Is Anybody Really Using Java? (Honestly!)
on
Swing
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· Score: 1
This isn't a troll; I'm seeking to educate myself.
I have had a number of encounters with Java-based GUI applications, and to a piece they have all been bad. All the Java GUI applications I have tried have been sluggish, unresponsive, and generally unimpressive.
They all seem to want to install their own JRE too, so it seems like I (as a user) am being punished because the Java compiler couldn't/wouldn't generate a native binary. But yet I have to install a native-binary version, because it installs a native-binary JRE as part of the package.
I have nothing particular against Java as a language - I don't like Bondage & Discipline languages myself, but language choice is very much a personal thing, and I don't presume that my personal preferences are best for the entire world. But Java as an implementation - as I have seen it - provides a really nasty end-user experience.
You've received a lot of good answers here, but this pointlet has been overlooked so far:
Sauron was a overwhelming, mass-power, crush-and-dominate kinda guy. He expected the Ring to be taken up by some sort of Hero, and openly used against him. He was searching for the Ring so desperately not only because he wanted the power of it for himself, but because he feared it in other hands.
To him, the concept that the forces of good might actually wish to _destroy_ it never occured to him.
And Gollum had shown (via Gandalf's interrigation of him) that it was possible to slip into Mordor unnoticed, if you were inconspicuous enough.
While it's nice to be agreed with, there's one comment in your reply that I find a little disturbing - that you will "defend software piracy and the open-source movement to the end"
It is _very_ important that we do not confuse the free copying and distribution of closed software with the Open Source movement. They are NOT the same thing.
Like it or not, there are a large number of our peers who make their living by writing software and selling it as product. Their numbers are much smaller than the number of IT professionals employed in "problem solving" roles (something they don't seem to realize) but they do hold a fair amount of influence, and they can get their voices heard. Furthermore, their situation very closely mirrors that of other IP-as-product industries, like the entertainment industry.
Open Source scares the holy bejeezus out of these folks - and with good reason. Open Source isn't going to just steal parts of their lunch, it's going to make them completely irrelevant. This is a scary thing to a provider with mouths to feed, and it behooves us to understand and appreciate that.
We need to educate these folks in Open Source as a method. They have to understand and see how it works so that they can re-cast their role in the industry as a participant in the Open Source movement, not as a victim.
Part of that is repecting their (admittedly misguided) concept of software-as-property, and not get involved with the copying and redistribution of "their" closed-source, propriatry software. They see that as theft, and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of people who have cast you in the role of "thief"
You and I both know that there's NOTHING anybody can do to stop either one of us from copying and dissiminating "pirated" warez, but the inibility to stop it does not justify our doing it. Not yet.
I recently read the portion of your website that discusses your proposed solution to the current (rather thorny) intellectual property and software licencing issues.
For those that have not read it, the nutshell summary is to produce a fixed number of software licences, each of which entitles you to the lastest/greatest version of whatever software is licenced. These licences, being fixed in number, can then be bought and sold on what amounts to a commodity market.
This is an interesting idea, but it suffers from at least two problems that I can see: a practical problem, and a philosophical one.
The practical problem is that, unlike other commodities like gold, oil, grain, or money, there is zero cost to duplicate the actual stuff the licence scrip represents - and it's the stuff, not the licence that actually does the work. You may create an artificial shortage of licences, but it has been demonstrated time and time again that there is no practical way to defeat the copying of digital media. The shortage of licences does not translate into a shortage of the software the licence represents.
The more cerebral problem revolves around the fact that software is not a consumable. Instead, the primary use of software, outside of the entertainment industry, is to solve problems. Software is a tool, the same way my 14mm wrench is a tool.
Assuming one _could_ create an enforcable copy-prevention scheme that would allow the limited-licence commodity to function, do we really want a world in which the number of tools to solve particular problems is limited? It would certainly suck if there were only 100 14mm wrenches in the world.
What I think the great victory of the Free Software movement is is that software stops being a product with intrinsic value. Instead, software goes into the general pool of knowledge for the use and re-use of other people with problems to solve.
A program is a lot like a surgical technique - the technique itself has no intrinsic value, and once discovered, detailed instructions on how to perform it are published freely. However, the services of those who can _apply_ the technique are highly valued.
I would submit that, instead of trying to devise a system in which knowledge is termed "property" and is bought and sold, we should instead be seeking to educate people that there really is no such thing as "intellectual property" and that what counts (and what one should be paying for) are the services of those who can apply and produce it. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is fundamentally broken and wrong.
I would like to hear your comments on these thoughts.
I don't remember which of their 95 "theses" it is, but the gist of it is that "Your customers often know more about your stuff than you do - and they talk to each other about you, and your services"
It seems to me, that as the DC (presumably) does PPP over its 56k modem, that a Linux box set up for IP Masq could be used to share a cable modem, DSL or whatever high-speed connection.
And I guess a Linux box full of modems could be used for DC LAN parties.
Anybody ever try this? How do you get 2 modems to connect to each other without using the phone system?
I understand your sentiment, but...
on
Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
Microsoft's crime was not "being successful". What Microsoft did wrong was to assume that that success placed them above the law, and justified them doing whatever it was they felt like.
And as it turned out, they felt like doing a lot of very nasty and unconsciencable things, a few of which - a FEW of which - are detailed in the "findings of fact" that were published a couple of months ago.
The free marketplace is supposed to be about quality rising to the top - the best products, with the best features, and the best prices. You succeed by producing quality work. And if all you do is produce quality products at good prices, then you have nothing to fear.
But as soon as you start going after competitors, you've crossed the line, and should expect to be punished. It's like running a foot race. If you're the fastest runner, you deserve success. But if you win by tripping up all the other runners, you don't deserve success.
If Microsoft had not sought to deny Netscape marketing channels, if it had not attempted to first aqquire, and then if that failed, render incompatible, every single promising innovative product that came down the pike, then they would not be in the pickle that they are today.
Yes, we expect companies to compete. But at the same time, we expect them to follow the rules of the game. Microsoft did not, and they are starting to pay the piper.
Now that we're getting into the 2.4-pre series, it's time for ever Linux user to do their bit for kernel development:
- Go grab the latest tarball (use a mirror please) - Configure, compile, and install it. - Make a report on linux-kernel about what worked and what didn't
Remember: "given enough eyeballs, all (kernel) bugs are shallow" Linux requires the massively parallel bug-finding that only widespread use and testing can provide.
Keep that paper bag off Linus' head! Find and report them bugs! Do your bit!
Scratch any bank, insurance company, car manufacturer, etc. etc. in the United States, and you will find a whole passle of mainframes doing all the heavy lifting.
Mainframes are far from dead. Most big business relies on them.
You know, those Cold-War-era telepathy experiments you and a couple of other folks have lampooned weren't entirely off the wall. It was serious research done for serious purposes.
And the fact that nobody was ever able to get it to work served an important purpose - it demonstrated that "telepathy" as the psudo-scientists know it, is bunk.
A negative result is often just as important as a positive one. I think it's unlikely that BAe will have much success, but I think that it's good that they try, and that they document their failures.
Far, far better that they try and fail, than never try at all.
A few years ago, I hit my head pretty hard (all though nowhere near as hard as this) and woke up in hospital.
Man, I was *all* screwed up. Didn't know where I was, didn't remember the past two weeks, would fixate on dumb things, babbled my head off....
In short, I did all the things that he's doing now.
It may be confusing and frustrating as hell for Cassie right now, but this is all normal for head trauma. He'll get better, eventually. I did. I'm fine.
Hell, I even got most of those two missing weeks back.;)
Someone want to pass this along to Cassie? Been there, done that, got better.
As someone who wishes he was making a living as a professional athelete (see http://www.wincom.net/trog/) I can testify that the only way you can afford to do stuff like this is with outside help.
Race cars are devices for transforming money into smoke and noise, and if mine ran on only my own money, it wouldn't run at all.
The big difference being though, that it's easy enough to cram sponsor logos onto my race car, but it's a little more difficult to get logos onto, say, the Spice Girls.;)
BTW, if anybody wants to get exposure (*cough* Red Hat *cough* VA Linux *cough* Andover) on a Nationally active race car team with proven sponsor performance, they should drop on by our web site.;)
The big difference is that the overwhelming, vast majority of programmers don't sell their software. Instead, they sell their services.
We solve problems and enable solutions at banks, manufacturing plants, insurance companies, HMOs, and the like.
Really, programming is more like being a doctor or a mechanic than anything else.
Music, however, presents another problem. Firstly, music is sold directly, and the entire industry is devoted to increasing sales. Secondly, (very much unlike programming) music is tied very tightly to an individual or group of individuals.
Linus could die tomorrow, and Linux would go on. Once a music artist kicks off... that's all she wrote folks.
I don't feel bad for people who sell software who are being put out of business by Open Source, as software _started out_ free and it was the "suits" that corrupted and prostituted it into something that was sold. But music artists I feel bad for.
is not the integrity of the software, per sae, but instead the obfuscation of the block list.
That's a huge difference.
If what was being mirrored was CyberPatrol executables, then OK, yeah - Mattel would have good reason to be mad, and good reason to seek legal recourse to prevent further distribution.
But what is being mirrored here is a tool that allows a registered owner of CyberPatrol to see the URLs of the sites that are being blocked.
You, as a registered owner of the product, paid for that list. You have a right to see what it contains. Those are your bits.
Now, as that list may be (is) copyrighted material, you may not have the right to redistribute that list - fair enough. Stupid, perhaps, but fair enough. But to block distribution of the tool that lets you see "under the hood" - that's evil.
It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut, and then suing anyone who pries the hood of their own car open - and even going after the people who sell crowbars, on the principle that they'll be used to pry open hoods.
Man, this has got to be the worst example of premeditated evil I have ever seen from a corporation - not just suing to intimidate people who critizise them (that's been done before) but actively using their position as a filter to prevent their customers from finding out about the critizism.
That's just Wrong.
This story needs to get written up by a wide-distribution Old Media outlet, and then dissiminated as widely as possible, to people like librarians, school principals, and Congressmen.
Let's pop out the ol' crystal ball for a sec, and make some predictions about the future of IT.
This ain't trollin' - I'll leave that to those more qualified. These are my honest predictions:
1) More and more of the old school UNIX vendors will stop producing their own UNIX and switch to Linux, especially on or around the time when they release new (incompatible) hardware.
I expect AIX to go sometime around the end of 2001, sooner if Linux can develop the features (HA clustering, journaling FS, etc) that AIX has but Linux doesn't. Expect to see more and more IBM UNIX developer-type folks working full-time on the Linux kernel instead of on AIX.
SCO will not see 2002. Neither will HP-UX.
Solaris will hold out the longest, but the Linux tide will overwhelm it by 2005.
2) We'll see a rise in the use of the *BSD family for the next couple of years, but as more and more people are exposed to the GPL through Linux, more and more people will _expect_ the GPL on their software. Sometime around 2003 the upwards trend will reverse, and *BSD will slowly slide to obscurity and historical curiosity - made worse as it loses developer mindshare to Linux.
3) I expect that the governments of the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and Germany will require the GPL on all software in use in government institutions by 2004.
4) Microsoft will declare bankruptcy by the end of 2005. The stock value will peak in early 2002.
5) We will see one more Windows release post-Win2k. So there will be Win2K, a stopgap WinFoo, and then that's all she wrote.
6) By 2010, the concept of "selling software" will seem as alien as selling air, or sunlight.
Well, despite the many hours of yeoman service provided by my Matrox Mill II, it looks like it's time to grab me a 3D accelerator for my PCI-only P233MMX XFree 4.0 plus Mesa sounds nifty-keen.
So given that I'm limited to PCI as my graphics bus, what's a good card to pick up?
I can get a Voodoo3 PCI, retail, for not a whole lot of cash, but is there a better choice?
Quality of support within Linux is a bigger issue for me than raw screaming 3D horsepower. 2D performance is not allowed to be impacted by the choice!
What's being overlooked in this argument is exactly what this "property" is - the keys to a potentially revolutionary medical treasure trove.
Imagine, for example, if Celera sequences a gene that happens to contain the root cause for cancer. Imagine if having access to this gene sequence makes creating a cure for cancer - or even better, a cancer *vaccine* - trivial.
I bet Celera is drooling over such a possibility, and that their licencing model includes some sort of royalty for products derived from their information.
But do we, as a species, really want this kind of information locked up where only a select (wealthy) few can get ahold of it? Do we want the research budgets of people looking for genetic-based cures to have to skyrocket further so that they can afford to pay Celera for their data? Don't we want things like cures for cancer (or whatever) to be as cheap and as widely available as possible?
Or how about this as a worst-case scenario: Celera patents gene XYZ. Lurking in the gene sequence of XYZ is that cure for cancer. The XYZ sequence is licenced by a few people, but none of them recognise that the cure is there. Celera's patent prevents the publication of XYZ's sequence by anyone else.
80 years later, the patent expires. The sequence to XYZ is finally available to a researcher capable of recognising that it contains the cure for cancer - and he does. A week later, a cancer vaccine is in testing, and two years after that, the cancer vaccine is in general use and cancer is eliminated.
How many people died horrible, lingering, suffering deaths so that Celera could enjoy their patent? How could a Celera employee or executive live with themselves, knowing they purposefully denied humanity something like this?
Greed sucks. Greed based on denying other people scientific knowlege sucks even harder.
Heh, I just picked up the Electronic Arts "Classic Gold" Ultima Collection, and have been wasting time playing them through in succession. I'm up to Ultima IV.:)
However, I tried running Ultimas 6-8 on my Win98 laptop, and it refuses to recognise the mouse - 'cause there's no MS-DOS mouse driver loaded, and no obvious way to find and load one.
So perhaps via DOSEMU I'll have more luck.
Say, any word if DOSEMU correctly handles games that came with their own OS replacement?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't a troll; I'm seeking to educate myself.
I have had a number of encounters with Java-based GUI applications, and to a piece they have all been bad. All the Java GUI applications I have tried have been sluggish, unresponsive, and generally unimpressive.
They all seem to want to install their own JRE too, so it seems like I (as a user) am being punished because the Java compiler couldn't/wouldn't generate a native binary. But yet I have to install a native-binary version, because it installs a native-binary JRE as part of the package.
I have nothing particular against Java as a language - I don't like Bondage & Discipline languages myself, but language choice is very much a personal thing, and I don't presume that my personal preferences are best for the entire world. But Java as an implementation - as I have seen it - provides a really nasty end-user experience.
Ever tried the Netscape 4.1 Admin console? Bletcherous! Horrible! Nasty! Yechh!
Is anyone out there deploying Java applications with good results? Really?
You're right - Gollum was captured at the border. My mistake.
;)
The point about Sauron expecting the Ring to be used against him and not an attempt at destroying it is still valid though.
You've received a lot of good answers here, but this pointlet has been overlooked so far:
Sauron was a overwhelming, mass-power, crush-and-dominate kinda guy. He expected the Ring to be taken up by some sort of Hero, and openly used against him. He was searching for the Ring so desperately not only because he wanted the power of it for himself, but because he feared it in other hands.
To him, the concept that the forces of good might actually wish to _destroy_ it never occured to him.
And Gollum had shown (via Gandalf's interrigation of him) that it was possible to slip into Mordor unnoticed, if you were inconspicuous enough.
While it's nice to be agreed with, there's one comment in your reply that I find a little disturbing - that you will "defend software piracy and the open-source movement to the end"
It is _very_ important that we do not confuse the free copying and distribution of closed software with the Open Source movement. They are NOT the same thing.
Like it or not, there are a large number of our peers who make their living by writing software and selling it as product. Their numbers are much smaller than the number of IT professionals employed in "problem solving" roles (something they don't seem to realize) but they do hold a fair amount of influence, and they can get their voices heard. Furthermore, their situation very closely mirrors that of other IP-as-product industries, like the entertainment industry.
Open Source scares the holy bejeezus out of these folks - and with good reason. Open Source isn't going to just steal parts of their lunch, it's going to make them completely irrelevant. This is a scary thing to a provider with mouths to feed, and it behooves us to understand and appreciate that.
We need to educate these folks in Open Source as a method. They have to understand and see how it works so that they can re-cast their role in the industry as a participant in the Open Source movement, not as a victim.
Part of that is repecting their (admittedly misguided) concept of software-as-property, and not get involved with the copying and redistribution of "their" closed-source, propriatry software. They see that as theft, and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of people who have cast you in the role of "thief"
You and I both know that there's NOTHING anybody can do to stop either one of us from copying and dissiminating "pirated" warez, but the inibility to stop it does not justify our doing it. Not yet.
I recently read the portion of your website that discusses your proposed solution to the current (rather thorny) intellectual property and software licencing issues.
For those that have not read it, the nutshell summary is to produce a fixed number of software licences, each of which entitles you to the lastest/greatest version of whatever software is licenced. These licences, being fixed in number, can then be bought and sold on what amounts to a commodity market.
This is an interesting idea, but it suffers from at least two problems that I can see: a practical problem, and a philosophical one.
The practical problem is that, unlike other commodities like gold, oil, grain, or money, there is zero cost to duplicate the actual stuff the licence scrip represents - and it's the stuff, not the licence that actually does the work. You may create an artificial shortage of licences, but it has been demonstrated time and time again that there is no practical way to defeat the copying of digital media. The shortage of licences does not translate into a shortage of the software the licence represents.
The more cerebral problem revolves around the fact that software is not a consumable. Instead, the primary use of software, outside of the entertainment industry, is to solve problems. Software is a tool, the same way my 14mm wrench is a tool.
Assuming one _could_ create an enforcable copy-prevention scheme that would allow the limited-licence commodity to function, do we really want a world in which the number of tools to solve particular problems is limited? It would certainly suck if there were only 100 14mm wrenches in the world.
What I think the great victory of the Free Software movement is is that software stops being a product with intrinsic value. Instead, software goes into the general pool of knowledge for the use and re-use of other people with problems to solve.
A program is a lot like a surgical technique - the technique itself has no intrinsic value, and once discovered, detailed instructions on how to perform it are published freely. However, the services of those who can _apply_ the technique are highly valued.
I would submit that, instead of trying to devise a system in which knowledge is termed "property" and is bought and sold, we should instead be seeking to educate people that there really is no such thing as "intellectual property" and that what counts (and what one should be paying for) are the services of those who can apply and produce it. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is fundamentally broken and wrong.
I would like to hear your comments on these thoughts.
I don't remember which of their 95 "theses" it is, but the gist of it is that "Your customers often know more about your stuff than you do - and they talk to each other about you, and your services"
:)
Well done.
It seems to me, that as the DC (presumably) does PPP over its 56k modem, that a Linux box set up for IP Masq could be used to share a cable modem, DSL or whatever high-speed connection.
And I guess a Linux box full of modems could be used for DC LAN parties.
Anybody ever try this? How do you get 2 modems to connect to each other without using the phone system?
Microsoft's crime was not "being successful". What Microsoft did wrong was to assume that that success placed them above the law, and justified them doing whatever it was they felt like.
And as it turned out, they felt like doing a lot of very nasty and unconsciencable things, a few of which - a FEW of which - are detailed in the "findings of fact" that were published a couple of months ago.
The free marketplace is supposed to be about quality rising to the top - the best products, with the best features, and the best prices. You succeed by producing quality work. And if all you do is produce quality products at good prices, then you have nothing to fear.
But as soon as you start going after competitors, you've crossed the line, and should expect to be punished. It's like running a foot race. If you're the fastest runner, you deserve success. But if you win by tripping up all the other runners, you don't deserve success.
If Microsoft had not sought to deny Netscape marketing channels, if it had not attempted to first aqquire, and then if that failed, render incompatible, every single promising innovative product that came down the pike, then they would not be in the pickle that they are today.
Yes, we expect companies to compete. But at the same time, we expect them to follow the rules of the game. Microsoft did not, and they are starting to pay the piper.
Paging Dr. Faust... Paging Dr. Faust...
Now go back under your bridge.
Faking sigs. How mature.
Kernel developers cannot fix unreported bugs....
Now that we're getting into the 2.4-pre series, it's time for ever Linux user to do their bit for kernel development:
- Go grab the latest tarball (use a mirror please)
- Configure, compile, and install it.
- Make a report on linux-kernel about what worked and what didn't
Remember: "given enough eyeballs, all (kernel) bugs are shallow" Linux requires the massively parallel bug-finding that only widespread use and testing can provide.
Keep that paper bag off Linus' head! Find and report them bugs! Do your bit!
Scratch any bank, insurance company, car manufacturer, etc. etc. in the United States, and you will find a whole passle of mainframes doing all the heavy lifting.
Mainframes are far from dead. Most big business relies on them.
*sigh* If only we could kill COBOL...
*ABEND*
Someone in the employ of the ACLU or the FSF or one of the other organizations who are willing and able to actually fight this should:
- Take the cphack source
- Modify it so that it's only use is to display the CyberPatrol block list (to avoid accusations that this is a tool to allow children to access porn)
- Release it under the GPL **PROPERLY**, with the COPYING file, the copyright signed over to the FSF, and the other required hoop-jumping
And then stand and deliver when Mattel comes knocking.
The original CPhack authors have done their bit. Now it's the turn of the Big Boys.
Heh, I bet he knew you were going to say that. :)
You know, those Cold-War-era telepathy experiments you and a couple of other folks have lampooned weren't entirely off the wall. It was serious research done for serious purposes.
And the fact that nobody was ever able to get it to work served an important purpose - it demonstrated that "telepathy" as the psudo-scientists know it, is bunk.
A negative result is often just as important as a positive one. I think it's unlikely that BAe will have much success, but I think that it's good that they try, and that they document their failures.
Far, far better that they try and fail, than never try at all.
A few years ago, I hit my head pretty hard (all though nowhere near as hard as this) and woke up in hospital.
;)
Man, I was *all* screwed up. Didn't know where I was, didn't remember the past two weeks, would fixate on dumb things, babbled my head off....
In short, I did all the things that he's doing now.
It may be confusing and frustrating as hell for Cassie right now, but this is all normal for head trauma. He'll get better, eventually. I did. I'm fine.
Hell, I even got most of those two missing weeks back.
Someone want to pass this along to Cassie? Been there, done that, got better.
As someone who wishes he was making a living as a professional athelete (see http://www.wincom.net/trog/) I can testify that the only way you can afford to do stuff like this is with outside help.
;)
;)
Race cars are devices for transforming money into smoke and noise, and if mine ran on only my own money, it wouldn't run at all.
The big difference being though, that it's easy enough to cram sponsor logos onto my race car, but it's a little more difficult to get logos onto, say, the Spice Girls.
BTW, if anybody wants to get exposure (*cough* Red Hat *cough* VA Linux *cough* Andover) on a Nationally active race car team with proven sponsor performance, they should drop on by our web site.
The big difference is that the overwhelming, vast majority of programmers don't sell their software. Instead, they sell their services.
We solve problems and enable solutions at banks, manufacturing plants, insurance companies, HMOs, and the like.
Really, programming is more like being a doctor or a mechanic than anything else.
Music, however, presents another problem. Firstly, music is sold directly, and the entire industry is devoted to increasing sales. Secondly, (very much unlike programming) music is tied very tightly to an individual or group of individuals.
Linus could die tomorrow, and Linux would go on. Once a music artist kicks off... that's all she wrote folks.
I don't feel bad for people who sell software who are being put out of business by Open Source, as software _started out_ free and it was the "suits" that corrupted and prostituted it into something that was sold. But music artists I feel bad for.
Let's say I have a big database of URLs. Lets also say I own a registered, fully legal copy of CyberPatrol.
I write a script that runs through my database, and attemps to connect (through CyberPatrol) to each URL. My script logs the failures.
And then I publish the list. Is this in any way illegal?
If it is, then I bet there's some reporters who'd like to hear about that...
That's a huge difference.
If what was being mirrored was CyberPatrol executables, then OK, yeah - Mattel would have good reason to be mad, and good reason to seek legal recourse to prevent further distribution.
But what is being mirrored here is a tool that allows a registered owner of CyberPatrol to see the URLs of the sites that are being blocked.
You, as a registered owner of the product, paid for that list. You have a right to see what it contains. Those are your bits.
Now, as that list may be (is) copyrighted material, you may not have the right to redistribute that list - fair enough. Stupid, perhaps, but fair enough. But to block distribution of the tool that lets you see "under the hood" - that's evil.
It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut, and then suing anyone who pries the hood of their own car open - and even going after the people who sell crowbars, on the principle that they'll be used to pry open hoods.
Evil, nasty behavior.
Man, this has got to be the worst example of premeditated evil I have ever seen from a corporation - not just suing to intimidate people who critizise them (that's been done before) but actively using their position as a filter to prevent their customers from finding out about the critizism.
That's just Wrong.
This story needs to get written up by a wide-distribution Old Media outlet, and then dissiminated as widely as possible, to people like librarians, school principals, and Congressmen.
Anubody know any reporters?
Let's pop out the ol' crystal ball for a sec, and make some predictions about the future of IT.
This ain't trollin' - I'll leave that to those more qualified. These are my honest predictions:
1) More and more of the old school UNIX vendors will stop producing their own UNIX and switch to Linux, especially on or around the time when they release new (incompatible) hardware.
I expect AIX to go sometime around the end of 2001, sooner if Linux can develop the features (HA clustering, journaling FS, etc) that AIX has but Linux doesn't. Expect to see more and more IBM UNIX developer-type folks working full-time on the Linux kernel instead of on AIX.
SCO will not see 2002. Neither will HP-UX.
Solaris will hold out the longest, but the Linux tide will overwhelm it by 2005.
2) We'll see a rise in the use of the *BSD family for the next couple of years, but as more and more people are exposed to the GPL through Linux, more and more people will _expect_ the GPL on their software. Sometime around 2003 the upwards trend will reverse, and *BSD will slowly slide to obscurity and historical curiosity - made worse as it loses developer mindshare to Linux.
3) I expect that the governments of the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and Germany will require the GPL on all software in use in government institutions by 2004.
4) Microsoft will declare bankruptcy by the end of 2005. The stock value will peak in early 2002.
5) We will see one more Windows release post-Win2k. So there will be Win2K, a stopgap WinFoo, and then that's all she wrote.
6) By 2010, the concept of "selling software" will seem as alien as selling air, or sunlight.
Happy St Patty's day.
Well, despite the many hours of yeoman service provided by my Matrox Mill II, it looks like it's time to grab me a 3D accelerator for my PCI-only P233MMX XFree 4.0 plus Mesa sounds nifty-keen.
So given that I'm limited to PCI as my graphics bus, what's a good card to pick up?
I can get a Voodoo3 PCI, retail, for not a whole lot of cash, but is there a better choice?
Quality of support within Linux is a bigger issue for me than raw screaming 3D horsepower. 2D performance is not allowed to be impacted by the choice!
Suggestions?
What's being overlooked in this argument is exactly what this "property" is - the keys to a potentially revolutionary medical treasure trove.
Imagine, for example, if Celera sequences a gene that happens to contain the root cause for cancer. Imagine if having access to this gene sequence makes creating a cure for cancer - or even better, a cancer *vaccine* - trivial.
I bet Celera is drooling over such a possibility, and that their licencing model includes some sort of royalty for products derived from their information.
But do we, as a species, really want this kind of information locked up where only a select (wealthy) few can get ahold of it? Do we want the research budgets of people looking for genetic-based cures to have to skyrocket further so that they can afford to pay Celera for their data? Don't we want things like cures for cancer (or whatever) to be as cheap and as widely available as possible?
Or how about this as a worst-case scenario: Celera patents gene XYZ. Lurking in the gene sequence of XYZ is that cure for cancer. The XYZ sequence is licenced by a few people, but none of them recognise that the cure is there. Celera's patent prevents the publication of XYZ's sequence by anyone else.
80 years later, the patent expires. The sequence to XYZ is finally available to a researcher capable of recognising that it contains the cure for cancer - and he does. A week later, a cancer vaccine is in testing, and two years after that, the cancer vaccine is in general use and cancer is eliminated.
How many people died horrible, lingering, suffering deaths so that Celera could enjoy their patent? How could a Celera employee or executive live with themselves, knowing they purposefully denied humanity something like this?
Greed sucks. Greed based on denying other people scientific knowlege sucks even harder.
Heh, I just picked up the Electronic Arts "Classic Gold" Ultima Collection, and have been wasting time playing them through in succession. I'm up to Ultima IV. :)
However, I tried running Ultimas 6-8 on my Win98 laptop, and it refuses to recognise the mouse - 'cause there's no MS-DOS mouse driver loaded, and no obvious way to find and load one.
So perhaps via DOSEMU I'll have more luck.
Say, any word if DOSEMU correctly handles games that came with their own OS replacement?