that's a problem. The bottom line is that they would be forced to stop infringing. They could choose to release their own code, they could replace the GPL'd code with their own, or they could choose to stop providing the product altogether. Any of these is fine.
What's the difference? It seems to me it's entirely a matter of semantics. In the past (and largely in the present) whoever won the war got to call the other side "criminal". The point is to get away from that and create some sense of fairness in international justice.
The people in these countries are poor, and it's them you have to worry about. That's where the suicide bombers come from.
You're right. That's why the world court needs the support of the Americans. Without the support of an international body with rules that are followed (even by the U.S.) you can't achieve fairness or even the perception of fairness. It will always be the U.S. making enemies around the world. Of course that means that occasionally the U.S. will have to accept judgements it doesn't like - the law works that way sometimes.
That's largely a matter of perception. I think it's more accurate to say that the U.S. fights those who are perceived as a threat its interests. Often they're "bad guys", sometimes they aren't. On the other hand the U.S. often supports bad guys.
I'm not likening anything to anything and I'm not condoning either. I'm saying that that the motivations are similar. The U.S. uses aircraft carriers and hits military targets because it has the ability to do so. Terrorists hijack planes because it works. I didn't say it was right.
I have no beef with Americans. I've been to New York and I love the city. It's horrible to think what's going on there. Yet somehow you've managed to elect some pretty awful leaders. I didn't say the U.S. should give me (or "us") money - I wouldn't see any of it. I said that if you want to see a proper peace you should contribute to an effective international court instead of trying to police the world unilaterally. If you don't want peace then that's really sad. It means wonderful cities like New York are going to keep being hit.
Unfortunately it's that attitude on both sides that caused this mess. The American government regularly "kicks ass" all over the world and creates a lot of resentment among the poor people who suffer because of it.
Now some of those bitter angry people have found a way to strike back. They probably feel exactly the way you do - eager to "kick some ass".
I'm neither American nor Arabic, so I suppose I can't really understand the anger that these groups feel for each other, but I am sad at what looks like an escalation of needless killing. So now you want to bomb some more Arabs. More angry people will join terrorist organizations, and more Americans will be killed. So when does it end? Does one side have to be totally anihilated? That's crazy.
If the U.S. wants justice the answer is to support international organizations like the international court. Give them the mandate and the resources to pursue international criminals. Unfortunately the current administration is following the opposite policy: witholding money from the U.N., and refusing to support the international court. Sad, but that's what happens when you let cowboys into the Whitehouse.
I must say I'm impressed. After all the stupidity being perpetrated by mega-corporations lately, it's great to see a company do something thoughtful and intelligent. The letter was straightforward and reasonable - not threats, no legalese, just a well thought out explanation of their position. I had almost forgotten that corporations are capable of common sense - it feels good to be reminded.
You know, I haven't played with Legos in twenty years, but those Mindstorms do look pretty cool. Maybe I'll go out and buy a box.
HP wants to be in the consumer PC business, then you're probably right. They should dump all the overhead and follow Dell. But it's a tough business and Dell is a tough competitor.
If HP wants to be in the high end, high margin consulting business, then Linux makes a lot of sense. There's no point supporting Digital Unix, Tru64, and HP-UX, especially since _none_ of these offer any real competitive advantage. (Being a little faster on certain classes of hardware or having a slightly better clusting system compared to AIX/Solaris doesn't count except in very limited markets). It makes a lot more sense to improve Linux where needed and gain access to the larger Linux market.
On the other hand, while adopting Linux across the board makes a lot of sense, it still doesn't offer a real compelling reason to use HP products. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help much either.
In the end that's the real challenge for the new HP. Finding something that they really can do better than Dell and IBM. The only thing that comes immediately to mind is printers, but that's not going to support such a massive company.
Politicians make a decent salary, but generally much less than they could make in private industry. You might just as well ask the congressman why he puts his time and energy into public service.
The answer is probably similar for Open Source/Free software people 1) there's a certain satisfaction in doing something you feel is worthwhile, 2) the desire to leave the world a little better than when you found it, 3) recognition by your peers is very motivating, 4) even if you don't make money directly, it can help with your later career.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most of us entered the IT field because we have a passion for the technology. The reality of most corporate work is that we never get to do the really cool stuff that we dreamt about in school - real work is pretty mundane. Working on something more interesting on the side lets us do the stuff we dreamt of doing when we entered the field.
I forget to escape my "<" at the end there. That should say: ("1000000000" < "999999999", although 1000000000 > 999999999).
Do you have evidence of this? Even when I was in high school my main use for my computer was writing essays. Today the people I know who are serious gamers have a PlayStation or similar.
The only compelling point I can see here for the Mexican government is the educational angle. But they could use a little of the money saved to develop some games that matched their curriculum. That would be a real win for Mexican kids.
Actually I use Gnumeric and Abiword most of the time. They don't have all the features of Word or OpenOffice, but they're solid and I like the look & feel. When I do use OpenOffice (people at work send me files) I find it pretty good. Certainly much better than the old Star Office. The interface is kind of annoying (too much like Windows), but that's just a question of what you're used to.
Ok, you've just proven you're a troll. A biggoted comment like this doesn't deserve a response.
What's your point?
Where did you get the idea that you have to spend several hours a day being a sysadmin? Modern distributions install painlessly and run smoothly all on their own. With Red Carpet you can even keep up-to-date on the latest security patches painlessly.
It's been a while since I've had to mess with Windows, but one of my co-workers was trying to install Windows on his laptop the other day. He was pretty annoyed at the braindead driver install ("insert this disk", "that's the wrong disk - please insert this disk"). Linux actually installs more easily on that particular laptop.
Or could it be that _Windows_ requires you to spend several hours a day playing sysadmin if you want to keep the patches up-to-date, whereas on Linux it's fast and easy.
GNOME (and probably KDE - I just haven't used it recently) seems to be ahead on that front. I change my desktop themes about once a month. It's fun and I like a little variety in something I spend so much time using.
I'll concede the games bit, but not the the "great looking OS" or the "support". MS customer support for the consumer is horrible (I'm sure it's better for companies with support contracts) and my GNOME desktop looks a lot better than Windows (I'm sure the KDE users feel the same way).
It's great for my needs, but there are still lots of people who need the applications that run on Windows. The exciting thing is that if even one of the more populous countries (Brazil, China, India) makes a major move to Linux, the application gap will close _very_ quickly.
Huh? That's a non-sensical statement. You seem to be implying that free software can't have any value. The free software I use (and I use free software almost exclusively) has a lot of value to me, and also to my clients. It's used to enhance productivity and do real work. What other kind of value are you looking for?
RedHat seems unlikely to me. I doubt they'd take a branch and try to stabilize it themselves. IMHO they would just pick a build at run with it. It's just not important enough for their business for them to bother with a separate branch.
Netscape would make a certain amount of sense, but why keep it a secret?
I could see AOL, but I don't think AOL needs to put out a release any time soon. They'd be better off just waiting for 1.0.
OEone? I don't really know much about them. Would they really be called a "major" vendor? Major contributer yes, but major vendor seems like a bit of a stretch.
Somebody like Nokia or Sony (for the PlayStation) might be a possibility. I could imagine them wanting to keep mum about their product, and they would definately count as major.
Does anybody have any clues as to who this mysterious major vendor is? It's pretty obvious that the insiders at Mozilla.org are under NDA or something like that.
The timing of this makes me wonder if maybe Mitchell isn't going to some other Mozilla related company. Even if not, I think it's interesting that the "commercial" Mozilla community is growing beyond just AOL. It makes for a healthier project.
I doubt there's a lot of software that explicitely depends on the date being nine digits. It's not like the Y2K bug, where the most convenient form to manipulate the date was often as a string. People using the Unix time for their date would normally find it easier to manipulate the value as an integer. As long as they stick to that they're fine.
Where there might be problems (and I'm guilty of doing this) is where the developer took advantage of the fact that dates sorted alphabetically also happen to be sorted temperally. Say you save dated information in files and incorperate the timestamp in the file name. When you read the file name back in it's a string. If you need the most recent data, it's tempting to sort it as a string and pick off the last item (especially if you're using Perl which makes this sort of manipulation really easy). Unfortunately string comparisons will stop working on Saturday ("1000000000" 999999999).
Actually I was pleasantly surprised when I moved to an office a few weeks ago that uses CUPS. It really does "just work". Absolutely awesome.
Of course, I'm using a network printer. I'm not sure what the state-of-art is for personal printing so you might have a point.
Actually it is a decent alternative to M$ on the desktop. I've been using it for years to do my day-to-day work. Really it depends on what you're trying to do.
The only things that Linux is missing today are: 1/high-quality games, 2/quality educational software, 3/a good selection of "niche" productivity applications like tax software. For mainstream everyday use (surfing, word-processing, fiddling with a spreadsheet) Linux is fine.
Also, the productivity packages don't have the maturity of the MS or Corel offerings, but for most people that doesn't matter. The kind of people who would buy and be happy with Microsoft Works should find that OpenOffice meets their needs quite nicely.
If the Mexican government encouraged Linux for home use then they'd find that a lot of the shortcomings solved themselves. A hundred million Mexican Linux users would lead to a lot of specialized software in Spanish: Mexican tax software, educational software, games, etc.
Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. I once refused to use company equipment for exactly this reason. I used my own laptop, my private e-mail (over a secure link), and my own cell-phone. The company didn't like this, but my contract didn't say I had to use their stuff, nor did it say I had to submit to monitoring.
I've contracted for many companies, and I've never had to submit to monitoring. I spend enough of my life (way more than 40 hours/week) at work that I feel quite justified in using some of that time for personal business.
My experience has been that the companies that insist on monitoring employees also tend to be the ones with the worst moral and the least compentent management. Of course that doesn't prove a causal relationship, but I doubt it's a coincidence.
Then there's render farms (for movies) and various scientific applications.
But it still seems like a pretty small market. Of course, a small company doesn't need to sell that many boxes to survive, so maybe that's ok.
Actually it's more like a really dense server farm.
Possible markets? The only thing that really comes to mind for me is ISPs. This could replace racks of essentially standalone machines quite nicely. But of course that's not the best market to go after right now.
I'm wondering if more conventional companies would go for this. There are lots of companies that have a ridiculous number of little servers floating around. If they had been deployed on a beast like this from the start then they could have saved a lot of money. But now that they have all these little servers, it's hard to imagine them throwing them all out and replacing them with one box.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about how this works. I actually don't have a clue either, but based on the little bit in the article I can speculate. Perhaps a real physicist can correct me:
A pulse in "frequency space" (thinking back to Fourier transforms) is actually composed of an infinite number of frequencies. In other words, to produce a square wave (a pulse) you have to add together a ton of sine waves at different frequencies. The more sine waves you add together, the better your approximation of the pulse. Going the other way, a pulse can be decomposed into sine waves in an analogous fashion.
So, an EM pulse would actually have some effect right accross the radio spectrum (hence the name "Ultra-Wide"), but could properly be said to not use any particular portion of the spectrum.
Is this at all correct? If so, then wouldn't a bunch of these devices pretty much screw up all other forms of radio?
But what are the punitive damages based on? Whatever the damages are, they obviously aren't an effective deterrent. The fine needs to be big enough that the board of directors and shareholders notice.
Note that I don't really feel that the victim should necessarily get all the proceeds. Give it to charity or something like that. If I lose a week's salary (that's a more realistic number for lost Internet access) then I want to be compensated reasonably - lawyers fees, financial losses, maybe a little extra for the trouble. I don't expect to walk away a millionair. But the company that screwed me over should feel some pain - enough to get a few incompetant mangers fired and make sure that they change the way they do business.
So is that the legal question? Whether or not selling something on your web site constitutes selling something in the U.S.?