Slashdot Mirror

Okaaay, what we have here is either an impostor or a revenant. Personally I'm voting impostor since the poster misses the point altogether, and even the reanimated corpse of this brilliant fellow wouldn't misunderstand something this simple so fundamentally.

There is an EICAR-like test for spam already, the GTUBE. However, what the EICAR and GTUBE tests are intended to accomplish is to determine whether any given hunk of input is in fact being scanned for unwanted content (be it spam, malware, or what have you) or whether it has successfully been obfuscated to the point that the filter misses it altogether. It's not a suitable test for the effectiveness of a filter at catching the evolving stream of real-world spam or malware.

Just to pick one out-and-out lie from the general confusion of your posting:

Excuse me, but the open-source community wrote Apache from standards they didn't write.

So, in fact, the open source folks who wrote Apache and its predecesors are the folks who wrote the standards.

So as I posted on your site, the above statment is downright slanderous, and you should retract it.

http://www.objectstyle.org/cayenne/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://ant.apache.org/

Choose any database you want. Tapestry is simply AMAZING!!! Everything is a component. It is like have all of the coolest legos and building sites in not time. Also, if you don't like the block, it is EASY to make custom components. Howard Lewis Ship is a genius.

Okay, the Java world needs to really wake up and start buying into Cayenne. Get off the Hibernate kick!!! All I see is ways to improve Hibernate and Cayenne already has it all in place. Plus Cayenne and Tapestry were made for each other.

J2EE was a nice try, but way, WAY too complicated. Both Cayenne and Tapestry are straight-forward and easy to use, IMHO!!!

http://www.objectstyle.org/cayenne/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://ant.apache.org/

Choose any database you want. Tapestry is simply AMAZING!!! Everything is a component. It is like have all of the coolest legos and building sites in not time. Also, if you don't like the block, it is EASY to make custom components. Howard Lewis Ship is a genius.

Okay, the Java world needs to really wake up and start buying into Cayenne. Get off the Hibernate kick!!! All I see is ways to improve Hibernate and Cayenne already has it all in place. Plus Cayenne and Tapestry were made for each other.

J2EE was a nice try, but way, WAY too complicated. Both Cayenne and Tapestry are straight-forward and easy to use, IMHO!!!

http://www.objectstyle.org/cayenne/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://ant.apache.org/

Choose any database you want. Tapestry is simply AMAZING!!! Everything is a component. It is like have all of the coolest legos and building sites in not time. Also, if you don't like the block, it is EASY to make custom components. Howard Lewis Ship is a genius.

Okay, the Java world needs to really wake up and start buying into Cayenne. Get off the Hibernate kick!!! All I see is ways to improve Hibernate and Cayenne already has it all in place. Plus Cayenne and Tapestry were made for each other.

J2EE was a nice try, but way, WAY too complicated. Both Cayenne and Tapestry are straight-forward and easy to use, IMHO!!!

Only a few has got computers here. But there are lot of activities happenning to change it. Including a project to put tens of thousands of GNU/Linux boxes in rural homes

Looks like many are thinking we are looking for FOSS as a cheap alternative, which is only a part of the story. We are more interested in the flexibility and independence than the cost itself.

And in terms of contribution, Sri Lanka hasn't been idle. For example, most of the Apahce Web Services contributers, including the lead, are living here.

Ok,

Weighing in with my two cents worth, for what it's worth, I'd like to brain dump what I would consider worth while options for your needs. All of these are solutions I either have used in the past successfully, or am currently using for various purposes. So bear in mind that this is not just the causal musings of a thread cruiser, but actual tried and proven solutions ;-)

First some basic assumptions:

1) You want to run some form of Unix or Unix like system ( i.e. Linux ) - you've noted you currently use your Apple PowerBook laptop, so one has to assume you're running Mac OS X 10.x.x natively ( more power to you ).

2) You want complete control over the system including "root" access 24/7 - this is of course the whole point of having your own system, you can beat it up, break it, rebuild it, and all that jazz.

3) The system should be able to be run remotely, even if just headless on your LAN, or perhaps more ideally remotely from some external 3rd party in a hosted solution so you don't end up having to host it behind your link at home ( also making it easier for you to provide access to other parties should you want to either share it with friends and family or if you just want to make it world visible for whatever reason - i.e. your own mail and web server et al ).

4) You want an "always on" solution, so this should be something that, as you state, should not suck too much juice power wise, is able to be built with a "standard build" style hardened platform, which in the case of power loss would ideally recover nicely, quickly, and be back on line ( I'll touch on this later as standard builds are going to make your life so much simpler and fun ).

5) The performance of the system ideally should be such that it will cope with the key elements you've noted in your post, such as:

a) remote access such as remote sessions via SSH won't kill the system

b) able to run a web server such as:

thttpd: http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/
Apache: http://www.apache.org/
mathopd: http://mathop.diva.nl/
Roxen: http://www.roxen.com/
Boa: http://www.boa.org/
Jigsaw: http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/ ( written in Java )
Acme.Serve: http://www.acme.com/java/software/Acme.Serve.Serve .html ( written in Java )
CERN: http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html
NCSA: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
Netscape FastTrack: http://home.netscape.com/ ( not sure if it's still available )
Netscape Enterprise: http://home.netscape.com/ ( not sure if it's still available )
Zeus: http://www.zeus.co.uk/

source: http://www.acme.com

I reckon if computers and gigabit networks were free, we'd already have a bunch of FOSS google killers. Lucene would probably be a good starting point.

I know you posted it joking, but you have to consider their monopoly. They are the best, their results are the most accurate, etc. Just have a look at the study Yahoo vs Google that Slashdot covered recently. Without Google, the web would be harder to use, and documents harder to find. What I think the the GP meant is free "as in freedom". The English language uses the term "free" for freedom and gratuity, but a free/libre distributed search engin is a good idea. There are already some projects like these, the only one I can remember of is Nutch.

Google is great, but you will really miss an alternative when they fall.

1) ACEGI - Aspect-orientaded-programming using a dependency injection model to replace or complement JAAS for authentication and authorization in an Application server independant way. A subproject of the Spring framework:

http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net/docbook/acegi .html/

2) XML Encryption and XML Digital Signatures. Used in Web Service security or independently.

http://xml.apache.org/security/

http://ws.apache.org/wss4j/

3) Container managed security implemented in every servlet container on the market, including tomcat.

In short, I'd like to see a comparison of the features and availablity of what people actually use in their applications, rather than an entirely fudgable comparison of reported/unreported security flaws.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -- Goethe"

iksrazal

1) ACEGI - Aspect-orientaded-programming using a dependency injection model to replace or complement JAAS for authentication and authorization in an Application server independant way. A subproject of the Spring framework:

http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net/docbook/acegi .html/

2) XML Encryption and XML Digital Signatures. Used in Web Service security or independently.

http://xml.apache.org/security/

http://ws.apache.org/wss4j/

3) Container managed security implemented in every servlet container on the market, including tomcat.

In short, I'd like to see a comparison of the features and availablity of what people actually use in their applications, rather than an entirely fudgable comparison of reported/unreported security flaws.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -- Goethe"

iksrazal

It sounds like you may be interested in Nutch, a sub-project of Lucene. Nutch is a full search engine package (fetcher, indexer, searcher, etc.), made to work in a cluster, etc. Of course, at the core of indexing and searching functionality is Lucene.

Typical search engines have licensing fees associated with them if you're embedding them in your application. This is basically an open source alternative. And you can customize the hell out of it. I've used it on several web-based applications and on SOA platforms, and it is fast, reliable, and easy to use. Did I mention it's open source? Take a look at the Apache site.

Some examples of customizable features are that you can index database entries and achieve quantum leaps in performance over that offered by Oracle, MySQL, PostGres, Firebird, etc. indexing. You can index formats that are not supported by the major search enginges.

It may not offer quite the performance of Google, Alta Vista, etc., but it's a FREE product, well supported by the folks at Apache, and many open source J2EE frameworks support it as well.

the Lucene (http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene) indexer will be inplememtned within Hula the web and cal application (http://hula-project.org/Hula_Server) made from open sourced Novell NetMail code. Samples of the search engine have been comitted and should start functioning within weeks, just in time for the new cal UI, which you can now view a demo of here: http://nat.org/2005/august/hula.html That's looking to be an amazing app...

I just add a bit on that list from top of my head.
Although I think the listed app goes beyond what the so called 'average pc user' wants, but there goes...

1. Konqueror ( http://www.konqueror.org/ )

2. Email - Sylpheed ( http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ )

3. I think Evolution is more like in this place.

4. Lately "Sound Juicer" is taking more attention too

5. VideoLAN aka VLC ( http://www.videolan.org/ ) and Ogle ( http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/ ) [and Goggles ( http://www.fifthplanet.net/goggles.html ) for Ogle GUI wrapper] for DVD watching.

6. There are plenty way to do this, but the typical ones could be 'Jinzora' ( http://www.jinzora.org/ ) and 'MusicPD' ( http://www.mpd.org/ ), even plain Apache does it fine too, in a way.

8. If you want easier to manage iptables wrapper, Shorewall ( http://www.shorewall.net/ ) and there are other wrappers too.

9. KOffice ( http://www.koffice.org/ ) and by individual components, Abiword ( http://www.abisource.com/ ), Gnumeric ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ ), Gnucash ( http://www.gnucash.org/ )

10. Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) or Sodipodi ( http://www.sodipodi.com/ ) for vector graphics.

11. Miranda ( http://miranda-im.org/ ). Windows only.

13. Hmm , Samba? ( http://www.samba.org/ ), WedDAV (Look parent post), FTP (plenty ftp daemons, ex : http://www.proftpd.org/, http://vsftpd.beasts.org/ etc)

16. GPhoto ( http://www.gphoto.org/ ), EOG ( http://www.gnome.org/ ? ), GQView ( http://gqview.sourceforge.net/ ). The latters are for just viewing mainly.

20. FreeNX ( http://www.nomachine.com/ , http://freenx.berlios.de/ ) http://www.poptop.org/ ), L2TPd ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/l2tpd ), RP-L2TPd ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/rp-l2tp/ )

24. Postfix ( http://www.postfix.org/ ), Sendmail ( http://www.sendmail.org/ ), Exim ( http://www.exim.org/ ), Cyrus ( http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/ ), Xmail ( http://www.xmailserver.org/ ), qmail ( http://www.qmail.org/ )

25. Spamassassin ( http://spamassassin.apache.org/ )

26. Same as above.

27. XSane ( http://www.xsane.org/ ) for sane frontends.

30. Buzzmachines ( http://www.buzzmachines.com/ ) I could be wrong...

31. 'various GUI frontends' - X CD Roast ( http://www.xcdroast.org/ ), K3B ( http://k3b.sourceforge.net/ )

32. Don't know any opensource ones...

But in the top right corner there's still a "search this site with google" (http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/).

How cute!

don't know if you've got enough upload, but try http://httpd.apache.org/ I've got no problems with my DIY web hosting, but YMMV.

From apache.org: 'Apache', 'Apache Software Foundation', the multicoloured feather, and the various Apache project names are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation, and are usable by others only with permission.

"Microsoft apache" would violate the Apache Software Foundation's trademark, unless Microsoft licensed the trademark from the Apache Software Foundation.

I don't know if PHP is trademarked. At any rate, Microsoft could add PHP support to IIS. If PHP is trademarked, then they would need to obtain a license, or call it something else.

As an example of the last case, I2C is a Phillips trademark. There are a number of chips such as Atmel microcontrollers which implement the I2C protocol. But, to get around the trademark licensing requirements, they don't call it I2C. They call it TWI (Two Wire Interface). It's the exact same protocol, but they can't call it by it's real name unless they obtain a license from Phillips.

I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt...

Free as in Speech, as long as you don't use our Trademark.

But a lot of open source licenses have exactly this restriction, like the Apache License

6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.

And lots of others too, mainly extending from the time when Open Source was driven from universities Berkely, MIT who didn't want their 'Trademark' abused.

You can compress html pages.. Try reading about the apache module mod_deflate. Gzip works fine.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.h tml

If you viewed the source of google and their css files you will see that they even remove the whitespace and rename javascript variables to be shorter.

I would also argue that most bandwidth usage is not on text (html, css, xml or whatever). But most bandwidth is used for images, archives, video and audio. JPEG, GZ, DIVX, MP3 are all efficient.

Apparently it has pretty much everything in it. Java though, so it's not for the extreme performance peopel.

I had some data, I wanted to lay it out graphically, a little perl script to transform it and *poof!* there it was!

Although, batik is a little bit slow. Hmpf. The Adobe plugin is nice though.

What is this new technology

SVG? New? Not that is news! SVG 1.1 was ratified on the 14th of January, 2003. Most SVG users either view the files in the Adobe Plugin, or translate to raster images for vector charting and the like. (I actually had a pretty cool 3D pie chart program for awhile there. SVG came out of one end, translated by Batik, then viewed as a PNG.)

why should I care about it

You shouldn't. It's just technology marching on. If you need to do vector graphics, you'll find it far more up-to-date and better supported than PostScript. If you don't need to do Vector graphics (or don't even know what vector graphics ARE) then you definitely don't care.

As a computer expert of 20 years and programmer of 15 years, how will this effect me?

You'll need a new bullet-point on your resume in a few years?

Will I have to learn totally new things, or does it build on the old ones?

You know XML? You know PostScript? How about ECMAScript? Yes? You're good to go then.

Who owns the patents to this new technology?

It's older than the hills technology. I dunno, maybe my great grandmother had a patent at some point, but there are none now. (Unless someone invents a stupid one like "Method for storing Vector graphics in XML." Hmm... maybe it is patented.)

Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?

Microsoft Internet Explorer (Exploder in my book) needs the Adobe plugin. AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it.

• How about that spiffy big Postfix or Sendmail box you've got sitting out there, whose sole purpose in life is to act as a relay? Sure, it'll process millions of messages per day. It doesn't have to do much.
• What if you're running a virus checker like ClamAV or a spam checker like SpamAssassin? Those take up CPU cycles. Sure, delivery is slower, but value was added.
• What if your back end mail system is something like the Citadel groupware platform, where MIME content drives an event handler system? Again, delivery is impacted, but the functionality of the system depends on it.
• What if your org has a global directory and your mail hub is responsible for making complex routing decisions for each message? Again, delivery is impacted; it'll be slower than the mega-fast-box, but mail won't be delivered correctly otherwise!

I just saved a client a ton of hassle and money by showing him how to use host headers on his Windows 2003 web server... he bought 50+ domain names and was going to have them all pointing at the same website. He inquired with his ISP about buying unique IPs and they were going to charge him $5/month/IP. For a small business, that's a lot of money to spend on something like that. Using host headers didn't cost him a thing (other than an hour of my time, which was part of a larger project anyway) and he can manage them himself now.

Apache calls this "name-based virtual host" (link) and points out that it doesn't work with SSL - you need a unique IP for that.

You might not care, since you're not into hosting/server management, but it's always worth learning something new.

"where menu links will change without having to manually change them in each page"

I think your looking for SSI, not CSS. SSI will allow you to "include" a menu page on all your other pages. If you make a change to that menu page, it appears sitewide instantly. It's like Dreamweaver "Templates", but usable.

The post above mentions mod_gzip - that will work if you're using apache 1. If you're using apache 2, the module you'll need is mod_deflate.

It's not hard to set up and works well.

Continuations have made their way into Apache Cocoon, too.

Some very sick people disagree...

Some future version of Tomcat should have built-in content parsing in its filters so that filter writers could write simple filters to transform content in a meaningful way. But I haven't seen that as a proposal anywhere.

You almost make it sound as if this is the first OSS search engine out there. Apache Jakarta's Nutch, a subproject of Lucene, has been around for over two years. I haven't done tons of research on the subject, so I'm betting Nutch isn't the only one.

Many, many sites do this. Apache backed by load-balanced Tomcats is a great way to scale. This has the potential to kill midsized sites that need more than a standalone server but can't afford Big Iron.

I'd say this guy is merely a pro-MS zealot, exactly like the anti-MS zealots here on Slashdot that he bashes.

Let's look at the article piece by piece:

Recap on alternative/joke names for MS.

States explicitely that "I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!". He's clearly already marked out his opinion as essentially content-less uninformed flaming, exactly what he complains about when it happen to MS.

Calls Windows a "pioneering effort". Now, I'm no Linux or Mac fanboy, but I was under the distinct impression that Windows had very little innovation compared to the Mac. IIRC various Microsofties have even admitted as much before, albeit off the record.

Regurgitates the long-disproven "popularity => more successful breakins" argument. More popularity equals more cracking attempts, I'll grant you, but that's not the same as successful security breaches. And anyway, haven't we already disproven this whole argument?

"Considering the fact that everyone who knows how to write two bits of code dreams of hitting windows with a virus, the guys at the "Redmond Giant" are doing a spectacular job."

Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaaa! As everyone knows, the two main groups who write viruses are security professionals offering a "proof of concept", and script kiddies. The overwhelming majority of coders/developers have never written (or certainly released) a virus in their lives.

In addition, given it's mostly VBScript kiddies - who are almost universally poor programmers - the runaway success of most Windows viruses is even more damning.

"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it."

Dunno what version of windows he's using, and not to deny Windows has got better over the years, but I still have plenty of issues even these days with unrecognised hardware, pieces of hardware detected twice, crashes due to dodgy device drivers, etc.

"In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem!"

Now, I'm not that au fait with the low-level Windows or Linux processes, but I understood that they both used monolithic kernels (ie, drivers not in userland). Surely this means that Windows also has to "recompile" the kernel when the device drivers change? If so it might be hidden behind a pretty user-interface, but it's the same damn architecture and the same design problem.

Tackles the anti-trust cases. Totally ignores Microsoft's documented illegal behaviour and instead blames it on jealousy from competitors. Riiiiiight...

Suggests Sun and Oracle's business models are based around sueing Microsoft. Is he confusing "Sun" with (the Microsoft-backed) SCO, and "Microsoft" with Linux?

He's actually suggesting these companies sue Microsoft because they see it as an easy revenue-earner, rather than a highly risky attempt at redress against the richest organisation (with the most expensive and persuasive legal team) in the world. Mind-boggling.

"Microsoft made some products which it would like to ship together with its OS, no where in the EULA does it say that "you are not authorized to install other software" If Mr. John Doe thinks media player is the worst piece of software he has ever used, he is free to go and download Winamp or Musicmatch Jukebox (neither of these offer free full versions)."

Yeah, they don't write it into the EULA where anyone could see it, but you don't need to do that when you've got the CEO of Dell's balls in your office drawer. It's harder to prove, and leaves less obvious marks for the next lawsuit.

Oh, and the key thi

I suggest a homegrown solution. If you primarily need to archive (but not search) emails then just use PostgreSQL (or MySQL i suppose).
If you'll need to search them, forget a database and use a Lucene index. You could also store all the text verbatim in lucene and forget the database.

With apache you can host as many domain as you like on on IP check NameVirtualHost
So many ISPs (especially small ISPs) host as many domains as one physical server (1 ip-adress) is capable of. So having hundreds of domains of one IP-adress is very common and one of the reason why there's still (ipv4) IP-adresses even if internet/domain usage is increasing.

• Some ancient clients are not compatible with name-based virtual hosting. For name-based virtual hosting to work, the client must send the HTTP Host header. This is required by HTTP/1.1, and is implemented by all modern HTTP/1.0 browsers as an extension. If you need to support obsolete clients and still use name-based virtual hosting, a possible technique is discussed at the end of this document.
• Name-based virtual hosting cannot be used with SSL secure servers because of the nature of the SSL protocol.
• Some operating systems and network equipment implement bandwidth management techniques that cannot differentiate between hosts unless they are on separate IP addresses.

Yes! It is. It's called virtual hosting.

How about FOP?

FOP FAQ

        BugBear

What I'm really after is an EPS to SVG converter so that I can use them with Apache's FOP tool.

Any suggestions?

> It sounds like you don't actually know Perl or Lisp,

You make a lot of wrong assumptions. I noticed that about you.

I know them both. I use Perl regularly, and I haven't used Lisp for a few years.

> So please share your source of wisdom that tells you
> that "the human brain takes more naturally to a straight-forward imperative languages"?

Gee, why don't you ask, you know, programmers! If Lisp was easier than Java, don't you think, it would be, like MORE POPULAR - maybe.

Instead you've got cases like where Yahoo ditches Lisp. For what? PHP! Oh, the humanity.

> If you've only seen programs represented by XML "a couple of times",

Sorry - that was my mistake - I meant a couple of 'programming environments' - one called 'JMeter' (http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter) and one called 'webMethods' (proprietary - webmethods.com). Both represent programs as XML, but have visual IDEs on top. I've had to read and modify these XML programs on a few occasions (IDE bugs/ convenience etc) and it was painful.

> Your own ignorance and incomprehension are not valid arguments that a language is flawed.

They're missing, and so is your argument.

> You declare that Lisp is unnatural for the human brain, but maybe
> it's your brain that's impared?

Your Lisp fanboy-hood is showing.
This is a case of bad tools blaming the carpenter.

> Your mistaken belief that declarative languages [c2.com]
> are hard to understand might have been caused by learning
> BASIC as your first language.

What is this 'childhood trauma by exposure to Basic' nonsense you're spouting? Are you serious? Dijkstra wasn't (at least I hope so... unless he is mentally damaged himself).

Do you think there some conspiracy to damage people's brains by teaching them imperative languages first? Break out the tinfoil hats people!

You really _so_ underestimate the human brain.

> Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in Selected Writings on Computing:
> A Personal Perspective that "It is practically impossible to teach
> good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to
> BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond
> hope of regeneration."

He's wrong. :) And since you so uncritically accepted his hyperbole, you're wrong.

Here's wikiquote on Dijkstra:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra
"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California."

I thought eBay used Java, no?
Technorati uses Java and is pretty big [1].
Simpy [2] uses Java.
Indeed [3] uses Java.
All 3 use Lucene [4] (Java search engine)

[1] http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=technorati.com
[2] http://simpy.com/
[3] http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=indeed.com
[4] http://lucene.apache.org/

Perl is also a nice choice. Sites Running mod_perl

I totally agree. At their core, web services are a common protocol (eg. SOAP) that allow disparate systems to communicate. As far as discoverable services, have the lawyers checked out http://www.uddi.org? in addition, servers such as juddi from apache (and many others) already implement this protocol.

Ultimately though, isn't having "discoverable" services very similar to things like jndi, ldap, and even DNS? what, is amazon gonna patent these as well?!

I hope my American counterparts put an end to this silliness. Surely, Amazon wasn't the first to come up with these ideas, so taking credit for it and being rewarded monetarily seems ridiculous. Monetary reward for a good idea is what a patent is for isn't it?

If I am not mistaken, I think .NET 2.0 was pulled (or at least significantly scaled back)and would be included as a later stand alone addition/download (a la WinFS).

XAML, if you want to do a little reading for fun, there is a good review of it that concludes:

Examined superficially, XAML tags have many of the features of traditional Web standards like HTML, as well as those of newer Web approaches like Mozilla's XUL. Alas, it lacks proper CSS stylesheet support. Examined more deeply, however, XAML tags reuse, reinvent, and renew many standard idioms from the software development world in a highly integrated way.

There are also people out there who see XAML as just a proprietary XML and MS will try to do to XML what they did with JScript/JavaScript

That doesn't count loads of other features, like the explorer, IE 7, a ton of security features, better search, better web services through Indigo (try doing web services with PHP now - I've done it, and it's such a pain that it's not really worth it. Microsoft nailed web services in 2002, and the new stuff is even better!).

I have alway been happy with SOAP/XML and it seems like they are doing pretty well Also, it seems like Indigo isn't what it used to be, or at least not yet. We also do not know how these new services will affect other internet users, presumably they will be a Vista only feature and in that case, how many developers will fully embrace them with MS's current adoption rate for XP. Will the Vista adoption rate be better or worse? One could argue not as good due to the increased system requirements for the "full" Vista experience, compared to the 98/2000 upgrade path. We went from 66MHz/16MB/225MB to 133MHz/64MB/2GB to "current processor, current computer". From that I guess 2GHz/512MB-1GB/64MB-128MB-256 VRAM, (hard drive space is not an issue anymore) That is quite an increase in specs, though I admit that is extrapolation from this:

Will my PC run Vista? That depends on how recently you bought it. Microsoft Allchin said in an April interview that he expects Vista will need about 512MB of memory and "today's level" of processor. The ability to display all the fancy new graphics will depend on what type of graphics card one has. On some older machines, the graphics may look similar to today's Windows.

Apple is doing the slapdash hacks, and Microsoft leads the way in beautifully architected software.

Now you are just tossing out some flamebait. "Slapdash hacks" is a disservice to the wonderful integretion of OOS into OS X. Also OS X has been lauded by many (I hate to do this, but this was the best all-in-one collection I could find without searching/cutting/pasting all night. This is only slightly bigger than the attention Apple was given for Panther.

Also, MS has been accused of many, many things, but has never been accused of creating "beautifully architected software". Seriously, XP SP2 took some important steps, but I am not going to say any such words until I see a final p

Yes, because he hasn't had reason to proclaim such a statement yet.

Apache Geronimo is probably going to gain a lot of ground, especially with IBM backing it.

Well, as I said you can't do use mod_php, mod_perl, and mod_ruby that way - specifically because it does persistent namespacing. However, you can do what you're looking for.
Separate using mod_suexec along with dynamically created, per user vhosts. I actually have access on a server that does this.

What is nice is that you have one syntax to access different kind of storage it svery powerfull.

# Specify a default charset for all pages sent out. This is
# always a good idea and opens the door for future internationalisation
# of your web site, should you ever want it. Specifying it as
# a default does little harm; as the standard dictates that a page
# is in iso-8859-1 (latin1) unless specified otherwise i.e. you
# are merely stating the obvious. There are also some security
# reasons in browsers, related to javascript and URL parsing
# which encourage you to always set a default char set.

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

'runs as user NOBODY'

Perchild MPM, which lets apache run as the user owning NN vhost has been all-but dropped.

A few other guys have (kind of) picked it back up again, and gotten it to (mostly) work, but it doesn't scale well, yet... (barfs at 256 hosts)

Why can't somebody get this to work? (I would, but I'm not a c coder)