Is this not directly analogous to software written (or tested) on the taxpayer dime? If there's a market for lesson plans, there's a market. A teacher should be free to make a profit off his or her ingenuity and/or hard work while at the same time increasing the efficiency of quality lesson distribution. A teacher shouldn't be free, however, to block redistribution of a lesson plan once sold. In other words, no restrictive copyrights, patents, timebombs, or whatever. For some reason, the emotions surrounding teacher pay, workload, respect, etc. seem to be clouding this particular issue.
'A major point of the article is that many of the key (and repeatedly published) 'facts' about the bomb are quite wrong.'
Indeed. The article is a bit of a curveball in that you go in thinking it's yet another scare piece about sub-sovereign amateurs building nuclear devices in the garage only to find out its really the story of one man's obsessive attempt to cut through the mythology and determine the *exact* specifications of the Little Boy device. Recommended reading for anyone who has ever felt himself go a little nutso at the vast amount of extinct technological knowhow in our post-industrial culture.
This article irked me heavily, but that's probably a good sign that Mr. Graham gives away many of the trade secrets we journalists rely upon in putting together articles.
Back in the days when I was filing 2-3 stories a week on open source software, I made a pretty quick realization that there were only so many stories you could write about people writing and rewriting each others' software. Once that realization set it, I was on the slippery slope to PR addiction as I struggled to a) fill the news hole while b) covering stories with any type of efficiency.
I can't think of too many examples where a PR pitch shaped my story, but Graham's comments about "mystery meat" covered in a coating of "journalese" sent a shiver down my back. Good PR people influence reporting by packaging ideas in the same glib, half-chewed fashion a reporter uses to package it for an editor. It's sort of like a virus slipping its DNA into the host cell's DNA. Since the number of clever ideas a reporter can process in a given week is finite, if you can slip one clever idea into his thoughtstream, it becomes a sit back and wait for the payoff process.
What Graham neglects to mention, however, is access. What makes PR so addicting to the reporter isn't the minimization of workload: It's the guarantee of face-to-face access when you need an interesting person or group to drive your story. Aside from seeking out buzz-quotes, another way to test for existence of a PR company is to look for all the subtle cues of an arranged meeting -- Hollywood journalism clues such as the way the interviewee attacked a salad during a 15 minute lunch or they way their eyes crinkled briefly in a 20 minute walk-and-talk. Good PR people know that every reporter is trying to make a mink coat out of a single pelt, so they make sure to keep the pelts on limited supply.
Anyway, I can say all this because, thanks to the economy, my career has veered away from relying heavily on PR folks. I now can afford to pitch only the story ideas I know are unique and that precludes talking to too many intermediaries. When I do convince PR people to have their clients talk to me, I wind up feeling guilty when the pitches bomb.
As for the future of the PR/news writer relationship, I've said it before and I'll say it again: A person should read the news the same way they buy fruit at the market. Sniff it, inspect it, clean it, and then eat it knowing that you still need a few more courses if you want a balanced meal. Blogs may expand the buffet table, but I find the fare the journalistic equivalent of an all candy diet. Something tells me the PR folks have already figured out how to package that candy.
IIRC, there was an event on Sept. 11, 2001 that all but shut down the U.S. economy for 96 hours. It wasn't software generated, of course, but many of the back up sites, redundant networking and contingency plans that kept the world's largest companies from going into an immediate air-stall owed their existence to the pre-Y2K fervor. Sometimes it takes a little fear to get the suits to pry open the pocketbook.
Of course, now that the current security obsession is terrorism maybe we shouldn't be too surprised by recent software meltdowns..
At best this kind of analysis helps you see trends over a long time period, but I don't see how that can help the pentagon except when they ask for more funding
How is this not a valuable use? If the fictional terrorist market shows heavy betting on a particular targe, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, say, you can consider it a reasonable reflection of public sentiment that the target in question is too "soft" and in need of proper protection. The Pentagon can then turn around to Congress and say, "Make the choice: Baghdad or Baltimore. We can't do both under the current funding structure."
....there isn't much insider buying happening with SCOX, especially now that we know the company stands to make billions.
It's like a stock analyst once told me: An insider sale can mean anything -- low confidence, a new pool in the backyard, college tuition for the kids. A buy means only one thing -- somebody on the inside sees the company doing well over the long haul.
. ..or give a simple random sample of the voting population a chance to weigh in on a particular issue via a telephone poll. Isn't that the type of democracy we have already?
I mean, c'mon. If the American people weren't so afraid of seeing body-bags -- and so obsessed with the president's sexual habits -- we could have taken Osama out three years ago.
I know the age of irony is over, but the whole reliance upon technology [cruise missiles, smart bombs, drones, GPS, etc.] to narrow the battlefield to a few specialized combatants seems, well, ironic.
From the day William Tecumseh Sherman cut down his first peach tree, military leaders have generally agreed that civilians are fair game in any conflict. Sure, it's immoral to kill unarmed people, but weighed against the greater immorality of war, hitting civilians is the quickest and easiest way to end the shooting match. Hiroshima and Nagazaki pretty much proved that.
Of course, this mentality is what gave rise to the culture of terrorism in the first place. As the "barrier to entry" into the combatant marketplace has grown, people who wanted to partake in the slaughter have opted to shun military targets altogether and take the war directly to the civilian populace.
From the Sun Tzu perspective, this seems pretty smart. Why fight your enemy where he's strong when you can hit him where he's weak? Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. Civilian populations can be pretty resilient, and unless you're willing to go big [i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki-style big], attacks have a tendency to strengthen political resolve. Look at North Vietnam and Israel for examples.
The current strategy, in which the military aims its sophisticated weapons at a few hundred culpable individuals, seems ultra-modern but is in fact ultra-retro. Its ultimate goal is to return the civilian to a spectator role and elevate the prestige of the warrior caste doing the actual fighting. Call it closed source warfare. CNN has become the military equivalent of the "We value your business" message computer users endure waiting for somebody in tech support to pick up the phone.
Frankly, I think American civilians should resist this trend and demand a bigger stake in the war "effort." After all, we've provided the bulk of the casualties so far, and we have the most to lose if the effort goes awry. A good start would be to demand a full accounting of the Bush Administration's military time-table by the 2002 mid-term elections, increased pressure for democratic reform in the Middle East [including a non-Zionist constitution in Israel], and heightened opposition to the curtailment of civil liberties here in the U.S.
George Bush and Condolezza Rice are watching the Texas A&M, Southern Methodist football game. W. is seated in a leather couch, drinking a beer, his feet propped up on the wagon-wheel coffee table. Condi is in her third mile on the stairmaster.
W.
Any word on how that elite [pronounced e-light] team of computer hackers getting along?
CONDI
The latest from CINCPER is they touched down outside of Kabul an hour ago.
W.
Outstanding!
W. slips hand in waistband Al Bundy-style and takes a sip of his beer.
I don't necessarily agree with the sentiments of the above posting, but I do agree that most U.S. citizens [and citizens of nations that line up alongside the U.S] should be prepared to see this as a generation-long struggle.
Many of the terrorist organizations throughout the world, most notably the PLO and IRA, have operated according to the "30-year war" doctrine used with expert effect by the Viet-Minh/Viet Cong/NVA troops during their 1945-1975 war for independence. Simply put, no industrialized nation, not even the U.S., can afford to maintain a full war footing much longer than five years. Why do you think most of the major wars of the last 150 years have ground to a halt after the 4th or 5th year? Guerrilla movements thrive off this fact by adopting a hit-and-run strategy and waiting until the citizens of the occupying nation lose the political will to endorse continued bloodshed.
This will definitely be the case over the next decade. Even if we do send in a coalition army to unseat the governments of every state from Morocco to Pakistan, the battle won't end there. If anything, it will heighten the need for a decade-long commitment, at minimum. All the posters who decry U.S. policy prior to this attack are justified. Perhaps a pan-Arab Marshall plan will make these states and their citizens friendlier to the Western world.
In order to help these states accept such a plan, however, we have to make sure it's an offer they can't refuse. That's where the war part comes in.
Sad but true.
I saw Ep. IV in the theaters when I was seven. Don't remember much about the experience except the trash compactor scene and the final mission. Still, I do remember my Dad's take:
"I'm sitting in the theater and the film opens with this lame title sequence rolling off into space. The title fades to black and suddenly a spaceship comes in from the top of the screen. I'm thinking, 'OK, I've seen this before.' Five seconds later, a second ship slowly emerges . . . and keeps emerging, and keeps emerging until finally the whole screen is filled and the whole theater is shaking from the sound of it.
"I'm thinking, "OK, I haven't seen that before.'"
Frankly, that's all I wanted from Ep. I. It didn't have to be Shakespearean drama, but you at least expected a quantum leap in special effects/action similar to what James Cameron pulled off with Terminator II. IIRC, the first scene in Ep. I is a ship flying toward some donut-shaped space station with a lot of weak dialogue about treaties, embargoes and whatnot. Right then and there, you knew it was going to be lame. Jar Jar or no Jar Jar.
For most authors, musicians, directors etc. the promise of financial reward is so ludicrously slim as to make playing the lottery a better time investment. Still, judging by the number of new titles [and rejected works] coming out each year, people must have other motives besides finanical gain when they create.
As a writer -- and I'm sure Jon Katz can empathize with this -- sometimes waking up the next morning to read your own text is incentive enough. As a musician -- and I'm sure many open source programmers share this feeling -- sometimes songs just emerge out of your brain whether you want them to or not. You then have two choices 1) release your work to the public or 2) let it die.
MP3 took off for the same reason open source is taking off. The number of musicians/programmers willing to follow path No. 1 is high, and the means of production are so cheap, that creators gladly eat the time/production costs as long as it gives them a chance to participate in the cultural conversation.
With DVD's the situation is different. Blair Witch aside, the going price for a quality film is $1 million plus. Even if you do manage to shoot one on the cheap, most directors rely on the promise of a future payout to lure cast and crew members. In this type of situation, studios are perfectly situated in the toll-taker position. They own the best content, either by buying it or lending the money for its creation, and therefore can dictate the terms of distribution [for now].
There is of course one side of the entertainment industry we're forgetting about here: The pornography industry. Remember, these are the guys who overlooked VHS' inherent copyright protection flaws and turned it into a multi-billion dollar medium.
When it comes to getting content creators "on our side," perhaps open source hackers need to approach content creators more amenable to the cause. You don't find many directors cut porno titles on DVD. What type of software does it take to get your favorite 90 min. triple penetration video piped across the Internet in the time it takes your boss to go to the restroom and back? My guess is if you can find that software -- and GPL it -- bottleneck technologies like DVD will quickly become irrelevant.
Don't worry. Creators are, by definition, creative. They'll figure out ways to make the new system work for them.
Speaking of. ..where can I get a "Worst Episode Ever" t-shirt like the one the Comic Bookstore Guy was wearing in the jockey episode? I'd pay good money [OK, adequate money] for one.
Design specs:
White Hanes 100% - Cotton Beefy T [the better to shrink and expose my navel.]
Front: Plain black lettering [New York font] "Worst Episode Ever."
Example: The first touchdown that Houston [er, Tennessee] scored in third quarter. ABC momentarily cut to a birds-eye POV shot of the Titan offense lining up. The formation hinted a run left [from the defense's POV], but the running back went right, following the lead of a pulling guard. End result: Six points and a whole new ballgame.
Looking through the battle maps in one of my When Titans Clashed; how the Red Army stopped Hitler by David M. Glantz and Jonathan House [kickass book BTW], I noticed that the Red Army employed similar tactics during the epic Stalingrad campaign. Zhukov lined the 17TC, 6, 24TC, 25TC and 18TC on the extreme left flank [faking a sweep left in football parlance] but sent the bulk of the tanks right [a counter trey], deep, deep, deep into the Op. Gp. Hollidt backfield. End result: Bye bye Sixth Army and a whole new war.
Of course, if you buy that analogy, yesterday's end result was kind of depressing. The Titan ground game proved to be too little too late, and the Wermacht-like Rams held on to the victory.
Waiting for the day when viewers can choose the camera angles [and send in the plays].;)
Considering most sitcoms -- cartoon or otherwise -- rarely make it past 10 weeks, the fact that the Simpsons writers can still come up with funny episodes using the same characters over and over is a testament to the show's success. Granted, it never approached the timeless, haiku-like simplicity of "Married with Children," but the show still keeps chugging along while its competitors [anybody remember the first "Cosby?"] fade away...
All time Favorite Simpsons Line: "Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You probably remember me from such instructional films as 'Here Comes the Metric System!' and 'Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly.'"
For those of you craving a more in-depth analysis of the embedded Linux field, I apologize for leaving so much on the cutting room floor.
The forking issue came up both because of last week's uproar over TurboCluster and my background reading on RTLinux, an "extension" of the Linux kernel that brings the real time capabilities to the fore.
Basically, I wanted to see what Linus thought about such "extensions." Apparently, he seems to approve. As a reader mentioned above, the GPL allows forking. This only becomes a Unix-style problem when the bulk of embedded developers -- a more commercially-minded group than PC hackers, apparently -- suddenly decide to branch off and start their own kernel group.
As for knocking the depth of Upside's content, what can I say? This is an interactive medium. If I get a ton of e-mails today and tomorrow begging me to dig deeper, I won't feel like I'm kicking so many readers out of the sandbox just by using the RTOS acronym.
Unfortunately, the last two days have not the best for getting through to Apple. I just got a call back from the main Linux community ombudsperson this morning. He said he wasn't be able to comment for the record without first running it through PR channels. All of the people I have contacted say support for Linux is strong inside Apple. For the moment, however, it's mostly on an individual or factional basis. Sort of what you'd expect within any large company, especially one trying to track two industries -- hardware and software -- at once. Sam Williams Upside Today
Slashdot Mirror
http://kleinschmidt.wordpress.com/2006/07/03/i-cannot-be-played-on-record-player-x/
That "easy fix" thing you mentioned...any idea where I can find one?
Is this not directly analogous to software written (or tested) on the taxpayer dime? If there's a market for lesson plans, there's a market. A teacher should be free to make a profit off his or her ingenuity and/or hard work while at the same time increasing the efficiency of quality lesson distribution. A teacher shouldn't be free, however, to block redistribution of a lesson plan once sold. In other words, no restrictive copyrights, patents, timebombs, or whatever. For some reason, the emotions surrounding teacher pay, workload, respect, etc. seem to be clouding this particular issue.
'A major point of the article is that many of the key (and repeatedly published) 'facts' about the bomb are quite wrong.'
Indeed. The article is a bit of a curveball in that you go in thinking it's yet another scare piece about sub-sovereign amateurs building nuclear devices in the garage only to find out its really the story of one man's obsessive attempt to cut through the mythology and determine the *exact* specifications of the Little Boy device. Recommended reading for anyone who has ever felt himself go a little nutso at the vast amount of extinct technological knowhow in our post-industrial culture.
Recursion on the brain ;)
"In Silicon Valley you tend to get the idea right but the decade wrong."
Back in the days when I was filing 2-3 stories a week on open source software, I made a pretty quick realization that there were only so many stories you could write about people writing and rewriting each others' software. Once that realization set it, I was on the slippery slope to PR addiction as I struggled to a) fill the news hole while b) covering stories with any type of efficiency.
I can't think of too many examples where a PR pitch shaped my story, but Graham's comments about "mystery meat" covered in a coating of "journalese" sent a shiver down my back. Good PR people influence reporting by packaging ideas in the same glib, half-chewed fashion a reporter uses to package it for an editor. It's sort of like a virus slipping its DNA into the host cell's DNA. Since the number of clever ideas a reporter can process in a given week is finite, if you can slip one clever idea into his thoughtstream, it becomes a sit back and wait for the payoff process.
What Graham neglects to mention, however, is access. What makes PR so addicting to the reporter isn't the minimization of workload: It's the guarantee of face-to-face access when you need an interesting person or group to drive your story. Aside from seeking out buzz-quotes, another way to test for existence of a PR company is to look for all the subtle cues of an arranged meeting -- Hollywood journalism clues such as the way the interviewee attacked a salad during a 15 minute lunch or they way their eyes crinkled briefly in a 20 minute walk-and-talk. Good PR people know that every reporter is trying to make a mink coat out of a single pelt, so they make sure to keep the pelts on limited supply.
Anyway, I can say all this because, thanks to the economy, my career has veered away from relying heavily on PR folks. I now can afford to pitch only the story ideas I know are unique and that precludes talking to too many intermediaries. When I do convince PR people to have their clients talk to me, I wind up feeling guilty when the pitches bomb.
As for the future of the PR/news writer relationship, I've said it before and I'll say it again: A person should read the news the same way they buy fruit at the market. Sniff it, inspect it, clean it, and then eat it knowing that you still need a few more courses if you want a balanced meal. Blogs may expand the buffet table, but I find the fare the journalistic equivalent of an all candy diet. Something tells me the PR folks have already figured out how to package that candy.
IIRC, there was an event on Sept. 11, 2001 that all but shut down the U.S. economy for 96 hours. It wasn't software generated, of course, but many of the back up sites, redundant networking and contingency plans that kept the world's largest companies from going into an immediate air-stall owed their existence to the pre-Y2K fervor. Sometimes it takes a little fear to get the suits to pry open the pocketbook.
Of course, now that the current security obsession is terrorism maybe we shouldn't be too surprised by recent software meltdowns..
At best this kind of analysis helps you see trends over a long time period, but I don't see how that can help the pentagon except when they ask for more funding
How is this not a valuable use? If the fictional terrorist market shows heavy betting on a particular targe, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, say, you can consider it a reasonable reflection of public sentiment that the target in question is too "soft" and in need of proper protection. The Pentagon can then turn around to Congress and say, "Make the choice: Baghdad or Baltimore. We can't do both under the current funding structure."
Not all insider buying is for long-term investment.
;)
Too true. Those insiders who buy for the short term, however, face Darwinian pressures of the Elliot Spitzer/Bill Lerach variety
....there isn't much insider buying happening with SCOX, especially now that we know the company stands to make billions.
It's like a stock analyst once told me: An insider sale can mean anything -- low confidence, a new pool in the backyard, college tuition for the kids. A buy means only one thing -- somebody on the inside sees the company doing well over the long haul.
. . .or give a simple random sample of the voting population a chance to weigh in on a particular issue via a telephone poll. Isn't that the type of democracy we have already?
I mean, c'mon. If the American people weren't so afraid of seeing body-bags -- and so obsessed with the president's sexual habits -- we could have taken Osama out three years ago.
I know the age of irony is over, but the whole reliance upon technology [cruise missiles, smart bombs, drones, GPS, etc.] to narrow the battlefield to a few specialized combatants seems, well, ironic.
From the day William Tecumseh Sherman cut down his first peach tree, military leaders have generally agreed that civilians are fair game in any conflict. Sure, it's immoral to kill unarmed people, but weighed against the greater immorality of war, hitting civilians is the quickest and easiest way to end the shooting match. Hiroshima and Nagazaki pretty much proved that.
Of course, this mentality is what gave rise to the culture of terrorism in the first place. As the "barrier to entry" into the combatant marketplace has grown, people who wanted to partake in the slaughter have opted to shun military targets altogether and take the war directly to the civilian populace.
From the Sun Tzu perspective, this seems pretty smart. Why fight your enemy where he's strong when you can hit him where he's weak? Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. Civilian populations can be pretty resilient, and unless you're willing to go big [i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki-style big], attacks have a tendency to strengthen political resolve. Look at North Vietnam and Israel for examples.
The current strategy, in which the military aims its sophisticated weapons at a few hundred culpable individuals, seems ultra-modern but is in fact ultra-retro. Its ultimate goal is to return the civilian to a spectator role and elevate the prestige of the warrior caste doing the actual fighting. Call it closed source warfare. CNN has become the military equivalent of the "We value your business" message computer users endure waiting for somebody in tech support to pick up the phone.
Frankly, I think American civilians should resist this trend and demand a bigger stake in the war "effort." After all, we've provided the bulk of the casualties so far, and we have the most to lose if the effort goes awry. A good start would be to demand a full accounting of the Bush Administration's military time-table by the 2002 mid-term elections, increased pressure for democratic reform in the Middle East [including a non-Zionist constitution in Israel], and heightened opposition to the curtailment of civil liberties here in the U.S.
Any word on how that elite [pronounced e-light] team of computer hackers getting along?
The latest from CINCPER is they touched down outside of Kabul an hour ago.
Outstanding!
W. slips hand in waistband Al Bundy-style and takes a sip of his beer.
CUT TO. . .
I don't necessarily agree with the sentiments of the above posting, but I do agree that most U.S. citizens [and citizens of nations that line up alongside the U.S] should be prepared to see this as a generation-long struggle.
Many of the terrorist organizations throughout the world, most notably the PLO and IRA, have operated according to the "30-year war" doctrine used with expert effect by the Viet-Minh/Viet Cong/NVA troops during their 1945-1975 war for independence. Simply put, no industrialized nation, not even the U.S., can afford to maintain a full war footing much longer than five years. Why do you think most of the major wars of the last 150 years have ground to a halt after the 4th or 5th year? Guerrilla movements thrive off this fact by adopting a hit-and-run strategy and waiting until the citizens of the occupying nation lose the political will to endorse continued bloodshed.
This will definitely be the case over the next decade. Even if we do send in a coalition army to unseat the governments of every state from Morocco to Pakistan, the battle won't end there. If anything, it will heighten the need for a decade-long commitment, at minimum. All the posters who decry U.S. policy prior to this attack are justified. Perhaps a pan-Arab Marshall plan will make these states and their citizens friendlier to the Western world.
In order to help these states accept such a plan, however, we have to make sure it's an offer they can't refuse. That's where the war part comes in.
Sad but true.
I saw Ep. IV in the theaters when I was seven. Don't remember much about the experience except the trash compactor scene and the final mission. Still, I do remember my Dad's take:
"I'm sitting in the theater and the film opens with this lame title sequence rolling off into space. The title fades to black and suddenly a spaceship comes in from the top of the screen. I'm thinking, 'OK, I've seen this before.' Five seconds later, a second ship slowly emerges . . . and keeps emerging, and keeps emerging until finally the whole screen is filled and the whole theater is shaking from the sound of it.
"I'm thinking, "OK, I haven't seen that before.'"
Frankly, that's all I wanted from Ep. I. It didn't have to be Shakespearean drama, but you at least expected a quantum leap in special effects/action similar to what James Cameron pulled off with Terminator II. IIRC, the first scene in Ep. I is a ship flying toward some donut-shaped space station with a lot of weak dialogue about treaties, embargoes and whatnot. Right then and there, you knew it was going to be lame. Jar Jar or no Jar Jar.
Where's Suge Knight when Dre really needs him?
As a writer -- and I'm sure Jon Katz can empathize with this -- sometimes waking up the next morning to read your own text is incentive enough. As a musician -- and I'm sure many open source programmers share this feeling -- sometimes songs just emerge out of your brain whether you want them to or not. You then have two choices 1) release your work to the public or 2) let it die.
MP3 took off for the same reason open source is taking off. The number of musicians/programmers willing to follow path No. 1 is high, and the means of production are so cheap, that creators gladly eat the time/production costs as long as it gives them a chance to participate in the cultural conversation.
With DVD's the situation is different. Blair Witch aside, the going price for a quality film is $1 million plus. Even if you do manage to shoot one on the cheap, most directors rely on the promise of a future payout to lure cast and crew members. In this type of situation, studios are perfectly situated in the toll-taker position. They own the best content, either by buying it or lending the money for its creation, and therefore can dictate the terms of distribution [for now].
There is of course one side of the entertainment industry we're forgetting about here: The pornography industry. Remember, these are the guys who overlooked VHS' inherent copyright protection flaws and turned it into a multi-billion dollar medium.
When it comes to getting content creators "on our side," perhaps open source hackers need to approach content creators more amenable to the cause. You don't find many directors cut porno titles on DVD. What type of software does it take to get your favorite 90 min. triple penetration video piped across the Internet in the time it takes your boss to go to the restroom and back? My guess is if you can find that software -- and GPL it -- bottleneck technologies like DVD will quickly become irrelevant.
Don't worry. Creators are, by definition, creative. They'll figure out ways to make the new system work for them.
Design specs:
White Hanes 100% - Cotton Beefy T [the better to shrink and expose my navel.]
Front: Plain black lettering [New York font] "Worst Episode Ever."
Back: N/A
Example: The first touchdown that Houston [er, Tennessee] scored in third quarter. ABC momentarily cut to a birds-eye POV shot of the Titan offense lining up. The formation hinted a run left [from the defense's POV], but the running back went right, following the lead of a pulling guard. End result: Six points and a whole new ballgame.
Looking through the battle maps in one of my When Titans Clashed; how the Red Army stopped Hitler by David M. Glantz and Jonathan House [kickass book BTW], I noticed that the Red Army employed similar tactics during the epic Stalingrad campaign. Zhukov lined the 17TC, 6, 24TC, 25TC and 18TC on the extreme left flank [faking a sweep left in football parlance] but sent the bulk of the tanks right [a counter trey], deep, deep, deep into the Op. Gp. Hollidt backfield. End result: Bye bye Sixth Army and a whole new war.
Of course, if you buy that analogy, yesterday's end result was kind of depressing. The Titan ground game proved to be too little too late, and the Wermacht-like Rams held on to the victory.
Waiting for the day when viewers can choose the camera angles [and send in the plays]. ;)
Sam p.s. the E-Trade monkey commercial was best.
All time Favorite Simpsons Line: "Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You probably remember me from such instructional films as 'Here Comes the Metric System!' and 'Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly.'"
For those of you craving a more in-depth analysis of the embedded Linux field, I apologize for leaving so much on the cutting room floor.
The forking issue came up both because of last week's uproar over TurboCluster and my background reading on RTLinux, an "extension" of the Linux kernel that brings the real time capabilities to the fore.
Basically, I wanted to see what Linus thought about such "extensions." Apparently, he seems to approve. As a reader mentioned above, the GPL allows forking. This only becomes a Unix-style problem when the bulk of embedded developers -- a more commercially-minded group than PC hackers, apparently -- suddenly decide to branch off and start their own kernel group.
As for knocking the depth of Upside's content, what can I say? This is an interactive medium. If I get a ton of e-mails today and tomorrow begging me to dig deeper, I won't feel like I'm kicking so many readers out of the sandbox just by using the RTOS acronym.
Later, Sam Williams Upside Today
Unfortunately, the last two days have not the best for getting through to Apple. I just got a call back from the main Linux community ombudsperson this morning. He said he wasn't be able to comment for the record without first running it through PR channels. All of the people I have contacted say support for Linux is strong inside Apple. For the moment, however, it's mostly on an individual or factional basis. Sort of what you'd expect within any large company, especially one trying to track two industries -- hardware and software -- at once. Sam Williams Upside Today