I don't need to buy a license for open source code that my customers use.
I can maintain systems that are at least compatible with with my customers' systems, if not downright identical, without concern for "licensing issues", "right to use", or any of that other stuff.
If the customer wants to set up a few extra systems for their internal delivery/test processes, then No Problem.
Open source products have been, in my experience, at least as reliable as proprietary equivalents.
Open source products give control to my customers: If they have a problem, but cannot get support "out there", then a competent developer can help. Just *try* getting help with proprietary stuff: It's a big fingerpointing nightmare.
The bottom line for me is that all that thinking about licensing, and proving that I have a right to work just isn't a problem in the open source world.
I hope the producers tone it down a bit, but the cinematographic style is, I believe, called "Cinema Verite". Another poster refered to it being "documentary style", which is also basically true. That's where "verite" comes in: It's meant to appear real, as one might see in a documentary.
SF can be difficult to make "believable" for too many of us, and I applaud the producers and writers of BSG for working to get it right. I also find the new series compelling. As a point of reference, I didn't bother to dislike the original BattleSuck Galactica 27 years ago (it was so lousy, even a 21-year-old *geek* couldn't bother with it!).
There is communism (insane totalitarianism found in USSR and an earlier China) but they never achieved that Marx wrote about. No "government" ever has (In the '60's and '70's people had communes, but they always broke apart on the shoals of human nature). The people who started "communist" revolutions never completed the process. I don't call those insane assholes "communists", they are insane oligarchs, just like the Czarist regime before them.
There was a time when the new government in this continent did something that had not been done before or since: They *gave up power*, placing that power in the hands of people. Since then, the concept has fallen on hard times. Today, we have oligarchs like Mr. Gates trying to restore Traditional Values: Own and control access to *fucking everything*. And they have enough financial resources to buy off what passes for government these days. And the only people doing anything about it (in information technology, they are FOSS advocates) eschew government and political process. Too busy writing actual reliable code, I suppose...
I don't like arbitrary authority, so I don't like big centralized government. On the other hand, I cannot think of another way to slow down the assholes who want to charge me for the privilege of working (using "their" "intellectual" "property"). It's a dilemma that I don't know how to resolve.
Whoever invented it, we seem to be unwilling or unable to mass-produce *our own* inventions. I am old enough to remember when Japan and the other asian economies were thought of as being merely "low-tech knock-off manufacturers". They are creative and hardworking people, willing to put their time and money into getting the work done efficiently and with high qualit.
And I admit that my intransigence is slipping out today. I *so wish* we would engage in the effort of actually manufacturing more consumer goods in this country.
Looking strictly at a single global namespace of all possible people, human-friendly globally unique identifiers cannot scale. I know, I am one of at least two people in my extended family with the same first, middle and last name. (Hmmm... I wonder if that isn't why C++ has namespaces?:-) )
Thinking about how these things would actually be used, however, it's not so difficult to arrange a way to make it work. People who interact with me are not likely to be interested in the other people with "my" name. As long as it's possible to establish an extensible model for expressing unique identity (not necessarily *easy*, but I believe feasible), then one can use a locally defined alias to the globally unique identifier.
Maybe some history of an individual might be useful in disambiguating one individual from another where name doesn't match. "Leonardo da Vinci" is an example. That guy was "Leonardo", and "da Vinci" distinguished him from "Leonardo da Verona" consequent to his being from "Vinci". (apologies to people who actually know how to express such things in Italian.:-) ) There's "Jesus of Nazareth", etc. etc. People's names tended to be locally unique, and global references simply used locality to distinguish one from another. We have more flexibility in expressing "locality" in the internet than classical geography, but there are ways to do it.
The FCC has authority over the *transmission* of signals in most wireless frequencies and at some power levels. The FCC has authority over the *transmission* of signals over the phone lines. The FCC has absolutely no, zero, zilch, nada authority over *MY* PC.
Authority over Cable companies, for instance, is also held by local communities.
This same FCC that doesn't bother to even *look* at how broadcasters are misusing their licenses? (to quote an oft-quoted phrase) They can pull my OPEN SOURCE, PRIVATELY OWNED AND OPERATED PC out of my cold dead hands.
You're right on W.R.T. evolution, considering that both Dawkins and Gould (R.I.P.) are decades-long internationally recognized experts in their fields. I believe you didn't handle the "global warming" thing fully, since there are *credible* opposing views.
Where evolution has been successfully used (c.f. disease resistance and accumulation of mutations, etc.) and its predictions essentially validated, there isn't much question there. Those who "don't believe in evolution" simply have their heads in the sand. However, until the recent arctic report, the human contribution to possible climate change was still somewhat arguable, though evidence was mounting. (With the arrival of the arctic temperature change report, "global warming" is headed for similar levels of assurance...)
The bottom line really is that journalists have a responsibility to detect *and report* on the current consensus of recognized scientific authorities. When there is a disagreement from the "contrarians", those arguments may be brought forward, with the clear disclaimer that they are out of the mainstream of scientific consensus, and their credibility should be measured accordingly. There *are* occasions when the contrarians are right. (I refer the reader to the treatment of proponents of plate tectonics until their eventual validation. They were considered to be *total crackpots* for many years.)
Your last paragraph is over the top though I am sure it was meant mostly in jest. While I think Murdoch/Fox/Rush are doing *everybody* a disservice, and could even be contributing to genuine disaster with their blatant and public stupidity, your last paragraph probably pisses off many who need persuading about the value of (steadily improving) scientific consensus.
Save your pennies, folks; live well but be certain to have some cushion. You *will* have opportunities to consider your participation in the IT industry sometime. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
I am in just that situation (considering my options) as of yesterday at noon, at which time my now former employer changed my status from employed to "considering my options". (My wife and) I saved well, lived conservatively, and other than questions about affordable health insurance, we are in good shape to manage this newfound freedom as a non-emergency.
Slightly offtopic: I have a completely new appreciation for F/OSS today, as I remain able to continue my studies without breaking the now non-refilling bank.
Any contributor or contributing organization can offer their work for whatever payment they can get for it, under the ordinary boring dual-license approach.
FWIW, "their work" in this context means that part of their contribution to Linux that is not derived from the work of the many thousands of other contributors according to the standard rules of copyright. Linus has stated in LKML that code is very unlikely to avoid being "derived", and therefore being subject to GPL, if it refers directly to kernel symbols, or includes kernel header files.
Yup, The terrorists won very very big due to the insane over-reaction of our society. On my cynical days, I give the label "authoritarian wannabees" to our current government. On my less cynical days, I realize it's a natural human reaction.
Feeling a bit cynical today, I believe that our governmnent should be smarter than to cave in to mob mentality. The fact that they didn't bother to get a damn clue is a testament to either colossal stupidity or real honest-to-God power-hunger.
My sister, a conservative Christian, chose to home-school her children. She had a relatively difficult time with the basic process, until she gave her children the freedom to learn and explore their world. After my sister accepted that lesson, the children have exploded out of the gate. They don't even slow down. Based our admittedly anecdotal observations of this particular situation, I believe some of what mr Gatto has said.
I also know a teacher who is constantly fighting with the school system to let the students learn, rather than follow the party line.
Background: My sister's original motivation for home schooling was to avoid some of the unfiltered acceptance of life-styles of which she disapproves. Also her expectation that the standard industrial schooling process would label her second child, a very energetic boy as having attention-deficit disorder and get "treated". I was pretty well concerned by this approach that my sister wanted to take. In the fullness of time, the positives of learning, self-confidence and genuine critical thinking will allow the children to become strong contributors to our society, probably a bit conservative but not rabidly dogmatic followers of some party line.
I have *way* reduced my media consumption, largely due to the increasingly restrictive processes they are imposing. My wife certainly likes the results (I've learned to cook some good stuff:-) )!
Free/Libre open source gets locked out of Blu-Ray (and as many other high-def multimedia formats as possible).
Microsoft's management is required by law to maximize return on investment ("fiduciary duty"), using every possible legal means. This process, getting their proprietary technology into as many requirements as possible, is part of their strategy, and I must admit that it's working perfectly. It's not "evil", it's goal achievement.
It's up to us, society at large, to establish the limits. If we fail to meet our end of the bargain, then that's on us.
Societies get to choose among a diversity of processes for managing ourselves. We can say "corporations are responsible for reasonable behavior and we will regulate them minimally, assuming that they work accordingly". We can also say "corporations must be expected to prioritize on shareholder value and we must pay close attention to their decisions, knowing that they are required to find every technique or loophole in the rules to achieve that goal".
In my opinion, what we have half one and half the other: "For the purposes of regulation by society at large, corporations are responsible for reasonable behavior and need not be so tightly regulated. For the purposes of corporate strategy, corporations are expected to maximize shareholder value using any legal means necessary". This model works *very well* for managers and majority shareholders of huge corporations. If this is a good model for social interactions, then we're in good shape. If not, then we should be working toward a better model.
I remember advocating two simultaneous reactions to 9/11:
Crimes must be punished
Americans should think carefully about why some people want to them down a few notches
It's not "girly" or "unpatriotic" to think about how one's actions affect others.
W.R.T. right vs left: It would be great if people thought about efficiency and effectiveness and responsibility once in a while instead of constantly going on about rights all the damn time. I am tired of laziness, intellectual and otherwise, substituting for getting together to get the job done (whatever the job is at any given time).
Genuine thinking is difficult and takes discipline. But worst of all, taking the time to actually consider one's approach is being labeled by both sides as unpatriotic/wrong/girly/wonkish/etc. I guess it's not exciting enough.
I was in a motorcycle accident 22 years ago that took me out for a month. Theoretically, I had a job on return. In reality, the *work* was gone to another worker. Fortunately for me, I had been looking for new work anyway and moved on. One is as indispensable as one is willing to be. And I understand those who are willing to work so hard. To such folks, I say two things: You *will* get tired, and it only puts off the inevitable anyway.
Never, never depend on your job. Have >12 months minimal operational savings ready to go when you are laid off.
...that drives market capitalization. "Eventually" can be a long time coming, but when the correction happens, it tends to happen suddenly. Of course, Mr Gates will never be eating out of a dumpster, he's way too smart to keep all his eggs in one basket. But I believe that as the world catches on to the fact (my belief) that it's hard to grow past near monopoly status, Microsoft's stock price will reflect Microsoft's value as a business.
On the original topic of open source killing jobs, (as has been said before) there are far more jobs dependent on efficient access to productive technology than on the technology itself. So, yes many "jobs will be lost", to many "other jobs". In the end, efficiency rules. However one gets there, that's how it will happen. Mr Gates cannot stop it any more than the oft-mentioned buggy-whip manufacturers.
I do not agree. Microsoft has tried to destroy every competitor, many successfully. In my opinion, Microsoft's business model is miserably inadequate with respect to its customers (real) needs, such as not being subject to every worm that comes along. Their approach to "partners" is miserably dishonest. Their manipulation of the market is legendary. I believe they are among the most harshly competitive, no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle, knockdown-dragout, meanest competitor the computer business has seen.
But they take their "fiduciary responsiblity" to stockholders very very seriously, and until recently (last year, this year) were among the most consistent growth stocks in business history.
I remember when we thought IBM were "evil"... They never came close! Microsoft executives are the gold standard of "growth at *all* costs" mentality.
Convergence is OK, it's cool and all. But so far as I've been able to tell, convergence has resulted mostly in limits on the availability of drivers for my preferred operating environment. Between the RIAA-controlled audio monopoly, the MPAA-controlled moving visual arts monopoly and Microsoft's desire to control computing has resulted only in proposed (or real) restrictions on how I get to setup and use my workstation.
Now a computer is a "media theft acceleration device", primarily useful (as far as the big boys are concerned) to "steal" "their" "product". I do not want what they have, so I am not stealing it. Their claim to it hangs on a slim thread of a business process so it's not really "theirs", and most of it isn't much of a product.
Actually, the i860 was a graphics chip. I guess that the original author intended to refer to the i960, a chip that was used in several communication systems that I worked on.
Intel released the I960 as an embedded chip, expecting to see some military applications. The first versions were the i960KA (without floating point) and i960KB (with floating point). They didn't get all that far in the marketplace. However the i960CA and its followon the i960CF were pretty slick. The i960 had 32 general purpose registers, and a processor-defined function call sequence that always placed a set of 16 on the stack ("caller-owned") and left a set of 16 alone ("args , temp & return values"). The i960CA cached the top
4, 6 or 8 stack frames in on-chip static memory with a 128-bit pathway to the main register set. This gave it amazing function calling and interrupt service performance. We wrote a sample clock-interrupt test that serviced a 100 kHz clock interrupt using only 23% of the CPU. (Remember, this was in 1992...) The product we built (see next paragraph) is still out in the network, switching phone calls.
I remember receiving one of first the 486DX2/66 processors in the city where I live (Columbus Ohio). I was at AT&T/BL at the time, and we were building a product based on a pair of 66MHz 486 and a pair 33 MHz i960CA processors. (Intel sent us a pair of chips for evaluation) We wanted to benchmark them, and I was the only developer whose home system could use the 32-bit capabilities of the 486. The 486DX2/66 was a screamer...
<offtopic> Being a total geekazoid, I had UNIX (yup, I blew $800 on a "used" SVR3.2 license)! I kept that license current through Novell UNIXware SVR4.2 in 1996, when this new geek-friendly OS called "Linux" had just received BKL-based SMP capability. I tried it, liked it, and kept using it. This "Linux" already had better VM performance (in my opinion) than the traditional UNIX, and semed to me to be on the way to much larger things. I stopped updating my UNIX license, donating it instead to a local high school.
I've been a developer for >30 years and have a clear idea of what I want in a workstation. Linux (and to be honest, including the valuable GNU utilities) provides that set of capabilities better than any other system I've ever used. I don't know about MacOS X, it might be pretty good. But in my experience, Linux has no peer. FYI, this experience includes every Microsoft operating system, every IBM mainframe operating systsem up to VS/ESA, PDP-11 DOS/Batch, RSTS/E, RT-11, VAX/VMS, Data General RDOS, AOS, AOS/VS on the MV4000 and MV8000, classic UNIX on a 68010, UNIX on IBM/Amdahl mainframes, BSD/OS on PCs, SunOS on sparc/2 and Sparc/10, NetBSD and OpenBSD. I also tried out Next and Apollo Domain. Sun and the BSD's came closest to Linux in quality.
Everything else is an also-ran. Finally, at present my day job involves embedded Linux. I've worked with both uClinux (m68k) and real Linux (MPC860 & 826x), (mostly updating and debugging) drivers for both. I have *never* seen a system as robust. Linux itself, the development process that led to its existence, and the ongoing development process that allows it to be such a powerful system, are all major treasures for those willing to recognize them.
</offtopic>
I agree with RMS here. Peoples' fear of RFID would be (is?) fully justified if there is no way to know where the tag is. FWIW, until I gain legal ownership of an object (garment, etc.), IT IS NOT MINE. I have no RIGHT to specify how retailers manage THEIR inventories.
Once an object is fully mine (as in paid for legally etc.), then I do absolutely specify how, when, or if that object is identified.
Which means that I simply want to know, once I've bought an object, how to disable its RFID tag if I so choose.
I agree that the world could not care less about humanity. I agree that the loss of some or even all humans will not make the bears cry. On the other hand, I way prefer "stability", and a reasonable approximation to knowing that my wife, family and myself will have access to reasonable shelter, food, etc.
We are performing a really really big experiment on the one and only planet to which we have access. In my opinion, it makes sense to think carefully about doing too much modifying without understanding the consequences. This is why the "skeptics" piss me off; their idea is "We are not scientifically absolutely certain that we're screwing it up, so let's keep grinding away on this grand experiment until it's too late".
Studies of homeostatic systems show that they tend to preserve the appearance of stability by increasingly expensive means until they cannot sustain it any longer; then they crash fast and hard. When the environment crashes, people get hungry and turn into raging assholes with lots of weapons. Who is volunteering to be the first one shot in the competition for reduced resources?
The lawsuit problem is slowly becoming less problematic. The new problem is "security". After 9/11/2001, general aviatioon simply got more difficult to get past government authorities. But general aviation is still present: A co-worker of mine flies a homebuilt aircraft. It's a fabulous hobby, but like anyone whose life is on the line, he takes safety way seriously. (paraphrasing his commentary) Airplanes, even the "little ones" in general aviation, balance many variables. Get one or a few wrong, and you become a Darwin award winner. That's an important reason designs tend to be 50+ years old: They are proven.
Burt Rutan is an amazing engineer surrounded by amazing engineers, and is that rare person who has a demonstrated ability to think outside the box successfully.
This weekend, I just bought a 1.5Gig USB drive for $139 (after rebates). It uses the Cornice memory element. Nice little unit. Now I am looking forward to having the time to get it working with my favorite workstation O/S...
Yup. About once a year, I build a "current" box that I hope will outlast the temporary enslavement of computer users by those who would turn them/us into "computing serfs". Whenever new "improved" technology arrives that gives control of *my* system to someone else, I'll stop upgrading until I can buy hardware that allows me to control my system again. It's my hope that control by others is a temporary situation that tends to be corrected in an open marketplace. Trusted, indeed...
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Beware or be enslaved.
Though it's not an open-and-shut simple approach, one can imagine a closed hardware management layer, driven by an open, developer-manageable O.S. software management interface layer. This doesn't solve the instruction-set incompatibility problem, but it is possible to let open maintainers handle the work they are (very) good at: Accommodating changing kernel interfaces, races, etc.
Linus is on record stating that as uncomfortable as it is, proprietary binary-only software can be linked into the kernel as long as it is not a derived work, meaning not depending on any interface provided by the kernel.
So Intel can preserve their private, secret register settings, providing a controlled abstraction of the hardware, and still tolerate, to some extent, varying kernel interface requirements.
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I don't need to buy a license for open source code that my customers use.
I can maintain systems that are at least compatible with with my customers' systems, if not downright identical, without concern for "licensing issues", "right to use", or any of that other stuff.
If the customer wants to set up a few extra systems for their internal delivery/test processes, then No Problem.
Open source products have been, in my experience, at least as reliable as proprietary equivalents.
Open source products give control to my customers: If they have a problem, but cannot get support "out there", then a competent developer can help. Just *try* getting help with proprietary stuff: It's a big fingerpointing nightmare.
The bottom line for me is that all that thinking about licensing, and proving that I have a right to work just isn't a problem in the open source world.
SF can be difficult to make "believable" for too many of us, and I applaud the producers and writers of BSG for working to get it right. I also find the new series compelling. As a point of reference, I didn't bother to dislike the original BattleSuck Galactica 27 years ago (it was so lousy, even a 21-year-old *geek* couldn't bother with it!).
There is communism (insane totalitarianism found in USSR and an earlier China) but they never achieved that Marx wrote about. No "government" ever has (In the '60's and '70's people had communes, but they always broke apart on the shoals of human nature). The people who started "communist" revolutions never completed the process. I don't call those insane assholes "communists", they are insane oligarchs, just like the Czarist regime before them.
There was a time when the new government in this continent did something that had not been done before or since: They *gave up power*, placing that power in the hands of people. Since then, the concept has fallen on hard times. Today, we have oligarchs like Mr. Gates trying to restore Traditional Values: Own and control access to *fucking everything*. And they have enough financial resources to buy off what passes for government these days. And the only people doing anything about it (in information technology, they are FOSS advocates) eschew government and political process. Too busy writing actual reliable code, I suppose...
I don't like arbitrary authority, so I don't like big centralized government. On the other hand, I cannot think of another way to slow down the assholes who want to charge me for the privilege of working (using "their" "intellectual" "property"). It's a dilemma that I don't know how to resolve.
And I admit that my intransigence is slipping out today. I *so wish* we would engage in the effort of actually manufacturing more consumer goods in this country.
Looking strictly at a single global namespace of all possible people, human-friendly globally unique identifiers cannot scale. I know, I am one of at least two people in my extended family with the same first, middle and last name. (Hmmm... I wonder if that isn't why C++ has namespaces? :-) )
:-) ) There's "Jesus of Nazareth", etc. etc. People's names tended to be locally unique, and global references simply used locality to distinguish one from another. We have more flexibility in expressing "locality" in the internet than classical geography, but there are ways to do it.
Thinking about how these things would actually be used, however, it's not so difficult to arrange a way to make it work. People who interact with me are not likely to be interested in the other people with "my" name. As long as it's possible to establish an extensible model for expressing unique identity (not necessarily *easy*, but I believe feasible), then one can use a locally defined alias to the globally unique identifier.
Maybe some history of an individual might be useful in disambiguating one individual from another where name doesn't match. "Leonardo da Vinci" is an example. That guy was "Leonardo", and "da Vinci" distinguished him from "Leonardo da Verona" consequent to his being from "Vinci". (apologies to people who actually know how to express such things in Italian.
The FCC has authority over the *transmission* of signals in most wireless frequencies and at some power levels. The FCC has authority over the *transmission* of signals over the phone lines. The FCC has absolutely no, zero, zilch, nada authority over *MY* PC.
Authority over Cable companies, for instance, is also held by local communities.
This same FCC that doesn't bother to even *look* at how broadcasters are misusing their licenses? (to quote an oft-quoted phrase) They can pull my OPEN SOURCE, PRIVATELY OWNED AND OPERATED PC out of my cold dead hands.
You're right on W.R.T. evolution, considering that both Dawkins and Gould (R.I.P.) are decades-long internationally recognized experts in their fields. I believe you didn't handle the "global warming" thing fully, since there are *credible* opposing views.
Where evolution has been successfully used (c.f. disease resistance and accumulation of mutations, etc.) and its predictions essentially validated, there isn't much question there. Those who "don't believe in evolution" simply have their heads in the sand. However, until the recent arctic report, the human contribution to possible climate change was still somewhat arguable, though evidence was mounting. (With the arrival of the arctic temperature change report, "global warming" is headed for similar levels of assurance...)
The bottom line really is that journalists have a responsibility to detect *and report* on the current consensus of recognized scientific authorities. When there is a disagreement from the "contrarians", those arguments may be brought forward, with the clear disclaimer that they are out of the mainstream of scientific consensus, and their credibility should be measured accordingly. There *are* occasions when the contrarians are right. (I refer the reader to the treatment of proponents of plate tectonics until their eventual validation. They were considered to be *total crackpots* for many years.)
Your last paragraph is over the top though I am sure it was meant mostly in jest. While I think Murdoch/Fox/Rush are doing *everybody* a disservice, and could even be contributing to genuine disaster with their blatant and public stupidity, your last paragraph probably pisses off many who need persuading about the value of (steadily improving) scientific consensus.
I am in just that situation (considering my options) as of yesterday at noon, at which time my now former employer changed my status from employed to "considering my options". (My wife and) I saved well, lived conservatively, and other than questions about affordable health insurance, we are in good shape to manage this newfound freedom as a non-emergency.
Slightly offtopic: I have a completely new appreciation for F/OSS today, as I remain able to continue my studies without breaking the now non-refilling bank.
FWIW, "their work" in this context means that part of their contribution to Linux that is not derived from the work of the many thousands of other contributors according to the standard rules of copyright. Linus has stated in LKML that code is very unlikely to avoid being "derived", and therefore being subject to GPL, if it refers directly to kernel symbols, or includes kernel header files.
Feeling a bit cynical today, I believe that our governmnent should be smarter than to cave in to mob mentality. The fact that they didn't bother to get a damn clue is a testament to either colossal stupidity or real honest-to-God power-hunger.
I also know a teacher who is constantly fighting with the school system to let the students learn, rather than follow the party line.
Background: My sister's original motivation for home schooling was to avoid some of the unfiltered acceptance of life-styles of which she disapproves. Also her expectation that the standard industrial schooling process would label her second child, a very energetic boy as having attention-deficit disorder and get "treated". I was pretty well concerned by this approach that my sister wanted to take. In the fullness of time, the positives of learning, self-confidence and genuine critical thinking will allow the children to become strong contributors to our society, probably a bit conservative but not rabidly dogmatic followers of some party line.
I have *way* reduced my media consumption, largely due to the increasingly restrictive processes they are imposing. My wife certainly likes the results (I've learned to cook some good stuff :-) )!
Microsoft's management is required by law to maximize return on investment ("fiduciary duty"), using every possible legal means. This process, getting their proprietary technology into as many requirements as possible, is part of their strategy, and I must admit that it's working perfectly. It's not "evil", it's goal achievement.
It's up to us, society at large, to establish the limits. If we fail to meet our end of the bargain, then that's on us.
Societies get to choose among a diversity of processes for managing ourselves. We can say "corporations are responsible for reasonable behavior and we will regulate them minimally, assuming that they work accordingly". We can also say "corporations must be expected to prioritize on shareholder value and we must pay close attention to their decisions, knowing that they are required to find every technique or loophole in the rules to achieve that goal".
In my opinion, what we have half one and half the other: "For the purposes of regulation by society at large, corporations are responsible for reasonable behavior and need not be so tightly regulated. For the purposes of corporate strategy, corporations are expected to maximize shareholder value using any legal means necessary". This model works *very well* for managers and majority shareholders of huge corporations. If this is a good model for social interactions, then we're in good shape. If not, then we should be working toward a better model.
I remember advocating two simultaneous reactions to 9/11:
It's not "girly" or "unpatriotic" to think about how one's actions affect others.
W.R.T. right vs left: It would be great if people thought about efficiency and effectiveness and responsibility once in a while instead of constantly going on about rights all the damn time. I am tired of laziness, intellectual and otherwise, substituting for getting together to get the job done (whatever the job is at any given time).
Genuine thinking is difficult and takes discipline. But worst of all, taking the time to actually consider one's approach is being labeled by both sides as unpatriotic/wrong/girly/wonkish/etc. I guess it's not exciting enough.
Never, never depend on your job. Have >12 months minimal operational savings ready to go when you are laid off.
On the original topic of open source killing jobs, (as has been said before) there are far more jobs dependent on efficient access to productive technology than on the technology itself. So, yes many "jobs will be lost", to many "other jobs". In the end, efficiency rules. However one gets there, that's how it will happen. Mr Gates cannot stop it any more than the oft-mentioned buggy-whip manufacturers.
I do not agree. Microsoft has tried to destroy every competitor, many successfully. In my opinion, Microsoft's business model is miserably inadequate with respect to its customers (real) needs, such as not being subject to every worm that comes along. Their approach to "partners" is miserably dishonest. Their manipulation of the market is legendary. I believe they are among the most harshly competitive, no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle, knockdown-dragout, meanest competitor the computer business has seen.
But they take their "fiduciary responsiblity" to stockholders very very seriously, and until recently (last year, this year) were among the most consistent growth stocks in business history.
I remember when we thought IBM were "evil"... They never came close! Microsoft executives are the gold standard of "growth at *all* costs" mentality.
Now a computer is a "media theft acceleration device", primarily useful (as far as the big boys are concerned) to "steal" "their" "product". I do not want what they have, so I am not stealing it. Their claim to it hangs on a slim thread of a business process so it's not really "theirs", and most of it isn't much of a product.
Intel released the I960 as an embedded chip, expecting to see some military applications. The first versions were the i960KA (without floating point) and i960KB (with floating point). They didn't get all that far in the marketplace. However the i960CA and its followon the i960CF were pretty slick. The i960 had 32 general purpose registers, and a processor-defined function call sequence that always placed a set of 16 on the stack ("caller-owned") and left a set of 16 alone ("args , temp & return values"). The i960CA cached the top 4, 6 or 8 stack frames in on-chip static memory with a 128-bit pathway to the main register set. This gave it amazing function calling and interrupt service performance. We wrote a sample clock-interrupt test that serviced a 100 kHz clock interrupt using only 23% of the CPU. (Remember, this was in 1992...) The product we built (see next paragraph) is still out in the network, switching phone calls.
I remember receiving one of first the 486DX2/66 processors in the city where I live (Columbus Ohio). I was at AT&T/BL at the time, and we were building a product based on a pair of 66MHz 486 and a pair 33 MHz i960CA processors. (Intel sent us a pair of chips for evaluation) We wanted to benchmark them, and I was the only developer whose home system could use the 32-bit capabilities of the 486. The 486DX2/66 was a screamer...
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Being a total geekazoid, I had UNIX (yup, I blew $800 on a "used" SVR3.2 license)! I kept that license current through Novell UNIXware SVR4.2 in 1996, when this new geek-friendly OS called "Linux" had just received BKL-based SMP capability. I tried it, liked it, and kept using it. This "Linux" already had better VM performance (in my opinion) than the traditional UNIX, and semed to me to be on the way to much larger things. I stopped updating my UNIX license, donating it instead to a local high school.
I've been a developer for >30 years and have a clear idea of what I want in a workstation. Linux (and to be honest, including the valuable GNU utilities) provides that set of capabilities better than any other system I've ever used. I don't know about MacOS X, it might be pretty good. But in my experience, Linux has no peer. FYI, this experience includes every Microsoft operating system, every IBM mainframe operating systsem up to VS/ESA, PDP-11 DOS/Batch, RSTS/E, RT-11, VAX/VMS, Data General RDOS, AOS, AOS/VS on the MV4000 and MV8000, classic UNIX on a 68010, UNIX on IBM/Amdahl mainframes, BSD/OS on PCs, SunOS on sparc/2 and Sparc/10, NetBSD and OpenBSD. I also tried out Next and Apollo Domain. Sun and the BSD's came closest to Linux in quality.
Everything else is an also-ran. Finally, at present my day job involves embedded Linux. I've worked with both uClinux (m68k) and real Linux (MPC860 & 826x), (mostly updating and debugging) drivers for both. I have *never* seen a system as robust. Linux itself, the development process that led to its existence, and the ongoing development process that allows it to be such a powerful system, are all major treasures for those willing to recognize them.
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Once an object is fully mine (as in paid for legally etc.), then I do absolutely specify how, when, or if that object is identified.
Which means that I simply want to know, once I've bought an object, how to disable its RFID tag if I so choose.
We are performing a really really big experiment on the one and only planet to which we have access. In my opinion, it makes sense to think carefully about doing too much modifying without understanding the consequences. This is why the "skeptics" piss me off; their idea is "We are not scientifically absolutely certain that we're screwing it up, so let's keep grinding away on this grand experiment until it's too late".
Studies of homeostatic systems show that they tend to preserve the appearance of stability by increasingly expensive means until they cannot sustain it any longer; then they crash fast and hard. When the environment crashes, people get hungry and turn into raging assholes with lots of weapons. Who is volunteering to be the first one shot in the competition for reduced resources?
Burt Rutan is an amazing engineer surrounded by amazing engineers, and is that rare person who has a demonstrated ability to think outside the box successfully.
This weekend, I just bought a 1.5Gig USB drive for $139 (after rebates). It uses the Cornice memory element. Nice little unit. Now I am looking forward to having the time to get it working with my favorite workstation O/S...
Yup. About once a year, I build a "current" box that I hope will outlast the temporary enslavement of computer users by those who would turn them/us into "computing serfs". Whenever new "improved" technology arrives that gives control of *my* system to someone else, I'll stop upgrading until I can buy hardware that allows me to control my system again. It's my hope that control by others is a temporary situation that tends to be corrected in an open marketplace. Trusted, indeed...
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Beware or be enslaved.
Though it's not an open-and-shut simple approach, one can imagine a closed hardware management layer, driven by an open, developer-manageable O.S. software management interface layer. This doesn't solve the instruction-set incompatibility problem, but it is possible to let open maintainers handle the work they are (very) good at: Accommodating changing kernel interfaces, races, etc.
Linus is on record stating that as uncomfortable as it is, proprietary binary-only software can be linked into the kernel as long as it is not a derived work, meaning not depending on any interface provided by the kernel.
So Intel can preserve their private, secret register settings, providing a controlled abstraction of the hardware, and still tolerate, to some extent, varying kernel interface requirements.