South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.fosslinux.com/29117/south-korea-switching-their-3-3-million-pcs-to-linux.htm <comment><USER2> South korean developer here. I am quite aware of government plans for software since I've done my service as a software developer for army.

There is a company called TmaxSoft which advertises itfself as only builders to the 'Korean OS'. Fueled by relatively high patriotism shared by average koreans, the government had been subsidizing this firm for more than 10 years. Despite the effort to liberate the nation from a private US firm this wasn't successful so far: first they tried to build their own kernel which froze at the public demo. After realizing it was dumb to write kernel from scratch, they began focusing on tuning the visual interface. The result was criticism that is was just a pathetic clone of MintOS(linux distro).

Due to bureaucratic debt over 10+ years, I think those government officials are desparately trying to meet an end to this mad project. The money and time they've spent well deserves a spot in governmental future plan in converting all american OS: Windows into Homemade korean government friendly OS.

<comment><USER2> More on TMaxSoft.

This software firm builds many 'hard' softwares like OS, DBMS or even MapReduce data processing cluster(like hadoop and spark). One might naturally ask 'why build a wheel while there are plenty already built by open source developers?' and economically aware person might also ask 'how are selling their products while competing against ubuntu, postgresql, spark?'

Cloning something from scratch and learning advanced technology in its process is a familiar thing in Korea. Enforcing home grown products to average customers, subsidizing one specific firm to take all domestic market share is how Samsung and Hyundai made its way to top global firms. So I guess the mental background for replacing OS by home made OS is similar to that which successfully grew Samsung. They are willing to pay off a lot of money so that a Korean firm outgrows Google, Facebook or Apple. An average developer knows it is a stupid plan to replicate linux or mysql from scratch. But government officials' heart still remain in the golden age when the very strategy they are executing with was valid for Samsung or Hyundai.

The way this firm hires its employees is tighly coupled with government. In our country all men are obliged to military service. However there are couple of options:

1\. B.S holders: no exemption. 2 years in a random role. 2\. M.S holders: you get to work for private firm for 3 years. Called 'special research agents'. Mostly work for engineering related firms. 3\. Ph.D holders: you are exempted as soon as you become a Ph.D holder.

All these exemption rules according to the level of scholastic degree is to foster R&D capability of our nation. And here comes a perky question: 'What happens to Ph.D dropouts?' As some might have guessed: 'You go to TmaxSoft, get hefty salary, get a girl, get married.'

I wouldn't say much about it if there weren't a fact that really bugs me. They do hoard M.S holders from best colleges, however the graduate students they hire aren't limited to CS majors. I've seen multiple chemistry majors or industrial engineering majors who dropped out of Ph.D course doing software engineering there. I have no idea how they could 'train' a non CS major to write code for hard core stuffs like OS or DBMS. And they tell the government officials that they have the best pool of engineers from prestigious colleges, which would ease the government to making decision to subsidize this firm.

<comment><USER3> > Enforcing home grown products to average customers, subsidizing one specific > firm to take all domestic market share is how Samsung and Hyundai made its > way to top global firms.

I can see how this would ensure domestic success, but how does that translate to 'top global firm' status unless the products / features & pricing are significantly superior?

<comment><USER4> It basically gives domestic firms breathing room to survive and grow, versus being suffocated by the currently superior products or foreign firms. The hope then is that in the future, with a stronger financial footing, these firms' products will improve to be truly competitive with those of the global competitors.

At least in hardware/manufacturing, both South Korea and China have done this with great success thus far.

<comment><USER3> > It basically gives domestic firms breathing room to survive and grow, versus > being suffocated by the currently superior products or foreign firms.

Yes, I get that. It's basic tariff protectionism. Many countries have done, and continue to, do this.

Here in Australia we've done it for decades, but with no global success.

> The hope then is that in the future ...

I hope that isn't the official strategy. ; |

The stronger financial footing (also achievable via vanilla domestic success sans tarrifs) doesn't necessarily guarantee global success, _especially_ if other nation states are adopting similar fiscal & trade policies ... which it's fair to say they are.

<comment><USER5> > Here in Australia we've done it for decades, but with no global success.

Examples? We have some of the most open markets in the world. We're one of the only countries the US has a trade surplus with...

<comment><USER3> > Examples? We have some of the most open markets in the world. We're one of > the only countries the US has a trade surplus with...

I guess the obvious example would be the car industry - mostly cars were just assembled in Australia in the most recent past, but previously there were some designed and built. Tariffs were applied to protect that industry (nominally the jobs associated with same) but despite the Australian car assembly sector basically being zero now, the tariffs still exist. It's almost like it's just a revenue generation scheme.

There's a long history of tariffs and duties within Australia [1] but none of those (to my knowledge) resulted in a thriving multi-national corporation (I'll exclude mining companies as they're primary industries, reliant on the lottery of resource availability rather than any particular commercial skill).

Perhaps Murdoch's News Limited, which undoubtedly obtained government support during its nascent era, but I'm not sure how comparable it is to the Samsung and Hyundais of the world (referring back to GP's claims).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_Australi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_Australia)

<comment><USER6> Australia has it pretty hard be competitive exporting industrial goods since the supply chain is mostly overseas and the domestic market is small, which means most things will gehave to be exported again. All this results in high shipping costs and latency in addition to being a high wage country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Inaccurate headline. They're doing a pilot project to see if they like it. This is where a lot of these "X Government Switches To Linux!" projects fall apart. Wake me up when they actually do it.

<comment><USER8> And in the end it's not Windows that governments and companies need, it's Office. Windows is fairly easy to replace for a lot of jobs nowadays. But working without MS Office is extremely difficult. It's basically impossible and certainly not worth it ensuring that all spreadsheets used will still work with alternatives, it also makes communication with other governments or companies much harder. That's where Microsoft makes the money and has its monopoly.

<comment><USER9> On the OS not being critical, I think that might be the case in 10 years, but large companies still have loads of internal desktop applications that haven't moved to the web yet.

But agree with your point on Office, there are many large organisations which are literally running on Excel, and which IT budget would have to grow 10 times if they were to replace all these excel based processes.

And I must say that I haven't seen any good alternative to Excel for a non programmer to set up a custom set of calculations, or deal with data. I am trying to get more people to learn SQL in my company, which shouldn't be too difficult. But you are not going to write a company valuation model in SQL. And I had poor results at getting non programmers to pick up coding (I offered 1 week external in class courses, lots of people volunteered but 80% did not really do anything with it).

<comment><USER10> I wonder what a landscape would look like where the OS isn't critical but everyone's still on Excel.

Wine suddenly gets really _really_ good, maybe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like the government is pushing VDI to replace dedicated internet PCs, which are used alongside air-gapped government network PCs. That means, main office PCs will still be running Windows.

Actually, Korean military had an experimental VDI program years ago, but the program failed mainly because of the price, most of which had to be spent on Windows license. IIRC, after creating a small prototype, the program is eventually scrapped.

So, no, this is not a negotiating move. Also, I believe this will definitely happen, because Windows 10 is stupidly expensive.

The official announcement from Korean government (Korean): [https://www.mois.go.kr/frt/bbs/type010/commonSelectBoardArti...](https://www.mois.go.kr/frt/bbs/type010/commonSelectBoardArticle.do?bbsId=BBSMSTR_000000000008&nttId=75607)

</comment><comment><USER12> As a foreigner who's spending a lot of time in South Korea and had to deal/saw people deal with the inability to do anything online without the use of a Windows client, I applaud this. Every time we need to interact with the government or a bank, we need to search around for a Windows laptop or try from a VM (doesn't always work). This makes it very hard for anyone to learn a non-Windows OS.

Next step: remove the silly Korean phone number requirement from your online services.

<comment><USER13> I had no issues with running Windows 7 in a VM for everything.

<comment><USER14> The point seems to be about finding a computer at all. Suppose you want to do some banking and all you have is your Android phone? According to what I'm reading from other comments, you may just need to find a Windows PC rather than handle things with your own device.

<comment><USER13> Nearly all of the banks in Korea have Android apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> South Korean here, explanation for some context:

South Korea has a deep legacy of MS-DOS/Windows, and it's reliance of Microsoft's OS is very high. This mostly is due to two reasons: the high use of the unique word processor(Hangul Word Processor) and the legacy ActiveX plugins used for cryptography when banking.

In the 90s, multiple internet service providers used ActiveX technology (for people who doesn't know, it's basically binary plugin technology to provide unlimited access to the local environment) to provide services. They were used to provide VOD services, etc... and when online shopping & banking started in the mid 90s the government mandated use of a 128bit crypto algorithm. At that time, the dominant browser IE only had 40 bit crypto due to US's export restrictions — so the 128 bit algorithm they decided to use was a independently developed algorithm called SEED, which was then implemented in ActiveX by the banks and shopping malls. This became a legacy, and for a long time even after the restriction was removed, people were forced to use ActiveX plugins until the smartphones came and the banks were forced to rewrite the system. There are still a lot of banks mandating the use of Windows for desktops — that's one reason why the Windows was so popular.

Windows 10 AFAIK (I've never used it, so I'm not really sure) is much more strict to the binary plugins, and Internet Explorer is almost going to die — so a lot of people were staying on Windows 7, including most of the government. By the deprecation of Windows 7, the government thought that this was a good time to remove much of the legacy that enforces Windows, and is considering Linux for one of its options.

One of the reasons why I have some hope on this project is because the government's use of Windows is basically for two things — the ActiveX plugins in the web (which are mostly disappeared thanks to smartphones) and the Hangul Word Processor, which was exclusively only on Windows until about 2008, when a Linux version was released for a short period of time (and was removed due to the lack of interest). If the government decides to transition to Linux, Hancom(HWP's developer) can prioritize the Linux port — which, in 2008 was already fully featured and has almost zero compatibility problems! (People using Linux still use the 2008 version by dockerizing the whole environment.)

Some context on the operating systems that were mentioned:

The Harmonica OS is a Linux Mint-based distribution that is localized thoroughly and has a lot of baseline programs (like the input methods) installed, and is pretty great for daily use.

The Tmax OS is... basically a scam OS that... well uses a big mix of Linux, BSD, and Wine's code, a homemade custom DE that is a poor ripoff of the windows interface and tries to integrate them (unsuccessfully)... and advertise as a 'pure Korean OS' to the officials.

<comment><USER16> Since you're here, can you explain what's special about the Hancom/Hangul office software?

The Wikipedia articles all just say things like "specialized support" or "special needs". I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just fine.

<comment><USER15> > I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which > presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just > fine.

Hangul support was a key feature in the 80s where everything was MS-DOS; and it wasn't prevalent then where a lot of hangul-supporting word processors were on the market.

The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control on the layout of the document... in a way that westerners don't really care. (That's a direct quote from a foreigner I know, maybe an over-generalization.) So the Korean Government and a lot of corporations were very committed on transitioning documents that were written by hand, to computers, and they also wanted to have this exact layout and form that was used before. Most forms are based out of tables — and I can't really explain this in text, but it gives you the power to layout the text the exact way you want, while in Word, you feel like you're wrestling with the layout engine. (Kinda like... if Word is old CSS where you had to use all kinds of float hacks to make your fragile layout, HWP gives you flexbox and grids... etc....) Some says that HWP is more like a DTD program like InDesign (I've never used it so I can't really comment) rather than a usual word processor that other countries use... but everybody is just super used to having all that control, so nobody can really transition back to Word.

<comment><USER16> Interesting! I'm curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was "Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it's way cheaper than any desktop publishing software".

Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn't this a case of having lots of templates?)

<comment><USER15> > I'm curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably > it was "Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it's way cheaper than > any desktop publishing software".

First of all, QuarkXPress had shitty, really shitty language support. You might be surprised when you know that most pro apps have really, really poor CJK support — apps like Photoshop currently has really hacky input support bolted on later, and frequently a problem. Even big, user facing apps like Microsoft Excel still has lots of problems with input. So back in the days where the word processor market was more diverse, QuarkXPress was not an option.

Then also, there is the popularity problem where people have not used or even heard about DTD software like this, and it's not really a friendly interface for users to create and modify documents.

This is a side story but... publishers that needed DTD software used QuarkXPress back in the day. The company backing the software had frequent conflicts with the local publishers with license pricing, and the publishers decided to protest by not upgrading to the latest version — and AFAIK lots of small publishers that didn't have the manpower to convert all of it's files to InDesign still buys used PowerMacs to run the version(I'm not sure but something like 3.3 — released in 1996!) that they use.

> Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, > why isn't this a case of having lots of templates?)

> presumably it was "Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it's way > cheaper than any desktop publishing software".

Yeah, pretty much true too.

Having lots of templates in HWP is one of the reason why HWP isn't disappearing; there is vendor lock-in due to custom file formats, and people don't feel any reason to move to another one.

<comment><USER17> partial story here -- lots of work was done on CJKV input systems, in each decade, but in many Asian markets (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam for SURE) piracy was rampant, which does not feed an R&D cycle.

Unicode was standardized, then the utf8 format after that, which *nix took full advantage of, but other legacy software (see paragraph 1) did not evolve in some cases.

<comment><USER15> Piracy is rampant to all popular software; I'm not sure how the conclusion that Asian markets have a higher pircy rate than the western market was reached. I'm pretty sure that MS Office is pirated in the US at least as much as Korea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this actually likely to happen, or a negotiating manoeuvre with Microsoft?

<comment><USER19> Last time they trusted Microsoft, they got their entire country stuck with ActiveX; that said, possibly a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

<comment><USER20> That was more South Korea's own bad crypto policy's fault than Microsoft's fault, though.

<comment><USER15> > That was more South Korea's own bad crypto policy's fault

South Korean here, I wouldn't say it was the government's fault to enforce better security/crypto tech on the web when banking, right? To be strict, everything really started because of the US's IMO useless export restrictions. Then it became a legacy that couldn't be third of for ~20 yrs. I don't think the policy was great, but it was reasonable at the time.

<comment><USER21> I think the point is that it wasn't better security. And nowadays it likely has no improvement or actually decreases security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Their friends to the North have been using Linux for many years know, although pirated copies of Windows are still prevalent as well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS)

<comment><USER17> Their relatives to the North... (fixed it for you!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It will be interesting to see how it will work.

If they have been Windows for so long and all the way up to Windows 7, they must have a lot of software and more interestingly hardware that Win7 manages to get working.

All sorts of bits and bobs hardware will potentially make trouble.

I also see in the article: "The South Korean government also plans to implement a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) that uses a virtual PC environment that runs on a cloud by the second half of 2020. The South Korean ministry expects a 72% savings in cost with the DaaS move. Security standards and DaaS models are currently in development, and pilot tests are scheduled to start in October of this year."

This does make a lot of sense in a two-stage program, switch out the desktop to become thin-clients that connects to the DaaS. Then they can allow end user to connect to a Daas of Windows7, Windows10, Linux, DOS, I mean whatever.

<comment><USER24> But when I was working daily via a DaaS platform, it's not a great experience for software development. Input latency is high enough to be noticed, the virtual desktop can not put under load (e.g. using a IDE for C++ other than Source Insight). My company had to switch back to desktop PC for most developers.

<comment><USER25> Yep, my experience exactly too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone who very much uses and likes FOSS, I'm not sure I'd actually recommend people use Linux in end-user, day to day work. I can definitely see BSD or Linux in core infrastructure, but end users don't really care too much about which OS to use, they care about driver compatibility, UX usability, and app availability, among other things like security and what-not. Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, it has auto-update and nice GUIs and all that. Linux doesn't.

I use Ubuntu 19.10 eoan for my daily driver replacing Windows 10 Professional for Workstations, and I can tell you that the drivers are _definitely_ worse, updates are manual, apps are updated last of the major OSes, and if I wasn't a SWE but I needed to use a computer for my job it wouldn't be as pleasant as Windows.

<comment><USER27> > Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, it has auto-update and nice > GUIs and all that. Linux doesn't.

Linux has tons of auto update solutions. E.g. on Debian you can configure the unattended-upgrades package to do it for you. There are plenty of nice GUIs for most tasks if you use the right distro. Ultimately, it's up to the admins of the deployments to take care of updates, not up to the end users.

As for the vendor maintained drivers that Windows has, it's often the same in Linux actually. Often, the maintainers of the mainline drivers are employees of the vendors. As it should be.

<comment><USER28> > Linux has tons of auto update solutions. E.g. on Debian you can configure > the unattended-upgrades package to do it for you. There are plenty of nice > GUIs for most tasks if you use the right distro.

These suggestions are still problems for many Linux distros these days and for general users there should be one sane default solution for 'auto-updating', just like Windows and macOS. No user should have to configure packagename-1.0 to do automatic upgrades for the user, it should be in the default install and configurable via the settings GUI with a simple checkbox. Finally, to further confuse the end-user to switch to a Linux distro is when they have to choose 'the right distro'. Windows and macOS come in one recognisable desktop form, Linux still suffers from an identity crisis on the desktop for end-users.

Unfortunately, it isn't possible for me to recommend a Linux distro to an end- user only for them to end up being frustrated with the switching process and eventually going back to Windows or macOS. Ubuntu and ChromeOS may suffice for some users but the other distros will confuse them further.

<comment><USER29> > Windows and macOS come in one recognisable desktop form

Like Win10 home, pro, server, or enterprise?

<comment><USER30> The difference for the end user is zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Lucky they aren't the world's biggest abuser of activeX...oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER32> The office suite part is the most painful. I am now using Softmaker Freeoffice (free version of Softmaker Office). It is an excellent alternative to Libreoffice, except that it is not opensource.

<comment><USER13> Most Koreans use a custom word processor called Hancom Office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting development. I wonder if Excel/VBA are a big part of their work. If so, there could be large costs in converting, testing, and deploying the alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER34> Did Germany try this unsuccessfully a few years back?

<comment><USER35> Munich _successfully_ pivoted to Linux for over a decade, then Microsoft Germany moved their HQ to Munich no doubt greasing many wheels in the process and Munich switched back to Windows a year later IIRC.

<comment><USER36> Currently Cern is having a go at replacing all microsoft products, due to high cost.

[https://home.cern/news/news/computing/migrating-open- source-...](https://home.cern/news/news/computing/migrating-open-source- technologies)

The institute is big enough that it might be a source of inspiration or knowledge for local governments in Europe.

<comment><USER37> The average CERN user is way more tech savvy than random government workers.

<comment><USER38> The average CERN user already does not use Windows or any MS products. All research infra is Linux (Cern Linux, a CentOS derivative), and apart from a stray Macbook, I've never seen anyone use anything but Linux.

Windows was for a few desktops, administrative staff and optionally email (some Exchange or OWA stuff or sth).

<comment><USER39> So the whole Windows infrastructure from 2000 - 2005, including the use of Office to write documents in some is gone?

And everyone at HLT has ditched their Apple laptops?

I thought Scientific Linux was no longer a thing (I was a beta user back in the initial release).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If I recall correctly, in the early 2000s, Japan wanted to migrate by default to Linux. That never happened for an unknown to me reason.

</comment><comment><USER41> I commend their effort, but I believe it should be done on an entire ecosystem level. From assembly to libraries to documents to frameworks. All of it should be turned into Korean, French, Mandarin, Russian, etc. If the governments of major nations decided to do it in a systematic manner along with corporate and university help, it shouldn't be that difficult a task. Create it once and then your entire citizenry can use it. It's rather surprising that there isn't much effort to port "computing" to people's native language. Why should the french or arabs have to learn english to code? Imagine having to learn russian to study physics or learn korean to watch Parasite. By making english the default language of computing, every non-anglo nation disadvantages their own citizens by placing an unnecessary hurdle in front of them.

How many people around the world are simply discouraged from programming because of added burden of having to learn english? How much are we losing out because of that?

This might be difficult for smaller and poorer nations, but what is the excuse for germany, france, spain, japan, brazil, etc with large enough populations to justify porting "computing" for their people?

<comment><USER42> Well, why do banks don't port all their code to recent and efficient languages? Pretty much the same here. All the code currently in use is written in English and it will take decades to completely transit from English to French computing (let's take the example of France, since I'm French). Add to that that all classes resources are for English programming languages and that to share knowledge between French, German and Russian programmers English is the only way to go.

But don't be fooled, in most companies all the comments and documentation are written in French. Variables are in English because it's the only language that only use the ASCII charset. Only recent languages have the support for Unicode identifiers names.

English reading comprehension (at the very least) is a mandatory skill to have in our modern world.

<comment><USER41> > Pretty much the same here.

It isn't. I'm talking about systematic change, not updating existing code. Like how latin was used to teach everything until nations decided to port religion, science, math, literature, etc to their native languages. Look at how much that changed the world. Rather than a select lucky few having access to knowledge tied to a language, it was ported and made available to all the peoples of a nation.

> Add to that that all classes resources are for English programming languages > and that to share knowledge between French, German and Russian programmers > English is the only way to go.

The only way to share knowledge is through english? So the french can't translate german and russians can't translate german? What about all the french, german and russians who don't know english? Are they supposed to languish in ignorance?

> Variables are in English because it's the only language that only use the > ASCII charset.

Variables, keywords, the standard libraries, runtime, kernel, assembly, etc.

> Only recent languages have the support for Unicode identifiers names.

You make it sound like you can't change it. Like older languages are set in stone.

> English reading comprehension (at the very least) is a mandatory skill to > have in our modern world.

This is simply not true as most of the modern world does not have basic english reading comprehension skills. And as I said, this type of thinking is holding back much of the world. And needing to have basic english reading comprehension doesn't mean that computation shouldn't be ported to one's native language.

The selfish few used to keep the masses ignorant through language exclusivity ( latin ). Seems like the same thing is happening here. Maybe it's not selfishness, but laziness or learned helplessness.

I know if I had to learn french in order to code, I wouldn't be a programming. And I'm sure it's the truth for the vast majority of american programmers. I think most people are similar throughout the world and having to learn a foreign language to program is an insurmountable obstacle for many.

<comment><USER42> > So the french can't translate german and russians can't translate german?

You can but then it's a work to do for each language. That's how science got reinvented in multiple places before virtually all papers start to be written in English and shared in international journals.

> You make it sound like you can't change it. Like older languages are set in > stone.

Do you suggest adding a layer of dependencies and complexity to the build systems to preprocess the source code to make it compilable by GCC/clang/Visual?

And it would make sharing open-source project limited to their language speakers, until you have someone translating the project. And what happens when that person can't keep up with the pace of the original project? Just look at all the material in Chinese on Github that is just inaccessible to non-chinese speakers.

All engineering schools in France require a minimum score on tests like TOEIC/TOEFL (in my school it was TOEIC 785 / 990, got raised to 800). High school graduation requires a CEFR level of B2 (even if not all students reach it) in English.

> I know if I had to learn french in order to code, I wouldn't be a > programming. And I'm sure it's the truth for the vast majority of american > programmers.

Except that a lot of the world is already exposed to English in movies, series, books, websites, memes, YouTube, work. American are not exposed to French, German, Japanese, Chinese.

<comment><USER41> > You can but then it's a work to do for each language.

You make it sound like that's a bad thing. Once again, I'm not sure whether it is laziness or just learned helplessness.

> That's how science got reinvented in multiple places before virtually all > papers start to be written in English and shared in international journals.

That's not why. It's because communication wasn't as global as it is today. And you seem to think that just because each nation/language has their own ecosystem that somehow the world will stop communicating with each other. You think english will cease to be the lingua franca of science. Nothing will really change except a lot of french people who wouldn't program in english would program in french. You can still program in english if you want. You can communicate in english. Your country would just have more options.

> Do you suggest adding a layer of dependencies and complexity to the build > systems to preprocess the source code to make it compilable by > GCC/clang/Visual?

No. Is there an added layer of dependencies and complexity to compiling languages in english?

> Just look at all the material in Chinese on Github that is just inaccessible > to non-chinese speakers.

So translate it. What is with the helpless attitude? Do you feel helpless that russian literature is in russian and you can't read russian? No, you'd find a french translation of russian literature right? Would you rather 1.4 billion chinese be able to use the chinese material or would you rather the 1.4 billion learn english first?

> American are not exposed to French, German, Japanese, Chinese.

Sure, not as much, but that doesn't take away from my point. There would be far less american programmers if we had to learn another language to program. It's common sense.

Do you think more americans would watch Parasite or Amelie if we had to learn korean or french first? Or more watch the movies once those movies were subtitled/dubbed in english first?

All I'm saying is that porting the ecosystem into people's native languages would boost the numbers of programmers and advance technology. It won't take away from those like you who want to program in english and it certainly won't take away from dominance of the english language in international communication.

Just like you can watch an american movie without subs/dubs. But most of your countrymen can't. Would you be against subbing/dubbing of english language movies to disadvantage your countrymen? I doubt it.

<comment><USER42> > It's because communication wasn't as global as it is today. And you seem to > think that just because each nation/language has their own ecosystem that > somehow the world will stop communicating with each other.

True, it would not but the communication surface would be much smaller, we would depend on a few bilinguals.

> Nothing will really change except a lot of french people who wouldn't > program in english would program in french. You can still program in english > if you want.

People barely speak English already so if you remove the need for some English keyword to do development, you can be sure you are heading toward a generation that doesn't know how and doesn't care about speaking English.

> No. Is there an added layer of dependencies and complexity to compiling > languages in english?

No because they are built from the ground up to use English. So if I understand your idea, by creating languages that are based on each local language we would not be able to share source code without having to translate it into our own language?

> So translate it.

So I need to learn Chinese. And English. And Russian. Or, more realistically, I need to depend on someone to do the translation for me. Automatic translation is not really that good for books and websites from the experience I have. Just taking cppreference which translates automatically, most of the time it's non-sense.

> Do you feel helpless that russian literature is in russian and you can't > read russian? No, you'd find a french translation of russian literature > right?

Yes but I miss on a lot of Russian literature.

I agree with you that if we had a programming language in French of the quality of Java or C or Python it would allow some individuals, that see English as a barrier, to get into programming. But the cons and the issues it brins largely outweight, in my opinion, this benefit.

<comment><USER41> > People barely speak English already so if you remove the need for some > English keyword to do development, you can be sure you are heading toward a > generation that doesn't know how and doesn't care about speaking English.

So be it if it means more programmers in france, china, russia, etc.

> No because they are built from the ground up to use English.

Yeah, and you can do the same in other major languages. It should be easier since we already did most of the work for you.

> So if I understand your idea, by creating languages that are based on each > local language we would not be able to share source code without having to > translate it into our own language?

Yes. You'd be able to share the libraries and executables, but not the source unless you know the language.

> So I need to learn Chinese. And English. And Russian.

No. The chinese, english, russian, etc has to be translated into french. Have you ever read a book by a non-french author?

> Automatic translation is not really that good for books and websites from > the experience I have.

That's my point. You are a worse programmer than you could be because you are coding in a foreign language. If you coded in french, you'd be a better programmer. After all, programming is an art, like literature.

> I agree with you that if we had a programming language in French of the > quality of Java or C or Python it would allow some individuals

You completely missed my point. You could convert Java, C, Python, etc into french or any other language. It's simply updating the grammar where you could do a simple 1 to 1 conversion of the keywords. It's so simple that an ambitious and competent person could do it over a weekend. The hard part is translating the libraries and the executables - the actual code in the wild. But it's doable if given enough resources.

Like you said, people translate documents in many languages already. Why not take the extra step and translate the source as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> No one mentioned video games? An extremely high percentage of South Koreans play video games and they have many of the top competitive players and esports leagues. I find it hard to believe these will transition to Linux any time soon.

<comment><USER44> The article is about South Korea __government __PCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I said this 10 years ago: if government from many developed nations pool their resources together, we could have a serious alternative to Windows and Windows Server. Most of the base elements are already there.

<comment><USER46> We already have a better alternative to Windows Server. It's Linux.

<comment><USER30> For server, definitely. For desktops, no: you have a thousand Linux variations that are a nightmare to support on large scale. It is hard enough to support 2-3 Windows versions in the same time, it is impossible to have an entire country on the same Linux distro and version unless you make it mandatory as in "North Korea mandatory".

<comment><USER47> Why is the government mandating one or two versions of Windows for _government computers_ fine, but requiring one or two selected versions of Linux distros "North Korea"?

<comment><USER30> TLDR: there are only 2 Windows versions with large market share, Linux on desktop is much more fragmented.

No, the government is mandating nothing, users can pick from the most popular OS and that are now Windows 10 and Windows 7. If you let users pick a Linux, any Linux, they will pick them all, unless the government really forces everyone to pick a single version - probably that is the point of the the version in the spotlight.

<comment><USER47> Government workers pick the OS on their work PCs, really? I'm quite sure "this is your PC, IT has installed Windows X on it" is the common case. It doesn't become suddenly bad if that instead is "... has installed Ubuntu 18.04 on it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Wait, the country which stills uses Internet Explorer 6 for online banking?

<comment><USER15> As a South Korean, I can definitely assure you that's not the case. We definitely didn't mandate the use of IE '6'... and while it's true that until early to mid 2010s banking did mandate use of IE, it stopped as soon as the smartphones became mainstream. Almost all banks and shopping malls work on Chrome and mobiles as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I wonder if the open source world could saddle on - what is obviously just a price lowering attempt. Grow something like the mozilla foundation, just from the attempts to reign license costs in- which then implements a directx compatible gfx api layer and a comon driver pool - that really always works.

</comment><comment><USER50> Windows 10 was the last nail in the coffin for Windows....

<comment><USER51> Windows 10 seems to run _faster_ on older computers than even 7 did.

Not saying it's my favorite thing, but rolling updates and decent built-in anti-malware make it a fairly good option these days, and with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and Multipass, there's a lot of _Linux_ stuff that can be done on Windows.

IMO, Windows 10, the separated kernel stuff they're doing, and their current support for Open Source software is the _best_ thing Microsoft has done in a long time.

Hopefully they don't get to _Extinguish_ this time.

<comment><USER52> I've a long time Windows user. Lately, I've been considering a switch to MBP but the cost is ridiculous. I'm now thinking my best choice is to upgrade my hardware and do a deep dive in Windows Subsystem of Linux. That would give me the best of both world, yes?</comment></comment></comment>


European Parliament rejects EU plan to axe Freedom of Panorama - <AUTHOR> http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/latest/photo-news/european-parliament-rejects-absurd-eu-plan-to-axe-freedom-of-panorama-55708

<comment><USER2> In case you're trying to fight your way through the double negatives, this means they're _keeping_ Freedom of Panaroma (which is good).

<comment><USER3> More precisely, members of the EU will continue to have their own law about Freedom of Panorama. For instance, there is not freedom of panorama in France, while it is absolute in the UK, and there are some restrictions in Germany.

<comment><USER4> WHAT? You can't take a picture of a public place in France and own (or release) the copyright?

<comment><USER5> Depends. In France, a building can _in itself_ be copyrighted, meaning you'd technially need permission from the "author" to publish a picture of it, unless the copyright has expired. [0]

Here's a funny one: in France, the Eiffel Tower copyright has expired; however, courts have deemed that the lighting display on the tower is a protected work, still copyrighted. Meaning you are allowed to publish pictures of the Eiffel Tower taken at day, but not at night -- unless you have permission. [1]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama#European_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama#European_Union)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_claims)

<comment><USER6> Wow, I did not think that copyright law could get worse than in the United States.

Thinking in US terms, it sounds like the argument that if you take a picture of your kids with a building in the background, the picture is a derivative work of the building's architect. Madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We must now continue to fight for an extension of important copyright > exceptions such as this one to all member states."

Good!

> Cavada wanted all European nations to adopt laws that may require permission > from a building's architect before an image is published commercially.

I would like a list of architechts supporting such a law. They deserve all photographs (and mentions) of their buildings to be removed from the internet.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the most uninformed titles I've read. There were no eu (commission or council) plans to kill freedom of panorama. The liberals inside the European parliament proposed it in one committee, the liberals, conservatives, right wing and socialists voted in favour of it (green and left against) in the committee and it passed. Now in the plenary, after sufficient backlash, socialists and some liberals have changed their opinion, thus an amendment introduced in a committee was slashed in three plenary. All that happened in the parliament, not in a mysterious other EU.

<comment><USER9> >This is one of the most uninformed titles I've read.

Well then perhaps you should read the article. Yours is a classic HN pedant response where some minor technical issue, which frequently isn't even an issue, becomes a fixation. You are taking issue with a minor ambiguity in the headline which is clarified by reading the article.

I wish people would stop these type of comments, they are the commentator's equivalent of a journalist's "gotcha" based on not letting the person being interviewed complete what they were saying and/or selectively editing.

<comment><USER10> No, they're right. The title mislead me.

The title suggests the EU decided something. Done. And then some European parliament came in and vetoed it. wtf?

Instead, a correct title would seem to be "European parliament strongly rejected proposal to axe 'freedom of panorama' across the EU"...?

The difference being "EU members' plan" vs "plan for the EU".

<comment><USER9> Titles are titles: they need to be short and are only an indication of the content, not a full summary. I don't know where anyone is getting the idea that the title can always be perfect summary from. Some degree of ambiguity is therefore almost always given if you only have one, short, sentence to act as a title.

It follows from this that out of tens of thousands of readers there will always be a few, perhaps even quite a few, for whom a title doesn't serve as a completely perfect summary. But rather than clogging up huge numbers of comment threads with completely pointless pedantry why don't you just read the actual article?

I suppose I wouldn't complain so much if completely pointless interjections such as yours and the original one I responded to were at the bottom of the comment threads, but they are frequently at the top. It's IMO a total cancer on HN comment threads because it adds no value to have someone splitting pointless definitional hairs (not refuting a central point _via_ a definitional argument as per PG's hierarchy of disagreement[0]) as the first comment. People roaring about their ignorance and apparent incapacity to read the actual article doesn't help any debate.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg)

<comment><USER10> Your bitching is longer than what you're bitching about. That's the cancer.

And no, it's not pointless definitional games, the title is intentionally totally wrong. Black vs white. It's not like it's mostly right but not quite, it's almost as wrong as it's possible to be and still be using words. And it's not about pointing out mistakes, it's about calling out pointless clickbait to get it flagged and telling people how to spot it next time. You for one seem to think it's an honest mistake and a good article.

> People roaring about their ignorance and [...]

Oh, you don't say. Do they go on and on? Cluelessly unaware that everyone is looking at them? Wow.

<comment><USER9> >And no, it's not pointless definitional games

Actually it pretty much is exactly that. You clearly didn't read the article or don't care about the article and only care about the headline. You aren't even discussing the article or the moral and legal points discussed within it, you are literally just concerned with the headline.

>the title is intentionally totally wrong. Black vs white.

The title isn't really a bad description of the article at all so to call it "totally wrong" is false. To call it "intentionally totally wrong" is, well, even more false.

>It's not like it's mostly right but not quite, it's almost as wrong as it's possible to be and still be using words.

I can't believe you'd actually seriously claim this, the title might be slightly ambiguous but to call it "as wrong as it's possible to be" is unequivocally a lie. The title in no way is "as wrong as it's possible to be". Are you a native speaker of English? I am not sure it's possible to make the statements you have made, at least in good faith, whilst being a native speaker. You have to be either a troll or a non-native speaker, with ants in your pants over something to do with the EU, because there is no other reasonable explanation for your wild claims. "European Parliament rejects EU plan to axe Freedom of Panorama" is simply not, as a title, "almost as wrong as it's possible to be and still be using words". Game over.

<comment><USER10> NO!!! You can't end the game! No!

> The title isn't really a bad description of the article at all so to call it > "totally wrong" is false.

Totally wrong. It implies things were decided, and that they were overruled, and that there were multiple bodies involved.

What really happened? A bill was proposed and voted against.

> To call it "intentionally totally wrong" is, well, even more false.

Yeah, nobody would ever write an intentionally misleading title for clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know, you live your life, blissfully unaware of laws as idiotic as this, and then one day you wake up, read the front page of HN, and now you have yet another thing to feel utterly outraged by. Shouldn't I have absolute right to photograph public spaces.

<comment><USER12> Should you? I agree you should be able take pictures of buildings and landmarks, but I'm not sure it's an absolute right.

Here's an example (though a bit contrived) where I don't think that right should (or does) apply: during the recent World Cup, many cities in the US showed the final on large screens at public parks. Are you allowed to take pictures of of the park that contain a portion of FIFA's copyrighted broadcast? How about if you take 29.97 pictures per second of the screen, carefully cropped so you get none of that annoying crowd?

<comment><USER11> The right should follow the intent, as evidenced by the photograph itself. If the evident intent is to document a public space, than you should have absolute right. But if the intent is to reproduce one particular building or sculpture, or broadcast (in your example), then the authors should have some rights. Though, I thing that any sculpture placed on public property should be in public domain, after all, the public has paid for it, right?

<comment><USER13> And more importantly, the artist/architect has been paid for their work.

I have this conversation with artists sometimes. If I buy a print, yes, you retain copyright, but I expect an exemption when I post a picture of my print on Facebook, hanging in my living room. On the other hand, many artists want to retain the copyright of an original I purchase - which I usually disagree with. I can offer an exemption to _my_ copyright which I purchase with the work that allows you to continue to sell prints. But if I'm going to pay a hefty price for an original work of art (or architecture) I expect to own it, copyright and all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unsurprisingly the EU made a sensible ruling. Just like most of the rulings they've made in the past 10 years. I'm not sure why the media and social justice groups got so worked up over it as it was in the minority anyway.

It's called a democracy for a reason - you've got to have fair representation from all angles, not just the most sensible. People are getting mightily agitated every time a strange law is brought to the table recently. I blame Twitter. /s

<comment><USER15> Cause they are used to the American democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems silly for architects to even want this. They would be undermining themselves! Would the Eiffel Tower be nearly as famous as it is if only approved/licensed photographers were allowed to photograph it? Would I even care who Frank Gehry is if photos of his buildings were not appearing in my Facebook feed and findable on Google, Wikipedia, etcetera? Is not getting your building "out there," as widely as possible, a success metric for an architect?

</comment><comment><USER17> See, democracy can and does work.

<comment><USER18> Well, I wouldn't associate the European Parliament with democracy that strongly.

<comment><USER19> _What?_ The European parliament is _the_ clearest example of a democratic institution inside the EU.

Commission and council have their elements of redirection, sure (i.e. it's people appointed by people who were democratically elected … though in the case of someone like Angela Merkel, herself elected by the German parliament, it's more like people appointed by people appointed by people who were democratically elected). Even though, they are still democratic, certainly, but redirection and delegation is a problem for democratic participation.

However, the European parliament does only consist of actually elected members. It doesn't suffer from any of the problems other EU institutions may suffer from.

You statement belies a clear misunderstanding of how EU institutions actually function. Please get off populist train and get an understanding of the _actual_ issues involved when it comes to democracy and democratic processes inside the EU. I, for example, want the EU parliament to get much, much more power compared to other European institutions, mostly because it certainly is the single most democratic EU institutions.

(But status quo is powerful … and the EU did grow out of more traditional bilateral and multilateral international agreements and treaties. Those things have always been run by heads of governments or people appointed by heads of governments. That history is hard to shake for the EU … and that is exactly why that model of heads of governments or someone appointed by them coming together and hashing it out is still sadly such an important element of EU governance. However, with too many EU skeptics a truly democratic EU government that is truly independent from heads of governments of nation states will certainly never be possible.)

<comment><USER18> > _What? The European parliament is the clearest example of a democratic > institution inside the EU_

Which is not saying much.

I won't get to the debate of the actual democratic quality of what we call "parliamentary democracy" and the culture of the passive once-at-4/5-years voting it encourages.

Even taking that as granted and democractic (e.g. accepting the same crap we get as democracy at the national level), in the EU most of the power still resides on the bureacrats, the commission and the council.

Then, even if we also sidestep the issue of the E.P. being a "fig leaf" for an undemocratic self-replicating bureaucracy, it also exhibits issues of "representation at scale", where decisions affecting the national level are taken by a parliament based thousands of miles away, whose proceedings are seldom covered by national media, with political alliances, connections and power plays, far away from the everyday life of citizens of members states, and trying to find a middle ground among tens of member states with differing economies, outlooks on politics, etc -- in which large, powerful, states, also buy more influence than their population count.

<comment><USER19> You are, again, confusing the issue, throwing in council and commission to the parliament.

Also, some staunch nationalism. Yuck. Disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read the title and was very confused, surely there must be some sort of bill or law or something called 'Panorama', because the only thing I can think of by that name is taking a long picture.

And then I read the article, and it truly referenced pictures.

What idiot thought legislating _fucking long pictures_ was a good idea?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone thinking this is stupid, it's actually a pointer to a very important change in the _power structure_ of the world:

"Occupation of the Kasbah in Tunis and of the Syntagma Square in Athens, siege of Westminster in London during the student movement of 2011, encirclement of the parliament in Madrid on September 25, 2012 or in Barcelona on June 15, 2011, riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome on December 14, 2010, attempt on October 15, 2011 in Lisbon to invade the Assembleia da Republica, burning of the Bosnian presidential residence in February of 2014: the places of institutional power exert a magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents manage to penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions, as in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it's only to discover empty places, that is, empty of power, and furnished without any taste. It's not to prevent the 'people' from 'taking power' that they are so fiercely kept from invading such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power no longer resides in the institutions. There are only deserted temples there, decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets—real traps for revolutionaries. The popular impulse to rush onto the stage to find out what is happening in the wings is bound to be disappointed. If they got inside, even the most fervent conspiracy freaks would find nothing arcane there; the truth is that power is simply no longer that theatrical reality to which modernity accustomed us. [...] But what is it that appears on euro banknotes? Not human figures, not emblems of a personal sovereignty, but bridges, aqueducts, arches—pieces of impersonal architecture, cold as stone. As to the truth about the present nature of power, every European has a printed exemplar of it in their pocket. It can be stated in this way: _power now resides in the infrastructures of this world._ Contemporary power is of an architectural and impersonal, and not a representative or personal, nature." (Invisible Committee, _To Our Friends_ , Semiotext(e) 2014)

<comment><USER21> The fact that they aren't changing the law is a sign?

By the way, for what it's worth, there was no attempt in 2001 to invade the Assembleia in Lisbon. There was a large demonstration, during which a commotion forced the police line to back up a little, nothing more.

Curiously, the time where there _really_ was a deliberate (and successful) attempt to break the police barrier (though they stopped before entering the Assembleia) was during a demonstration by _other cops_.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  What potential innovation would occur with Gigabit internet? - <AUTHOR>

Average speeds now are roughly 15Mbps.  What would speeds of 1 Gbps allow to change on the internet? <comment><USER2> Facebook exists in its current form because of broadband. Along with Instagram, etc. Running Facebook of even circa 2008 without broadband is painful. In a way broadband adoption let websites like Facebook and many others come into existence.

With 1 Gbps, I think it will be similar. We'll see websites with components that wouldn't be possible without it, but those components themselves (uploading photos of your drunk college friends) were possible to some degree beforehand.

I don't think it will be a radical transformation where suddenly doctors preform robot surgery as envisioned with things like Internet2, but I could see, say, more Skype meetings with your doctor as the video quality and sound quality increase.

<comment><USER3> I suspect we'll see omnipresent, always-on video cameras everywhere.

Forget Street View, we'll have Street Camera, maybe always-on connection to Google Glasses? (I think there were several sci-fi books on the subject).

There are already many obsessed bosses connecting to work even on their holidays, maybe now they'll own a telepresence robot.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of good uses :) but the current mindset makes me think of these possibilities first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the surprising answer may be: not all that much.

Look at how fast computers are these days. No one (except gamers and professionals) have _needed_ faster computers in 5 years. Once we all got fast dual core machines with 4GB ram it's pretty much all been gravy. Mobile devices are starting to reach that level now.

I don't doubt that there will be some very compelling applications for gigabit speeds, but I don't think it will be a revolutionary thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1-10 Gbps would fall into the similar speed as SATA disk drives. That speed would be the "Retina Display" of Network Speed, where you forget if the file is stored locally or remotely. You can entirely get rid of your local drive and boot the system from Dropbox or similar network drive.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe it will change audio/visual applications.

HDMI will be a thing of the past because you will be able to transfer the highest quality audio and video over the Cat5/6 cable including internet data.

Movie Theaters could be democratized if you could view movies over the cable allowing those wanting to start a theater to have direct access to new movies via a subscription model.

Audio/Visual is where it will be - I can see it as clear as I can see this laptop in front of me.

<comment><USER6> Also, this is where Microsoft's kinect patent to see how many people are in a room could come in handy to ensure the subscription model isn't abused in case profit sharing is a prerequisite by the production companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Telepresence. Sites like nugs.net could stream concerts from large venues to many smaller venues in realtime & sold out shows could entertain new audiences in remote locations.

There's a project out of Canada called Scenic & Scenic2 that currently uses Internet2 to do this: [http://code.sat.qc.ca/redmine/projects/scenic2/wiki](http://code.sat.qc.ca/redmine/projects/scenic2/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER8> IMHO the key is not download speed, but upload. That would change a lot.

<comment><USER9> How so?

<comment><USER10> Quick video uploading and allowing everyone to self host webservices with a multitude of users I guess

<comment><USER9> This comes up every time this question is asked, but no one is going to self host web services. It's just too much of a pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Additional off-site RAM?</comment>


Patrick Stewart Returns as Jean-Luc Picard for a New Star Trek Series - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/04/patrick-stewart-is-returning-to-the-role-of-jean-luc-picard-for-a-new-star-trek-series/ <comment><USER2> My god, Patrick Stewart looks like he hasn't aged in 30 years.

On another matter, does anyone else wonder who at TechCrunch thought it was a good idea to make scrolling to the bottom of the page be an automatic redirect away from the article?

<comment><USER3> One of the benefits of early male pattern baldness. :)

<comment><USER4> What are some others please

<comment><USER5> You're saving on haircuts and shampoo.

<comment><USER6> Shampoo yes, haircuts no same cost as unbald people :(

<comment><USER7> I don't understand, I've (mostly) been using an electric beard/body hair trimmer to shave my head for the last 11 years.

<comment><USER6> Cost at a barber shop. If you go to one the cost for a haircut is the same for a man whether he is bald or not. And I get a #2 clipper all over too done in two minutes $25 plus tip.

Sure at home with an electric razor would be cheap but I tried and I can't get reach the back of my neck very well and it looks bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised he's 78 but not too worried that that'll weaken his performance. According to IMDB, Stewart lost 21 pounds for the movie "Logan" [0] in order to portray a sickly Prof. Xavier. Dropping weight as a wrestler was incredibly painful even as a HS wrestler, so I think he must be very healthy for a man in his late seventies to even consider such a regimen.

If anything, Stewart's old age will be an asset. The final TNG movies had him acting as an action hero; now the new show will be inclined to have more cerebral conflicts.

[0] [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/trivia?ref_=m_tt_trv_trv](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/trivia?ref_=m_tt_trv_trv)

</comment><comment><USER6> The best part about Star Trek The Next Generation was the fantastic writing, the focus on science and the guidance of young viewers throughout the series. I bet there were many people inspired to go into science as a result of the show both TNG and TOS.

As much as I enjoyed the other Treks and current Trek they seem almost self- absorbed, caring more for looks and ratings (I guess they have to) than story telling caring about the viewers. DS9 was pretty good but the producers made stupid, spiteful changes near the end, same for Enterprise.

You have to wonder what has changed that doesn't allow a series like Star Trek to be itself and instead cater to people seeking only explosions, swearing and banal story lines.

<comment><USER9> I've actually enjoyed Discovery quite a lot. I think it's easy to see the old series through rose tinted glasses and forget the extremely subpar episodes, focusing only on the best. In my opinion Discovery has been inconsistent, but far less so than, say, the first season of TNG. That said, I'm still irate they set it in the past. There's no reason for it - even the tech that forms a major plot point feels generations beyond Voyager!

I hope this new Picard show is something entirely different. Given that it'll air alongside Discovery I see no reason for it to be another "explore the galaxy" setup.

<comment><USER10> Does Discovery eventually stop being Action Trek? I watched the first episodes, and it seemed to be grimdark filled with lousy people.

TNG showed an evolved mankind, valuing such obscure things as kindness, non- violent solutions, and generally not being asshole.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't. I'm 35 and have seen TNG three times in my lifetime. The last time I saw Discovery immediately afterwards. My fiancé insisted on stopping the series. I pulled myself through, alone. It got worse every episode. One of the worst series I have ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a fan of dwelling on old characters, but at least this moves the Trek timeline forward.

The latest episode of Trek - as the fictional timeline goes - Nemesis - is 16 years old.

It's criminal that a franchise whose overarching theme is optimistic futurism has been looking backwards for so long.

</comment><comment><USER13> It boggles my mind why creatives seem to always think that the audience wants "something different". You had a good thing going. Change up a few elements, improve a dew things, but give us more of the awesome formula that created a phenomenon in the first place. I would hate to see Stewart's latest effort go down the same drain as Enterprise and Discovery.

<comment><USER14> Different times. He stated that he's only now excited about returning to the role, and hadn't previously been the last 20 years, because he sees how bleak many people's outlook is about the world right now. He himself has uncharacteristically begun watching the TNG episodes for a dose of hope. So I think we will find the federation in a state of dis-unification (earth exiting the union? immigration problems?) and perhaps even Picard struggling to find and build hope.

<comment><USER15> That and the fact that his last popular role was an animated poo, which probably made a return to Trek seem like a big step up.

<comment><USER16> He is also hilarious as the CIA director in American Dad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love Patrick Stewart in Trek but, for me, his finest piece of acting will always be the quadruple take masterclass:

[https://youtu.be/XFMrBldVk0s](https://youtu.be/XFMrBldVk0s)

</comment><comment><USER18> Finally, I hope this has a hopeful version of the future like TNG

<comment><USER19> Yes, though I'm enjoying ST:Discovery, WestWorld, and The Expanse, I really miss optimistic sci-fi.

Is there anything like that out there now that I'm missing?

<comment><USER20> The Star Trek-clone "The Orville" is just that - with some added Seth Macfarlane humor.

I expected absolutely nothing from it but ended up really enjoying it. Only one season out so far.

<comment><USER21> Orville is clearly made by someone who loves star trek. It's a comedy but it has good stories that could have been TNG episodes.

<comment><USER22> His love of trek has been life long - he even made a fanfilm as a teenager! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_Sgcxg5PQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_Sgcxg5PQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm betting this will take the form of a clipshow where old Picard and Riker get drunk in a vineyard and remember the good old days.

</comment><comment><USER23> ...available on CBS' online subscription/original content service, CBS All Access.

Yeah, another subscription service. Sorry Jean-Luc, you've been assimilated for real this time.

<comment><USER24> Isn't that what cable was? Only this one you can buy for a month, binge, and cancel. It isn't all that bad.

<comment><USER23> TNG was over the air.

We're in a strange phase right now where these individual companies are creating content and you have to subscribe to each one. It's somewhere between cable where you pay one company for access to a whole lot, and paying for individual productions. Everyone thinks they can be the go-to place if they just produce some good stuff that you can get only from them. For me it's just too much bother, and if it say "CBS" I'm kinda wondering why it's not OTA in the first place.

I'll pick it up when if/when it's on blueray or <gasp> DVD.

<comment><USER24> They know OTA is dead and are trying to position themselves to not be beholden to Netflix, Hulu...etc, although that would be easier on us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Meta: Someone tried posting this same article yesterday and it was flagged. Now it's not flagged this time. Hacker News herd mentality?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17688773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17688773)

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe the arc will be him talking down an evil Wesley Crusher who is ravaging the federation in his mind controlled hyper warp ship :-).

More seriously I wonder how members of TNG feel about this move. The original voyage cast got 7 movies the TNG cast got 4, and the Abrahms crew has at least 3 movies (probably 4 if IMDB is to be believed)

So the cynic in me thinks this is just a grab at trying to save the Discovery series from an early demise (like the Enterprise series) by trying to slot in a character from a successful show. This worked at least once with ST:DS9 after all.

<comment><USER27> He is not joining Discovery it is going to be a new series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does this fit into the new timeline that the Abrams reboot creates? Will the new Picard series be in the TNG timeline?

<comment><USER29> The JJ Abrams movies have never been in the same timeline as the TV shows so the new show will be in the same timeline as TNG

<comment><USER30> Are the Abrams movies even Star Trek? Feels nothing like ST.

<comment><USER18> They are action movies. Star trek was never about action.

<comment><USER31> This has always been Star Trek's dichotomy. Many ships called Enterprise have been blown up (in a permanent, non-time travel magic way), and it happened in the movies.

The movies are action. The series are where the characters and universe are built.

<comment><USER10> Just messing up a ship doesn't make it action. For a canonical example, see the Titanic.

<comment><USER31> Star Trek movies are like if the Titanic had to fight off the combined fleets of all WW1 and WW2 powers.

There's a reason the ships get blown up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm quite surprised at this to be honest. I saw Patrick outside the Old Vic in London last year when he attended the Theatre Awards, and he looked very frail. Maybe it was a temporary thing that has now got better, but didn't expect to see him in another big movie.

</comment><comment><USER33> I bet it's a smaller role where he (more or less) plays Boothby.</comment>


Learn to play chess online - <AUTHOR> https://www.chesscademy.com <comment><USER2> For those who already know how to play chess but want to get better (preferably quickly with minimal, targeted training), I wrote a guide called "How to Get Good at Chess, Fast" that hit #2 on HN: [http://www.gautamnarula.com/how-to-get-good-at-chess- fast/](http://www.gautamnarula.com/how-to-get-good-at-chess-fast/)

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic, thank you for sharing this with the people who missed it the first time around.

<comment><USER2> Glad you found it useful! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment on the post and I'll get to it as soon as I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love chess, but I abstain from playing, because when I start, I become obsessed with it and it takes over my life. I spend more and more time training, doing analysis, reading up, playing, trying to get better at it and become very touchy about my rating number..

And then I ask myself - why should I get better at chess ? I already play better than everyone who doesn't play chess. I play worse than anyone who can dedicate 4-8 hours a day, every day, training. Why should my emotional well- being be a function of a number which is my rating in some online chess service ?

So I stop playing...

Anyone else experienced this ?

<comment><USER5> That's likely true with anything else in your life. I love to cook, I'm much better than people who doesn't cook but I'm worse than anyone who dedicates 4-8 hours a day every day.

But I don't care, I enjoy it so I keep doing it. Do you not enjoy chess enough to play it without needing another reason?

<comment><USER4> I rarely cook to win :).

You play chess to win and losing is stressful and unpleasant. So you train more to increase your chances of winning. I still enjoy playing just for fun, but after a couple of "fun" games, the competitive side kicks in and it stops being fun and becomes a goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's often instructive to watch great players play chess. ChessNetwork has a series of hundreds of videos in which he talks through every move of the games that he plays. I encourage budding chess players to check out his Youtube channel: [http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork](http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork)

<comment><USER7> I love the channel for the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. It has numerous lectures targeted for beginner, intermediate, and expert players that cover a wide range of topics while analyzing games. The lectures are given by various GMs and IMs. Check out Ben Finegold's lectures, He is a great teacher and never fails to crack me up.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub](https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I teach my beginning students simple openings like the London System as > white

This is not a good idea for a number of reasons. One is a d4 opening will lead to a more closed game, at which the beginner is at a disadvantage, since it requires a deeper understanding of positioning and strategy.

Two is the beginner will learn less if playing closed games initially. A beginner should aim for open games (1. e4) where they will have more opportunity to learn tactics. As they advance, they can move to closed game (1. d4) strategy.

Inevitably, you will play as black and some of your opponents will open with 1. d4. So you will be learning a little about closed games from the beginning even if you're never opening with them yourself.

One thing I did initially was just to usually play the same opening moves. As white, I always played 1. e4. As black, I would see what piece white moved, and then played the same response to that every time. This cut down on the openings I had to learn - at the end of move 1, the board was always in one of twenty positions, as opposed to one of forty positions, or one of sixty positions. Easy alpha-beta pruning.

For example, I never played the Italian Game as white. If white played it, I might play the Rousseau Gambit, which is probably not good against experts, but is good enough against beginners who depend on knowing the traps of the Italian Game. Even if they do 4. d4, you can do 4...fxe4 and then the board is wide open again, even if you're at a slight positional disadvantage.

</comment><comment> nevi-me I wish I had learnt to play when I was younger, i.e before my teens. I learnt as a teen while in secondary school, and it came at a time where I needed to learn some mental discipline.

In high school we used to coach younger kids from a neighboring primary school. Some kids would be all over the show, but the ones who did well picked up quite well. A few of them made provincial school tournaments, and fewer would make nationals. The gap in our training would then be apparent at that level because they'd be playing against kids who are learning enough chess theory, i.e endgame theory.

We once had someone in our team leading in material, but fail to mate her opponent, so sad yet funny because it was like a witch hunt, chasing the opponent king all over the show with a few pieces. We hadn't taught them some endgame tactics.

I think chess is one of those games that many people should try out. I'm glad I had a friend in the game when I went through painful teenage years.

<comment><USER9> > The gap in our training would then be apparent at that level because they'd > be playing against kids who are learning enough chess theory, i.e endgame > theory.

Openings are a vast area of theory as well.

I played competitive chess in my teens for a bit (my neighbor was insanely good at it and I got better just by being his punch bag) and I always refused to learn any theory. I think it's comparable to cheating on a test, it's supposed to be a game and a puzzle and I would feel the same if I learned how to solve a puzzle by memorizing solutions from a book.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, I had a similar outlook (although with Magic rather than chess :P), but got over it. Learning theory isn't like looking at the solution for a puzzle, it's like learning specific problem-solving skills. It doesn't take the challenge away but rather enables you to play at a higher level which, with a decent game, is going to be deeper, more interesting and more challenging.

Now I think of learning enough theory to get to an intermediate level (at least) is more like a ticket to play the game at all: the game I play now is qualitatively different from the game I used to play and broadly better. To be sure, it was still fun when I was floundering around, but competitive play with a high-level mental framework (and yes, some specific information directly copied from others) leads to far higher replay value.

I'm sure chess is the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lichess.org is fun too. I'm not much of a chess player but I sometimes find the chess puzzles to be fun at [http://en.lichess.org/training](http://en.lichess.org/training)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really useful, I like assortments of puzzles like these. They keep my brain sharp.

<comment><USER12> [http://chesstempo.com](http://chesstempo.com) is the state of the art for tactics puzzles auto-adjusted to your strength.

<comment><USER13> And for the ability to review already seen problems using spaced repetition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This site has promise, but I think the training section needs to become smarter. I worked through about 20 problems. None of them were challenging for me, but that's because I'm not in the target market (I'm about the same strength as the site's creator). However, what concerned me was that they didn't become more challenging at all. The difficulty seemed to randomly vary from one problem to the next. Given the capabilities available to an online system, the training exercises should quickly adapt to the level of the student.

Personally, while growing up, I spent many, many hours with a book of tactics by Maxim Blokh that had a numeric value assigned to each problem, corresponding to its difficulty. Telling the student the difficulty level is less than ideal (and can be avoided online), but the ability to focus on problems just outside of my "comfort zone" was an invaluable training tool.

</comment><comment><USER15> Your username rules don't allow hyphens but you don't lint them out of Facebook names :(

Cool site, though!

<comment><USER16> I have a space and an accent in my name.. Linking to FB completely prevented me from signing up. After getting the initial error, nothing else would work.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, me too. I can't tell if the system if just getting hammered, or if it is a problem with the FB integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was some chess tutorial going around online that I failed to properly bookmark. The tutorial was premised on the fact that for casual fun games, you shouldn't have to memorize a bunch of strategic openings and instead adopt some of the older methods of playing before everyone memorized everything.

Does anyone remember this and have a link to it?

<comment><USER19> That's usually the recommended way of learning chess:

1\. Basic moves and tactics

2\. Advanced tactics

3\. Strategy

4\. End game (when few pieces are left the board)

5\. Middle game

6\. And finally, openings

<comment><USER20> When I was taught by a GM, and the way I teach kids, start a bit different.

-Basic moves and tactics -Very simple endings (RR+K, then Q+K, finally R+K). Without this, many games between kids just can never even finish! -Strategy -Basic opening theory: Nothing memorized to even 5 moves, but evaluation of the first 2 or 3 opening moves in basic lines, built upon the basic chess knowledge we had been taught. This way we avoid very short games that teach little, because white was silly and started with G4, or moved their queen 5 times in a row.

After that, kid's games look like chess: They have a beginning, a middle and an end in a sensible number of moves and many moves are about gaining material. Once we reach that point, we really can start talking about higher level topics. It's only then were openings are left for the end, because understanding things like tension and weak squares is far more useful. Kids probably have played over a hundred games too, so they can also start to see patterns, so they start having to have some intuitions about combinations all by themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using chesscademy.com for like a year or more, they have excellent chess strategy puzzles. Problem is however that site has some annoying little bugs on touch devices that I've reported a few times and got zero response from owner, and AFAIK they still haven't fixed them. Also I've noticed that some puzzles started repeating quite often, which all led me to conclusion that this project has been abandoned?!

</comment><comment><USER22> This is for more advanced players:

When I played chess I liked Chessbase's products. They have their fingers in many pies, including engines, interactive trainings, game databases etc. Most of the content is created by IMs/GMs and is very good quality.

Unfortunately everything they do is Windows-only. Playchess, their online chess portal is on iOS and it's absolute crap compared to the Windows client.

</comment><comment><USER23> Chess is relatively easy to learn, but incredibly difficult to master (especially if you're just starting out but are old enough to be reading HN). It can also be really addictive. Many have made it in to a complete obsession. Reminds me of math in some ways, for its depth, beauty, and difficulty.

<comment><USER24> I entered that obsession. Then I realized just how long it would really take me to even get decent and stopped. Now I simply respect chess from a distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've gone to chessacademy.com before to see if this existed and it didn't. Thankful it does now!

<comment><USER26> psst- it still doesn't ;)

<comment><USER25> haha like codecademy before it! They get so mad when you say "Code Academy" too - still wonder why. That domain HAS to be available.

<comment><USER27> Woah, I didn't know. I _always_ thought it's "Code Academy" and everyone else around me referred to it this way. I hate it when people go too clever just to be cool.

<comment><USER25> Love Codecademy and they're good natured about it and can laugh at themselves, but they WILL correct you if you say it as two words :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For me, an invaluable companion for learning openings has been [http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/](http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/). The design of the site is unchanged since ca. 1995, but it works well.

<comment><USER29> in terms of openings I would also suggest

[http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online- databases/o...](http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online- databases/opening-database.html)

and

[http://chesstempo.com/chess-openings.html](http://chesstempo.com/chess- openings.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there anything similar for Go?

<comment><USER31> I'm about to start tutoring with a teacher in Go. We're going to be doing similar things. My weekly homework includes:

1\. 30 minutes of problems a day.

2\. Play 5 rated games (i.e. games that COUNT with 30+mins on the clock for each player) and record game

3\. Give a detailed review of my thoughts of 3 of those games

4\. Memorize any professional game and, at the start of the weekly tutoring session, replay it from memory for my sensei.

But in a more informal setting here's what I'd recommend:

1\. Immediately after finishing an in-person game, ask to review the game with your opponent from memory. Hopefully get a stronger player to watch you two reviewing the game, and maybe replay the game on a new board so that you can check the true board position to jog your memory.

2\. Do problems! The Elementary Go series from Kisiedo is good, as is the "Graded Go problems for beginners" series.

There are a handful of great Go teachers who post things on youtube. Nick Sibicky teachers at the Seattle Go Center and his videos are amazing. [https://www.youtube.com/user/nicksibicky](https://www.youtube.com/user/nicksibicky) Haylee is a korean professional who plays online and posts her videos. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTji1kQNoWIH85dB_Vxka9g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTji1kQNoWIH85dB_Vxka9g)

Get strong!!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> First time I tried chess on my phone. Fat finger is a usability problem with irreversible consequences. I had to abandon a game.

Maybe drag and drop is not the best interaction model here.

</comment><comment><USER33> Tried sign in via Facebook. My username wasn't accepted :(

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been using this the last couple of days, it is GREAT. I've been playing chess almost my whole life and I've learned so much.

</comment><comment><USER34> ... is it me or is a facebook login required?

</comment><comment><USER35> Good job. Does it have online PVP?

</comment><comment><USER36> can't even sign up after login with facebook. frustrated and go back playing chess on my ipad.</comment>


If OpenStack has won, then cloud computing has lost - <AUTHOR> http://ibuildthecloud.tumblr.com/post/55215029155/if-openstack-has-won-then-cloud-computing-has-lost <comment><USER2> Drivel dripping with sarcasm in a one post tumblr blog. I really hope this crap doesn't get any more upvotes.

>> The competition and choice is essential to the open web. Yet OpenStack wants to be the only game in town?

Yeah, because CloudStack and Eucalyptus are just going to disappear overnight. What do you expect from a presentation given at the OpenStack Summit? "Here's Why CloudStack is Great?" Ya, competition is good so if CloudStack disappears tomorrow you can create your own competitor, what's stopping you?

>> No, absolutely nothing has been commoditized.

Ok.

>> So if I pick up OpenStack or OtherStack they should be basically interchangeable.

They aren't? Given your example of a HTTP server I'm sure I can just slap my httpd.conf onto a ngix server and off I go, right?

>> I'm sorry, but I missed that term in my Operating Systems 101 class. Why? Because there is no definition.

You must have went to a school where you memorized terms and didn't learn to think for yourself. The idea is that OpenStack sits on top of hardware, the same way an OS sit on top of hardware. If you want to get all grammar nazi about it you won't score any points with anyone.

>> So somewhere, at some point, OpenStack completely lost focus and now solely focuses on promoting itself. As though the original problem was that we didn't have a thing called OpenStack and we have now filled that gap by creating OpenStack.

What does this even mean?

>> So can we get serious now about commoditizing the cloud?

Yeah dude, Amazon, Red Hat, HP, and IBM haven't already done this or anything.

>> I have some thoughts there…

Sure, I'll be back for your 2nd post but I hope it has some actual substance.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree.

I think the problem is that the definition of what a "Cloud Operating system" is actually is quite loose. Mine would include compute, storage, and networking.

And truly, by this definition, OpenStack _did_ achieve something and filled a gap, as it integrated all these components (and so did CloudStack / Eucalyptus).

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia opens up to describe an operating system as "a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs".

Since the majority of the programs we build today run on servers, not desktops, we needed new APIs to compute / storage / network. A new class of OS provides these, which we call IaaS or Cloud Computing. Some of these new OSes also provide the aforementioned 'common services' such as datastores or event loops.

I think the excitement lies around having an open source OS for programming your infrastructure to, instead of a (nevertheless excellent) proprietary one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the main goal is not to make cloud software the commodity, but rather to make IaaS a commodity, so that there will be multiple vendors of IaaS that are largely interchangeable.

There are today a number of public clouds that run OpenStack, of which HP Cloud and Rackspace Cloud are the two most visible. Because they're all running OpenStack, they are (hopefully) going to be interchangeable commodities. There's still some way to go, but we're much further along than we would be without OpenStack.

I believe also that having multiple implementations is not discouraged (but is not the primary goal). The APIs are distinct from the implementation and you are welcome to re-implement them (the docs make a distinction between e.g. the Identity API and the Keystone Identity implementation). I do think it would be interesting to experiment with alternative implementations. Many people, for example, replace the Swift storage component with Ceph, as both support the Openstack Object Storage API.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think commoditizing the cloud, in the sense of attempting to make all cloud providers ferature-for-feature compatible, is the right goal either. Sure, ideally we'd like if it possible to easily migrate our entire stack from one cloud host to another with minimal disruption, but frankly it doesn't happen that often, so that's too narrow a use case for OpenStack to try to solve.

Instead OpenStack's intent is you have a bunch of hardware in a datacenter, then you use this software to make your own cloud on that hardware. That in turn opens up the market for more cloud providers. Obviously Amazon offers the most mature feature set in that space so trying to offer similar features as Amazon is a worthy goal.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought the NIST definition for cloud computing was fairly succinct. The five essential characteristics are:

      1. On-demand self service
      2. Broad network access
      3. Resource pooling
      4. Rapid elasticity
      5. Measured service

I'm fairly certain Openstack as well as Eucalyptus and Cloudstack all meet that definition.

<comment><USER8> Yup. And you can add Open Nebula to the list.

BTW, given that NIST uses Eucalyptus, you could argue that Eucalyptus meets not just the formal definition of cloud computing, but also the practical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting start but seems unfinished. I'd like it to go into more detail/support of the arguments.

</comment><comment><USER10> A couple of problems with this writeup.

First:

Actually, commoditization is about when an atomic capability becomes tradable/sellable:

GOOG says "A raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee." ([http://www.google.com/search?q=define+commodity](http://www.google.com/search?q=define+commodity))

Coffee, copper, coal, and oil, all are differentiated. There is light sweet crude, heavy crude, and others. Copper from different mines has different properties and quality. Coffee is highly variable. Yet all are commodities.

The base unit doesn't have to be exactly the same, it just has to be measurable in terms of value so that you can compare one against the other.

This assertion has been corroborated in recent debates I had with an ex- commodities broker who was very clear that the commodities he bought and sold were quite frequently differentiated and variable.

For those who care, that was Dr. James Mitchell, CEO of CloudOptions, who was previously Global Head of Commodities for Morgan Stanley. Blog postings here: [http://www.cloudoptions.com/blog/](http://www.cloudoptions.com/blog/)

Second:

This article's argument is essentially that if OpenStack is the winner, then everyone else loses. This is not a zero sum game, so there can be multiple winners, but just as with Linux, it's likely that there will be a very small number of winners and those will mostly dominate and then there will be a very long tail.

Linux success (as you can see in my original slide deck) meant that UNIX and other early x86 UNIX derivatives (e.g. SCO UNIX, 386BSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) essentially "lost". But Linux "winning" meant that we have a relatively standardized server operating system running globally, which actually increases competitiveness, allows for people to focus their learning and knowledge, and makes everyone's life better. The conclusion that is leapt to isn't really supported by any evidence. It's simply asserted.

I say this as a long time BSD guy. I wasn't happy that Linux won, but I am happy that we have a relatively standard server operating system.

Finally:

To imagine that this will be any different with the cloud operating system wars is nonsensical. Clearly there will be one or two major winners and OpenStack is positioned to be the primary winner at the moment.

<comment><USER10> Also read this:

[http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/2009/02/fast_iteration_ver...](http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/2009/02/fast_iteration_versus_elegant.html)

Fast iteration wins. OpenStack is far ahead in this regard and only picking up speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cant' you use open stack as part of a virtual private cloud that includes AWS?

</comment><comment><USER12> It won, partly, because is has nothing to do with Java App Servers.)</comment>


Don't Expect OS X 10.7 Not to be locked like AppStore. Jobs says, "Nope" - <AUTHOR> http://www.macgasm.net/2010/04/26/dont-expect-os-x-10-7-to-be-locked-down-like-the-appstore-steve-says-nope/

<comment><USER2> What? The article title says "Don't expect OS X 10.7 to be locked down like the AppStore. Steve says, "Nope."" Where did the "Not" double negative come from? Please fix this title and I'll vote it up

<comment><USER3> The HN title is even worse.

"Don't expect OS X 10.7 Not to be locked down like the AppStore. Steve says, "Nope.""

This entire article/submission reeks of crack-baby nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Steve responded to this? The witty should have been: "Did your fucking brain fall out of your skull?" Of course people at HN were taking it seriously....

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1292436></comment>