Technical and security challenges aside for the moment, the really killer app for this technology is the seamless networking of otherwise non-networkable appliances.
Not everybody wants an ethernet jack on their toaster, but _everything_ has a power jack.
Imagine the following:
- buy a new VCR/DVD Player/Alarm clock? Plug it into the wall, and watch it set the time on itself to the same time as all the other devices in the house.
- Self-monitoring appliances that are syslog() capable (or something similar) and report faults to a central logging facility
- Appliances that export network APIs to provide scriptable control
...and a host of other Really Neat Stuff possible if you have a standardized network in every home.
This is right on the edge of being offtopic, but it's so facinating that I have to mention it.
There is a new-this-year TV drama called "The West Wing" that tells the story of a fictional President and his staff as they attempt to run the country.
Unlike most TV, this show is _very_ good. It has excellent writing, intelligent characters, and some real heavy-hitter actors (Martin Sheen as The President, Rob Lowe as an aide)
However, the characters in the White House in this show are a little... idealized. They're all strong-willed, highly-motivated, noble people. I've heard the characters described as "the White House Staff as they wish they were" because they're all so dammed _competent_
Thus, the characters in this TV show can be seen as almost providing an example for the real staff to aspire to. Public policy improvement by way of televised fiction!
I bring this up, because on last week's cliffhanger episode, there is a scene where a staffer is preparing questions that the President is likely to be asked at a town hall meeting. The particular issue he is wrestling with is China engagement - if "engagement" is the way to bring Communist countries into the fold, then why be so harsh to Cuba? Why the double standard?
Well, today on the way to work, I hear on the radio that a US Senator/Congressman has introduced a bill to start relaxing sanctions on Cuba, and I'll be dammed if the soundbite didn't sound like it had been lifted straight from the TV show by this particular politician.
Holy crap! Can a televised morality play really affect US foreign policy?
The concept boggles the mind. Holy media influence Batman!
Does this C++ compiler come with some sort of Borland-only libraries, with the associated Borland-copywritable include/header files?
OK, I'm grasping at straws here, but maybe that's what they're trying to protect.
Of course, it's not like it makes any real difference. If a tool (like a compiler) tries to restrict your freedoms, then use another compiler that does not. Like, say, gcc - which I'm told does C++ just fine.
Firstly, (at the risk of blowing my oown horn a little) soldiers are a lot more intelligent than your average Hollywood movie portrays. We're not mindless automotons who cheerfully believe whatever information we're fed. We are quite capable of drawing our own conclusions.
Secondly, high-level commanders are typically not interested in feeding bullshit to lower echelons. The military ethos places extreme value on honesty and trust. You may not always (for security reasons) be able to provide subordinates with the complete picture, but you never actually _lie_ to them.
Not only does lying reduce the trust subordinates have in a commander, but subordinates must be ready to assume the positions and responsibilities of a commander should the commander be killed. Purposely feeding subordinates bad information is a good way to lose battles.
But there was also precious little dialogue between the two sides, and when presented with a lack of information, we tend to see what we want to see. And we, as a military, were sold a Soviet Union that was slavering at the bit, looking for the opportunity to invade the Free World and enslave it.
But what we in the West neglected to see, partially because we weren't allowed to see it, was just how badly we were scaring the Soviets. The Soviet Union had been invaded twice in as many generations, and each time the losses on the Soviet side had been ENORMOUS. It wasn't until after the Wall fell that we really started to get a sense of scale as to how close the Soviets came to surrendering, how colossal their manpower losses were, and how miraculous their recovery.
After reading histories of WWII written after some of this information became available, there is no question in my mind that the Soviets won WWII. The Western contribution is miniscule in comparison. At best, we were a diversionary effort that distracted Hitler enough so that he couldn't bring his full effort to bear on the Eastern front, and one could argue that the Western factory bombing campaign helped slow the rate of German regeneration, but when it comes down to the number of German combat units destroyed, the Soviets win hands down - and at _terrible_ personal cost.
So no wonder they were just a teensy bit paranoid. And with the US spewing anti-communist propaganda at every opportunity, and a large, well organized mobile force parked on the East German border, and weapons of mass destruction churned out in the thousands... who wouldn't be scared?
And I distinctly remember in the mid-late eighties the Americans trying very hard to come up with ways to fight a limited, conventional war in Europe, without resorting to the use of nukes. From a Soviet perspective, that sounds a whole lot like an invader trying to get around their primary defensive deterrent.
The Soviet Union certainly wasn't the worker's paradise they claimed they were, and there were a lot of serious downsides to the way they ran their country, their foreign policy, and a number of other things. But having seen NATO's actions though Russian eyes... damn, we were doing a very good job of sounding a lot like an invader.
In a very real way, we were poking a bear with a stick, and I think that we're very, very lucky that the bear never lost patience and lashed out. And had the bear lashed out, it's hard to say that we didn't deserve it.
I spent the latter part of the Cold War in the Army, and I distinctly remember expecting the balloon to go up sometime during my lifetime.
And as an Armoured Recce guy, I had to memorize and _keep_ memorized Soviet ORBATS, tactics, and weapon/vehicle capabilities so that I'd recognise the bad guys when they came calling.
But a couple of years ago, after the Wall fell, I had an opportunity to meet one of my counterparts from the Red Army, and we got to talking about "old times". And what he told me was that they were all waiting for NATO to invade _them_!
And he managed to give great examples of our "threatening stance"
A minor lesson in tactics - the nature of modern armoured warfare is that it is impossible to contain a localized bit of ground. The enemy can concentrate his forces and always overwhelm localized defenders. If you share a border with a bad guy, and you each have 1000 tanks, then placing your tanks at equal intervals along the border will do nothing when the enemy throws all 1000 tanks at one spot.
Accordingly, the way you defend against armoured units is to place lightweight screening units up front, and have progressively larger and heavier units staged behind them. The screening units make contact, and report back to the heavy units, who then determine where the attackers are going and counterattack in mass.
It's called "defense in depth". To defend against Divisional-level assaults requeres about 100km of depth.
However, the West German wasn't too keen on the idea of the first 100km of their country being given up by default and used as a battlefield. They wanted the invaders stopped at the border.
Well, NATO knew that this just wasn't going to happen, but political expediancy required them to come up with a solution. And the solution they came up with was that as soon as the balloon went up, they would _immediately_ invade East Germany and attempt to penetrate 100 km in and set up the defensive screen. Tactical nukes would be used to blunt any thrusts pushing into West Germany, and the units pushing into East Germany would be used to cut off the attackers.
What this looks like on the ground are large mobile units massed close to the border - exactly what an invasion force would look like. Because it _was_ an invasion force.
Now the Soviets had more experience with large-scale armoured combat than anyone. They KNOW what is required to defend against armour. And every time NATO would tell them "we're just going to defend ourselves against agression" the Soviet generals would look at the troop distributions in West Germany and go "We know what defenses look like, and those are NOT defensive formations" - and they'd go make another 10000 tanks.
The two of us discussed this for quite some time, and when we finally understood each other, we had a good laugh over it all.
That's not to say that the Soviets weren't very interested in promoting Communism - they were, and they persued that agressively. But they never seriously considered Napoleanesque annexation by force of the whole of Europe like we feared.
The answer posted to my question is brief, as one expects from sound-bite journalism, but reading between the lines we can get a fair idea of SCO's current plans:
1) They think there needs to be someone between "the customer" and Linux, and they want to be one of those people. Conclusion: Either an SCO Linux distribution, or a "strategic partnership" relationship with an established distribution.
2) It seems they realize that the raw OS space is going or gone - points for that. They can't just come out and say it with new versions of Unixware et al on the way, but it does seem they're starting to get a glimpse of the forest.
3) They're thinking "value-add" - stuff that runs on top of Linux that provide services not normally provided by a stock distribution. I can't think of anything in this space not already served by a good existing Free app (webserver? LDAP server?) or someone with huge market share (Oracle?) but perhaps the end-goal is systems integration.
For their sake, I hope the long-term plan IS systems integration and other services, because if they're thinking of new sever-side "killer apps" then their lunch is going to get eaten AGAIN as soon as the Free version of whatever-it-is is developed.
How 'bout that - maybe SCO is starting to Get It.
It's called "criticism", dumbass
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New Ender Sequel
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· Score: 1
My my, touchy, aren't we?
The fact remains that, no matter _why_ he wrote them, the later Ender books simply are nowhere near the quality of the original three books.
Which is a shame, as the first three books are fantastic.
But when a writer dips back into the trough, and doesn't bother putting the effort in because he knows that the mere fact that it's an "Ender Book" means it'll sell - that's just milking the cow. Going through the motions.
See "Star Wars, Episode I" for more examples.
"Ender's Shadow" was a shoddy mess. It makes no difference to me if he sold one or a billion, the book still stinks. And after reading the first few chapters of the followup, I find to my dismay that it's getting WORSE, not better.
What do I want? Quality. And lately, Card hasn't been delivering.
Ever been asked "Why should I care if I can get the source code to [insert OSS program here]? I'm not capable of hacking it!" ?
Bob has a great answer in his rebuttal.
People would not buy a car with the hood (bonnet for the Brits) locked shut, even though most people haven't a clue about how the motor works.
Why? They're not going to fix the motor themselves.
But by being able to open the hood, people can take to the car to _whoever they want_ to get it fixed. They have choice. They're not locked-in to a single provider of mechanical services.
Wow! Simple, concise, and easy to understand!
Perhaps ol' Bob should get a job as a journalist.:)
This is the most well-balanced, well-spoken interviews with RMS that I've read in a long while.
Y'know, it's kinda funny - ESR got into the position he's in right now (spokesmodel for the Open Source folks) by being a less-radical, "warm and fuzzy" version of RMS. Someone who could convey the underlying message of the FSF without all the revolutionary language.
But yet lately, it's been ESR who's been foaming at the mouth, and here ol' RMS comes off as the calm, level-headed one.
And even funnier, people accuse RMS of being a Communist all the time, and yet here he accuses his opponents of being "Soviets" - twice!
Ahh, it's people like RMS and ESR who make this stuff fun.:)
Card books for the non-Card reader
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New Ender Sequel
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· Score: 1
For those of you who may not have read any Card, here's my take on his books:
Ender's Game: An absolutely fantastic book. This is a "must own, so you can re-read often" book.
Speaker for the Dead: Incredibly, an even better and more powerful book than Ender's Game. The story is less Hollywood, so those with short attention spans need not apply, but for those with strong imaginations, this is Card's masterpiece.
Xenocide: Starts out with the potential to be even better than SFtD, but wanders off into some strange and bizzare sidetracks near the end. Still a very good book, but lesser than the first two Ender books.
Children of the Mind: This one was highly disappointing. It felt hurried and rushed, and suffered from a lack of any real direction.
Ender's Shadow: Hello, Sequalitis! With this book Card goes from a writer, to a milker of a cash cow. Totally predictable, sloppy - and skippable.
The Homecoming Series: Starts out very strongly - the first book is very good. It's not at the level of the first 3 Ender books, but it's solid stuff. Things start slipping from there, and the wrapup feels like Card would just rather finish and move on. Overall, a good read for the whole series, but nothing outstanding either.
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus: A good, solid, SF yarn, and the best of Card's recent work. The premise is nothing groundbreaking, but the execution is first-rate. Worth reading.
Overall, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Pastwatch should be on one's "must buy" list. The others are worth reading if they fall into your lap, but don't go out of your way to buy them.
This isn't exactly what you want, but if the all-singing, all-dancing CGI module is too heavy for your purposes, then the CGI-Lite module may be better for you.
use CGI-Lite;
$cgi = new CGI-Lite;
%FORM_HASH = $cgi->parse_form_data();
if (! %FORM_HASH) { print_main_interface; } else { process_form(%FORM_HASH); }
Aside from the purely practical purpose of processing plural-byte datasets using perl programs, there exists a powerful punishment for the producers of the Obfusacated Perl Contest with this latest Perl permutation:
You can use Unicode in your source files!
Which means you can now have Unicode characters as things like variable names, subroutines, and so on.
$ = &($);
and so on.
Whee! I bet ol' Starscreamer's head explodes after reading THAT for 10 hours.:)
Well, "exponential" in a localized sense. Or perhaps "nonlinear" in the more general.
You're quite right that there must be bounds on the system - number of available programmers, the scaleability of the development process, and the maximum value of "quality" for the program. (Can "cat" get any better?) - and others.
But once a certain threshold is passed, an Open Source project's "quality curve" is very much steeper over the same period of time as an equivelant Closed Source one. As long as the Closed Source version maintains a higher raw value of "quality" (say, Photoshop vs Gimp) then the Closed Source software has an advantage. And for very complex and involved programs (again, Photoshop vs Gimp, perhaps Mozilla vs IE) then that advantage may be maintained for quite a while.
But once the Open Source project hits the "hockey stick" portion of its quality curve - look out!
So far, the number of Open Source projects that can be described as "sufficiantly mature" are fairly small and live mostly in infrastructure space - Linux, Apache, Perl, sendmail, bind etc. - but the user space applications are coming, and coming fast.
According to the principles of Open Source software development described in The Cathedral and the Bazzar (amongst others), for each "class" of software where there exists signifigant community interest, the Open Source version of the software will at first lag behind its Closed Source counterpart (in terms of features, reliability, etc) but as time progresses, the Open Source software will eventually surpass the Closed Source software.
Once this happens, there's no looking back - the Open Source software has far more developers and debuggers working on the project than even the richest and largest Closed Source software house could ever hope to employ.
If one could somehow graph "quality" of a given software project, one would see that Closed Source software increases linearly, whereas Open Source increases exponentially.
Given that the Linux "quality and features" line is either close to or already across the SCO Unix "quality and features" line, and given that SCO Unix and Linux compete in the same ecological niche, there is really very little reason to put further effort into developing/supporting SCO Unix - Linux has (or is about to) "win" and once "won", SCO Unix will never be able to make up the lost ground.
How then does SCO plan on surviving as a corporate entity when their primary product is outclassed by an Open Source, "free beer" version of the same thing?
(This isn't a borderline troll, I am genuinely curious how SCO intends to survive. They are perhaps the first "major" single-product company to butt heads with a mature Open Source project. How they handle the situation may predict what will happen to other such companies when their single product encounters a similarily mature Open Source version of the same thing - perhaps Adobe (Gimp) in a couple of years?)
You're mistaking the individual success/failure of Linux based businesses for the overall success of Linux as a whole - something that appears to be a common enough mistake.
The thing is though, that Linux's success is completely independant of the successes or failures of people who attempt to build businesses around Linux. In fact, that's entirely the point.
Linux was succeeding (on its own merits) well before there were any Red Hats, VA Linuxes, Calderas, or whatever. And if any or all of these companies go completely bankrupt, Linux will still continue to develop and succeed.
Linux doesn't *NEED* business. Business can help speed up the processs by providing resources and promotion, but remove business from the equation and all you do is slow the process down. It cannot be stopped.
*THAT* is what is so revolutionary about Open Source - that the software is no longer a "product" that is produced by a business in order to be sold to make profit. Instead, OSS is more like a community toolset, or an "art" (in the sense of "medicine" or "welding" or "tailoring")
Yes, the Linux stocks tanked, and for the most part, I think they deserved to. No WAY were any of those companies worth what their stock price indicated. I see the stock tanking as more of a return to sanity than a "failure" on the part of Linux.
But I expect Caldera to *stay* tanked, because their business model is in complete orthagonality to the way that Linux works. VA is a hardware company, their potential is as good or bad as any other hardware company. Red Hat "gets" Linux and OSS - they understand the community they work with and who support them. Can that translate into commercial success? The jury is still out. But I give them a MUCH higher probability of success than Caldera, because at least Red Hat isn't pissing into the cornflakes of those that support them.
If you listen carefully to Mr. Love's speech, you can hear the frustrated roaring of a dinosaur, railing about these damned mammals who have warm blood, don't lay eggs, and who don't sell software as "product".
"Evolutionary" indeed.
That Mr. Love is so upset about the GPL shows that it is carrying out one of its intended purposes - to prevent people from packaging up our hard work and selling it to someone else as their own.
It's clear to me that Caldera Doesn't Get It, and that accordingly, Caldera _stock_ is worthless.
Hmmm, maybe that's why their stock is tanking, d'y'a think?
what would you use it for...browsing the internet?
Absolutely.
We've got a Linux box on a cable modem as our primary home computer, but even being multi-user (which is beautiful - can't imagine sharing a computer without it) we can't share the monitor. One or the other - not both.
But with a Dreamcast (which we already have) ethernet-connected to the hub, and some IP Masq - Bingo! Two web browsers. Family harmony.
And besides, I hear Chu Chu Rocket is pretty good - and Quake3 is coming out for the DC soon enough.
I agree with your major points, but I find your example of "bottled water" an interesting one.
Are you _really_ paying for "cleaner" water, or are you paying for the _perception_ that the water is cleaner? Most municipal water supplies are treated before they are piped out, and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that your tap water and your Evian are equally clean.
I know when I buy bottled water, it's usually for convience - it's already cold, it's portable, it doesn't spill, I'm thirsty NOW, dammit, and I can't find a public water fountain - not because I think it's somehow superior in quality.
Which indeed serves only to strengthen your argument and analogy. Water bottlers sell conveniance, not product. Same with record companies.
While your conclusions are inarguable, there remains the fact that there is a very definate upper bound on the "steepness" of the gradient - the tensile strength of the human body.
I, uhh, don't have figures that would indicate exactly what that strength might be, but I suspect it's on the order of a thousand kilos or so.
If the gravity gradiant, even on the "gentle" hole, is steep enough such that there exists a point where a point separated by about 2m has a 1000kg difference, you've just killed your travellers.
Wormhole-building Engineering Challenges
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Wormholes? Maybe.
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While it's great to see that work is going forward on these avenues of thought, there seems to be a number of sticky engineering prblems that need to be adressed before wormhole-hopping becomes a feasable mode of transport, even if the math proves correct.
For instance: if the wormhole needs to be supported by "exotic matter" to remain stable, then what are the properties of this matter, especially with regards to interaction with the "mundane matter" that comprises us and our transportation & life support systems.
If "exotic matter" is the antimatter version of granite, then a wormhole propped open with it is going to prove problematic as a medium to travel. Not only would it be quite solid, but it would explode quite spectacularly if you attempted to walk through it.
Then there's the environment surrounding the wormhole entrace/exit to consider. Black Holes have such a steep gravity gradiant that they shred anything that comes near them well before the object enters the hole's event horizon. While a wormhole may not require black hole-levels of mass, and so may not have a signifigant gravity gradient, there will be a region of highly curved space near the location of the entrance/egress - what effects would that extreme spacial curvature have on a nearby physical object?
And even if the wormhole does something as boring as emitting large amounts of hard radiation it may limit its usefullness. What good is the ability to hop thousands of light years in an instant, if the mouth of the thing must be located at least one light-year away from an inhabited planet?
Given that we still have trouble building manned extreme-deep-water submersibles, I think it may be a little while yet before we're ready to engineer wormholes.
The fundamental problem is that there is NO WAY to prevent people from killing each other. It is an IMPOSSIBLE TASK to stop it
Unlike the copying of digital data - which consumes no physical matter nor leaves any physical traces - the act of killing someone leaves physical evidence and has a physical cost. Enforcing laws against murder IS possible (in fact, shamefully routine)
Your analogy does not hold.
Music is a product, because people can survive by supplying it to an audience whose demand permits this.
No, the playing of the music is a service the artist provides. That is what consumes the artist's time, and that is what the artist is being paid for. If nobody is willing to pay the artist, up front, for that service (be it a concert or a recording session) then that artist is not in demand. If the artist is not in demand... well, then why should they be considered an artist. I can call myself a "brain surgeon" all I like, but if my services as a brain surgeon are not needed or wanted, then I have to find something else to do.
Note that we have not removed "capitalism" from the equation - we're just paying for what is actually provided: a service.
If a musician can only expect to make money from the initialial recording of their music, and to not only survive, but to make an industry from it, they would need to charge a great deal of money for the initial recording. Either that, or musicians are not entitled to any large degree of wealth.
Yes, and yes, and there is a third option - do more recordings. You know, like a day job?
Do you think that software companies would be able to pay software engineers $100k/y, if they could only be guranteed to make money off of the initial sale of a single shrink wrapped piece of software?
Another broken example - the vast, vast majority of software engineers are not employed in the production of for-sale, shrink-wrapped software. The majority of us work for other industries as "problem solvers". We write code to fix specific business problems. Software engineering is much more like being a doctor, or a plumber, then it is a farmer.
However, let's examine your argument by replacing "software engineer" with "musician" as there are far more software engineers out there than there are decent musicians. Why should a recording company pay a musician money to record music if it's only going to be copied anyway?
It's called "patronage". I like musician X's work. I know that if recording company Y is going to continue to produce CDs of X's music, that Y has to sell enough CDs to cover their overhead and a little profit. So I buy the CD with the explicit knowledge that if people don't buy the CDs, then no more of X's CDs will be produced. In an indirect way, I am compensating X for their time by proxy of Y.
If, however, I decide to provide copies to my friends, then they get to decide if they want to buy the CD or not - and they may not want to - and that's fine. That's the risk that the recording company has to take.
Perhaps the recording company will choose to position itself as a service to the musician instead, where the musician pays the recording company for the use of the studio, the CD press, the distibution, etc. The musician sets the price of the CD, and the recording company sells it. But then the risk is on the musician as to if anyone will choose to buy the CD or not.
But either way, this is a "distributed patronage" system, not the selling of property beyond that of the physical plastic and metal that makes the CD. The bits are just that - bits
Thank God for the Grateful Dead - they showed that exactly this kind of system is entirely workable. They encouraged the wholesale copying and distribution of their material, and yet they made a fine living off it.
The whole concept of "intellectual property" is just soooo broken... there's no "property" there - it's just information. There is no cost to duplication; it's not a zero-sum game. It's not the bits that are scarce, it's the services of the people who can arrange the bits. But any business model that functions via an artificial scarcity of bits is doomed.
Yes, I do fully understand the full ramifications of my beliefs, and frankly, I welcome it.
There are two fundemental problems here - but before I start, let me say up front that yes, it's hard to justify to a music artist why their work should be "given away for free". Not impossible, but tough. The case is far easier to describe when applied to software and programmers.
Fundemental problem number one is that there is NO WAY to prevent the copying and distribution of music files (or indeed, of any digitally encoded information). It is an IMPOSSIBLE task to stop it. You can restrict it for a time, you can nail a couple of individuals, you can do anything you like, but ultimately, you're playing whack-a-mole with a whole lot of moles. Any law written to prevent this activity is ultimately unenforcable, and an unenforcable law is an exercise in legal masturbation.
That does not, in of itself, JUSTIFY the behaviour (ie, "they can't stop me so it's OK" is not a valid line of reasoning) but the fact that you cannot stop it MUST be taken into account.
The second, much more important problem, is that art is not a product to be bought and sold. The recording industry has tried very, very hard to make this so, and they've poisoned generations of artists into believing that "art is a product" to help justify the neat little racket they've created, but the concept is flawed and rotten at its core.
Consider this: an artist sits in a recording studio, plays the song, and the song is recorded and mixed into the final cut. The whole writing-recording-editing process took a certain amount of time, and yes, the artist deserves to be compensated for that time. But once the artist has finished the recording, then there is no further cost to the artist - the job, as it were, is complete. If one copy is distributed, or a thousand, or a billion, it doesn't change the amount of work the artist needed to do to make the recording.
Why should any artist expect to continue to make money when their job is finished? How is that reasonable?
Consider this - I want my house painted, because I want people to look at my house and say "Gee, what a nice house!". So I pay someone to paint my house. Once paid, the artist moves on. It would be entirely unreasonable for me to pay the painter a royalty for each time my house was viewed - the job is done.
If I want a really nice paint job, then I hire a really good painter. Because he is so good, he can charge more up front for the job - but this is a service I'm purchasing. I'm not licencing my paint job from him. I compensate him for his time and talent, as is right and correct, but that's it.
Sound farfetched? It's not. Replace "house" with "ceiling" and pretend I live in the Cistene Chapel. Aha! Historical precident!
Record companies have legit costs - studio equipment and land use overhead, printing costs, distribution costs, etc - that they have a right to try and cover. They also have a right to try and make a profit. But the current recording industry is an aberration built on an erroneous assumption - that art is a product. It's not. It's a SERVICE. And if the money they make selling CDs is not enough to cover their overhead or to make enough product when anyone can copy the recording and distribute it at will, then what they have is a **failed business model**, not "theft".
Just because you've been selling ice cubes to Eskimos for years doesn't mean you will be able to continue to do so. And laws designed to prevent Eskimos from scooping up the snow outside because it circimvents your business aren't right either.
Art is not a product. Artists are service providers, not manufacturers. And it's time we stopped treating both of them as such.
That ultimately means that the days of bilionaire artists are coming to a close - and that's fine by me. Are the Backstreet Boys really worth 10,000 high school teachers? 5,000 doctors? I sure don't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing in the press release about a Linux version.
Is one planned?
Technical and security challenges aside for the moment, the really killer app for this technology is the seamless networking of otherwise non-networkable appliances.
Not everybody wants an ethernet jack on their toaster, but _everything_ has a power jack.
Imagine the following:
- buy a new VCR/DVD Player/Alarm clock? Plug it into the wall, and watch it set the time on itself to the same time as all the other devices in the house.
- Self-monitoring appliances that are syslog() capable (or something similar) and report faults to a central logging facility
- Appliances that export network APIs to provide scriptable control
...and a host of other Really Neat Stuff possible if you have a standardized network in every home.
This is right on the edge of being offtopic, but it's so facinating that I have to mention it.
There is a new-this-year TV drama called "The West Wing" that tells the story of a fictional President and his staff as they attempt to run the country.
Unlike most TV, this show is _very_ good. It has excellent writing, intelligent characters, and some real heavy-hitter actors (Martin Sheen as The President, Rob Lowe as an aide)
However, the characters in the White House in this show are a little... idealized. They're all strong-willed, highly-motivated, noble people. I've heard the characters described as "the White House Staff as they wish they were" because they're all so dammed _competent_
Thus, the characters in this TV show can be seen as almost providing an example for the real staff to aspire to. Public policy improvement by way of televised fiction!
I bring this up, because on last week's cliffhanger episode, there is a scene where a staffer is preparing questions that the President is likely to be asked at a town hall meeting. The particular issue he is wrestling with is China engagement - if "engagement" is the way to bring Communist countries into the fold, then why be so harsh to Cuba? Why the double standard?
Well, today on the way to work, I hear on the radio that a US Senator/Congressman has introduced a bill to start relaxing sanctions on Cuba, and I'll be dammed if the soundbite didn't sound like it had been lifted straight from the TV show by this particular politician.
Holy crap! Can a televised morality play really affect US foreign policy?
The concept boggles the mind. Holy media influence Batman!
Does this C++ compiler come with some sort of Borland-only libraries, with the associated Borland-copywritable include/header files?
OK, I'm grasping at straws here, but maybe that's what they're trying to protect.
Of course, it's not like it makes any real difference. If a tool (like a compiler) tries to restrict your freedoms, then use another compiler that does not. Like, say, gcc - which I'm told does C++ just fine.
Firstly, (at the risk of blowing my oown horn a little) soldiers are a lot more intelligent than your average Hollywood movie portrays. We're not mindless automotons who cheerfully believe whatever information we're fed. We are quite capable of drawing our own conclusions.
Secondly, high-level commanders are typically not interested in feeding bullshit to lower echelons. The military ethos places extreme value on honesty and trust. You may not always (for security reasons) be able to provide subordinates with the complete picture, but you never actually _lie_ to them.
Not only does lying reduce the trust subordinates have in a commander, but subordinates must be ready to assume the positions and responsibilities of a commander should the commander be killed. Purposely feeding subordinates bad information is a good way to lose battles.
But there was also precious little dialogue between the two sides, and when presented with a lack of information, we tend to see what we want to see. And we, as a military, were sold a Soviet Union that was slavering at the bit, looking for the opportunity to invade the Free World and enslave it.
But what we in the West neglected to see, partially because we weren't allowed to see it, was just how badly we were scaring the Soviets. The Soviet Union had been invaded twice in as many generations, and each time the losses on the Soviet side had been ENORMOUS. It wasn't until after the Wall fell that we really started to get a sense of scale as to how close the Soviets came to surrendering, how colossal their manpower losses were, and how miraculous their recovery.
After reading histories of WWII written after some of this information became available, there is no question in my mind that the Soviets won WWII. The Western contribution is miniscule in comparison. At best, we were a diversionary effort that distracted Hitler enough so that he couldn't bring his full effort to bear on the Eastern front, and one could argue that the Western factory bombing campaign helped slow the rate of German regeneration, but when it comes down to the number of German combat units destroyed, the Soviets win hands down - and at _terrible_ personal cost.
So no wonder they were just a teensy bit paranoid. And with the US spewing anti-communist propaganda at every opportunity, and a large, well organized mobile force parked on the East German border, and weapons of mass destruction churned out in the thousands... who wouldn't be scared?
And I distinctly remember in the mid-late eighties the Americans trying very hard to come up with ways to fight a limited, conventional war in Europe, without resorting to the use of nukes. From a Soviet perspective, that sounds a whole lot like an invader trying to get around their primary defensive deterrent.
The Soviet Union certainly wasn't the worker's paradise they claimed they were, and there were a lot of serious downsides to the way they ran their country, their foreign policy, and a number of other things. But having seen NATO's actions though Russian eyes... damn, we were doing a very good job of sounding a lot like an invader.
In a very real way, we were poking a bear with a stick, and I think that we're very, very lucky that the bear never lost patience and lashed out. And had the bear lashed out, it's hard to say that we didn't deserve it.
I spent the latter part of the Cold War in the Army, and I distinctly remember expecting the balloon to go up sometime during my lifetime.
And as an Armoured Recce guy, I had to memorize and _keep_ memorized Soviet ORBATS, tactics, and weapon/vehicle capabilities so that I'd recognise the bad guys when they came calling.
But a couple of years ago, after the Wall fell, I had an opportunity to meet one of my counterparts from the Red Army, and we got to talking about "old times". And what he told me was that they were all waiting for NATO to invade _them_!
And he managed to give great examples of our "threatening stance"
A minor lesson in tactics - the nature of modern armoured warfare is that it is impossible to contain a localized bit of ground. The enemy can concentrate his forces and always overwhelm localized defenders. If you share a border with a bad guy, and you each have 1000 tanks, then placing your tanks at equal intervals along the border will do nothing when the enemy throws all 1000 tanks at one spot.
Accordingly, the way you defend against armoured units is to place lightweight screening units up front, and have progressively larger and heavier units staged behind them. The screening units make contact, and report back to the heavy units, who then determine where the attackers are going and counterattack in mass.
It's called "defense in depth". To defend against Divisional-level assaults requeres about 100km of depth.
However, the West German wasn't too keen on the idea of the first 100km of their country being given up by default and used as a battlefield. They wanted the invaders stopped at the border.
Well, NATO knew that this just wasn't going to happen, but political expediancy required them to come up with a solution. And the solution they came up with was that as soon as the balloon went up, they would _immediately_ invade East Germany and attempt to penetrate 100 km in and set up the defensive screen. Tactical nukes would be used to blunt any thrusts pushing into West Germany, and the units pushing into East Germany would be used to cut off the attackers.
What this looks like on the ground are large mobile units massed close to the border - exactly what an invasion force would look like. Because it _was_ an invasion force.
Now the Soviets had more experience with large-scale armoured combat than anyone. They KNOW what is required to defend against armour. And every time NATO would tell them "we're just going to defend ourselves against agression" the Soviet generals would look at the troop distributions in West Germany and go "We know what defenses look like, and those are NOT defensive formations" - and they'd go make another 10000 tanks.
The two of us discussed this for quite some time, and when we finally understood each other, we had a good laugh over it all.
That's not to say that the Soviets weren't very interested in promoting Communism - they were, and they persued that agressively. But they never seriously considered Napoleanesque annexation by force of the whole of Europe like we feared.
The answer posted to my question is brief, as one expects from sound-bite journalism, but reading between the lines we can get a fair idea of SCO's current plans:
1) They think there needs to be someone between "the customer" and Linux, and they want to be one of those people. Conclusion: Either an SCO Linux distribution, or a "strategic partnership" relationship with an established distribution.
2) It seems they realize that the raw OS space is going or gone - points for that. They can't just come out and say it with new versions of Unixware et al on the way, but it does seem they're starting to get a glimpse of the forest.
3) They're thinking "value-add" - stuff that runs on top of Linux that provide services not normally provided by a stock distribution. I can't think of anything in this space not already served by a good existing Free app (webserver? LDAP server?) or someone with huge market share (Oracle?) but perhaps the end-goal is systems integration.
For their sake, I hope the long-term plan IS systems integration and other services, because if they're thinking of new sever-side "killer apps" then their lunch is going to get eaten AGAIN as soon as the Free version of whatever-it-is is developed.
How 'bout that - maybe SCO is starting to Get It.
My my, touchy, aren't we?
The fact remains that, no matter _why_ he wrote them, the later Ender books simply are nowhere near the quality of the original three books.
Which is a shame, as the first three books are fantastic.
But when a writer dips back into the trough, and doesn't bother putting the effort in because he knows that the mere fact that it's an "Ender Book" means it'll sell - that's just milking the cow. Going through the motions.
See "Star Wars, Episode I" for more examples.
"Ender's Shadow" was a shoddy mess. It makes no difference to me if he sold one or a billion, the book still stinks. And after reading the first few chapters of the followup, I find to my dismay that it's getting WORSE, not better.
What do I want? Quality. And lately, Card hasn't been delivering.
Get over THAT, fanboy.
Wow, Bob has a great nugget in there!
:)
Ever been asked "Why should I care if I can get the source code to [insert OSS program here]? I'm not capable of hacking it!" ?
Bob has a great answer in his rebuttal.
People would not buy a car with the hood (bonnet for the Brits) locked shut, even though most people haven't a clue about how the motor works.
Why? They're not going to fix the motor themselves.
But by being able to open the hood, people can take to the car to _whoever they want_ to get it fixed. They have choice. They're not locked-in to a single provider of mechanical services.
Wow! Simple, concise, and easy to understand!
Perhaps ol' Bob should get a job as a journalist.
This is the most well-balanced, well-spoken interviews with RMS that I've read in a long while.
:)
Y'know, it's kinda funny - ESR got into the position he's in right now (spokesmodel for the Open Source folks) by being a less-radical, "warm and fuzzy" version of RMS. Someone who could convey the underlying message of the FSF without all the revolutionary language.
But yet lately, it's been ESR who's been foaming at the mouth, and here ol' RMS comes off as the calm, level-headed one.
And even funnier, people accuse RMS of being a Communist all the time, and yet here he accuses his opponents of being "Soviets" - twice!
Ahh, it's people like RMS and ESR who make this stuff fun.
For those of you who may not have read any Card, here's my take on his books:
Overall, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Pastwatch should be on one's "must buy" list. The others are worth reading if they fall into your lap, but don't go out of your way to buy them.
This isn't exactly what you want, but if the all-singing, all-dancing CGI module is too heavy for your purposes, then the CGI-Lite module may be better for you.
use CGI-Lite;
$cgi = new CGI-Lite;
%FORM_HASH = $cgi->parse_form_data();
if (! %FORM_HASH) {
print_main_interface;
}
else {
process_form(%FORM_HASH);
}
Simple!
Aside from the purely practical purpose of processing plural-byte datasets using perl programs, there exists a powerful punishment for the producers of the Obfusacated Perl Contest with this latest Perl permutation:
:)
You can use Unicode in your source files!
Which means you can now have Unicode characters as things like variable names, subroutines, and so on.
$ = &($);
and so on.
Whee! I bet ol' Starscreamer's head explodes after reading THAT for 10 hours.
Well, "exponential" in a localized sense. Or perhaps "nonlinear" in the more general.
You're quite right that there must be bounds on the system - number of available programmers, the scaleability of the development process, and the maximum value of "quality" for the program. (Can "cat" get any better?) - and others.
But once a certain threshold is passed, an Open Source project's "quality curve" is very much steeper over the same period of time as an equivelant Closed Source one. As long as the Closed Source version maintains a higher raw value of "quality" (say, Photoshop vs Gimp) then the Closed Source software has an advantage. And for very complex and involved programs (again, Photoshop vs Gimp, perhaps Mozilla vs IE) then that advantage may be maintained for quite a while.
But once the Open Source project hits the "hockey stick" portion of its quality curve - look out!
So far, the number of Open Source projects that can be described as "sufficiantly mature" are fairly small and live mostly in infrastructure space - Linux, Apache, Perl, sendmail, bind etc. - but the user space applications are coming, and coming fast.
According to the principles of Open Source software development described in The Cathedral and the Bazzar (amongst others), for each "class" of software where there exists signifigant community interest, the Open Source version of the software will at first lag behind its Closed Source counterpart (in terms of features, reliability, etc) but as time progresses, the Open Source software will eventually surpass the Closed Source software.
Once this happens, there's no looking back - the Open Source software has far more developers and debuggers working on the project than even the richest and largest Closed Source software house could ever hope to employ.
If one could somehow graph "quality" of a given software project, one would see that Closed Source software increases linearly, whereas Open Source increases exponentially.
Given that the Linux "quality and features" line is either close to or already across the SCO Unix "quality and features" line, and given that SCO Unix and Linux compete in the same ecological niche, there is really very little reason to put further effort into developing/supporting SCO Unix - Linux has (or is about to) "win" and once "won", SCO Unix will never be able to make up the lost ground.
How then does SCO plan on surviving as a corporate entity when their primary product is outclassed by an Open Source, "free beer" version of the same thing?
(This isn't a borderline troll, I am genuinely curious how SCO intends to survive. They are perhaps the first "major" single-product company to butt heads with a mature Open Source project. How they handle the situation may predict what will happen to other such companies when their single product encounters a similarily mature Open Source version of the same thing - perhaps Adobe (Gimp) in a couple of years?)
You're mistaking the individual success/failure of Linux based businesses for the overall success of Linux as a whole - something that appears to be a common enough mistake.
The thing is though, that Linux's success is completely independant of the successes or failures of people who attempt to build businesses around Linux. In fact, that's entirely the point.
Linux was succeeding (on its own merits) well before there were any Red Hats, VA Linuxes, Calderas, or whatever. And if any or all of these companies go completely bankrupt, Linux will still continue to develop and succeed.
Linux doesn't *NEED* business. Business can help speed up the processs by providing resources and promotion, but remove business from the equation and all you do is slow the process down. It cannot be stopped.
*THAT* is what is so revolutionary about Open Source - that the software is no longer a "product" that is produced by a business in order to be sold to make profit. Instead, OSS is more like a community toolset, or an "art" (in the sense of "medicine" or "welding" or "tailoring")
Yes, the Linux stocks tanked, and for the most part, I think they deserved to. No WAY were any of those companies worth what their stock price indicated. I see the stock tanking as more of a return to sanity than a "failure" on the part of Linux.
But I expect Caldera to *stay* tanked, because their business model is in complete orthagonality to the way that Linux works. VA is a hardware company, their potential is as good or bad as any other hardware company. Red Hat "gets" Linux and OSS - they understand the community they work with and who support them. Can that translate into commercial success? The jury is still out. But I give them a MUCH higher probability of success than Caldera, because at least Red Hat isn't pissing into the cornflakes of those that support them.
If you listen carefully to Mr. Love's speech, you can hear the frustrated roaring of a dinosaur, railing about these damned mammals who have warm blood, don't lay eggs, and who don't sell software as "product".
"Evolutionary" indeed.
That Mr. Love is so upset about the GPL shows that it is carrying out one of its intended purposes - to prevent people from packaging up our hard work and selling it to someone else as their own.
It's clear to me that Caldera Doesn't Get It, and that accordingly, Caldera _stock_ is worthless.
Hmmm, maybe that's why their stock is tanking, d'y'a think?
what would you use it for...browsing the internet?
Absolutely.
We've got a Linux box on a cable modem as our primary home computer, but even being multi-user (which is beautiful - can't imagine sharing a computer without it) we can't share the monitor. One or the other - not both.
But with a Dreamcast (which we already have) ethernet-connected to the hub, and some IP Masq - Bingo! Two web browsers. Family harmony.
And besides, I hear Chu Chu Rocket is pretty good - and Quake3 is coming out for the DC soon enough.
Is anybody making a plug-in Ethernet module for Dreamcast yet?
If they did, I'd buy one today. I have a use for it right now!
I agree with your major points, but I find your example of "bottled water" an interesting one.
Are you _really_ paying for "cleaner" water, or are you paying for the _perception_ that the water is cleaner? Most municipal water supplies are treated before they are piped out, and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that your tap water and your Evian are equally clean.
I know when I buy bottled water, it's usually for convience - it's already cold, it's portable, it doesn't spill, I'm thirsty NOW, dammit, and I can't find a public water fountain - not because I think it's somehow superior in quality.
Which indeed serves only to strengthen your argument and analogy. Water bottlers sell conveniance, not product. Same with record companies.
While your conclusions are inarguable, there remains the fact that there is a very definate upper bound on the "steepness" of the gradient - the tensile strength of the human body.
I, uhh, don't have figures that would indicate exactly what that strength might be, but I suspect it's on the order of a thousand kilos or so.
If the gravity gradiant, even on the "gentle" hole, is steep enough such that there exists a point where a point separated by about 2m has a 1000kg difference, you've just killed your travellers.
While it's great to see that work is going forward on these avenues of thought, there seems to be a number of sticky engineering prblems that need to be adressed before wormhole-hopping becomes a feasable mode of transport, even if the math proves correct.
For instance: if the wormhole needs to be supported by "exotic matter" to remain stable, then what are the properties of this matter, especially with regards to interaction with the "mundane matter" that comprises us and our transportation & life support systems.
If "exotic matter" is the antimatter version of granite, then a wormhole propped open with it is going to prove problematic as a medium to travel. Not only would it be quite solid, but it would explode quite spectacularly if you attempted to walk through it.
Then there's the environment surrounding the wormhole entrace/exit to consider. Black Holes have such a steep gravity gradiant that they shred anything that comes near them well before the object enters the hole's event horizon. While a wormhole may not require black hole-levels of mass, and so may not have a signifigant gravity gradient, there will be a region of highly curved space near the location of the entrance/egress - what effects would that extreme spacial curvature have on a nearby physical object?
And even if the wormhole does something as boring as emitting large amounts of hard radiation it may limit its usefullness. What good is the ability to hop thousands of light years in an instant, if the mouth of the thing must be located at least one light-year away from an inhabited planet?
Given that we still have trouble building manned extreme-deep-water submersibles, I think it may be a little while yet before we're ready to engineer wormholes.
Still, the math is cool though.
Some of the links in the middle of the article are broken - they're suffixed with ".html" instead of ".shtml".
The "next" links on the bottom of each page seem to work though - or you can just add the "s" manually.
The fundamental problem is that there is NO WAY to prevent people from killing each other. It is an IMPOSSIBLE TASK to stop it
Unlike the copying of digital data - which consumes no physical matter nor leaves any physical traces - the act of killing someone leaves physical evidence and has a physical cost. Enforcing laws against murder IS possible (in fact, shamefully routine)
Your analogy does not hold.
Music is a product, because people can survive by supplying it to an audience whose demand permits this.
No, the playing of the music is a service the artist provides. That is what consumes the artist's time, and that is what the artist is being paid for. If nobody is willing to pay the artist, up front, for that service (be it a concert or a recording session) then that artist is not in demand. If the artist is not in demand... well, then why should they be considered an artist. I can call myself a "brain surgeon" all I like, but if my services as a brain surgeon are not needed or wanted, then I have to find something else to do.
Note that we have not removed "capitalism" from the equation - we're just paying for what is actually provided: a service.
If a musician can only expect to make money from the initialial recording of their music, and to not only survive, but to make an industry from it, they would need to charge a great deal of money for the initial recording. Either that, or musicians are not entitled to any large degree of wealth.
Yes, and yes, and there is a third option - do more recordings. You know, like a day job?
Do you think that software companies would be able to pay software engineers $100k/y, if they could only be guranteed to make money off of the initial sale of a single shrink wrapped piece of software?
Another broken example - the vast, vast majority of software engineers are not employed in the production of for-sale, shrink-wrapped software. The majority of us work for other industries as "problem solvers". We write code to fix specific business problems. Software engineering is much more like being a doctor, or a plumber, then it is a farmer.
However, let's examine your argument by replacing "software engineer" with "musician" as there are far more software engineers out there than there are decent musicians. Why should a recording company pay a musician money to record music if it's only going to be copied anyway?
It's called "patronage". I like musician X's work. I know that if recording company Y is going to continue to produce CDs of X's music, that Y has to sell enough CDs to cover their overhead and a little profit. So I buy the CD with the explicit knowledge that if people don't buy the CDs, then no more of X's CDs will be produced. In an indirect way, I am compensating X for their time by proxy of Y.
If, however, I decide to provide copies to my friends, then they get to decide if they want to buy the CD or not - and they may not want to - and that's fine. That's the risk that the recording company has to take.
Perhaps the recording company will choose to position itself as a service to the musician instead, where the musician pays the recording company for the use of the studio, the CD press, the distibution, etc. The musician sets the price of the CD, and the recording company sells it. But then the risk is on the musician as to if anyone will choose to buy the CD or not.
But either way, this is a "distributed patronage" system, not the selling of property beyond that of the physical plastic and metal that makes the CD. The bits are just that - bits
Thank God for the Grateful Dead - they showed that exactly this kind of system is entirely workable. They encouraged the wholesale copying and distribution of their material, and yet they made a fine living off it.
The whole concept of "intellectual property" is just soooo broken... there's no "property" there - it's just information. There is no cost to duplication; it's not a zero-sum game. It's not the bits that are scarce, it's the services of the people who can arrange the bits. But any business model that functions via an artificial scarcity of bits is doomed.
Yes, I do fully understand the full ramifications of my beliefs, and frankly, I welcome it.
There are two fundemental problems here - but before I start, let me say up front that yes, it's hard to justify to a music artist why their work should be "given away for free". Not impossible, but tough. The case is far easier to describe when applied to software and programmers.
Fundemental problem number one is that there is NO WAY to prevent the copying and distribution of music files (or indeed, of any digitally encoded information). It is an IMPOSSIBLE task to stop it. You can restrict it for a time, you can nail a couple of individuals, you can do anything you like, but ultimately, you're playing whack-a-mole with a whole lot of moles. Any law written to prevent this activity is ultimately unenforcable, and an unenforcable law is an exercise in legal masturbation.
That does not, in of itself, JUSTIFY the behaviour (ie, "they can't stop me so it's OK" is not a valid line of reasoning) but the fact that you cannot stop it MUST be taken into account.
The second, much more important problem, is that art is not a product to be bought and sold. The recording industry has tried very, very hard to make this so, and they've poisoned generations of artists into believing that "art is a product" to help justify the neat little racket they've created, but the concept is flawed and rotten at its core.
Consider this: an artist sits in a recording studio, plays the song, and the song is recorded and mixed into the final cut. The whole writing-recording-editing process took a certain amount of time, and yes, the artist deserves to be compensated for that time. But once the artist has finished the recording, then there is no further cost to the artist - the job, as it were, is complete. If one copy is distributed, or a thousand, or a billion, it doesn't change the amount of work the artist needed to do to make the recording.
Why should any artist expect to continue to make money when their job is finished? How is that reasonable?
Consider this - I want my house painted, because I want people to look at my house and say "Gee, what a nice house!". So I pay someone to paint my house. Once paid, the artist moves on. It would be entirely unreasonable for me to pay the painter a royalty for each time my house was viewed - the job is done.
If I want a really nice paint job, then I hire a really good painter. Because he is so good, he can charge more up front for the job - but this is a service I'm purchasing. I'm not licencing my paint job from him. I compensate him for his time and talent, as is right and correct, but that's it.
Sound farfetched? It's not. Replace "house" with "ceiling" and pretend I live in the Cistene Chapel. Aha! Historical precident!
Record companies have legit costs - studio equipment and land use overhead, printing costs, distribution costs, etc - that they have a right to try and cover. They also have a right to try and make a profit. But the current recording industry is an aberration built on an erroneous assumption - that art is a product. It's not. It's a SERVICE. And if the money they make selling CDs is not enough to cover their overhead or to make enough product when anyone can copy the recording and distribute it at will, then what they have is a **failed business model**, not "theft".
Just because you've been selling ice cubes to Eskimos for years doesn't mean you will be able to continue to do so. And laws designed to prevent Eskimos from scooping up the snow outside because it circimvents your business aren't right either.
Art is not a product. Artists are service providers, not manufacturers. And it's time we stopped treating both of them as such.
That ultimately means that the days of bilionaire artists are coming to a close - and that's fine by me. Are the Backstreet Boys really worth 10,000 high school teachers? 5,000 doctors? I sure don't think so.