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GNU is Not Unix

IEEE Spectrum Open Source issue 26

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-login dept.
David McWha writes "The cover story of the May issue of IEEE Spectrum is on open source systems, and gives a good balanced view of the competition between Windows NT and various Unices (including Linux). There is a nice unbiased review of the pros and cons of each. The whole story from the history through to the commercial model of open source is there. The article is available online, but you have to be an IEEE member to get in, so join! "
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IEEE Spectrum Open Source issue More

IEEE Spectrum Open Source issue

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  • Re:Ironic (and moronic also) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That is ironic. I think /. should do a little legwork in situations like this and actually contact the content provider and ask if they can post an excerpt or something. It's fine to hear about the article but you should know that most are not going to pay a membership fee to read this article. How about providing your members a real service and do so actual work instead of letting your users do it for you.

  • Join the IEEE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    99.99999% ??? , oh come on, you should join for
    three reasons ...
    1) They provide a forum for issues concerning engineers.
    2) They provide benefits like access to portable health insurance which is important in an industry where most jobs only last 2 to 3 years and most companies last less than five years or so.
    3) They lobby for your rights in Washington; this is necessary to counter the increased spending (bribery?) by companies like Microsoft on special laws to benefit them and hurt engineers.

  • I think that the introduction of restrictions on links to non-free content on /. would be a bad idea. I think that it is valuable for one to know that IEEE Spectrum published such an article, even if one can't read it online. If Rob and/or someone else in the crew thinks it's worth putting up, then fine. The /. item was very explicit that the Spectrum article wasn't available to non-IEEE members, so no one should have been surprised when they found that there wasn't any way around it.

    It's not like there isn't any filter on /. content... I've submitted maybe a dozen stories and not a one has been picked up (except maybe one or two that was put up when someone else submitted them a couple of weeks later... I'm sure everyone who submits stories has had this happen).

    BTW, the IEEE is doing much better on keeping up with current events in their publications; the print journals are still dismally behind the times, but they have taken to publishing much more stuff online, and the membership includes good access even to stuff you don't subscribe to (subscribing to one journal can get you access to the online stuff in some other journals).

  • Re:"Protected" Content and Pirating (Score:3)

    by Rene S. Hollan ( 1943 ) on Monday May 24, 1999 @05:58AM (#1881375)
    I disagree.

    It should be up to /.ers to decide what's "exceptional". Do we really want /. to filter the news to us like the major media players do?

    Perhaps some sort of per-article tag, relating to kind of content, restrictions, etc. could be used so that indivudual /.ers could select appropriate filters for themselves.

    As for copyright violation, I don't see that as Rob's problem.
  • It should be up to /.ers to decide what's "exceptional". Do we really want /. to filter the news to us like the major media players do?

    I don't know whether "we" want it or not, but I am pretty certain there's some filtering going on, anyhow. I'm 1 for 4 when it comes to seeing stories I've submitted appear. I'm not complaining about this state of affairs, either. I read Slashdot precisely because it's a filter. It's what I 'pay' Rob et al for when I get rid of that adfu.blockstackers.com line in my Junkbuster configs.


    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • Or a (well stocked) news stand? Or maybe a friend who is a member?

    IEEE is a non-profit professional organization. The costs they charge just cover the services they give.
  • An article about Open Source software and the article itself isn't viewable except by members.

    A bit ironic, I agree, but I wager it is available in the library of every university in the world with engineering or comp sci.

    /. provides pointers to interesting articles I wouldn't otherwise see. Surely this goes double for member-only publications, and you might just look out for it next time you are in the library.

    I was once a member of IEEE, the organization itself sucks like hell, at least here in Mexico. I really regretted shelling out the money to subscribe, specially being a hungry student at the time (and their "computer" mag was always late on everything, playing catch-up to byte, etc).

    I couldn't disagree more. For students IEEE is incredible value for money. Last year I paid US$46 for 30 issues of 3 high quality technical publications - $1.50 each! Plus other member benefits. Full membership is more expensive, but try hitting up your employer for a "technical development" cost.

    IEEE Computer is not trying to compete with Byte, it has a lot more technical and theoretical detail, it's not a consumer mag.

  • Well, okay, you're right. You almost convinced me to join and support the standards groups. And I should have been more specific about which part of the IEEE I was talking about. But whether or not to join wasn't at issue, since I didn't want to *have* to join them in order to read an article posted on /.

  • It would be nice to be able to filter out any article that requires a signup to read.

    BN

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 24, 1999 @06:40AM (#1881383)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • An article about Open Source software and the article itself isn't viewable except by members.

    I was once a member of IEEE, the organization itself sucks like hell, at least here in Mexico. I really regretted shelling out the money to subscribe, specially being a hungry student at the time (and their "computer" mag was always late on everything, playing catch-up to byte, etc).

    I coincide, /. shouldn't display pay-subscription-site news. Like the guy said, 99.9999% of us won't subscribe just to read the thing.

    -elf

  • "Protected" Content and Pirating (Score:3)

    by L1zard_K1n6 ( 39154 ) on Monday May 24, 1999 @05:27AM (#1881385)
    It would probably behoove /. to not make links to "member-only" articles unless they are extremely exceptional. Not only is it a pain in the rump for the 99.99999% of us who are not, nor will ever be, IEEE members, but it encourages some here to "pirate" the article and paste it in here, which I would assume runs counter to the intention of having it on a members-only site to begin with.

  • "Protected" Content and Pirating (Score:5)

    by Weezul ( 52464 ) on Monday May 24, 1999 @05:57AM (#1881386)
    Perhaps we should have a policy of making ``more desciptive posts'' when we make links to member only sites, i.e. ask for a summery with any link to a members only site. This seems like a good policy since it allows potentially valuble content to be posted and those of us who don't want to join can still get the message.

    In this case it would have been worth providing a basic list of what they liked and didn't like about the various OSes. This could probable have been done in one paragraph without even a hint of copyright enfriengment.
  • those banner ads at the top of these pages probably go to fattening the pockets of the "team".
    Actually, the income from banner ads probably goes to fatten the pockets of the ISP where /. colocates its server. And it probably paid for the server. And the ever-increasing disk space required to archive insightful (and less so) comments.
  • But it is clear that the people that the IEEE does serve are their members only. That's not including me or thousands of other /. readers.
    You know that ethernet that you probably use, that /. uses, that everyone else uses? IEEE Std. 802.3. The standard for UNIX? IEEE 1003. SCSI? That's an IEEE standard, too. Standards development isn't cheap; editors cost money. (They gotta eat, too.)

    Standards development is just one of the services the IEEE performs for the industry at large. There are others.

    Full disclosure: I chair an IEEE standards working group. I personally know people who work for the IEEE standards department. It's likely that little money from the IEEE pubs department goes towards supporting the standards effort at the IEEE; this is merely an example.

  • Here is the actual article, right on the IEEE site... :)

    http://www.spectrum. ieee.org/spectrum/may99/features/work.html [ieee.org]

    -r
  • Oops, forgot include the username/password. Sorry about that.

    Username: spectrum98
    Password: tempid

    -r

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