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The Mac is the only true desktop replacement contender. When Microsoft Office becomes available for Linux, that's when Linux will become a serious contender.

I would love to sample some of that iCrack you're smoking. 1) not everybody needs or even wants an office suite. even counting "business machines" which are the vast majority of windows licenses, only about 30% have any sort of office suite installed. I can't cite a source, but my company does very large scale samplings of global business machines annually. 2) microsoft is not the only source of excellent office suites.

Yes.

I've found the IBM JVM's to be faster and more stable. Also, it doesn't make me install *two* copies of the JRE like Sun does (one for development and one for the system JVM). So all-in-all, I like the IBM verison better.

As another poster said, it looks like IBM won't be developing a standalone version. However, I just found the IBM Development Package for Eclipse. It includes IBM's JDK 1.4.2 for Windows. I'm hoping that it's in it's own separate package like it was in the MQ Series client. But it seems that this is IBM's way of getting the new JDK out.

Not as nice as a pure JDK download, but it'll work...

Any language can "leak" memory, depending on how the programmers program. See this IBM developerWorks note for a how-it-happens, how-it's-cured tutorial. If Java didn't leak memory, how would JProfiler exist?

A) Sun implemented too much functionality. (1, 2)

B) All of that functionality is built into one library instead of separate downloadable libraries. (3)

C) Every JVM is required to come with the library. (4, 5)

I respectfully but wholeheartedly disagree with you on all points.

A/1,2) I applaud Sun for raising the bar in delivering so much functionality. For the most part, the packages are well organized enough that the classes you don't use don't bother you. (For example, there have to be hundreds of classes in java.awt.*, but if you only write webapps or CLI apps, you don't even have to know they exist.) As for bugs, I haven't found the Java libraries to be more buggy than the vast majority of third-party libraries I've used. In fact, they are far less buggy because there are so many eyes on them (i.e. all the millions of Java developers out there).

B/3) Granted, not all of the packages are absolutely best of breed. (AWT/Swing come immediately to mind.) But most of them are quite well written, by fine minds like Josh Bloch and Doug Lea. I don't think there are many people in the world who could have written this. Overall I think the quality of code in most of the Java platform classes is at a level that almost any development organization would be proud of. And anyway, I don't see how code quality is related to a deployment decision like "should this be one JAR or seventeen?". What you're really saying is all this code shouldn't have been written by Sun, because you assume they don't have enough developers or that those developers are not focused enough on their tasks. (Right??)

C/4,5) The Java community has not proven to be short on innovation. There have in the past been plenty of third-party Java collection classes (Trove, Commons Collections, Commons Primitives, tclib, FastUtil, PCJ, Mango). I would like to see some more specific examples to back up your claim of "huge losses in productivity". (Although the general argument may not be totally without merit, because the .NET development community does in general seem to shun non-Microsoft libraries and technologies.)

As for your backward compatibility argument, I don't see how a widely used library should have any less of a responsibility to remain backward compatible with previous versions, than a language does.

And from just a common sense perspective, can you seriously mean that a modern language shouldn't have built-in types for such basic abstractions as string, list, hashtable? Do you really think this kind of crap is an improvement?

why on earth should anyone care that there's something that's almost Java, only without anywhere near as much industry support, and many years less maturity?

C# is better than Java in almost every way:

• C# has function pointers (delegates) and closures (this is the biggest draw for me).
• The CLR's generics implementation is more efficient. Java's ArrayList<Integer> is painfully inefficient.
• The CLR's generics implementation is more complete because it retains runtime information about type parameters. Java's generics has some limitations ons what a type parameter can be.
• C# has better virtual method annotation syntax; non-virtual by default, explicit override, explicit shadowing.
• C# has a simple way of making sure you dispose resources.
• "unsafe" mode. Now you can stay in C# for many tasks that you used to have to write C code for. Unsafe code is platform independent.
• This is more of a CLR thing but Java really needs an AppDomain-like isolation facility. They're working on it, but it's a little late now.

You may hear about these "features" from pro-CLR people:

• Value types. These are bad. They just fragment the type system. A good compiler can figure out how to speed things up requiring that you mess up the type system.
• Language agnostic. This is not true. How are you going to call overloaded functions from C? What about dynamic dispatch on parameters? The API is very C++/Java-centric and will have to stay that way. The CLR does have slightly better interoperability, though.

The only advantages the Java language has (that I can think of) are:

• Flexible variant typing.
• More powerful enums.

It's true that C# is mostly copied from Java. They didn't add any novel ideas. They just improved it incrementally (and screwed up a little too). But after everything is accounted for, it's clearly a better language. You can talk about "maturity" and "industry support" all you want, but some people are just happy to be using a superior language.

BTW, both "maturity" and "industry support" wont be problems for C#. It's not hard to design a mature language and set of class libraries when you have a working example to learn from. Also, Microsoft has mature designers working on the CLR and that counts for something too. As for "industry support", you have got to be joking. When they make the CLR come pre-installed on Longhorn, it will instantly become an industry standard. Even now it's available directly through Windows Update. The whole XAML/Avalon thing is not even ready yet but Amazon.com has already used it to build a prototype. It's depresing, but true: anything that comes out of Microsoft will have a completely unfair advantage over any competing products. Macromedia is next.

blakespot

Here's a bit more: each node has 2 cpus and 4 fpus, custom non-preemptive kernel

application program has full control of all timing issues kernel and application share same address space

kernel is memory protected

kernel provides: program load / start / debug / termination file access all via message passing to IO nodes

I could go on and on but it's all on Blue Gene's site http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/index.html

I can't resist adding that GCC won't use the second FPU on each die...

Right, because as we all well know, no big companies care about linux.

I think they're probably aware just fine. This is the third "open source" project that they have released, and you'll notice that again it's pretty much just crap that's either reinventing the wheel, or crap that is of no value to the community. Additionally in this case, the fact that it's implementing a Wiki system kind of feels like the old "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish" of which they are so often accused. One way or the other, it's opening the source to utterly insignificant projects (in terms of their business plan and profits, I don't mean that the Wiki principle is in any way worthless) presumably so that when the next anti-trust case comes up, they can confidentally claim that they're a 'community player' for open sourcing some of their projects.

I also saw mention from another poster about the use of the IBM Public License, which is listed on the GNU website as being "not inherently a bad idea", but "incompatible with the GPL". In this way, Microsoft can continue it's FUD and public declarations that the GPL is like a "Pacman" that eats up intellectual property.

They can quite happily keep releasing insignificant projects, slating the GPL and Linux at every opportunity, and claiming all the while that they're not as proprietary and hostile as everyone thinks.

Copied (and formatted) from sf.net/projects/fwcontrib:

Project: flexwiki-contrib: Summary

Summary | Admin | Home Page | Forums | Tracker | Bugs | RFE | Lists | Tasks | Docs | News | CVS | Files |

A collection of utilities for enhancing FlexWiki. :Distributed Computing Foundry

Development Status: 4 - Beta, 5 - Production/Stable
Environment: Win32 (MS Windows)
Intended Audience: Developers, End Users/Desktop
License: IBM Public License
Natural Language: English
Operating System: Windows
Programming Language: C#
Topic: Communications, WWW/HTTP, Text Editors>

It's Win32, and C#. Mono MIGHT be able to take it, but don't bet on it...

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensou rce/license10.html is the IBM Public License, FWIW.

Sybase ASE: same original codebase as MSSQL Server
Oracle: most well-known database engine in the world
MySql: Most popular Open-Source database in the world
PostGres: Not my cup of tea, but its an option
DB2: IBM's DB2... SuSE and RedHat only

I always shudder at the thought of running a database engine on Windows...

That being said, this article really describes the failure of Combe to properly implement the platform. In this particular instance there is no way to place the blame of this failure on Linux.

If you want to see some proof of just how successfull linux can be as an e-commerce platform have a look at JBoss and IBM.

I have plenty of out-of-date Java experience so I subscribed to Sony's developer news 2 minutes after I saw the Java logo pop up on my new Sony/Ericsson T610. The cost of the SDK with interface h/w for the Sony platform is a bit out of hobbiest range. and I hear bad things about bluetooth security holes. Is this my next chance to write the killer app? That Sony is now obsolete and never had CDMA anyway so now I got TWO reasons to buy a new cell phone. Anybody got a pretty printer..the sample code is wrapped ugly. and its C code! great! I have even more C experience and its even more out of date. OK, brew sdk is a free download,...this is gonna be fun. BTW, go read the article then follow link to an article on porting games from J2ME to Brew

So... instead of taking steps to reduce Debian's boot time, let me get this straight - you spent twenty-four hours compiling an operating system, and you shaved what a second or two off your boot time? That's the most catastrophically stupid thing I've ever heard.

With a little research you could have accomplished a parallel init-process, without wasting twenty-four hours compiling unnecessary packages.

Not to be too picky, but the phrase "LCD display" is redundant. As we are all aware of, the 'D' in LCD already means display, so there is no need to specify that it is a display. This is something which has bothered my for years, but I digress.

My Sharp Zaurus SL-C860 features a 3.7" VGA display. The text is amazingly sharp- though it might be hard to read because everything is so small (I believe the pixel density is around 216 pixel/inch). This new screen is nearly one-third the area of the Zaurus', yet features the same resolution. Just a few years back, we were all drooling over this IBM Roentgen display, with its 200ppi (in this article). Can't wait to see one in my next cell phone, complete with a fresnel lens so I can read the text!

You'll find an interesting chart in this article. If I'm reading it correctly this display is just beyond the resolving power of the eye at 18".

You'll find an interesting chart in this article. If I'm reading it correctly this display is just beyond the resolving power of the eye at 18".

If they "slightly" expanded it, though, you'd have a ~22 inch LCD with 6400x4800. Finally, a use for those high-end video cards with tons of memory!

Well, this isn't that good. But a 9 Megapixel LCD (3840x2400) would still be nice. I'd love to get two of these and run Xinerama. The problem is that each takes 2 DVI connections. So you'll need two dual DVI video cards. I'll probably have to rob a bank and wait for an Nvidia 6800 SLI system to be released.

You want to change resolutions or monitor profile? Reboot.

No, restart X. Or run a second X server. Or hit Control-Alt-Numpad+ to go to the next resolution setting. Or use an X server that implements the RandR extension. (I think most drivers do in Xfree86 4.3).

You want to change font DPI? Reboot.

No, restart X. Or run a second X server. I admit that I don't know of an extension that can change the font DPI on the fly. You may be able to do some magic by restarting the font server to get different fonts in all new applications, but I haven't tried it.

Your system has scheduled fsck to run, either out of routine or out of improper shutdown? You need to reboot after it's done.

One word: ext3. Or another word: XFS. A third word (although some people consider it an obscenity, myself included): ReiserFS. There's even the IBM option.I've been running ext3 on my laptop over three years and many unclean shutdowns, and I never have to wait for an fsck, or reboot afterwards.

About the only thing that requires a reboot these days is a kernel or hardware upgrade. You go ahead and keep on rebooting the system, if that's all you know how to do. Just don't confuse your lack of troubleshooting skills with a deficiency on Linux's part.

Look into the Liberty spec. One of its optional provisions is forced reauthentication.

Liberty, and its competing standards like WS-Federation and SAML, are good because the partners can run whatever vendor's software they like. You just have to verify your vendor is compliant.

Liberty Specifications
SAML Spec
WS Fed Spec Any number of vendors in the access control realm are jumping on the Liberty bandwagon. My company makes a product competing with Netegrity. Of course ours is superior in every way imaginable :)

This is pretty interesting. PWC was purchased by IBM, one of the largest patent holders, many of which are software patents.

This is incorrect. I work for PricewaterhouseCoopers & we are not owned by IBM. Years ago, IBM purchased "PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting" which was a relatively small part of the large partnership. If you don't believe me, here's proof.

> It's strange the friends we seem to be making these days ... First IBM, now PWC.

PWC is IBM!

IBM acquired PWC a few years ago: http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2002/10/02.html.

You might as well ask why some people love diabolical puzzles - it's simply something they enjoy doing. While there may well be a learning experience involved, the sheer joy of seeing a command prompt on some oddball specialized hardware after 90 hours of hacking really is enough for some people.

And it's not all cool scientific shit either - IBM also does research on some less serious stuff, such as Burr Puzzles

just work, every time, without fail

They don't have to achieve that. They just need to make things work in the same ballpark as they do now while ensuring that is doesn't work at all on a non-Trusted machines.

Probably the easiest comparison would be to try permanantly shutting off your cookies and javascript. A non-trivial percentage of websites simply refuses to work unless you activate cookies and/or javascript. You will constantly be faced with a choice of turning them on to get the sites to work, or refusing to submit and getting locked out of more and more websites.

faith in the market

The basic market forces act to ensure the success of the system.

In attempting to oppose cookies and javascript *you* are the one that suffers, just as in attempting to oppose Trusted Computing *you* are the one that suffers. Those who accept Trusted computing will receive free music in their HappyMeals, music you refuse to be able to play. They will be given free software and be able to buy software, software which you refuse to be able to use. They will be able to view and use websites you refuse to be able to use.

The only way such opposition could succeed is if a large percentage of clueless computer users are willing to suffer in resistance, widespread self sacrificing resistance. That can only happen if the mainstream media comes out against Trusted Computing. And even then it will be a very difficult fight. Trusted Computing products do and will conseal the fact that they are Trusted Computing based. For example HP's system is called ProtectTools with no mention of Trust. IBM's current Man in Black ThinkPad commercials advertize the security chip "protecting you from hackers" without mentioning Trust. Even this Slashdot story Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router completely missed the fact that these routers are Trusted Computing based, and I deft you to find an admission anywhere on Cisco's website that there is any connection between these routers and Trusted Computing.

And on top of that there will still be tons of people unknowingly activating/using Trusted Computing in order to be able to play the freebie music disk they got inside a McDonalds HappyMeal. They can resist and get nothing, or submit and get free music.

Practically every computer-related company on the Fortune 500 is a member of the Trusted Computing Group or is otherwise involved. They have very good reason to think it can and will happen.

Stopping Trusted Computing is not going to be easy. We need mainstream media support. We need as much active opposition as possible. We need those who understand the threat not to assume it can't happen.

-

IBM VisualAge C++ is also supported on Linux.

You might ask "why?" -- and the answer is the same as if you asked "Why are companies still selling Fortran compilers?": a whackload of existing, working code and a build environment that would cost mega-bucks to port to a new set of tools.

It would be interesting to see how VisualAge compares on ChaoticCoyote's benchmark. I hope IBM contacts him to get into the next edition of his benchmarks.

I'll be convinced IBM contributes as much as Sun to OSS when I see that IBM has GPLed AIX like Sun will GPL Solaris...

Funny, the latest I've heard was that Sun still isn't saying what license they plan to use for Solaris. Do you have a link to an article where Sun claims they will use the GPL? All I've heard from them is that they want to "take the model with Java and bring it to Solaris."

Personally, as a Linux user, I'm much interested in IBM's real contributions to the Linux kernel. Their intent is to make Linux capable of replacing AIX eventually.

I'm not just talking about mainframe and POWER ports, as an anonymous coward above suggested, either. Of course, we all know about JFS, NUMA, SMP scalability, and EVMS (the last of which wasn't accepted, in the end). IBM has also contributed work on ext2/3, IA-64, PCI hotplug, udev, USB, and a number of other projects.

...or that IBM has given a huge office solution like OpenOffice...

How many office solutions do we need? How about a huge software development solution like Eclipse, instead?

...or that IBM supports Gnome with code contribution/HIG...

How about donating code to projects like Mozilla, Samba, and of course Apache (and more Apache)?

Finally, let's not forget that it's IBM that is paying the legal bills that will prove that Linux is free of whatever UNIX intellectual property may still exist, while Sun has been pumping funds into SCO's war chest.

I'll be convinced IBM contributes as much as Sun to OSS when I see that IBM has GPLed AIX like Sun will GPL Solaris...

Funny, the latest I've heard was that Sun still isn't saying what license they plan to use for Solaris. Do you have a link to an article where Sun claims they will use the GPL? All I've heard from them is that they want to "take the model with Java and bring it to Solaris."

Personally, as a Linux user, I'm much interested in IBM's real contributions to the Linux kernel. Their intent is to make Linux capable of replacing AIX eventually.

I'm not just talking about mainframe and POWER ports, as an anonymous coward above suggested, either. Of course, we all know about JFS, NUMA, SMP scalability, and EVMS (the last of which wasn't accepted, in the end). IBM has also contributed work on ext2/3, IA-64, PCI hotplug, udev, USB, and a number of other projects.

...or that IBM has given a huge office solution like OpenOffice...

How many office solutions do we need? How about a huge software development solution like Eclipse, instead?

...or that IBM supports Gnome with code contribution/HIG...

How about donating code to projects like Mozilla, Samba, and of course Apache (and more Apache)?

Finally, let's not forget that it's IBM that is paying the legal bills that will prove that Linux is free of whatever UNIX intellectual property may still exist, while Sun has been pumping funds into SCO's war chest.

IBM has shown a real interest in Linux since Linux started to hit mainstream visibility about 5-6 years ago.

I don't know if they've pushed "Linux-specific hardware", but they have gone through great pains (with the iSeries AS/400 / eServers specifically) to make them Linux compatible and run Linux natively, either as the primary partition or part of a multi-partition system.

IBM has shown a real interest in Linux since Linux started to hit mainstream visibility about 5-6 years ago.

I don't know if they've pushed "Linux-specific hardware", but they have gone through great pains (with the iSeries AS/400 / eServers specifically) to make them Linux compatible and run Linux natively, either as the primary partition or part of a multi-partition system.

You're missing the point, perhaps just to be a smart arse, or perhaps to show off your ignorance. Doesn't matter much which, but just to clear up your FUD for other folk ...

Yes, you can try Linux by running it from a bootable Knoppix CD. And it won't touch any damn thing on your hard disk at all. Your system will be completely unaffected by the experience. Not even a single bit on the hard disk need change.

Then, if you like it, you can get into things a little further, by for example, creating a special file on your hard disk to hold your home directory and settings.

And if you *really* like it (you should try it, I think you would like it) then ... wait for it ... drumroll ... it can be installed to the hard disk just like any other Linux distro. I guess you didn't know that.

Check what IBM say about Knoppix.

Actually, your followup should have been:

When was the first spam message really sent? April 1994 wasn't it? Those god damn lawyers started it.

Xsan from Apple is pretty much StorNext for OS X, only the licenses are a lot cheaper.

Worth mentioning is SGI CXFS, which runs on most popular platforms, although I belive some like OS X are still in beta. Licensing is expensive ($2500+ per node), the setup is complicated and you only get support if you're running SGI storage systems.

Also from IBM is SANergy. This runs alongside your deployed filesharing protocols like NFS & SMB, and "fuses" the actual data transfer over your SAN. Licensing is expensive, and from what I've heard development has been discontinued.

There's also Melio but that's only for Windows and looks like it's going to be version 1.0 forever.

Right now there are a lot of file systems that do somehing not all that different than what Sun is proposing. The project I am on is evaluating them as we speak for a center wide filesystem. I've had the fun (no sarcasm, honestly) of setting up a number of different onces and helping to run benchmarks and tests against each. All of them have strengths. Every single one of them has some nasty weaknesses.

If you are looking for an open source based cluster file system, Lustre is what you want. It's supported by LLNL, PNNL, and the main writers at ClusterFS Inc. It's a network based cluster FS. We've been using it over GigE. However, we've found that there needs to be a ratio of 3:1 for data server:clients for a ratio. Wehave only used one metadata server. Failover isn't the greatest. Quotas don't exist. it also makes kernel mods (some good and bad) to do a mild fork of the linux kernel (they put them into the newer kernels every so often). It only runs on Linux. Getting it to run on anything else looks...scary.

GPFS runs on AIX and Linux. Even sharing the same storage. It runs and is pretty stable. it has the option to run in a SAN mode or network based FS. In the latter form, it even does local discovery of disks via labels so that if a client can see the disks locally it will read and write to them via FC rather than to the server. It, however, is a balkanized mess. It requires a lot more work to bring up and run: there is an awful lot of software to configure to get it to run (re: RSCT. If you haven't had the joys of HATS and HAGS, count yourself very, very lucky).

ADIC's StorNext software is another option. This one is good if you are interested in ease of installation, maintanence, and very, very fast speeds (damn near line speed on Fibre channel). I have set this one up for sharing disks in less than two hours from first install to getting numerous assorted nodes of different OS's to play together (Solaris, AIX, Linux). It freakin on virtually everything from Crays to Linux to Windows. It's issues seem to be scaling (right now doesn't go past 256 clients) and it has some nontrivial locking issues (righting to the same block from multiple clients, and parallel I/O to the same file from multiple clients if you change the file size).

There are some others that are not as mature. Among them are Ibrix, Panasas, GFS, and IBM's SANFS. All of them are interesting or promising. Only SANF looks like it runs on more than Linux though at this point. Our requirements for the project I am on are to share the same FS and storage instance among disparate client OSes simultaneously. This might not be the same for others though and these might be worth a look. Lustre dodges this because its open source and they're interested in porting.

Right now there are a lot of file systems that do somehing not all that different than what Sun is proposing. The project I am on is evaluating them as we speak for a center wide filesystem. I've had the fun (no sarcasm, honestly) of setting up a number of different onces and helping to run benchmarks and tests against each. All of them have strengths. Every single one of them has some nasty weaknesses.

If you are looking for an open source based cluster file system, Lustre is what you want. It's supported by LLNL, PNNL, and the main writers at ClusterFS Inc. It's a network based cluster FS. We've been using it over GigE. However, we've found that there needs to be a ratio of 3:1 for data server:clients for a ratio. Wehave only used one metadata server. Failover isn't the greatest. Quotas don't exist. it also makes kernel mods (some good and bad) to do a mild fork of the linux kernel (they put them into the newer kernels every so often). It only runs on Linux. Getting it to run on anything else looks...scary.

GPFS runs on AIX and Linux. Even sharing the same storage. It runs and is pretty stable. it has the option to run in a SAN mode or network based FS. In the latter form, it even does local discovery of disks via labels so that if a client can see the disks locally it will read and write to them via FC rather than to the server. It, however, is a balkanized mess. It requires a lot more work to bring up and run: there is an awful lot of software to configure to get it to run (re: RSCT. If you haven't had the joys of HATS and HAGS, count yourself very, very lucky).

ADIC's StorNext software is another option. This one is good if you are interested in ease of installation, maintanence, and very, very fast speeds (damn near line speed on Fibre channel). I have set this one up for sharing disks in less than two hours from first install to getting numerous assorted nodes of different OS's to play together (Solaris, AIX, Linux). It freakin on virtually everything from Crays to Linux to Windows. It's issues seem to be scaling (right now doesn't go past 256 clients) and it has some nontrivial locking issues (righting to the same block from multiple clients, and parallel I/O to the same file from multiple clients if you change the file size).

There are some others that are not as mature. Among them are Ibrix, Panasas, GFS, and IBM's SANFS. All of them are interesting or promising. Only SANF looks like it runs on more than Linux though at this point. Our requirements for the project I am on are to share the same FS and storage instance among disparate client OSes simultaneously. This might not be the same for others though and these might be worth a look. Lustre dodges this because its open source and they're interested in porting.

A woman trying to grab smoke. :-) Sort of like trying to get solid details about the filesystem when everything was handled by the marketing droids.

Hmmm...as late as June 1 it was being referred to as DFS, the Dynamic File System. Not good enough for marketing, as it was too generic a term. Now it is ZFS -- the LAST WORD in filesystems. Ugh!

What happens when IBM decideds to let Sun's marketing droids know that ZFS is IBM's zSeries File System for OS/390 machines? How about that it also was a "dfs" in the way of "Distributed File System"?

Sun now want to take on Veritas, whose existance came into being pretty much to deal with the crappy Sun volume management.

All in all, Solaris 10 looks promising. Even more so that a good chunk of it will be open sourced.

If you actually cared about DB2 on linux you would know about DB2 Universal Database for Linux.

It's a product based on the Eclipse patform (not a plugin, more a standalone application).

It's a VoiceXML-oriented IDE. In a nutshell, VoiceXML is a specification that defines how to make a speech recognition (or DTMF) application for the *phone* (not the desktop) using a Web model (that is, exchanging documents over HTTP). The toolkit developped by IBM allows programmers to build call flows graphically, to edit VoiceXML and grammar documents, to manipulate pronounciation dictionnaries and to do other related tasks. I believe this is the part that they are going to give to Eclipse.

The other piece they're going to open is "Reusable Dialog Components", a set of VoiceXML documents (or templates), grammars and code. Theses modules allow programmer to combine different components together in order to build a complete application. I think this part is going to Apache.

Also note that:

Currently, Voice Toolkit for WebSphere Studio is only available on Windows

Although VoiceXML is a growing standard, many area are still uncovered by the spec. AFAIK, this toolkit is not likely to integrate nicely with run-time platforms other than IBM WebSphere Voice Server.

This is just an IDE. You need to buy the runtime (the VoiceXML gateway). I really don't think they will open their speech recognition software (a lot more than a 10M$ investment).

To quote IBM's POWER history, there are differences: "For instance, PowerPC is open-endian, supporting both big-endian and little-endian memory models, where POWER had been big-endian. The original PowerPC design also focused on floating-point performance and multiprocessing capabilities. Still, it did and still does include most of the POWER instructions. Many applications work on both, perhaps with a recompile to make the transition."

The JRuby article is part of the alt.lang.jre series, with announced articles about "Rhino, Nice, and NetRexx, and many other exciting alternate languages for the JRE". It looks like the articles are coming in this order, one around the beginning of each month.

The JRuby article is part of the alt.lang.jre series, with announced articles about "Rhino, Nice, and NetRexx, and many other exciting alternate languages for the JRE". It looks like the articles are coming in this order, one around the beginning of each month.

IBM wants your apps. They'll give you a free laptop bag if you develop an app for Linux on their Power platform. I think the most disturbing thing about this is the picture of Tux in a blue tux. He looks like he's ready to sing in a lounge somewhere.

But (somewhat) seriously, I could make room a four-way 64 bit Linux box on my desk. Chances are you've probably not seen my desk -- not an easy task.

And to save people research time... here's a link that explains booting linux from USB-2 or Firewire drive with the help of a boot floppy/CD, in the cases that the BIOS doesn't support it natively. (just like the Mandrake GlobeTrotter provides)

This sounds like IBM's Robocode contest from a while back. In that particular game, you wrote a robot class built around a predefined basic robot, using a provided API for stuff like "radar," and sensing when you're in the line of fire. Your robot would battle with N other robots in an arena, and the last left standing would win.

I think whoever won the contest last time won a new ThinkPad Notebook, but that was two years ago. By now, I think Robocode's been set aside within IBM.

Now it looks like some Third Party's built a competition around IBM's Robocode.

So when the typewriter with a proportional font and a th key is found you have to admit that Bush lied about his guard service. A lie, a dirty little lie from a dishonest and dishonorable liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth on any subject.

Now... on to business...

The IBM Executive had proportional fonts in 1942, it was the workhorse typewriter for much of business for that exact reason. A Lt Colonel is exactly the type of person who would want correspondence to be written in an impressive typeface. The clerk would use the same machine to write all memos regardless of importance.

First off, military correspondence is prepared in accordance with regulations, not artistic fancy. The notion that a mid-level officer, like a Lieutenant Colonel, would be concerned with pretty typefaces in 1973 is silly. That didn't become a craze until the Macintosh in the mid '80s.

It is very unlikely that a relatively low level tactical headquarters would have the sort of fancy, expensive typewriters like that in the early '70s. This is especially true for a National Guard unit, which tends to get hand-me-downs. Even if they were buying new equipment, it isn't likely at the time that they would have bought this sort of expensive typewriter.

Having typed more military correspondence, memos, and reports than I care to remember, working with proportional fonts is a pain when you are formatting manually. When I eventually was able to use a computer for that sort of thing I always tried to use one font, courier, since it was fixed width and made complying with regulations so much easier. I can't believe that they wouldn't have done the same, i.e. used a fixed width font / typeface.

If you visit this site where you can find a copy of the manual for the IBM Selectric Composer. Or, visit IBM's site and check into the research papers on some of these typewriters. Then start looking for all of the features necessary to reproduce those documents. They aren't there in any single combination of elements.

You might get sort of close, but the only way that you could do it by would be by doing things which would greatly slow down the production of documents. That is, type a bit, stop, swap type elements, type, stop, swap type elements, type, etc., repeat. Based on that, I think it is very likely that they would handle things like superscript elements (th) like almost everybody did with typewriters: use the same typeface and off-set it. That would have been both efficient and acceptable under regulations. To even suggest that they would have done it by swapping type elements is ridiculous, especially since the supposed author of these secret memos could barely type.

At least that is more credible than your idea of field modification to typewriters. The selectric you mention used type-balls. I don't think that there are going to be very many field modifications to those.

Routine administrative functions in low-level military headquarters rely upon standard, mass produced office equipment, generally from the lowest bidder. They don't rely on fanciful machines combining features from multiple known machines that existed somewhere in the world, or ones with special modifications to type runes.

And you should be clear that there are more than just self-proclaimed experts saying these document

Kerning, the spacing between letters in a propotional font, is something a typewriter of that era is not capable of. It has no idea what letter came before it, and therefore can't space the letters the way computers can today. Doesn't matter WHAT font style it's in. Typewriters of that era are simply not able to do that.

That's the smoking gun in all this, and that's what proves those documents are fake.

Gee, that's sure some "smoking gun" you've got there, since IBM introduced proportional spacing typewriters in 1941.

"Case Closed," indeed.

Where did the Bush Administration get their copies of the "forgeries" that they released themselves the same day? Oh, from the Kerry campaign. You've got it all figured out.

Congratulations, they invented the BBS !

Interestingly, I've been trying to find time to start an IBM Domino based BBS for my neighborhood. Yes, I started an i-neighbors thingy, but it would still be cool to have our own local site. (rembering the good 'ol days of 300 baud dialup :)

I would say install linux at home (try something like Gentoo Linux), and spend a lot of time working with it.

There is a set of tutorials going from Basic to Advanced Linux Administration linked here, and a direct link to the tutorials here.

Good luck and enjoy Linux - it can be a lot of fun!

supplemental: see http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941 .html, where IBM mentions proportional spacing as becoming "a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters" starting in 1941.

There were Executives released throughout the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.

-ed

Oh yeah?

Just because you didn't know about it, doesn't mean it isn't real.
Also, a quick typography lesson for all:
Typefaces are a standard. They rarely change. The Times typeface has been in existence for decades, as has Futura, Garamond, etc, etc. They don't change very much over time. Times Roman was invented in the early 1930's.