I read through this thread and I have seen many postings of examples about the various experiences and situations that have happened to lots of people. It might be helpful at this point to review the perspectives and priorities of the different players in this game.
Lets start at the beginning with the great untold truth. The benefit of enhancing a business process with computer support stems from the pre-automation analysis of the paper system, and not generally the computers themselves. In many cases, if you streamline the business process in order to make it suitable for automation, and you were to stop just short of buying the computers and investing in software, and you went ahead and subsequently used to newly optimized system, you would gain most of the advantage for a lot less cost and complexity. I have known this in my heart for many years, but have spoken of it only a few times. In my youth, in the days of the mainframes, analysts would review the business process and design systems to support that process, and programmer analysts would construct technological infrastructure to automate those processes. In this scenario, the business needs are actually reviewed by business analysts who understand the big picture and how the company operates at a profit. In the old days, computers were big and expensive, and computer time was expensive, and business data processing was scheduled into a queue and was performed on a priority basis at the processing center, and the value of the data being processed had to be worth the analysis, programming time, and data processing costs.
There horizontal applications were the programming languages and environments, such as a manufacturer's mainframe and the data processing support services provided in the environment, such as database support bound into the operating system. (IBM main frame style). Some vertical applications were sold openly but many were developed in-house by a company for their own use.
The high costs of data processing forced the companies to use a very rigid sequence of requirements/analysis/implementation/operation (then recurse).
Then came microprocessors and computers everywhere you look. Suddenly any company could buy computers and use then for company data processing needs at much lower costs. They could shoot from the hip and often things would work out ok, relative to the old way and the old costs. Chaos ruled as people went about applying these less expensive computers to any aspect of the business processes that could benefit from some automation. The discipline of the old days, such as a need to do a business analysis to be sure that the data processing solution was comprehensive and efficient and completely met the businesses needs well away.
Rogue technology solutions sprung up and got stuck in closets all over the place, but these solutions were not as well analysed or as complete as the previous mainframe solutions, and often certain aspects of the situation were ignored because they weren't very visible in the mainframe environment, but they were there, such as service plans to keep critical systems up, and centralized backup of data, and often a vendor supplied system engineer with an office on-site filled with microfilm to keep the system tuned well. As these quickly constructed micro-solutions started to fail because of hardware unreliability of consumer grade hardware and software, business managers started having to do some explaining about why the solutions they promoted that was to save money was broken and the business process that kept the company profitable was broken. In the old days, there was a saying about the value of simple saying, "Lets go IBM", because the full treatment of analysts, and programming and good expensive hardware and support usually resulted in a maintainable working system that may still be running even though it was written in COBOL before many of us were alive.
What we had since the IBM-PC was a situation were consultants with a good understanding of microcomputers and programming languages and databas
Over the years I worked at several companies that sold word processors. Each of the programs was closed source and had a following of customers that liked and used the software. In the beginning a word processor was a text mode editor. Later fonts arrived, and word processors started getting features that previously existed in typesetting programs. The point I am trying to get to is that for a period of time I remember clearly, the word processor companies competed on the basis of features. Customers would request features and the developers would add those features, thereby promoting customer lock-in as the business clients came to depend on the features that had been added. One of the benefits of paying for the software is that support was available, and the company was hungry for ideas from clients for new features. Many such features included pleading mode for lawyers, proportional spacing for certain fonts, support for popular printers. There was plenty of work for lots of application and system programmers because Microsoft hadn't achieved their monopoly on basic Windows drivers yet. In the early days, hardware companies would create unique hardware, and drivers would be required to link them into the operating system. Subsequently in the Windows time, once a driver was written for a hardware type, the competition would be to design and manufacture a device more cheaply that could use the built in drivers and hardware companies would not need custom drivers for their hardware. I guess this was great for the hardware companies but it was not so great for the driver writers (including me). The point I am trying to make is that you can't just write one version of something and expect to become fabulously wealthy. It is not quite that easy. You have to work at adapting the product to the needs and desires of the marketplace, and better than the competition, it you want to keep your marketshare and eventually enjoy wealth. Nowadays, if you want to do this with closed source software, you have to keep enough developers working on it to compete with the open source software on the basis of features, quality, reliability, and efficiency. If you are unwilling or unable to do that, you get overrun by the open source software. Thats how it works, IMHO
If a developer wrote a piece of software that was popular and wanted to receive money for his effort, he could sell the software to Microsoft and they could take it commercial without fearing that they would litigate with themselves over the patents used by the product in question. It makes non-commercial developers unpaid Microsoft employees in that if the product has value, Microsoft has the only right to pursue commercialization. I suppose someone else could commercialize but they would need to purchase a patent agreement from Microsoft and that might be too much to bear in a competitive marketplace. Anyway this seems to do more in the long run for Microsoft than anyone else.
I just left a long message for ebay explaining why I will no longer be doing business with them. The is something fishy going on between them and the church of scientology. From what I have rea previouslu, I thought ebay had some balls. I am the kind that votes with my wallet, and ebay won't be getting any more of my hard earned money, ever. Neither will paypal or skype. I am not sure why I thought my personal information was safe with ebay to begin with, but after what I read about the VeRO program, it is clear to me that the church can browse the ebay client list at will. IT would have made more sense for ebay to keep quiet about their relationship with the church. In fact the VeRO program in general bothers me a lot. If a copyright holder brought a suit against someone, they could perform discovery (IANABCL) and get what they needed if a judge agreed. Leaving the judge out of it, and giving the keys to the filing cabinet to the church makes it too easy for abuse to occur.
I bought a top of the line Sony VAIO that was marked VIsta Capable and paid $2000, just to find out a while later that it was short video ram to run aero. In fact after I bought four Vista Capable machines, I made it to the Microsoft site and found out the extent to which I had wasted a portion of my life savings. I was a TechNET Plus licensee and bought the machines for development because I had Vista available in Technet Plus. About $5000 all in all. Two notebook and one desktop.
I use Apple Macintosh now and won't be spending any more money with Microsoft. This last routine with Vista Capable left a $5000 bad taste in my mouth that doesn't want to go away. I bought two VAIO notebooks and two HP desktop machines. In addition to the hardware shortage, drivers and installation media problems made it all a nightmare.
I read the note posted on sourceforge where the author said repeatedly that it would be in everyone else's interest to delete and remove any copies of the material wherever it may be. That is not exactly accurate. It may be in his interest for these items to be removed. I would be interested to know if anyone else made any contributions to the project. I mean after all that is the way it works, you open the code, and people contribute with the subsequent use for their own purposes. If anyone contributed work, and then he withdrew the GPL, that would be THEFT.
Since the goal of a power system is to be up, the creation of a control to bring it down seems counter-productive. Then to take that control and make is available over the Internet is extreme.
While a need to shut down might exists, it should be a local phenomenon, and not a remote control.
The problem is a situation where one person can control a system with such huge impact. Perhaps it should take several people with adequate authentication to perform the deed.
An ISP provides a DNS server for two purposes. The first is so that it's customers can receive name resolution while they suft the web...
The second is so the the ISP's mail server can deliver email.
In both cases, the DNS server exists for the explicit purpose of serving the interests of the paying customers. There is plenty of case history where unauthorized use of equipment has found to be actionable. For instance, when a fax spammer sends unexpected fax's to your machine, the basis for your objection is that he was an unauthorized person accessing your fax equipment. The courts don't have much of a sense of humor about knob twisting. It's obvious this guy had been told to cease and desist, but had a hard on about this ISP.
Third party reviews are valuable, but as an experienced engineer, I have experienced doubts about code when bugs found during development seemed to disappear without being "fixed". There is a tendency to forget about mysteries that go away even though they may have been indicative of potential trouble that would only manifest under rare conditions. Professionals try to take the time to understand these wobbles to make sure they are fixed, but I have never read code notes written by developers that include admissions of possible unstable code when it doesn't seem to be causing trouble. Aside from auditors making a list of things they suspect by reading the code, bugs can be based on bugs in hardware, or mismatched versions of sub components and so on. For us to have the perfect world, we would have to have the code reviewed, but also the developers would have to write journals and admit their doubts and observations about unsolved mysteries. HHDL commented about how science is based on observation and our ability to observe computers is limited.
I recently involved myself with the G1G1 program. I am very impressed with the entire situation. While everything hasn't settled down yet, my first experience with the XO has been very positive. As a software engineer with 40 years of experience, I am way over-exposed to certain hardware and software here in the USA. I know some people will hate this, but IMHO Linux is a lot like Windows. From a look and feel standpoint, I find it similar to common user access specifications.
The OLPC XO on the other hand is new. I had a learning experience similar to what a child would have. I took the machine out of the box, and spent time learning about it. In every respect it is NOT like Windows. I found that entirely refreshing. Even though I am a switcher and use Macintosh computers these days, the contrast between what I am used to and the XO is awe inspiring. I don't play games on computers and while I use them for web and email, as well as programming, I find it hard to have "FUN" with them. The XO is different. I began to "PLAY" with it and started learning straight away. Those who say it should have Windows and Office have spent too much time sucking on Microsoft's teat. I expect to have a great deal of fun with mine.
Now I admit the keys are small, but they are useable. I am getting used to the Sugar user interface and it is intuitive. When I do programming on the box, I shell in from my Mac. The machine has quite a way to go, but it is a worthy enterprise. I will enjoy writing software to run on the machine, and not all software activity has to be for money. The XO brought out my inner child, and if I knew local children that had these, I would enjoy relating to them, and learning from them.
If you haven't played with one, it is hard for you to understand how cool they are. I am happy that there is a child somewhere that has one because I donated to the program. It made me feel good. There is nothing wrong with that. I encourage people to learn more about the project before judging the machine or the people involved. There is something very special about the project that I can feel in my heart.
I looked at the drawing on the groklaw site of the alleged keyboard and from what I could see, it looked a lot like a plain old IBM PC keyboard. The quality of the drawing was so poor I couldn't tell much beyond that.
I realize that I am no where near as compassionate at HHDL but there are lots of countries in the world that could benefit from the OLPC and if the Nigerian Government doesn't want it, I suppose that would be their decision.
I think the people at OLPC must have a real sense of humor and will deal with this in an appropriate way. Maybe the display design lady will move to Nigeria and go to work with the keyboard folks...
My first program was in Fortran two and was a few lines, basically a Hello World!!
I went on from there to a lifetime of software engineering. At the beginning, all there were was mainframes.
The smallest machine around was the IBM 1620, and I could only dream of actually owning a computer.
Today I own an 8-core Mac Pro. A machine thousands of times more powerful than those original mainframes.
My dreams have come true:-)
I would have done anything legal and moral to have an XO at that age.
Re:Are they allowed to use Linux and close the sw?
on
Archos 605 WiFi Hacked
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· Score: 1
I thought that is they base their product on Linux (gpl) that they had to disclose the source code of their device. Microsoft can close the software comprising their protected video path bec ause Windows is their's. But I thought that was basically why we didn't have HD players based on Linux...
I have written a lot of drivers in my life. There are basically two kinds of driver developments. Motivated and Hostile. When a hardware company has a warehouse full of hardware to ship, and it is a driver issue keeping the product from flowing, motivated product engineers are standing by to answer question, provide tips and bits of diagnostic and initialization code they wrote during development. Some of my drivers have been little more than operating system specific wrapping around proof of concept code written by design engineers. When the driver works reliably and efficiently, everyone is a hero, and the hardware ships. The other kind of development occurs when the hardware is already flowing. For instance, if the primary use of a hardware item is Windows, the hardware is selling like crazy already, and the engineers are too busy designing the next cheaper version of the last hardware to roll out. Generous support to driver writers working on "alternative operating systems" is problematic to obtain. What makes this worse is when politics get involved and a hardware vendor doesn't want to piss off the main OS vendor by appearing to care about the alternative operating system. In business, having single sources for necessary parts of your product, or single distribution targets for your products is like putting all your eggs in one basket. It would benefit these hardware companies to have drivers for at least three targets in case any of them fail over time. Thats a nice Windows based business you got there, a shame if anything happened to it.
Now having toasted a piece of bread at Interop, is there really a need to take, "Because I Can..." any further?
Just joking. Automation is fun, but Disney was going on about the home of the future back in the 50's i think...
Contemporary PC operating systems (with plug and pray) are faced with identification and operation of a multitude of devices that can be inserted into the bus or attached to one port or another. Part of what takes a lot of boot time is probing for devices and identifying drivers appropriate to operate them. This is one area where Apple can excel as they have a smaller range of hardware to support (not counting usb...). I recently looked at the linux driver source code for handling serial ports and was astounded at the amount of code required to handle all the slightly different uarts in the wild. It has to be hard for an OS vendor to predict startup time when they don't have a clue what your configuration is. Even back in the PC-AT time, it was impossible to test all configurations. The variety of video boards, hard drives, and processors make all this very difficult.
I used to leave open access points for my neighbors. I asked them not to use p2p software. They said they would not, but soon, my dsl was swamped with thousands of connection requests from all over the world. I closed the access point and had to wait almost a year for the connection to become useable again. While I wanted to share, there are eula issues with the ISPs and legal issues about child porn and p2p activity. The desire to share is noble, but the dangers are very real. When people pay for their connectivity, they often protect it from harm. No control goes hand in hand with no consequences.
I purchases a firewall box to put between my development computer and my comcast high speed internet.
I kept receiving email from the firewall during safari sessions with ebay. I couldn't explain why I was getting
the resets from ebay. I find this upsetting.
The precident could be immediately applied to the unsupported accusations by MS about Linux infringement on MS patents, which MS is too busy to detail...
You are right on about this. The 80286 had the beginnings of what was required to write solid operating systems. The boundary protection and memory virtualization started giving the microprocessors the virtual memory semantics that we were used to from the mainframes. Aside from features that were missing (later added in 80386) and the loadall saveall debacle (security through obscurity failure), things were looking bright for the operating system writers targeting micros. Unfortunately, Microsoft made a decision not to use the boundary protection in their new operating system called "Windows". They ignored most of the work that Intel did providing support in the silicon for a decent micro operating system. The boundary protection could have been built into the programming language and runtime. Things would have been much better in the long term. I guess in the early days, they (MS) didn't want to use the memory space or cycles to secure the environment, although later they were willing to virtualize the entire runtime in that name (.NET).
I used to sell operating systems. I was very generous with my time helping the users configure their hardware and software to make the operating system work correctly. Many of my clients pirated my software and called back for installation support multiple times for a single license. In the case where a software vendor licenses a product to a user at a company, they may have to hold the hand of the user at first. If the license gets transferred to another user, a fee is not unreasonable as the installation support was already given once in good faith . Just how many times should a software vendor be required to give the same support for a single license? It is hard to determine whether a reinstall is a legitimate instance or a pirate instance. In my opinion, a modest fee for a license transfer is reasonable. At least the procedure allows for the company to transfer a license from one employee to another as needed. Anything else could be very unfair as people come and go. I have seen licenses agreements that allow for transfer and they usually explain about the original licensee not keeping media and uninstalling the product at the time of the transfer. If people do this ethically, it makes perfect sense to me.
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I read through this thread and I have seen many postings of examples about the various experiences and situations that have happened to lots of people. It might be helpful at this point to review the perspectives and priorities of the different players in this game. Lets start at the beginning with the great untold truth. The benefit of enhancing a business process with computer support stems from the pre-automation analysis of the paper system, and not generally the computers themselves. In many cases, if you streamline the business process in order to make it suitable for automation, and you were to stop just short of buying the computers and investing in software, and you went ahead and subsequently used to newly optimized system, you would gain most of the advantage for a lot less cost and complexity. I have known this in my heart for many years, but have spoken of it only a few times. In my youth, in the days of the mainframes, analysts would review the business process and design systems to support that process, and programmer analysts would construct technological infrastructure to automate those processes. In this scenario, the business needs are actually reviewed by business analysts who understand the big picture and how the company operates at a profit. In the old days, computers were big and expensive, and computer time was expensive, and business data processing was scheduled into a queue and was performed on a priority basis at the processing center, and the value of the data being processed had to be worth the analysis, programming time, and data processing costs. There horizontal applications were the programming languages and environments, such as a manufacturer's mainframe and the data processing support services provided in the environment, such as database support bound into the operating system. (IBM main frame style). Some vertical applications were sold openly but many were developed in-house by a company for their own use. The high costs of data processing forced the companies to use a very rigid sequence of requirements/analysis/implementation/operation (then recurse). Then came microprocessors and computers everywhere you look. Suddenly any company could buy computers and use then for company data processing needs at much lower costs. They could shoot from the hip and often things would work out ok, relative to the old way and the old costs. Chaos ruled as people went about applying these less expensive computers to any aspect of the business processes that could benefit from some automation. The discipline of the old days, such as a need to do a business analysis to be sure that the data processing solution was comprehensive and efficient and completely met the businesses needs well away. Rogue technology solutions sprung up and got stuck in closets all over the place, but these solutions were not as well analysed or as complete as the previous mainframe solutions, and often certain aspects of the situation were ignored because they weren't very visible in the mainframe environment, but they were there, such as service plans to keep critical systems up, and centralized backup of data, and often a vendor supplied system engineer with an office on-site filled with microfilm to keep the system tuned well. As these quickly constructed micro-solutions started to fail because of hardware unreliability of consumer grade hardware and software, business managers started having to do some explaining about why the solutions they promoted that was to save money was broken and the business process that kept the company profitable was broken. In the old days, there was a saying about the value of simple saying, "Lets go IBM", because the full treatment of analysts, and programming and good expensive hardware and support usually resulted in a maintainable working system that may still be running even though it was written in COBOL before many of us were alive. What we had since the IBM-PC was a situation were consultants with a good understanding of microcomputers and programming languages and databas
Over the years I worked at several companies that sold word processors. Each of the programs was closed source and had a following of customers that liked and used the software. In the beginning a word processor was a text mode editor. Later fonts arrived, and word processors started getting features that previously existed in typesetting programs. The point I am trying to get to is that for a period of time I remember clearly, the word processor companies competed on the basis of features. Customers would request features and the developers would add those features, thereby promoting customer lock-in as the business clients came to depend on the features that had been added. One of the benefits of paying for the software is that support was available, and the company was hungry for ideas from clients for new features. Many such features included pleading mode for lawyers, proportional spacing for certain fonts, support for popular printers. There was plenty of work for lots of application and system programmers because Microsoft hadn't achieved their monopoly on basic Windows drivers yet. In the early days, hardware companies would create unique hardware, and drivers would be required to link them into the operating system. Subsequently in the Windows time, once a driver was written for a hardware type, the competition would be to design and manufacture a device more cheaply that could use the built in drivers and hardware companies would not need custom drivers for their hardware. I guess this was great for the hardware companies but it was not so great for the driver writers (including me). The point I am trying to make is that you can't just write one version of something and expect to become fabulously wealthy. It is not quite that easy. You have to work at adapting the product to the needs and desires of the marketplace, and better than the competition, it you want to keep your marketshare and eventually enjoy wealth. Nowadays, if you want to do this with closed source software, you have to keep enough developers working on it to compete with the open source software on the basis of features, quality, reliability, and efficiency. If you are unwilling or unable to do that, you get overrun by the open source software. Thats how it works, IMHO
If a developer wrote a piece of software that was popular and wanted to receive money for his effort, he could sell the software to Microsoft and they could take it commercial without fearing that they would litigate with themselves over the patents used by the product in question. It makes non-commercial developers unpaid Microsoft employees in that if the product has value, Microsoft has the only right to pursue commercialization. I suppose someone else could commercialize but they would need to purchase a patent agreement from Microsoft and that might be too much to bear in a competitive marketplace. Anyway this seems to do more in the long run for Microsoft than anyone else.
I just left a long message for ebay explaining why I will no longer be doing business with them. The is something fishy going on between them and the church of scientology. From what I have rea previouslu, I thought ebay had some balls. I am the kind that votes with my wallet, and ebay won't be getting any more of my hard earned money, ever. Neither will paypal or skype. I am not sure why I thought my personal information was safe with ebay to begin with, but after what I read about the VeRO program, it is clear to me that the church can browse the ebay client list at will. IT would have made more sense for ebay to keep quiet about their relationship with the church. In fact the VeRO program in general bothers me a lot. If a copyright holder brought a suit against someone, they could perform discovery (IANABCL) and get what they needed if a judge agreed. Leaving the judge out of it, and giving the keys to the filing cabinet to the church makes it too easy for abuse to occur.
I bought a top of the line Sony VAIO that was marked VIsta Capable and paid $2000, just to find out a while later that it was short video ram to run aero. In fact after I bought four Vista Capable machines, I made it to the Microsoft site and found out the extent to which I had wasted a portion of my life savings. I was a TechNET Plus licensee and bought the machines for development because I had Vista available in Technet Plus. About $5000 all in all. Two notebook and one desktop. I use Apple Macintosh now and won't be spending any more money with Microsoft. This last routine with Vista Capable left a $5000 bad taste in my mouth that doesn't want to go away. I bought two VAIO notebooks and two HP desktop machines. In addition to the hardware shortage, drivers and installation media problems made it all a nightmare.
Wasn't that the version that ran on the IMLAC ? I remember seeing it at UCLA around 1971/2.
I read the note posted on sourceforge where the author said repeatedly that it would be in everyone else's interest to delete and remove any copies of the material wherever it may be. That is not exactly accurate. It may be in his interest for these items to be removed. I would be interested to know if anyone else made any contributions to the project. I mean after all that is the way it works, you open the code, and people contribute with the subsequent use for their own purposes. If anyone contributed work, and then he withdrew the GPL, that would be THEFT.
Since the goal of a power system is to be up, the creation of a control to bring it down seems counter-productive. Then to take that control and make is available over the Internet is extreme. While a need to shut down might exists, it should be a local phenomenon, and not a remote control. The problem is a situation where one person can control a system with such huge impact. Perhaps it should take several people with adequate authentication to perform the deed.
An ISP provides a DNS server for two purposes. The first is so that it's customers can receive name resolution while they suft the web... The second is so the the ISP's mail server can deliver email. In both cases, the DNS server exists for the explicit purpose of serving the interests of the paying customers. There is plenty of case history where unauthorized use of equipment has found to be actionable. For instance, when a fax spammer sends unexpected fax's to your machine, the basis for your objection is that he was an unauthorized person accessing your fax equipment. The courts don't have much of a sense of humor about knob twisting. It's obvious this guy had been told to cease and desist, but had a hard on about this ISP.
Third party reviews are valuable, but as an experienced engineer, I have experienced doubts about code when bugs found during development seemed to disappear without being "fixed". There is a tendency to forget about mysteries that go away even though they may have been indicative of potential trouble that would only manifest under rare conditions. Professionals try to take the time to understand these wobbles to make sure they are fixed, but I have never read code notes written by developers that include admissions of possible unstable code when it doesn't seem to be causing trouble. Aside from auditors making a list of things they suspect by reading the code, bugs can be based on bugs in hardware, or mismatched versions of sub components and so on. For us to have the perfect world, we would have to have the code reviewed, but also the developers would have to write journals and admit their doubts and observations about unsolved mysteries. HHDL commented about how science is based on observation and our ability to observe computers is limited.
I recently involved myself with the G1G1 program. I am very impressed with the entire situation. While everything hasn't settled down yet, my first experience with the XO has been very positive. As a software engineer with 40 years of experience, I am way over-exposed to certain hardware and software here in the USA. I know some people will hate this, but IMHO Linux is a lot like Windows. From a look and feel standpoint, I find it similar to common user access specifications. The OLPC XO on the other hand is new. I had a learning experience similar to what a child would have. I took the machine out of the box, and spent time learning about it. In every respect it is NOT like Windows. I found that entirely refreshing. Even though I am a switcher and use Macintosh computers these days, the contrast between what I am used to and the XO is awe inspiring. I don't play games on computers and while I use them for web and email, as well as programming, I find it hard to have "FUN" with them. The XO is different. I began to "PLAY" with it and started learning straight away. Those who say it should have Windows and Office have spent too much time sucking on Microsoft's teat. I expect to have a great deal of fun with mine. Now I admit the keys are small, but they are useable. I am getting used to the Sugar user interface and it is intuitive. When I do programming on the box, I shell in from my Mac. The machine has quite a way to go, but it is a worthy enterprise. I will enjoy writing software to run on the machine, and not all software activity has to be for money. The XO brought out my inner child, and if I knew local children that had these, I would enjoy relating to them, and learning from them. If you haven't played with one, it is hard for you to understand how cool they are. I am happy that there is a child somewhere that has one because I donated to the program. It made me feel good. There is nothing wrong with that. I encourage people to learn more about the project before judging the machine or the people involved. There is something very special about the project that I can feel in my heart.
You know, a SaganByte of storage. It would have to store Billions of billions of bytes.
I looked at the drawing on the groklaw site of the alleged keyboard and from what I could see, it looked a lot like a plain old IBM PC keyboard. The quality of the drawing was so poor I couldn't tell much beyond that. I realize that I am no where near as compassionate at HHDL but there are lots of countries in the world that could benefit from the OLPC and if the Nigerian Government doesn't want it, I suppose that would be their decision. I think the people at OLPC must have a real sense of humor and will deal with this in an appropriate way. Maybe the display design lady will move to Nigeria and go to work with the keyboard folks...
My first program was in Fortran two and was a few lines, basically a Hello World!! I went on from there to a lifetime of software engineering. At the beginning, all there were was mainframes. The smallest machine around was the IBM 1620, and I could only dream of actually owning a computer. Today I own an 8-core Mac Pro. A machine thousands of times more powerful than those original mainframes. My dreams have come true :-)
I would have done anything legal and moral to have an XO at that age.
I thought that is they base their product on Linux (gpl) that they had to disclose the source code of their device. Microsoft can close the software comprising their protected video path bec ause Windows is their's. But I thought that was basically why we didn't have HD players based on Linux...
I have written a lot of drivers in my life. There are basically two kinds of driver developments. Motivated and Hostile. When a hardware company has a warehouse full of hardware to ship, and it is a driver issue keeping the product from flowing, motivated product engineers are standing by to answer question, provide tips and bits of diagnostic and initialization code they wrote during development. Some of my drivers have been little more than operating system specific wrapping around proof of concept code written by design engineers. When the driver works reliably and efficiently, everyone is a hero, and the hardware ships. The other kind of development occurs when the hardware is already flowing. For instance, if the primary use of a hardware item is Windows, the hardware is selling like crazy already, and the engineers are too busy designing the next cheaper version of the last hardware to roll out. Generous support to driver writers working on "alternative operating systems" is problematic to obtain. What makes this worse is when politics get involved and a hardware vendor doesn't want to piss off the main OS vendor by appearing to care about the alternative operating system. In business, having single sources for necessary parts of your product, or single distribution targets for your products is like putting all your eggs in one basket. It would benefit these hardware companies to have drivers for at least three targets in case any of them fail over time. Thats a nice Windows based business you got there, a shame if anything happened to it.
Now having toasted a piece of bread at Interop, is there really a need to take, "Because I Can..." any further? Just joking. Automation is fun, but Disney was going on about the home of the future back in the 50's i think...
Contemporary PC operating systems (with plug and pray) are faced with identification and operation of a multitude of devices that can be inserted into the bus or attached to one port or another. Part of what takes a lot of boot time is probing for devices and identifying drivers appropriate to operate them. This is one area where Apple can excel as they have a smaller range of hardware to support (not counting usb...). I recently looked at the linux driver source code for handling serial ports and was astounded at the amount of code required to handle all the slightly different uarts in the wild. It has to be hard for an OS vendor to predict startup time when they don't have a clue what your configuration is. Even back in the PC-AT time, it was impossible to test all configurations. The variety of video boards, hard drives, and processors make all this very difficult.
It couldn't have helped appearing on the HBO program real-time (which I like). It is sort of high profile here in the usa.
I used to leave open access points for my neighbors. I asked them not to use p2p software. They said they would not, but soon, my dsl was swamped with thousands of connection requests from all over the world. I closed the access point and had to wait almost a year for the connection to become useable again. While I wanted to share, there are eula issues with the ISPs and legal issues about child porn and p2p activity. The desire to share is noble, but the dangers are very real. When people pay for their connectivity, they often protect it from harm. No control goes hand in hand with no consequences.
I purchases a firewall box to put between my development computer and my comcast high speed internet. I kept receiving email from the firewall during safari sessions with ebay. I couldn't explain why I was getting the resets from ebay. I find this upsetting.
The precident could be immediately applied to the unsupported accusations by MS about Linux infringement on MS patents, which MS is too busy to detail...
You are right on about this. The 80286 had the beginnings of what was required to write solid operating systems. The boundary protection and memory virtualization started giving the microprocessors the virtual memory semantics that we were used to from the mainframes. Aside from features that were missing (later added in 80386) and the loadall saveall debacle (security through obscurity failure), things were looking bright for the operating system writers targeting micros. Unfortunately, Microsoft made a decision not to use the boundary protection in their new operating system called "Windows". They ignored most of the work that Intel did providing support in the silicon for a decent micro operating system. The boundary protection could have been built into the programming language and runtime. Things would have been much better in the long term. I guess in the early days, they (MS) didn't want to use the memory space or cycles to secure the environment, although later they were willing to virtualize the entire runtime in that name (.NET).
I used to sell operating systems. I was very generous with my time helping the users configure their hardware and software to make the operating system work correctly. Many of my clients pirated my software and called back for installation support multiple times for a single license. In the case where a software vendor licenses a product to a user at a company, they may have to hold the hand of the user at first. If the license gets transferred to another user, a fee is not unreasonable as the installation support was already given once in good faith . Just how many times should a software vendor be required to give the same support for a single license? It is hard to determine whether a reinstall is a legitimate instance or a pirate instance. In my opinion, a modest fee for a license transfer is reasonable. At least the procedure allows for the company to transfer a license from one employee to another as needed. Anything else could be very unfair as people come and go. I have seen licenses agreements that allow for transfer and they usually explain about the original licensee not keeping media and uninstalling the product at the time of the transfer. If people do this ethically, it makes perfect sense to me.
The classic hello.c program is my nomination. It must be popular as it is used so much by so many people. It is considered minimal in most circles.