True, but you misquoted the statement. The correct statement is not absolute. It reads, and I quote a guy called Linus:
"Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone." I am sure you will agree that the correct statement sans flamebait modifications does not warrant a "clear contradiction" as many detractors of FOSS who are jumping at this opportunity to point out a example of a fixed bug that was not necessarily a security risk and saying "see, the OSS model is clearly flawed! BSD has a 25year old bug that was only fixed now!"
Heck, how many other bugs have been fixed over the years?
These detracting arguments smack of FUD mongering...
Too true. I would've did a screencap, and then got the police to get his IP addy from the bed store if he did not actually buy something. If he bought something a screencap of the shipping addy would've been jackpot.
But, we can calmly thing through our steps, but this poor soul had a few seconds to react under pressure.
If you all read TFA - *sigh* what am I saying... this is/. - you would have noticed the part where it says an on screen countdown lets you know a picture is being snapped.
The thief actually saw that and tried to cover the lens, but was too late...
Uh, that is kinda what happened. They needed a.net developer, and I am a sysadmin, but since a business contact brought the two of us together (that is how I got to be interviewed by the boss himself) he decided to have a chat/interview with me in any case.
So, maybe it was more a networking session than an interview, but a possible job offer was on the cards - just they are a windows only shop, and they have enough support personnel, for now...
I wish our company did, but there's no real economic incentive to do so. If anyone can successfully make the case, let me know. I'd love to present arguments to our company higher-ups. I bolded that. If you read tfa you will come across this:
Twenty or more other designs are expected to enter the market over the next six months, and Microsoft expects 10 million to 13 million of the devices to sell this year, according to the documents.
Analyst IDC's forecast is more modest: On Thursday it said it expects ULPC sales to hit 9 million units by 2012, up from 500,000 last year. Again I bolded.
a)Say M$ is successful and is able to sell XP on every second of those ULPC's. That is a lot of PC's running Linux.
b)Now if a gaming developer manages to develop a high quality game that (1) runs on Linux and Windows and(2) runs on their lower specifications it would make a killing in the market.
c)If they develop a high quality inter platform game for these ulpc's, they could pitch their product to the vendors of these ulpc's to include as pre-installed, and make revenue from game related content, and maybe even from the inclusion of these games.
Why is this a good idea?
i) By conservative estimates there will be 9Million of these units sold by 2012. That is four years from now. WinXP will be very outdated by then, so MS will either need to ship a competitive modern OS for these, or Linux will be the dominant OS, so beginning a cross-platform development process makes sense. At best M$ will be able to gain 50% of the market.
ii) 9Million units are a lot. This is a lucrative gaming market. The Playstation (the PSP) and Nintendo (the DS) offerings have shown that mobile gaming is alive. Preparing a product for the boom to come makes sense, as these products become cheaper they will continue selling well.
iii) A possible sales pitch to the makers of these products is this: A range of games for these devices will radically expand the market. Parents will feel better about buying their children a portable productivity tool that also plays games as opposed to buying a dedicated entertainment device. Adult gamers will also spend money on a combined device rather than having to buy two separate devices.
iv) The hardware specifications also lend these devices to a satisfying gaming experience. Many of them have wireless networking functionality, internet access will soon be a given, and they come with lots of processor power and RAM. Graphics support might be problematic in the short term, so 3d games that are graphics intensive might pose a problem for now. MMORG, FPS, Racing and strategy games will all be popular on these devices.
v) Since the ULPC is in essence a device based on x86 compatible architecture it will be easy to port games to the traditional gaming PC, making it easy to for once effectively bridge the divide between mobile and home-based gaming. The internet will make it possible for both to play games online against each other.
In closing, there is a lucrative, largely untapped Linux (and windows) market for the gaming industry. If effort is made to develop a range of games for these devices it will mean revenue over a very long term. If extra effort is put into developing the business model properly a gaming developer might be the first to offer a game that can be played transparently on the ULPC, the PC and the Laptop. This will be a first, and good firsts make money.
Money is a motivator, and if you develop for the ULPC linux market you are also by default developing for the Linux desktop and notebook market, hence you will have broken into not only a wide market of mobile gaming, you will have broken into the linux gaming market, and you will not only be a market leader, you will essentially be the market owner on most common platforms today and tomorrow.
I would be surprised if a gaming developer isn't already working towards this goal.
Well... like I said, ultra mobility is a secondary concern for me. I have a nokia 9300 that does the trick if I am ever away from my laptop for too long...
My opinion might change should I start needing very high mobility, but then I would need something that included/doubled as a cellphone and had internet sans access points since in South Africa open access points are scarce, carrying two separate devices makes no sense to me...
In fact, can/. recommend something that fits those criteria?
Let me say this: I did not get the Job, but I am not upset at that, I was going for the interview in the spirit of "if I don't get it I don't mind."
I have a ton of respect for the guy, he has build a successful business, and is obviously good at what he does.
We had a frank discussion on the platform they use, and he has worked with Linux before. What I did notice was the aforementioned FUD reference. I'd expect more from a guy like this.
If the MS platforms were really that much superior to the Linux platforms why not have more specific and substantiated arguments? I smelled either a test, like an above poster mentioned, or he really believed the FUD, since he had no recent experience in a linux environment - by his own admission ten years ago at the newest.
I would rather go for a low-end full laptop than an EEEPC, that said, keep in mind that here in South Africa an EEEPC is about four fifths the price of a bottom of the range laptop which has better specs.
Sure it might be more mobile, but I do not need such mobility, hence in my case a laptop would make more sense.
Well, Apple have one big advantage when it gets to their Operating System.
They get to decide what hardware they use, and limit the hardware to a rather narrow range. Hence they can develop their software to run optimally on very specific hardware. Hence their hardware/software combination is extremely optimized.
MS, and most Linux distributions, need to make sure their software runs on a wide range of hardware, so they cannot spend a large chunk of their developing time/budget on fine-tuning their software to the hardware like Apple does.
The Linux community does a better job at this than MS methinks.
I am very appreciative of what Apple has achieved, but being a Linux fan my loyalty lies there.
My real reaction to this is nausea. In effect this is what is happening:
"Please please pleeeaaasse sell XP on your products! We'll even give it at a discount, but then you need to do what we say specs wise."
C'mon, why the limits on the hardware specs? Is it to limit the choice of the customer?
"Sorry sir, if you want a touch screen with that baby we'll need to limit you to using Vista. I know you are supposed to have a choice in the matter, but Microsoft policy dictates otherwise. Yeah, in effect they get to decide what you can run on what you buy. A linux alternative, uh sure - I think dell offers a similar spec device with Ubuntu on it... wait, where are you going!?"
When will MS begin to put the interests of their customers first? If they can develop a custom version of Windows for mobile devices, surely they can develop a custom _modern_ version of Windows for low-end or micro laptops.
If a linux community can do that, why can't they? Are they admitting that the open-source community which they deride so is capable of something they are not?
Could it be that they cannot develop something like this? I say they definitely can, so the only other alternative is that they don't want to - hence they don't give a rats ass what the customer needs.
like most of their similar pitches I went for an interview recently, and the owner of the company remarked on my Linux experience and told me how much better the MS environment is for developing in, and how good a "properly set up and maintained" MS server is.
His pitch was a word for word copy of the MS FUD you get on their website.
I'll repeat what I said above - if WINE were to be included in a distro, and hardwired into said distro to allow the running of windows apps with minimum hassle, there'd be a boost in the development, plus a boon in the corporate/business adoption of Linux.
Then I'll say this - if they have on-staff developers maintaining their in-house vb4 software (or whatever that is - I worked in a company that used a piece of software written in Access and running on Access *sigh*), their developers aren't doing their job. If your company is still stuck in 98land because your custom developed software can only run on that a plan needs to be made, either your in-house _paid_ developers should do their jobs, or if the program was developed by a different company management should do their jobs and get the software improved.
And if you are going to shell out cash to develop/update a piece of software to run on vista (which is probably what will need to be done since XP is due to be unavailable for sale anyway) why not explore developing it for Linux instead?
And especially if that piece of software is the ONLY reason they have not made the move over to Linux I see very little stopping them from making the move.
Yeah, me too. I never use Windows anymore. In fact, for what I do the FOSS software available suits me better than the MS and proprietary offerings I used before.
My brother is on XP only because he is a hard-core gamer, and not enough of a geek to see the value in trying to get his games to work with wine+linux.
I installed Ubuntu with wubi on his system, and am in the process of trying to get his games working with wine.
I stumbled at the first hurdle, three twice. COD4 installed but would not run. I realized I missed a step and rolled back to install DirectX (which I didn't) and suddenly everything went pear shaped.
Wine is not an easy to use piece of software, yet. I firmly believe that it will improve constantly, but for now it is not ready.
BTW, I am a linux geek, and rather adept at the environment, so something like wine (which I have used with success before, among others to install and run x-fire) should not be as hard to use successfully for me.
I disagree with a fine distinction - wine does not emulate the API, since it uses the same API that Windows uses, but rather provides the API natively in Linux to a program written for windows.
An emulator, otoh, lets a piece of software think (if you'll excuse the anthropomorphism)that it is running on windows while it is using a different API.
In the case of wine, the API is provided natively while the software is running in linux.
The following statement from parent got met thinking.
Personally, I would prefer just to see more true Linux versions of software, particularly among the popular games. What if wine would be implemented in a distro like PCLOS or Ubuntu. Imagine if you can run Linux and pop in most any "written for windows" piece of software and wine runs it natively on linux?
If wine were to be integrated in some of the larger distros I am convinced the larger exposure will speed along development, and speed the acceptance of Linux in the workplace.
MS cloning is not necessarily a bad thing. If one can offer for free a better product than what MS is offering as a paid for product you are bound to have people adopt your product.
The key being "a better broduct." For most companies that shell out for MS framework cost is a secondary consideration.
if they went out of business they would first product a patch to remove the DRM. Which is a roundabout way of saying that this is easily patched.
And then another little rant: DRM = Digital Rights Management.
1. Don't I have digital rights? 2. Who is managing/protecting my digital rights? 3. Who's digital rights trump who's? Customer comes first or not?/rant
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, how many other bugs have been fixed over the years?
These detracting arguments smack of FUD mongering...
Here you go... and in your size too! Yep, a nice tinfoil hat, provided by the NSA no less!
Ooh. Thanks for the linky! I am a bit of a history nut and I find that site a treasure trove of reading material...
... it has been reported that a farmer has modified his cessna cropduster with machine guns. Something about "German Invasion"...
Too true. I would've did a screencap, and then got the police to get his IP addy from the bed store if he did not actually buy something. If he bought something a screencap of the shipping addy would've been jackpot.
But, we can calmly thing through our steps, but this poor soul had a few seconds to react under pressure.
If you all read TFA - *sigh* what am I saying... this is /. - you would have noticed the part where it says an on screen countdown lets you know a picture is being snapped.
The thief actually saw that and tried to cover the lens, but was too late...
Uh, that is kinda what happened. They needed a .net developer, and I am a sysadmin, but since a business contact brought the two of us together (that is how I got to be interviewed by the boss himself) he decided to have a chat/interview with me in any case.
So, maybe it was more a networking session than an interview, but a possible job offer was on the cards - just they are a windows only shop, and they have enough support personnel, for now...
Well, tech such as this will bring our holodeck dreams just that bit closer.
Also I can see where tech such as this can be implemented in the medical field, as a for-instance.
Analyst IDC's forecast is more modest: On Thursday it said it expects ULPC sales to hit 9 million units by 2012, up from 500,000 last year. Again I bolded.
a)Say M$ is successful and is able to sell XP on every second of those ULPC's. That is a lot of PC's running Linux.
b)Now if a gaming developer manages to develop a high quality game that (1) runs on Linux and Windows and(2) runs on their lower specifications it would make a killing in the market.
c)If they develop a high quality inter platform game for these ulpc's, they could pitch their product to the vendors of these ulpc's to include as pre-installed, and make revenue from game related content, and maybe even from the inclusion of these games.
Why is this a good idea?
i) By conservative estimates there will be 9Million of these units sold by 2012. That is four years from now. WinXP will be very outdated by then, so MS will either need to ship a competitive modern OS for these, or Linux will be the dominant OS, so beginning a cross-platform development process makes sense. At best M$ will be able to gain 50% of the market.
ii) 9Million units are a lot. This is a lucrative gaming market. The Playstation (the PSP) and Nintendo (the DS) offerings have shown that mobile gaming is alive. Preparing a product for the boom to come makes sense, as these products become cheaper they will continue selling well.
iii) A possible sales pitch to the makers of these products is this: A range of games for these devices will radically expand the market. Parents will feel better about buying their children a portable productivity tool that also plays games as opposed to buying a dedicated entertainment device. Adult gamers will also spend money on a combined device rather than having to buy two separate devices.
iv) The hardware specifications also lend these devices to a satisfying gaming experience. Many of them have wireless networking functionality, internet access will soon be a given, and they come with lots of processor power and RAM. Graphics support might be problematic in the short term, so 3d games that are graphics intensive might pose a problem for now. MMORG, FPS, Racing and strategy games will all be popular on these devices.
v) Since the ULPC is in essence a device based on x86 compatible architecture it will be easy to port games to the traditional gaming PC, making it easy to for once effectively bridge the divide between mobile and home-based gaming. The internet will make it possible for both to play games online against each other.
In closing, there is a lucrative, largely untapped Linux (and windows) market for the gaming industry. If effort is made to develop a range of games for these devices it will mean revenue over a very long term. If extra effort is put into developing the business model properly a gaming developer might be the first to offer a game that can be played transparently on the ULPC, the PC and the Laptop. This will be a first, and good firsts make money.
Money is a motivator, and if you develop for the ULPC linux market you are also by default developing for the Linux desktop and notebook market, hence you will have broken into not only a wide market of mobile gaming, you will have broken into the linux gaming market, and you will not only be a market leader, you will essentially be the market owner on most common platforms today and tomorrow.
I would be surprised if a gaming developer isn't already working towards this goal.
Well... like I said, ultra mobility is a secondary concern for me. I have a nokia 9300 that does the trick if I am ever away from my laptop for too long...
/. recommend something that fits those criteria?
My opinion might change should I start needing very high mobility, but then I would need something that included/doubled as a cellphone and had internet sans access points since in South Africa open access points are scarce, carrying two separate devices makes no sense to me...
In fact, can
The real uproar will come when slashdot gets blocked.
Let me say this: I did not get the Job, but I am not upset at that, I was going for the interview in the spirit of "if I don't get it I don't mind."
I have a ton of respect for the guy, he has build a successful business, and is obviously good at what he does.
We had a frank discussion on the platform they use, and he has worked with Linux before. What I did notice was the aforementioned FUD reference. I'd expect more from a guy like this.
If the MS platforms were really that much superior to the Linux platforms why not have more specific and substantiated arguments? I smelled either a test, like an above poster mentioned, or he really believed the FUD, since he had no recent experience in a linux environment - by his own admission ten years ago at the newest.
Yes.
I would rather go for a low-end full laptop than an EEEPC, that said, keep in mind that here in South Africa an EEEPC is about four fifths the price of a bottom of the range laptop which has better specs.
Sure it might be more mobile, but I do not need such mobility, hence in my case a laptop would make more sense.
Well, Apple have one big advantage when it gets to their Operating System.
They get to decide what hardware they use, and limit the hardware to a rather narrow range. Hence they can develop their software to run optimally on very specific hardware. Hence their hardware/software combination is extremely optimized.
MS, and most Linux distributions, need to make sure their software runs on a wide range of hardware, so they cannot spend a large chunk of their developing time/budget on fine-tuning their software to the hardware like Apple does.
The Linux community does a better job at this than MS methinks.
I am very appreciative of what Apple has achieved, but being a Linux fan my loyalty lies there.
Yeah, the specs seem high enough.
My real reaction to this is nausea. In effect this is what is happening:
"Please please pleeeaaasse sell XP on your products! We'll even give it at a discount, but then you need to do what we say specs wise."
C'mon, why the limits on the hardware specs? Is it to limit the choice of the customer?
"Sorry sir, if you want a touch screen with that baby we'll need to limit you to using Vista. I know you are supposed to have a choice in the matter, but Microsoft policy dictates otherwise. Yeah, in effect they get to decide what you can run on what you buy. A linux alternative, uh sure - I think dell offers a similar spec device with Ubuntu on it... wait, where are you going!?"
When will MS begin to put the interests of their customers first? If they can develop a custom version of Windows for mobile devices, surely they can develop a custom _modern_ version of Windows for low-end or micro laptops.
If a linux community can do that, why can't they? Are they admitting that the open-source community which they deride so is capable of something they are not?
Could it be that they cannot develop something like this? I say they definitely can, so the only other alternative is that they don't want to - hence they don't give a rats ass what the customer needs.
His pitch was a word for word copy of the MS FUD you get on their website.
So wine doesn't use the Windows api, like DLLs that you can either get from a windows install or download from MS or other sites?
Uhuh.
I will respond to this in two ways.
I'll repeat what I said above - if WINE were to be included in a distro, and hardwired into said distro to allow the running of windows apps with minimum hassle, there'd be a boost in the development, plus a boon in the corporate/business adoption of Linux.
Then I'll say this - if they have on-staff developers maintaining their in-house vb4 software (or whatever that is - I worked in a company that used a piece of software written in Access and running on Access *sigh*), their developers aren't doing their job. If your company is still stuck in 98land because your custom developed software can only run on that a plan needs to be made, either your in-house _paid_ developers should do their jobs, or if the program was developed by a different company management should do their jobs and get the software improved.
And if you are going to shell out cash to develop/update a piece of software to run on vista (which is probably what will need to be done since XP is due to be unavailable for sale anyway) why not explore developing it for Linux instead?
And especially if that piece of software is the ONLY reason they have not made the move over to Linux I see very little stopping them from making the move.
Yeah, me too. I never use Windows anymore. In fact, for what I do the FOSS software available suits me better than the MS and proprietary offerings I used before.
My brother is on XP only because he is a hard-core gamer, and not enough of a geek to see the value in trying to get his games to work with wine+linux.
I installed Ubuntu with wubi on his system, and am in the process of trying to get his games working with wine.
I stumbled at the first hurdle, three twice. COD4 installed but would not run. I realized I missed a step and rolled back to install DirectX (which I didn't) and suddenly everything went pear shaped.
Wine is not an easy to use piece of software, yet. I firmly believe that it will improve constantly, but for now it is not ready.
BTW, I am a linux geek, and rather adept at the environment, so something like wine (which I have used with success before, among others to install and run x-fire) should not be as hard to use successfully for me.
I disagree with a fine distinction - wine does not emulate the API, since it uses the same API that Windows uses, but rather provides the API natively in Linux to a program written for windows.
An emulator, otoh, lets a piece of software think (if you'll excuse the anthropomorphism)that it is running on windows while it is using a different API.
In the case of wine, the API is provided natively while the software is running in linux.
If wine were to be integrated in some of the larger distros I am convinced the larger exposure will speed along development, and speed the acceptance of Linux in the workplace.
Push it push it PUSH IT!!!
Contribute to the smog while studying it.
MS cloning is not necessarily a bad thing. If one can offer for free a better product than what MS is offering as a paid for product you are bound to have people adopt your product.
The key being "a better broduct." For most companies that shell out for MS framework cost is a secondary consideration.
And then another little rant: DRM = Digital Rights Management.
1. Don't I have digital rights?
2. Who is managing/protecting my digital rights?
3. Who's digital rights trump who's? Customer comes first or not?