Slashdot Mirror

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

And don't forget that Novell Goes for SCO's Throat. This is most interesting development yet. Novell may well end up with the money destined to pay Boies scumbag lawyer that came from Microsoft and SUN.


Marie Sharps is hot

It's called WinFS (Windows File System). Fortunately, Microsoft couldn't get their act together in time for it to make Longhorn/Vista... whenever it's going to show up!

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1640212,00.as p

But, someday, somehow, MS will have a new, improved, and totally propritary file system to bedevil us with.

Steven

This guy has similar views. Both sound plausible.

Novell Goes for SCO's Throat

As others have already mentioned, one of the many interesting things that came out in this filing was that SCO asked Novell to go in on the scam. Novell called it "scheme". Novell declined and SCO marched on.

It will be interesting to see how SCO management avoids jail time.

Crafted IPv6 packet vulnerability.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-2005 0729-ipv6.shtml

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1841669,00.as p

Upshot is that if you aren't running IPv6 on the router, this doesn't affect you.

Distributing and maintaining closed-source applications you have to pre-compile it into a binary distribution, and therefore in the ideal case you want to develop towards a set of standards. Currently there is no prevailing standard base which secures compatibility among Linux distributions, and therefore a company have to create individual binaries for every distribution it supports (which has it's own unique package set). The fact that there is no standard package set create dependency hell and often leads to many vendors just supporting one distribution or a version of that distribution. Fortunately there is an effort called the LSB (Linux Standard Base) which aims to develop and promote a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant system. It seems like the LSB is slowly getting foothold in the Debian camp, but it is currenly unclear how much interest it will generate in the rpm-crowd (Mandrake, SUSE, Red Hat etc). Even if the standard is not adopted by SUSE and Red Hat, it has the prospect of unifying the Debian-based distributions so that Linux can collect a substantial amount of users on only three distribution-platforms. Proprietary software vendors has shown themselves willing to support three Linux-distribution bases.

Now, the licensing issues for proprietary vendors to develop towards the Linux standards also needs to be clear and easy to understand. Even though the plurality of open-source licenses gives the developers a good choice, it takes quite an effort to wade through the implications of all of them. I am not saying that closed-source platforms does not involve this problems, what I am saying is that on a platform like Windows you can (through paying a bunch load of money) acquire a commercial license, which can be really difficult for some GPLed projects. The problem with a library under the GPL-license is that it does not clearly define *exactly* what a derivative work is, which is left up to a whim to be interpreted by anyone, and since GPL has a viral nature a proprietary software vendor can not risk that his application will be defined as a derivate work. For instance Trolltech recommends that commercial vendors use it's alternative commercial Qt license while developing closed-source software. We have often heard about the Windows licensing hell, but this is often interpreted as licensing hell by the lawyers of proprietary software-vendors. Fortunately the Linux Standard Base addresses these problems by requiring that any package included in the LSB should be free to use for anyone to develop towards. The LGPL is a license which satisfies this criteria while still protecting the work itself from being ripped off by commercial vendors keeping the changes they have made to a LGPL project for themselves. It should be up to the devoper(s) to choose which license the software should be developed under (GPL, LGPL and proprietary).

Linux has the prospect of ma

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

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

"Tayler: So is that what it means to be an open-source company? Or does it mean that you have technology licensed under the GPL (GNU Public License)? If that's the only definition, then I see a lot of companies that people call open source but aren't, because they're not licensed under the GPL."

well for one, applications released under the GPL are free software, not open source software. he should learn the difference between the two.

So what kind of innovation are you doing in your area for Microsoft?

"Taylor: There are things we're excited about, and there are things that are just the basics. We spend close to $6.8 billion in research and development; it really comes in a variety of areas."

I think we all know where innovation and research money goes into (eweek.com)

"Taylor: There's really nothing innovative today that Linux does that we can't do."

i guess thats why so many people leave windows to use linux. It goes for apple too. What he is really saying is there is nothing that linux and apple can have that we can steal and put in Windows calling it our own.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1838261,00.as p

FireFox version 1.06, immediately updated next day from version 1.05, & why?

* Read inside... 1.05's fixes broke older ones, & it's toolbars & extensions related, AGAIN!

APK

> Not true. The article describes bonding multiple wafers in a stack. This is most certainly not how ICs are currently made.

Actually.... yes it is... http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1246424,00.as p

Better information can be found on eWeek and Computerworld.

In short it looks like HP is holding a competing conference. Other user groups, like Encompass, are working w/ HP on this new conference.

Most /. readers already know not to use user-agent string evaluation to conditionally server content (it's lame to do so).

However I tried to persuade the readers of the original forum where the article was posted with a post. I adopted a rational argument and hopefully it will influence the non-slashdot audience with what I hope is an eloquent statement against this inane (but perfectly understandable from the vendor's perspective) advice.

original article

And here's my post there:

Subject: Microsoft is deadly wrong about this advice

First, I am a strong Microsoft supporter and have personally benefited from the use of their products. However, the most important reason for the web's creation -- and its primary value -- is to allow hitherto incompatible content formats to be seamlessly integrated according to internationally accepted standards, e.g., HTML, XML, HTTP, CSS, etc. No single vendor can lay claim to any of these languages or protocols, i.e., they are standards, not proprietary systems, owned and controlled by a single vendor. By conditionally serving content based on a single vendor's proprietary user agent (IE 7, Firefox, or Opera, for example), you not only reveal a profound misunderstanding of the web's great communicative power, but you will paint yourself into a corner from which you will find costly to extricate yourself (I know, I already made this painful mistake once, in the last decade).

In summary: build your content according to standards (not ipso facto, ephemeral market-share ideology), and let the browser vendors do what they're supposed to do: innovate while simultaneously and rigorously adhere to W3C standards.

"Come on now, be civil. The Internet belongs to the world."

One BIG reason why US refuses is because the UN doesn't have a working LEGAL system.
I.E. Courts to resolve disputes and contract issues, courts to review lower court decisions, etc.

The UN would be hard time pressed to come up with a replacement legal system.
Heck the UN can't even police their own personal. I.E. Witness the Oil for food debacle.

I suspect that the US Dept of Commerce also took notice on how easy it was for ICANN to get rid of the, "at large members", of the Board. That didn't go over too well and is another reason why ICANN wasn't given addditional control.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

...the zlib bug

Smart business move? Yes. Consequence free actions are generally good ones. Until a slap on the wrist becomes substantial, they can do whatever they want.
Depends on the outcome of the lawsuit. While government-initiated antitrust cases tend to be settled for symbolic fines (remember Microsoft?), damages in lawsuits between companies are sometimes pretty high. When googling for an example, I found some old news about the settlement between Sun and Microsoft:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1560909,00.as p
Quote:
The settlement, which stems from a lawsuit Sun filed in 2002, will include Microsoft continuing to support Sun's Java Virtual Machine, as well as Microsoft paying $700 million to Sun to resolve pending antitrust issues and $900 million more to resolve patent issues.
700 million on the antitrust part of this settlement. Won't kill a company like Intel but it is not exactly cheap.
Another one is
http://www.webhosting.info/news/1/ibm-wins-$850m-s ettlement-from-microsoft_0701058182.htm
where Microsoft pays $775m plus some free software to IBM.

$ diff -Naur inftrees.c ../zlib-1.2.2.orig/
--- inftrees.c 2005-07-10 13:38:37.000000000 +0100
+++ ../zlib-1.2.2.orig/inftrees.c 2004-09-15 15:30:06.000000000 +0100
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@
left -= count[len];
if (left < 0) return -1; /* over-subscribed */
}
- if (left > 0 && (type == CODES || max != 1))
+ if (left > 0 && (type == CODES || (codes - count[0] != 1)))
return -1; /* incomplete set */

/* generate offsets into symbol table for each length for sorting */

However, Ormandy said, "Zlib is very mature and stable, so development is sporadic, but it's certainly not dead. Mark Adler [a Zlib co-author] responded to my report with a patch and an in-depth investigation and explanation within 24 hours, and I believe he expects to release a new version of Zlib very soon."

from http://eweek.com/

header: Infrastructure

Internet Chatroom Helps Keep City of London Open By Jane Merriman, Reuters and Alistair MacDonald, Reuters

July 8, 2005

Be the first to comment on this article

LONDON, July 8 (Reuters)--A secret Internet chatroom run by Britain's financial regulators helped keep London's financial markets open after Thursday's bomb blasts, while financial firms activated security measures in case of further attacks. ADVERTISEMENT

The Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority switched on a secure section of their Financial Sector Continuity Web site to talk to major banks in the City of London's financial hub about how they were coping.

A Bank of England spokeswoman said this was the first time the secure site had been used in an actual crisis situation since its creation in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

"In the light of yesterday's events, the tripartite authorities (Treasury, Bank of England and FSA) have activated the contingency part of the Web site," they said on Friday.

The Web site has a secure section in which the authorities can communicate directly with big banks that are key to the stability of the international financial system.

The City of London's financial markets, where currencies, stocks, bonds and commodities worth trillions of dollars are traded daily, kept going despite disruption from Thursday's bombings on a London bus and underground trains, which killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds.

"Contingency planning by banks has increased considerably in last three years, post Sept. 11, and what yesterday shows is that the planning has worked," said David Key, crises management practice leader at Control Risks Group, which advises many banks on crisis and security management.

PLANS IN PLACE

Swiss financial services group UBS, for example, briefly evacuated its building on Liverpool Street, which houses bond and currency desks, but contingency plans ensured trading was not affected.

Japanese bank Nomura did not have to evacuate staff to any of its three disaster recovery sites in London, but a well-rehearsed plan was put into effect, coordinated by an emergency response team, which held meetings every hour.

Nomura security staff were alerted to the bombs by text, pager and e-mail messages sent by London's police service. A complete roll call of staff was taken, and a helpline for family and friends set up. On Friday, the bank was operating with about half its usual staff, with people being told they need not come in if they did not feel comfortable doing so.

The Corporation of London, the body that runs the City, and City of London police also have an Internet communication system that was used on Thursday to pass on advice to banks and other firms in the "Square Mile", the European hub for some of the world's biggest financial services firms.

Banks have long had plans for such attacks and routinely monitor code levels put out by intelligence services and the police. Chairmen of several big banks, for example, plus their security chiefs, had a briefing with intelligence services about four months ago, one bank source familiar with the matter said.

"Banks' internal security teams have got better and more sophisticated as they have invested in best practise," Key said.

"There has also been a move away from the traditional focus on security towards risk management, or understanding the threat and developing resilience," he said.

CONTINGENCY

The City of London is no stranger to bomb attacks.

In 1992 many firms suffered devastation from a huge car bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army outside the Baltic Exchange in the heart of the area. A year later, an

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1834942,00.as p It seems that Mandriva/Lycoris is working with Progeny to become a Debian based distro. So it seems that we're increasingly looking at three major platforms for enterprise Linux: 1. Red Hat/Fedora 2. Novell/Suse 3. Debian (incl. Ubuntu, Mandriva+Progeny+whatever else) I hope that all these distros that are basing off Debian contribute the enhancements back to Debian.

It's strange that as Ubuntu seems to be moving away from Debian, other distros are moving toward them.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1830880,00.as p

http://www.osjournal.com/content/85/Reviews/A_look _at_Fedora_Core_4/

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2 005/6/28/prodit/11304408&sec=prodit

These reviews aren't quite so negative as the review posted on /. . Funny how that is.

Ransom Love sold all his stock when the lawsuit started. link

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I don't why this stuff always get modded as troll on slashdot, maybe it's an old post that keeps coming up or something but you do tend to see a lot of aggressive modding on BBC critical subjects here. It's a great shame.

Yes the BBC has delivered some good, 'important' stuff over the years, and has been a valuable contribution to world media but the way it's funded (even if you never want to see it go) is desperately unfair and uncompetitive and out of date. And well, put it this way if in the future more and more TV is delivered over the net I won't be subsidising the BBC with a 'computer tax' that was being bandyed around by UK ministers a while back. Sorry.

Now the real question on my mind as I read slashdot today is why on earth are you not covering the 'big' story:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1833126,00.as p

Back in 2003, when Sun Microsystems Inc. was considering whether it might join the then soon-to-be-independent Eclipse Foundation, one of the key concerns, aside from technical issues, was the name Eclipse.

Sun said it would not join an organization named Eclipse, and the foundation agreed to change the name. The Santa Clara, Calif., company didn't want to join an organization whose name was perceived as encouraging the demise of Sun, company executives said at the time.

It turned out Sun wasn't the target of the Eclipse moniker, though. In his keynote at the EclipseCon 2005 conference in March, Lee Nackman, chief technology officer and vice president of Design, Construction, and Test Tools at IBM's Rational Software division, said Microsoft Corp. was actually the company IBM wanted to "eclipse" and was the true object of IBM's attention.

"Our target was Microsoft," Nackman said. "Microsoft was clearly the market leader and was on a path to become the dominant tools platform. It was clear there'd be competition for developers... So around 1998 we felt, key to the competition around application servers and middleware, we needed to bring developers to Java-based middleware ... IBM's middleware business depended on bringing developers to our Java-based middleware."

[snip]

"But the name seems so perfect a knock against Sun. How could it not be? Well, according to a source, some of the early Eclipse originators had a retreat where one of the themes was the universe and many code names emerged involving celestial themes. Eclipse stuck. And while Sun was not necessarily the primary target, "these were really smart people, and I don't think the visualization and competitive implication was lost," a source said."

Now that we're finally out from under Microsoft Office, we don't want to be in a similar position with Sun. Users don't want Sun to be in a position to change the rules at a future time. That's the whole point of open source.

Heh, on the topic of the name, it took months before the whole Eclipse - Java - Sun Microsystems thing clicked in for me. But apparently they weren't targeting Sun at all!

From Eclipse: Behind the Name:

"Our target was Microsoft," Nackman said. "Microsoft was clearly the market leader and was on a path to become the dominant tools platform. It was clear there'd be competition for developers... So around 1998 we felt, key to the competition around application servers and middleware, we needed to bring developers to Java-based middleware ... IBM's middleware business depended on bringing developers to our Java-based middleware."
[snip]
"But the name seems so perfect a knock against Sun. How could it not be? Well, according to a source, some of the early Eclipse originators had a retreat where one of the themes was the universe and many code names emerged involving celestial themes. Eclipse stuck. And while Sun was not necessarily the primary target, "these were really smart people, and I don't think the visualization and competitive implication was lost," a source said."

This time for sure... Presto! (About 16,600 English pages for apple's demise death with Safesearch on via Google.)

Here we go again...

Given that Sun Microsystems is a large part of the "OSS community" (see the "share" marketing campaign going on atm), that you accuse of pissing off Sun, you make it sound as if that they have done a lot of bad things to themselves. Have they, really? I'd find that odd.

Hardly. Sun has attempted to *enter* the OSS community time and time again, but they are consistently rebuffed and have to work on their own. They are even persecuted for their kindness! In general, IBM has done far less, but they get a free ride. Why is that?

Yes, I've looked at the new JRL, and unfortunately it's not as simple as the FAQs say. See http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath@gnu.org/msg0 9825.html for details.

Yes, I've seen your analysis. I find it overly critical, but I'm afraid I can do nothing to change that. Sun could probably sue you for hundreds of little infractions that the law may or may provide them with relief for. But they don't, because they are attempting to play nice. Sun may not have the motto, "do no evil", but their actions generally speak to it.

For how bad things can go with Sun and open source projects not paying respect to Sun's licenses, see Lutris' Enhydra (open source application server from a few years ago, killed by its authors because of alleged SCSL violations),

As I remember the situation, Sun never threatened legal action. Rather, Enhydra felt that they needed the Java Logo, and was going through the long process of obtaining the logo. Nor did that kill Enhydra. After the release of J2EE, lack of interest in their existing platform managed that. (Anyone remember ExoOffice?)

JBoss (open source application server, had to fork over a certain, large amount of dollars to reach license peace with Sun)

Sun made the TCK available to OSS projects, but JBoss is a commercial entity. In any case, things were always complicated there. (Never did get the full story behind why Rickard left.)

On a side note, I plan to work with Sun's legal to see if their standard tainting clause could not be clarified, eventually, but don't count on it: I don't write Sun's licenses, Sun does.

That's good news. :-)

Regarding missing documentation, well here is one for you: javax.swing.text.html.HTMLEditorKit: can you tell which HTML 4.0 tags are supported and which are not supported, precisely, from the API specification alone? :)

No, but I would take one of two tacks:

1. Just support common tags and hope you're compatible enough. (This isn't as bad of an option as it may seem at first. Even if you get a few details wrong, bug reports will help you sort things out later.)

2. Test the existing Java binaries for what they are and are not compatible for.

When things went south on the SMTP auth fast track last year the chairs suggested that all the protagonists submit their proposals as experimental standards. Once again, the /. title overstates the matter. We can expect other experimental proposals for IP-based authentication like CSV.

But it's all just jerking off now because Domain Keys has won the authentication battle in the market.

Microsoft are big on XML. Their new office format will be completely open and XML compliant. Do you call releasing a file format in a GPL-incompatible way "completely open"?? (Notice I didn't refer to GPL-incompatible code. There's a lot of GPL-incompatible free software out there, and they are still free software. File formats, however, are a different story. To be open, they need to be implementation-independent. Not only in their specification but also on their licensing.)

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

http://appleintelfaq.com/

What did Apple announce at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 6, 2005?

Apple announced that it is transitioning from PowerPC processors provided by IBM and Freescale (formerly Motorola) to x86 architecture processors from Intel. The first Intel-based Macs will ship before mid-2006, and the transition will be complete by the end of 2007.

Where can I find out more official information about this announcement?

Apple press release

Intel press release

WWDC keynote address (Transcript)

Why did Apple make this change?

The following scenario likely contributed to this decision:

IBM has been unable to meet its performance commitments for the PowerPC 970 family (G5) processors. In mid-2003, IBM promised 3 GHz G5s to Apple by mid-2004. As of mid-2005, 3 GHz G5s are still not available, over two years after the initial announcement, and over one year after the promised delivery.[1]

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that IBM will make 3.2 GHz triple-core G5 derivatives available to Microsoft for Xbox 360.[2] IBM is also concentrating efforts on chips for Nintendo Revolution and Sony PlayStation 3.[3, 3.1] With IBM concentrating on expensive high-end server class processors and the console and embedded markets, and with Apple at less than 2%[4] of IBM's PowerPC business, it was clear IBM's priorities were focused elsewhere.

Apple is also less than 3%[4] of Freescale's PowerPC business, with Freescale focusing on embedded, communications, and automotive markets. The priorities of IBM and Freescale do not coincide with performance and other needs of the traditional desktop and portable computing marketplace.

What has Apple done to prepare for this transition?

Apple has been publicly maintaining the core OS of Mac OS X, Darwin, for both PowerPC and x86 platforms since the release of Mac OS X. Internally, Apple has been secretly maintaining Mac OS X in its entirety and all Apple applications for both PowerPC and x86 for over 5 years, since before Mac OS X's public release.[5] Mac OS X's predecessors also ran on x86.

Apple has made available Xcode 2.1, which adds the capability of creating PowerPC/x86 universal binaries. Xcode 2.1 can be used on either PowerPC or x86 systems to create universal binaries. Application developers already using Xcode in most cases need only recompile their application with an additional checkbox adding x86 architecture support.

Apple has also licensed[6] QuickTransit from Transitive Corporation for Rosetta, a realtime binary translation system to support PowerPC binaries seamlessly on x86 hardware. The current performance of Rosetta

I was hoping that Bram would address that article claiming that BitTorrent is being used to distribute spyware instead of this Avalanche crap. I think it's more important to keep people from being afraid of using BitTorrent than it is to deal with misconceptions about a program that isn't even out in beta form yet.

--Ender

Look at the Wiki's date guys. The Channel 9 page was updated late last year.

Since then, it's been revealed that Monad will not be in Longhorn--whenever the heck that will come out--but will show up in Exchange 12 say sometime in 2007.

Don't ask me what a command shell will be doing in an e-mail server.

For the details see the following article from: Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft Watch

From where I sit, Monad was a decent idea. With it gone, I see even less reason than before to upgrade to XP SP3, excuse me, Longhorn.

Steven

Most senior software engineers have at least 3 years working experience. As far as I know in my company, no recruit without working experience has ever been given a senior software engineer position. I am a senior software engineer in a team of a dozen individuals, most of whom have a Master's, and some with a PhD.

Only work experience can tell you what it is like to design a software product, be part of its implementation, finally have the product released (after a lengthy delay), and the upkeep of hundreds of thousands of lines of code over several years, catering for new features, and bug fixes.

Experience also tells you how to correctly apply design patterns, and why refactoring is indispensible. Technical skills aside, experience also teaches you how to deal with product managers, program managers, quality engineers, as well as to appreciate their roles. Experience also teaches you how to prioritize tasks when you're swamped.

It also changes the way you think, I'd like to say from that of petulance and naivete, to a professional with an appreciation for processes. A good example of what I mean by petulant or naive is this article in eweek entitled "IT Execs Should Learn More About Coding" (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1814485,00.a sp), which slams execs with "poor initial design concepts and constant feature creep". Face it - that is the reality of most software projects, not so much because of the exec lacking programming skills, but because software design is hard, and constant feature creep is often inevitable because businesses have to keep up with their competitors and listen to their customers. One eweek reader who responded (print edition of eweek) that also disagreed with the article, pointed out the only constant in software development is change, and stipulated that engineers should know about design patterns, which in turn should allow us to have flexible designs that are amendable to change. I will further add that while design patterns do in fact help us build better programs, they do not actually tell us how to manage those changes. That is where refactoring comes in - a systematic process to modify stinky code sections.

Work experience teaches you to be pragmatic, and makes you look for processes to solve your problems, imperfect as they may be.

I have never run into any limitations with OpenOffice infact I find MS office much harder to use. I see no reason to buy MS Office when I cannt run it on Linux without wine, its harder to use, I have to pay for it, and its just crap. If you dont belive me check this article out.

How can you install spyware if you're just playing an avi file?

I hate to break it to you, but it's been done already. It's true that the process is not completely automated yet, unless you happen to have a vulnerable IE. Some social engineering might also prove useful. Anyway, it's lovely to see DRM at work, don't you think?

"The 1/4 of longhorn's code will be in .Net" Please cite your source, as I remember seeing stories here on /. to the contrary. Like this. When one says native, it implies an implicit inability to be separated from any install of the OS. Foley's article seems sound enough for me to buy that .NET is no longer NATIVE, but an OPTION, despite having been promoted heavily. The code is not in Longhorn, it is an option just like MSN Messenger is an option.

SCO have already said they have no problem with Sun releasing OpenSolaris. Some have speculated that this is because Sun's agreement with USL gave it enough rights to the Unix code (much of which came from Sun to USL) to make it open anyway, whether or not SCO like it.

Here is a Microsoft quote from the eweek website. I wasn't aware the Microsoft "could" break the interent. But, if Al Gore can invent it than perhaps Microsoft can break it. "We have to test thoroughly to make sure it doesn't introduce a new problem. We have to make sure it doesn't break the Internet." http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1825805,00.as p

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1772674,00.as p 8 core cpu with each core maxing at 8 threads. these are for servers, scientific/business modeling.

Read all about it:

PowerPC Linux Vendors Are Sticking with It

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1825444,00.as p

Steven

Eh???? From the forementioned weblink:

...Tiger on Intel pre-installed, allowing you to run,...

While this interium system may be generic whiteboxes, it seems likely that this analyst is on track with Apple's true path for boxes that ship.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824781,00.as p http://www.intel.com/technology/security/

LaGrande is backward compatible (i.e., windows will boot) but there are hooks for Apple to stop MacOS X (not Darwin... the full proprietary stack) from booting up. Meshes very well with what the Apple VP is quoted as saying about not precluding Windows (or Linux) from booting.

Perhaps you should read about this.....

http://www.intel.com/technology/security/

(found after reading http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824781,00.as p) )

If you think Apple won't use that technology to lock down the proprietary libraries that run on top of Darwin I'm not sure you're very familiar with Steve Jobs' mindset. That technology has Apple's name written all over it.

With that infrastructure apparently all they'd need is some kind of "am i legal Apple box key" service and just have some of the core Apple proprietary services "check in" before completing startup.

Still may be possible to crack, but likely far more involved than install on a fresh disk partition.

Here?

Here?

But mostly remember that bugzilla has a policy of locking and censoring the most virulent, until they have a fix.