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So, like, I figured I should read this license to figure out what's up. I looked around a bit and eventually found it.

The very first thing I noticed is that it's much, much more difficult for a layman to read and understand than the GNU GPL is. Now, everyone reading Slashdot knows how much controversy, confusion and debate the GPL has spawned -- imagine how much worse it would be if the GPL had been written in this incomprehensible style. The SCSL has no preamble which explains the intent of the license; and in order to make any sense of the text of the license, one must continually refer to the license's Glossary to figure out what is meant by all of the Capitalized Words. The SCSL is actually three or more separate licenses all concatenated together, and you have to read a meta-license to determine which of the sublicene(s) apply to you.

So, while I didn't bother reading all of the license, I got the following out of it:

• The software is only free (in the Debian Free Software Guidelines sense) for Research Use. You can't use the software freely if you actually have a job. (The Internal Deployment Use sub-license isn't free, either.)

• For any other use (including commercial use), there are unacceptable limitations. You can't distribute modifications, and you can't disassemble or reverse engineer executables.

The last thing I noticed, after I quit reading the license in disgust, was that there was a "session ID" appended to the URL. It seems that Sun wanted to track me as I browsed their site. Naughty Sun! (The actual URL that I got for the license when I finally got to it was http://www.sun.com/jini/licensing/scsl_jcp_v.1.6c_ web.html;$sessionid$E5HGUBAAAV2LDAMU VFZE3NQ -- but I snipped the "session ID" garbage from the end before adding the license link in the first paragraph.

Does Sun really think that programmers are so bone-headed that we won't see right through all of their little tricks? We (or our predecessors) are the people who built the Internet! We aren't stupid, and we notice details. Your lawyers can't bury us with avalanches of mumbo-jumbo, because we programmers will eventually pick our way through the maze and find the rotten trash you dropped at the exit.

By playing these petty little power games with us, Sun only continues to alienate us. This is why Java has met with such a cold reception among the technologically savvy user and programmer community -- Sun doesn't want to play by the rules.

Well, just remember that the ultimate power is ours, not theirs. We have the power to disregard Sun's offerings until they come up with a way to work with us instead of against us. Sun isn't offering anything we need -- they're trying to grow a market. We've already got the tools and the talent to go our own direction, without Sun's poisoned candy. So while Sun keeps shooting itself in the foot and feeding fluff to the "HTML coders", we can go on with our lives.

Sun sponsor the McLaren F1 racing team, and also provide hardware. see here. However, it doesn't use Java in the car, as far as I know.

Can someone with real-world experience with both application servers and more standard technologies (CGI, Perl, JSP, servlets, etc.) compare what advantages app servers and/or EJB really bring to the table? I am developing my first app server project now (Enhydra), and see some definite advantages, but not a huge number of them, at least for now.

BTW, please don't mention MySQL, or database comparisons... the database backend doesn't matter in the discussion of app servers/EJB vs not.
----------

Posted by The Devout Capitalist:

There are over a hundred comments about open source. Very few talk about the business issues from Alan Baratz's perception. I've heard Alan speak several times, in public and in private, about Netscape and Java before the Sun-Netscape Alliance. The concern is simple:

Enterprises must be able to deploy current Java 2 applets.

Only Java applets written to support the ancient 1.0.2 version can be reliably deployed on the Internet; and this hurts the Java cause. So far, Sun's attempts to aid its screaming customers have included the HotJava Browser, the Java Plug In, the Personal Application Browser, the compliance lawsuit with Microsoft, collaboration attempts, and prayers. Now with the alliance, Alan sees a chance to make a world class browser that will power the next wave of the Java movement, and he is willing to pay for it. As Mozilla hasn't provided the browser, the field is open to new approaches. I expect Alan would pay $75 million to fix this problem this calendar year.

Please remember that this discussion is about money.

Posted by The Devout Capitalist:

There are over a hundred comments about open source. Very few talk about the business issues from Alan Baratz's perception. I've heard Alan speak several times, in public and in private, about Netscape and Java before the Sun-Netscape Alliance. The concern is simple:

Enterprises must be able to deploy current Java 2 applets.

Only Java applets written to support the ancient 1.0.2 version can be reliably deployed on the Internet; and this hurts the Java cause. So far, Sun's attempts to aid its screaming customers have included the HotJava Browser, the Java Plug In, the Personal Application Browser, the compliance lawsuit with Microsoft, collaboration attempts, and prayers. Now with the alliance, Alan sees a chance to make a world class browser that will power the next wave of the Java movement, and he is willing to pay for it. As Mozilla hasn't provided the browser, the field is open to new approaches. I expect Alan would pay $75 million to fix this problem this calendar year.

Please remember that this discussion is about money.

Posted by The Devout Capitalist:

There are over a hundred comments about open source. Very few talk about the business issues from Alan Baratz's perception. I've heard Alan speak several times, in public and in private, about Netscape and Java before the Sun-Netscape Alliance. The concern is simple:

Enterprises must be able to deploy current Java 2 applets.

Only Java applets written to support the ancient 1.0.2 version can be reliably deployed on the Internet; and this hurts the Java cause. So far, Sun's attempts to aid its screaming customers have included the HotJava Browser, the Java Plug In, the Personal Application Browser, the compliance lawsuit with Microsoft, collaboration attempts, and prayers. Now with the alliance, Alan sees a chance to make a world class browser that will power the next wave of the Java movement, and he is willing to pay for it. As Mozilla hasn't provided the browser, the field is open to new approaches. I expect Alan would pay $75 million to fix this problem this calendar year.

Please remember that this discussion is about money.

First of all, there's more than a single embedded systems market. There are truly low-end systems (think toaster thermocontrols) where a Unix-like OS is certainly overkill. On t he other hand, there's a very large market segment where a Unix-like OS is not overkill. Telecom switching equipment and industrial control panels fit into this category. In these segments, it's not unusual at all for your "small" computer to be a m68k, PPC, SPARC, or Pentium running at a respectable speed and having 4, 8, or even 32+ Mb of memory. This is the market space currently occupied by VxWorks ( Wind River Systems), pSOS ( ISI), LynxOS ( Lynx Real-Time Systems), VRTX ( Mentor Graphics), Chorus ( Sun), QNX ( QNX Software Systems), OS-9 ( Microware), and a whole bunch of others that I can't think of off the top of my head. Oh, yeah, and Windows CE.

I even know of folks who are using Solaris or AIX in this type of application. Not to mention the poor fools who are stuck with Windows NT for control and monitoring applications (don't laugh, it happens!).

Now, the majority of these real-time operating systems (RTOS) are POSIX-compliant, at least to some degree. Usually, this means that they implement the POSIX.1 APIs. So, except for the tasking and memory models, they look a heck of a lot like Unix/Linux. Some of them (LynxOS, QNX) are downright Unix clones (like Linux). All of them have TCP/IP networking available, all of them either already have Java support or have promised it Real Soon Now, lots of them even use gcc/gdb as their toolchain.

Given that, why not Linux? Margins tend to be sensitive here, so you'd really like to eliminate those per-cpu royalties that the commercial (I should say "proprietary", since MontaVista is obviously commerical) vendors charge. And (contrary to what some /.'ers have posted) uptime is critical in many of these applications. Long-term supportability and credibility is also critical, as many of these systems may have production lifetimes of years, and field lifetimes of decades. Customers already recognize the value of having access to the source code in these circumstances, and they tend to demand it from their software vendors (it is usually provided under NDA or escrowed).

Now, check out the founders of MontaVista. Jim Ready helped put together VRTX, one of the first commerically-successful RTOS's. Jerry Kirk founded Microtec, which is the dominant vendor of compilers and debuggers for embedded systems (the XRAY debugger is the most-used debugger in the embedded world). So I would guess these two ought to have a good understanding of how to put together a OS + development enviroment that would appeal to the RTOS market.

It looks to me like, between this and eCos, we're about to see The Cathedral and the Bazaar dynamic in yet another OS market.

While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it needs to be. -- Linus Torvalds

Not quite.

In fact, Sun *DOES* open-source their micro-code. You can get all the goods on the latest and greatest UltraSparcs, fab 'em yourself, change 'em around, and research on them. If you make any good changes, you can either license the right to sell them from Sun, or give your changes back to Sun.

So no, it isn't a joke.

Good luck fabbing an Ultra, though.

--Corey

I know someone who did some benchmarking with various compilers on high end RISC hardware (SGI Origin 2000 and Sun Starfire). It was doing fluid dynamic modelling, and the code was about 400,000 lines. The egcs compiler was about 3x slower at compiling the code. For actual generated code, for a variety of tests/setups, the egcs code was much slower on several tests (9x slower on one test), and on one or two tests it was actually slightly faster than the commercial compilers. On a few tests the egcs code failed to work due to bugs in the egcs compiler.

Compiling for high end hardware is very hard, and you generally need compilers that know the hardware to get the best results, which is why it's not that surprising egcs/gcc didn't do too well on the high-end hardware - because it rarely gets used for such things.

Sun have a long, detailed white paper on egcs VS Sun's compiler. They quote 34% faster SPECint code and 127% SPECfp code with their own compiler. They also promote some other things - better development environemnt, hence improving productivity. btw, Sun's standard compiler costs $500 and their pro one cost $1500, I believe... (of course, if you're paying developers to write code, saving two-man weeks of time could be enough to justify that $1500, for the guy working from home, the cost is prohibative)

Sun have said they're working on some stuff to help people writing software that works correctly on Solaris and Linux more easily. It'd be nice if they made their compilers work under Linux and be free to non-commercial useage.

Now I can't for myself see how Java could be used for low level OS stuff (rather redundant) but such an OS exists already.
Remember that the Java classes are essentially executable code and chips do exist that use bytecode as the native language so it may not be that bad.

Despite all this, the notion seems like their playing king of the hill and not sleigh the dragon.

EBay dark for 2nd day
ONLINE: A software problem leaves the site's auctions blocked.

The only techinical detail, FWIW, is the quote ``Company officials said Friday that the outage apparently stemmed from a problem with software provided by Sun Microsystems Inc.''

The article mostly deals with the missed selling opportunities, including a quote from someone who had quit her job to sell stuff on eBay and was losing a fortune.

Hardware: I think that Sun really made a mistake here. I'm not too unhappy that they threw out SBus and went to PCI, that really does strike me as a good idea, but dropping onboard SCSI in favour of onboard IDE, well, that was just plain stupid. As it is, every time we buy and Ultra 5 we have to burn a slot to get SCSI into the thing. I notice performance problems with my IDE disks on my workstation, I'd hate to imagine them in any kind of server. Likewise, they seem to have redesigned the case with inconvienience in mind. You have to eviscerate the damn thing every time you want to change anything (memory being the worst) and all the little bits and pieces seem to be fairly low quality.

In the end, the only reason that I upgraded from an Ultra 1 was the frambuffer. 24 (or 32) bit graphics are nice, especially when compared to the measley 8 bits I had before. I don't really have any one application that takes advantage of the extra colors, but color map conflicts (and thus epileptic flickering as maps are switched) are a thing of the past.

And, of course, there's the Mystery Bay. On the front of Ultra 5s is a little flip door that looks just about the right size to admit a 4mm tape. Of course, it isn't the right size, and no tape drive would fit inside anyway. When asked Sun said (after _much_ internal research and many days of not calling me back) that it was for a PCMCIA card reader. Great! I said, and where can I find this reader? "Well," they said, "we don't know. I actually don't think there is one. But when there is, you'll have a bay for it." -- wonderful.

OS: Solaris 7 is the standard these days, ships preinstalled on the Ultra 5. I ran Solaris 7 for two whole weeks on my Ultra 5 before purging it from the disks in a fit of retribution. To say that it's slow is an understatement. My TI-85 can serve web pages faster! I don't know if Solaris 7 is just broken (note the short time between Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 releases) or if it's only broken when it runs on Sun's new hardware. In any case, I dropped back to Solaris 2.6 and am much happier.

On an Ultra 1 Solaris 2.6 shows significant speed increases over 2.5.1, but all of these speed increases seems to have been effectively countered by the hardware in the Ultra 5. The end result: my Ultra 5 running Solaris 2.6 is now just about as fast as my old Ultra 1 running 2.5.1.

Marketing: Given all of these experiences I decided to go check out Sun's site to see what they had to say about Ultra 5s and new Solaris versions. I was somewhat amazed to find that they seemed to be marketing the thing as a desktop machine, trying (or so it seems) to compete with PC manufacturers. Now I'll admit that I like having a Sparc on my desktop, but a PC it ain't! The complete lack of emphasis on marketing the machines as servers was simply amazing. And this pattern seemed to be repeated for the other new Ultra machines.

It's really not clear to me what the heck Sun is up to, but I think that they have some serious thinking to do about their direction in the market. Presumably there's a reason to be (seemingly) ignoring their strengths, but I sure don't know what it is.
--

it's very reminiscent of sun's jini logo.

I dunno about IPv6 for the other unix guys, but there is a Sun provided IPv6 patch available for Solaris, and has been around since 1997 - for Solaris 2.5. Such a patch apparantly works on Solaris 7 too, though the web page doesn't say - it's bit outa date with regards to OS versions. Anybody know what the case is for Irix, and the other big boys? Besides, last I heard IPv6 hadn't even been completed yet, and I have no idea how long it'll be until it's being used significantly - ie I think bringing up IPv6 is a bit redundant when talking about current NOSs.

I wasn't particularly impressed by this article. Could have been better in a couple of ways (in some ways it seemed to have re-hashes from other articles going on about Netware VS Windows), and besides, we've seen so much similar articles it's getting boring... ^-^

PS Before someone asks, IPv6 is to replace IPv4 sometime and give us 128 bit IP addresses, instead of 32 bit. To put it simply.

The quality of the software depends entirely on the owner organization; this can be a problem if the owner organization does not place the same value on quality as the using organization, the owner organization has a different perspective on quality, or if quality resources are not allocated in ways that the using organization needs.

A sly dig at MS? :)

I did unleash a little fury on IIS, didn't I. I didn't mean to turn this thread into IIS bashing. I've just had some really bad experiences with IIS. It's way too integrated into the operating system for my taste. (Anytime that you are using the operating system's user database to authentiate web users, something is just plain wrong.) And the fact that the operating system that it is integrated into is NT just makes it worse. It's just not stable, manageable, or scalable enough.

Your claim that IIS is the fastest webserver is pure flamebait. If you would like to point me to a URL, I'd be happy to look at it. But, I'll guarantee that the fastest webserver isn't any webserver running on NT. Apache, Zeus, and Netscape can all crush IIS, simply by the fact that they can run on high-end UNIX machines with a dozen or more processors.

It doesn't really matter anyway though. I doubt that anyone makes their choice of web servers based on performance tests anyway. The difference in performance is small enough that features, managability, and stability are going to be decision points.

For those of you who brought up PHP's effect on the webserver comparisons, I concede that PHP may be significant development. To be honest, I don't know enough of the details about PHP to comment on its strengths and weaknesses. I'm a servlet kind of guy myself, so I haven't checked it out. But it does seem to be a simpler solution than mod_perl. (Not that Perl isn't cool.) At first look, it just looked like another server-side scripting language to me. Which is cool in it's own right since it's open source. But people tell me that it rocks.

By the way, since I didn't explicitly say it before: my opinions are mine, not Netscape's. I don't work on the development team for Enterprise server, and am not a professional webmaster either, so my opinion probably isn't any good anyway.

Rather than split this hair in public, I'll simply point readers to Sun's filing on the matter. It's important to note that, even if you grant that Sun didn't do the Right Thing, Microsoft is still not permitted to simply infringe the trademark.

As for Spyglass's JVM compatibility issues and the treatment they got (which, I assume for the purposes of discussion, is different from what Microsoft received), I'll simply observe that Spyglass had neither the desire nor the ability to destroy Java and its goal of universal interoperability. Microsoft had, and has, both. I don't see Sun as being a bad guy for protecting itself in this manner from M$ and not trying to do so with Spyglass.

The judge hasn't ruled, even tentatively, so far on the issue of trademark infringement. The answer isn't as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be, however.
--

If you're looking for a good use for Java on the web, take a look at Art Technology Group's Dynamo Application Server, written entirely in Java. It's a truely excellent application server. We've been using it for about 6 months and we're very happy with it. It powers some real high end sites too, like Sony and even Sun and it runs on Linux too.

Somewhat off-topic: Remember this little bit of news?

Sun stands to make quite a bit on the Java hardware side of things in much the same way...

On one hand it's great because it means anyone can get a hold of the processor core and design embedded systems around it - fantastic in an Academic environment. Sun benefits from up-and-coming design community penetration and familiarity.

But then all those designers have become "tainted" through their exposure; good luck trying to do a clean-room version of the core...

I'm pretty much neutral on this; Sun stands to gain a lot, but so does academia...

What happens if your raid card goes? Use software raid to mirror accross two controllers and you've eliminated a single point of failure.

Instead, you buy a box from someone like Baydel or Sun Storage Solutions. This box has a bunch of disk drives in it and a couple of controller boards that have SCSI controllers to talk to the disks, RAID hardware, and a SCSI controller to talk to the host. This disk box deals with all of the RAID stuff (striping, parity, rebuilding failed disks on hot spares, etc.). The host sees the entire array as one or more disks.

For the host, you just buy a couple of regular SCSI controllers and plug each one of these into one of the controllers on the disk array box. Then you just have to set it up to fail over to the second controller if the first one fails in some way (be it the host controller, the cable, or the controller in the disk array box).

cjs

If they kept the SPARC, its not really "Intel" hardware is it? Ok, ok, the PCI bus. :-)


This is only currently on the Ultra 5 and 10. Thelowend boxen. The market for cheaper/faster workstations looks like what dictated this. It's just a finger in the market, but if it gets people
to use unix or linux, I think that's just spiffy.


sixl6@dimensional.com

Umm... you didn't look at Sun's site too carefully then... one click away from the lxrun page was this article on what was done, and in it, there's info on a read-only ext2fs driver for Solaris x86.

Unless of course they are only talking about x86 Solaris.

They are only talking about x86 Solaris; this item from Sun's Web site (linked to by the article) says:

Lxrun is an open source application that enables you to run Linux applications unmodified with Solaris(TM) applications on the Solaris operating environment on Intel platforms.

(emphasis added by me).

Sun UK used to do it completely free (they'd order it for you from the US) but stopped doing it because of excessive demand.

Personally, I think this is excellent news for the Solaris and Linux platforms. Right now it only runs on x86, but Sun says they are considering a SPARC port.

Keep an eye on the lxrun web site for more news. There is a download link available. Solaris Central will be covering the product as well.

There are at least three independent implementations of IPv6: Sun's, INRIA, and... hell. can't remember offhand.

If you're interested in more info on IPv6, check out Sun's site, and the IETF ipng working group info page

SCO/IBM, and Sun, to name two more...

Adam

What are you, nuts? If anything there is too much you can configure in Solaris. For starters:

A collection of tuning papers and resources

• Thin clints are probably the right way to go for the enterprise... much more stable, easy to maintain... it would save loads of support costs. But for the home user? Who's gonna be my server?

• Maybe an "internet appliance" is fine for most things but what about us programmers? What about Photoshop and 3D Studio? Are there really viable alternatives that can handle thousands of users compiling and running filters and rendering 3D? Can a "thin client" run Quake3?

Btw, 'thin client' does NOT mean there is no hard disc (or equivilant). It does not mean 33Mhz 386. Remember the recent Intel stuff about the StrongARM 2? Cheap little embedded processor that goes up to 600Mhz. Guess what it will targeted at...? It's kinda hard to define 'thin client' - think of something around an old Atari or Amiga, but with at least 200Mhz processor, 16MB RAM, 'internet connectivity' as standard, etc. OS would probably (mostly) come in ROM, or similar...

• There are lots of "computer enthusiasts" (not even counting us hardcore geeks) that would be appalled by the idea of not having a local drive or their own software. And how would software licensing work? Subscriptions? Blehh...

'thin client' != 'no hard disc'. It might have a notebook size one, it might even have one of those IBM micro ones, it might have flash ram, or other type of NV (non-volatile) RAM, it might have an Orb drive or Zip drive or re-writable CDROM...

Software licensing will be interesting... lots of possibilities. Here's a little piece by Scott 'I polish by teeth everyday' McNealy titled Stop buying software

• Their is a future for Scott's vision I'm sure... but there will ALWAYS be a market for REAL home computers with REAL OSs, IMHO

Some people (in the press, and from some corporations) have been banding around the 'death of the PC'. Perhaps they should have said 'death of the PC culture', though I guess that's harder to fit into a headline. They don't mean the PC'll disappear, but that it will be 'sidelined' - it won't have the crown anymore.

• While Linux will pose more of a threat in the long-term, currently it's helping Sun. Here's some recent Sun-related links - Sun does well according to
• IDC server survey. Sun's sha re price has risen from $20 to $70 in last 6 months. Sun is now selling the Samba-like NetLink (part of Project Cascade). Interview with Scott McNealy (Sun CEO) at The Register, parts one, two, three and four - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I love Linux.". A SunWorld (not part of Sun) article about the "unoperating system" - Oracle (and Sun's) plans for 'thin-server' appliances with a small OS.

Here's the bit about Linux from the article at The Register:

• "Linux is like Windows: it's too fat for the client, for the appliance ...it's not scalable for the server. It's the right way to do the wrong answer, so if you're going to do the wrong answer which is fat clients and thin servers, then at least do it with Linux.

• "Don't send any money to Microsoft for something that's fatter, slower, buggier, doesn't scale as well, and has fewer people working on it.

  "There was an interesting little experiment our CTO [Bill Joy] did. He took the Sony Vaio notebook ... He downloaded Linux, then he went over to Netscape and downloaded the latest version, and then he went over to Star Office, and all of a sudden he had a better, faster, smaller, lower-powered, bug-free, legally free environment ... with more people working on it than the entire state of Washington.

  "Now why in the world would anybody ever write another cheque to Microsoft? I don't know. But why would you do Linux either? That's the wrong answer. Go thin clients, go appliances: that's the right way to go long term. So that's why I call [Linux] the right way to do the wrong answer. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I love Linux."

Okay, some comments on this. If you include all the GNU/XFree86 as being part of Linux then it becomes pretty damn big. XFree86 is something like 45 million lines of code, last I heard. So 'all' of GNU/Linux is about 60 million, perhaps. Solaris is about 10 million. However, Scott's take on the future is basically the network computer concept. However, the markets he's thinking of are a) corporate, b) embedded consumer systems (TVs, set-top-boxes, intelligent phones etc) and not geeks. So, you have 'big iron' servers in the background giving you extreeme reliability - as reliable as phones, and incidentaly about 20% of Sun's revenue comes from telcos. These manage the 'master records' of your files, data etc. You then have 'simple' local clients that can do their own processing and have access to your 'big iron' servers.

As an example, just recently, Sun announced their 'i-Planet' software, which is very cute - all you need is 'client' computers with Java running on it, and some servers in the background, with both connected to the internet. Now, what you do is from anywhere on these client computers you 'login' to the server, which then sends you some Java programs so that you can securely manage/access your email and other things. Basically, you don't need a 'personal' computer anymore.

Scott's "right way to do wrong answer" is kinda misleading. But you can look at it like this, a) he thinks Linux is 'good' for what it is supposed to do, b) he thinks that (currently) Linux is not a general solution to the various problems that need to be solved in computing - ie it solves a sub-set. Scott's general 'solution' is for big (Sun) servers in the background with 'thin clients' being used the the public/workforce running Java - the hardware/OS doesn't even have to be from Sun.

Is he right? Well, I think that for many situations I think 'thin client' 'network computing' is a good way to do many things, but it's not really for hacker types. How well the implimentation works will depend on the software, which is why NCs didn't take off - the software wasn't ready.

Sorry this isn't very well written...

• While Linux will pose more of a threat in the long-term, currently it's helping Sun. Here's some recent Sun-related links - Sun does well according to
• IDC server survey. Sun's sha re price has risen from $20 to $70 in last 6 months. Sun is now selling the Samba-like NetLink (part of Project Cascade). Interview with Scott McNealy (Sun CEO) at The Register, parts one, two, three and four - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I love Linux.". A SunWorld (not part of Sun) article about the "unoperating system" - Oracle (and Sun's) plans for 'thin-server' appliances with a small OS.

Here's the bit about Linux from the article at The Register:

• "Linux is like Windows: it's too fat for the client, for the appliance ...it's not scalable for the server. It's the right way to do the wrong answer, so if you're going to do the wrong answer which is fat clients and thin servers, then at least do it with Linux.

• "Don't send any money to Microsoft for something that's fatter, slower, buggier, doesn't scale as well, and has fewer people working on it.

  "There was an interesting little experiment our CTO [Bill Joy] did. He took the Sony Vaio notebook ... He downloaded Linux, then he went over to Netscape and downloaded the latest version, and then he went over to Star Office, and all of a sudden he had a better, faster, smaller, lower-powered, bug-free, legally free environment ... with more people working on it than the entire state of Washington.

  "Now why in the world would anybody ever write another cheque to Microsoft? I don't know. But why would you do Linux either? That's the wrong answer. Go thin clients, go appliances: that's the right way to go long term. So that's why I call [Linux] the right way to do the wrong answer. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I love Linux."

Okay, some comments on this. If you include all the GNU/XFree86 as being part of Linux then it becomes pretty damn big. XFree86 is something like 45 million lines of code, last I heard. So 'all' of GNU/Linux is about 60 million, perhaps. Solaris is about 10 million. However, Scott's take on the future is basically the network computer concept. However, the markets he's thinking of are a) corporate, b) embedded consumer systems (TVs, set-top-boxes, intelligent phones etc) and not geeks. So, you have 'big iron' servers in the background giving you extreeme reliability - as reliable as phones, and incidentaly about 20% of Sun's revenue comes from telcos. These manage the 'master records' of your files, data etc. You then have 'simple' local clients that can do their own processing and have access to your 'big iron' servers.

As an example, just recently, Sun announced their 'i-Planet' software, which is very cute - all you need is 'client' computers with Java running on it, and some servers in the background, with both connected to the internet. Now, what you do is from anywhere on these client computers you 'login' to the server, which then sends you some Java programs so that you can securely manage/access your email and other things. Basically, you don't need a 'personal' computer anymore.

Scott's "right way to do wrong answer" is kinda misleading. But you can look at it like this, a) he thinks Linux is 'good' for what it is supposed to do, b) he thinks that (currently) Linux is not a general solution to the various problems that need to be solved in computing - ie it solves a sub-set. Scott's general 'solution' is for big (Sun) servers in the background with 'thin clients' being used the the public/workforce running Java - the hardware/OS doesn't even have to be from Sun.

Is he right? Well, I think that for many situations I think 'thin client' 'network computing' is a good way to do many things, but it's not really for hacker types. How well the implimentation works will depend on the software, which is why NCs didn't take off - the software wasn't ready.

Sorry this isn't very well written...

Though they should make more of the OS available if they want to appeal to CS geeks. I mean, Solaris isn't nearly the educational tool that Linux is because the implementation isn't freely available to look at and tinker with.

Really? I thought the source was available to people at .edu sites. I remember a bunch of hullaballoo when they made that anouncement for Solaris 2.6. I'll bet it's still available.

Unlike other Unix players such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, Sun, in Palo Alto, Calif., has unveiled no plans to support Linux on its hardware.

Untrue. Sun has decided not to ship linux with it's hardware,
but is supporting linux on Sparc and UltraSparc. Check out:
http://www.sun.com/software/linux

(Note: Sun will be offering developers server-side binaries for free download from this website later this week. Check back here for download information.)

Sun is going to release the source, but not under its Community Source License (it says this on Sun's site). The source will be available for a flat fee. See here check the third question.

http://java.sun.com/products /java-media/jai/index.html

Most of what you say is false.

The Lisa interface - the direct parent of the Macintosh interface - wasn't actually all that much like Smalltalk's interface.

Go read Inventing the Lisa Interface for more on how the Lisa (and therefore the Macintosh) came about. Read the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines and Tog on Interface to learn more about why the Mac interface is the way it is.

This is not to say the Macintosh interface has no deficiencies; some of them -- though less than you imply -- are due to the original Mac's anemic hardware specs when compared to the Lisa's. But as someone who's used MacOS, NEXTSTEP, various X-based systems, BeOS, the Lisa, and Windows rather extensively it's obvious that it's the best personal computer interface yet.

(Also, just so you know, you can get a multi-button mouse for the Macintosh. I know people who swear by their 4-button mice. You can also get a command line environment for the Macintosh with pipes and redirection; it's just not part of what's shipped to end users because end users generally don't wnat or need that functionality.)

Very clever, but no match for the giants - my votes: apple and sun, nortel (I like the globe-o) and the logo for the apple newton, which I can't find on the web right now. You know how apple is about obsolete products: like they never existed. Oh well, another good logo wasted.
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-neorosis

Jini is Java-based technology for networking your appliances together. From their web site:

Jini connection technology makes computers and devices able to quickly form impromptu systems unified by a network. Such a system is a federation of devices, including computers, that are simply connected. Within a federation, devices are instant on--no one needs to install them. The network is resilient--you simply disconnect devices when you don't need them.

And since it's Java-based, it can already work with personal computers, and it doesn't need anything from Microsoft.

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Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address

A compiler cannot make a thread...

I was under the impression that "auto-parallelizing" compilers can convert, say, some Fortran or C/C++ code into multi-threaded code.

See, for example, this Sun white paper on their compilers, which, it appears, can auto-parallelize loops to run on multiple processors.

While I agree with alot of the comments concerning the question over real criminality and how microsoft definatitly has a certian amount of due negligence. This post is probably the most interesting.

A class action suit should be filed against Microsoft for it's negligent behavior in not creating preventitive measures by the people and corporations impacted by this virus.

The fundimental question is really what sort of ietf standard could be applied to prevent this from happening again?
The forced re-entry of password check when sending out Userid (eg. non root) messages with over 5 to 10 recepients?
One of the major problems is that this type of mail type virus has not been considered by any of the rfc and ietf drafters.. It is a new 'concept', pardon the pun.

I don't think virus prevention of this kind is the realm of the IETF, it is the realm of application writers. Now, the IETF should make sure that all protocols are secure, which will help... for example, right now it is possible to spoof the From: address(the field is added on the client side... it's not easy to hide all traces of the fact it was spoofed, but for a non-technical user, it isn't necessary) or intercept email and add an attachment containing a virus to it. So, I could pretend I was someone you trust, and send you a virus.

But, there already is an RFC on how to prevent this - RFC2311 - S/MIME Version 2 Message Specification All email readers and writers should start supporting this(hopefully in reasonably secure ways such that you can verify any automatically generated email before letting it get signed!), so that sometime soon we even have the reasonable option of not accepting any email without a verified digital signature. (Imagine the possibilities for eliminating/filtering SPAM! Delete or filter into a separate folder all mail received from someone who isn't in your key ring and doesn't have a key verified by one of your friends!)

The outcome of various ideas to eliminate this type of attack mean that every major mail distribution system must be reconfigured. All clients would have to make allowances for the change in standards as well. - While this is not a big issue for open source, the effects of a major revamp of closed source applications is huge.

This is not true. No change in the mail distribution system is necessary to prevent this type of virus. Merely changes on the clients to prevent a script received via email from automatically emailing people. Note that Java already has protections against such things, whereas Visual Basic does not. Also changes to implement S/MIME so as to verify who sent the email, so that you know whether or not the mail was received from a trusted individual. (Note: This won't help unless scripts are also prevented from sending signed mail!)

You're probably referring to Sun's Community Source License; these are the products they currently have under that license - but Solaris isn't one of them.

You're probably referring to Sun's Community Source License; these are the products they currently have under that license - but Solaris isn't one of them.

Solaris has {various things} and best of all, its source code is freely available to look at (and modify for personal use).

Really? I found this page for the Solaris SPARC and Intel Source code Program, but if you follow the Download the agreement link under "Licensing Agreement", you find it says "Please note that we cannot accept applications from non-educational institutions nor from individual students."

So to what other program are you referring to when you say "its source code is freely available to look at (and modify for personal use)."? Given that you didn't qualify that as "freely available to educational institutions", you clearly weren't referring to that program, unless I missed something else that indicates that you can get the source even if you're not an educational institution.

Solaris has {various things} and best of all, its source code is freely available to look at (and modify for personal use).

Really? I found this page for the Solaris SPARC and Intel Source code Program, but if you follow the Download the agreement link under "Licensing Agreement", you find it says "Please note that we cannot accept applications from non-educational institutions nor from individual students."

So to what other program are you referring to when you say "its source code is freely available to look at (and modify for personal use)."? Given that you didn't qualify that as "freely available to educational institutions", you clearly weren't referring to that program, unless I missed something else that indicates that you can get the source even if you're not an educational institution.

You can vote for PNG support in Java on Sun's "Bug parade", as it does not only allow you to vote for the removal of bugs, but also for new features.
PNG support is currently the second most requested feature (first is Linux support).
If you want to vote for PNG, you have to join the Java Developer Connection (free), the URL of the bug parade is:
http://developer.java. sun.com/developer/bugParade/index.html. The PNG feature has the Bug id 4101708.

No associative array type.

It's called java.util.Ha shtable.

Hack something on top of JNDI ?

There's also Globus but they don't provide copyright info.

Also a no-export thang at MIT .

stef