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LWCE Reports Continue

Posted by timothy on from the not-many-plushies-this-year dept.

Linux World continues, and reports from the floor continue to roll in; below are some more tidbits on what was on the floor or announced at today's show. Notably absent this year (besides a whole raft of companies, like formerly large exhibitors like Penguin Computing, Oracle, VA Software and subsidiaries like OSDN) were the sort of toys that crystallized dot-com risk-taking. On the other hand, companies like IBM, HP and Compaq seem as gung-ho as ever, with all sorts of info on how large customers will save (favorite trade-show words) Real Money with free software, and the dot-org booths where a lot of the show's spirit lives are happily sharing their projects' visions and toys.

wo1verin3 writes: "Trivia for geeks... and nerds. Or rather geeks vs nerds. Read about the contest of the people with oddly and randomly shaped heads here." This site also links to MoC chrisd's page of questions and answers.

abel wisman submitted news that GNU Bayonne and PreViking have merged into a single project, which will keep the name GNU Bayonne. Not familiar with either? Bayonne is a telephony application server, and PreViking is a telephony-switching daemon, both of which are open source. David Sugar of the Bayonne project also demonstrated an automated web-based callback system used to provide callbacks to form-based online queries. The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer. The Bayonne booth at LinuxWorld offered booth visitors today free calls to anywhere in the world using these technologies.

red_gnom writes: "Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo. A bid is being prepared to provide the computing power behind the US government sponsored Project Purple, which will pool a vast server farm to the three leading U.S. research labs, which is scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2004."

terrywin writes: "Apparently, the company that licensed Corel's Linux has indicated that the beta is now available. http://www.xandros.com/news.html, their home page has a link to the beta form. The last report I saw on this was back in September."

Finally, cnmill points to this story on CNET about today's announcement of version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base. Congratulations!

41 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, they are completely out of the linux biz, or so says their CEO, so no wonder they blew it off!

  2. Making money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As the VC money dries up and projects that aim for the stars get blown up on the launching pad, the true beneficiaries of all the free programming labor become obvious. It isn't those companies that hold to some ideal of Freedom of Software or other tripe like that. The ones who are making it are the closed source shops who have a product to sell. IBM, Oracle, et al.

    Linux to them is simply another market to tap. It isn't about the love of coding, but the love of money. So much the better for them that people are willing to give away their work for free.

    When the dust finally clears a year or two from now, you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development and multiple software houses offering server software for the platform. "Linux on the desktop" is dead if these big-iron companies are the ones left supporting the platform. So much the better, I'd say.

    1. Re:Making money by SomeOtherGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ya. Look at what IBM has done for the desktop products they have aquired in recent years...(let them die horrible deaths..) anyone remember the Lotus 123 spreadsheet, Amipro word processor, et all...If it wasnt for a steady stream of cash they would find someway to kill Notes also...Read the article in todays USATODAY...They are in the Linux thing for servers only...They will spend a gazillion dollars on getting 5000 VM's to run on a mainframe -- but I bet you wont see them spend a dime on anything for the desktop...

      --
      (+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
    2. Re:Making money by mamba-mamba · · Score: 2, Interesting

      When you say, "you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development," what exactly do you mean? Responsible for what and to whom?
      Do you mean that somehow all the people who now spend their time on the kernel and all the other software that makes linux tick will be somehow forced out of doing any linux stuff? How would that happen? Do you mean that they will just get sick of doing linux stuff? I don't really envision that. There might be some attrition, but not total abandonment. Also, do you think Linus is going to sell the rights to the Linux trademark to this one big company?

      Also, when you say that the "true beneficiaries" of free programming labor are these companies (or this company), you seem to be ignoring the customers and other users. I would argue that the true beneficiaries of all this free coding are the people who use the code. If it turns out to be the case that established companies find a way to make money off of linux, I don't think that necessarily means that all the coders labored in vain. I mean, if I wanted to get rich writing code, I don't think I would have published it or allowed it to be published under the GPL or other permissive license. So the programmers haven't really lost anything as I see it. They knew the rules of the game and they played it willingly. They're just like all the other former startup employees who worked hard, but didn't quite get rich.

      The investors, though, they lost something. They lost money. And I think its fair to say that they actually were trying or at least hoping to make money. I do feel a bit sorry for the investors, whoever they are.

      MM
      --

      --
      By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
    3. Re:Making money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      When you say, "you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development," what exactly do you mean? Responsible for what and to whom?

      Good question, one that I figured would come up. I mean that one single company will do the bulk of Linux development and will be recognized as the "standard Linux". They will conduct themselves in a very business-like fashion and likely refuse patches from the wild. They will become the OpenBSD of Linux. Their revenue will come from large contracts with corporations for setup and support.

      Sure, there will be hobbyists who still tinker with the OS and the OS will still be "free", but the true money to be made in gratis software is the support of it. This single company will be the only one that will emerge from the current crop of distro vendors with the money, reputation, and knowledge necessary to be the main Linux distributor in the Western Hemisphere.

      Also, when you say that the "true beneficiaries" of free programming labor are these companies (or this company), you seem to be ignoring the customers and other users.

      Yes, I am. Because I don't say that customers are the main beneficiaries of Windows either. Rather, it is Microsoft (and in like manner, Redhat) who makes money *off of Linux*. Other companies and people may make money *with* Linux or Windows, but discussion of the customers is peripheral to the discussion of those companies making money off of Linux.

      The investors, though, ... lost money. I think its fair to say that they actually were trying or at least hoping to make money.

      That's the way the cookie crumbles. It's a little like the stock market: It isn't the ones putting the money in that are getting rich (VCs), it's the ones brokering the sales (IBM, Compaq...)

    4. Re:Making money by HeUnique · · Score: 2

      Actually - there is some life in Lotus - check their web site...

      --
      Hetz (Heunique)
    5. Re:Making money by cduffy · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Sure, there will be hobbyists who still tinker with the OS and the OS will still be "free", but the true money to be made in gratis software is the support of it. This single company will be the only one that will emerge from the current crop of distro vendors with the money, reputation, and knowledge necessary to be the main Linux distributor in the Western Hemisphere.

      Not likely. There may be one Linux distribution which gains general usage, but they'll still only be a distributor; they'll still take their software from "the wild" before packaging and QAing and selling it, and there will still be smaller companies which do better in other markets.


      I work for a Linux company doing embedded systems work (MontaVista Software), and we have to accept patches from the wild. As it is we can provide and support a huge amount of high-quality software on a very wide array of platforms with a staff of under 200 people. To accept only in-house patches would either require a massive growth in staffing (and a corresponding growth in expense) and, further, would stop us from benefitting from the concurrent development done outside the company.

      Indeed, there've been times when we've considered keeping work we did in-house between ourselves and our customers, and came to the decision that there was a very strong business case for merging our work into the community tree to ease the costs involved with software maintenance. Doing internal development is just too expensive, and the advantages to justify it just aren't there. This is true no matter who you are -- it would be no more cost-effective for Red Hat (or Microsoft) to work on an internal fork of some Linux distribution than it would be for us.


      As for what I said about having smaller companies succeeding in niche markets, let me use MontaVista as an example. We have a fair number of experienced kernel coders working for us, and several very large companies have found our "money, reputation and knowledge" to be enough to justify purchasing our products and services. By the numbers (less than 200 people) we're small fries compared to what you'd think you need to run an OS company, yet we've been doing remarkably well. Largely, this goes back to OSS development methodology. Because we can take advantage of the concurrent work done elsewhere, we can focus on work closely aligned with our specialty -- embedded systems -- and not have expend undue time on software maintenance. Because we do embedded systems so well (due to our focus!), we win customers in that market over differently focused competitors. This demonstrates how smaller companies can survive and even thrive in an OSS environment despite the potential presence of a 900lb gorilla.


      ...but the true money to be made in gratis software...

      Our customers don't care about gratis -- our product isn't gratis to them (though it is cheaper than many proprietary alternatives, particularly if they're producing a large quantity of units; Linux, of course, carries no royalties). Rather, they care about libre. Because of the GPL, they can take their existing product (including the software they got from us) and go to another embedded systems company at any time or switch to working in-house if they don't like the service they receive from us. Our customers have absolute freedom from vendor lock-in -- nothing to sniffle at. Thus, they're assured that they'll receive quality service and honest pricing -- or they really can just go somewhere else.

    6. Re:Making money by iabervon · · Score: 2

      It is likely that there will emerge a single Linux vendor that will provide Linux to the masses. On the other hand, this is unlikely to cut into the community, because the community has never been about that, nor needed that.

      Furthermore, there's no way that the big vendor will get the size necessary to actually produce even a significant fraction of the Linux software. And there's no reason they should: if Apple and Adobe can have a relationship such that people generally buy both MacOS and Photoshop if they buy either, there's no reason that a commercial Linux vendor and a bunch of free software projects can't have this relationship, too. The case of Microsoft, where a single company can actually provide all the software, is unlikely to arise in the Linux world, just because the structure of Linux makes it hard to create or maintain a monopoly, and lacking a monopoly, it is impossible to get the money or the army of programmers.

      I think there will be a company that makes a lot of money on packaging Linux and selling it to people who don't want to change it very much and want support for it as is.

      I think there will be a number of companies selling Linux software, once a significant portion of consumers can be presumed to have Linux; since there's no Microsoft there, there's the opportunity for another company to sell software.

      I think the main effect of the free software which will be available will be to limit the space that companies will write software in. If there is really solid free software in place, companies will use it rather than competing with it. The projects I see as this solid are the kernel, the common libraries (libc, ncurses, libjpeg, zlib, openssl, etc), the GNU utilities, XFree86, emacs, and vi. Companies will, for instance, not try to compete with X, but also not contribute much to it, and use it. Sure, they benefit from it, but only as consumers of a free and useful raw material.

      I put a couple hundred dollars into VA a while ago. It seems to me that this money went toward improving Linux software. I lost money on it, of course, but I think I got more back in terms of, say, software I could find due to SourceForge and more reliable hardware and software. While investors are normally in it for the possibility of getting more cash back for the stock than they paid for it, some people invested in Linux companies because, even if the money didn't produce more money, it would produce more value.

  3. The Register Article by Prisoner+Of+Gravity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo.

    This is clearly really exciting news. If Linux ends up being used on the world's largest (or fastest, or sexiest, etc...) computer, it's reputation for being both A)A valid solution for high-load calculations and B)A superior solution, worthy of being used on expensive hardware.

    If Linux is used on this largest computer, imagine what this will mean for managers choosing it for mere 'large' computers. The future looks good for 'Big' Linux.

  4. Visit our booth by Monkeyman334 · · Score: 2

    I couldn't make it to LWCE (still waiting for one in Seattle), but the rest of the Open Source Web Design crew is out there. I don't know what exactly we're showing off, except our really cool site. I hear we're across from an IBM booth and on a corner, somewhere in the .org pavillion. And the booth number is less than 10 ... like .. 4. We have some pictures of the setting up on Skatters homepage. Anyway, check it out!

  5. Why no represent? - Karma to burn by SomeOtherGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How bad is VA and OSDN hurting to not represent at such a big event?? -- I guess 1 look at themes.org is a good example of how fast something can go downhill. (Saw the article on the Loki timeline -- will we see a VA/OSDN timeline?)

    --
    (+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
  6. 1st time conference attendee by jamienk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was the first computer conference I've ever attended. Most of it was what I expected it would be -- a bunch of bullshit: the big companies and the little companies were hawking their wares, acting slick and SELLING SELLING SELLING.

    There were a ton of proprietary software vendors, wholely clueless that Linux users may prefer Linux because of the Freedom. NuSphere, for example, was showing off their Linux port of the Windows PHP IDE product...acting like Linux was just another platform, like a port to a Mac. (The port was incomplete.) Compaq held an expensive-looking gameshow contest with questions like "Why is Compaq considered a leading expert in Linux?" and where all the answers were "all of the above." Ximian came accross as a slick, funded, bullshit corporation, selling their MS Exchange connector. I fear the future of GNOME in their hands. Best propritary software was the guy from Taiwan, selling a program that grabs all relevent Windows config files and translates them to the correct Linux equivs (Sendmail, Appache, SAMBA, etc.). He said his product was big in China.

    The Hardware vendors seemed less bad -- at least they're selling a THING, not IP. Of particular note was the Sharp Linux PDA -- much better than I imagined, more like a little laptop than a PDA.

    Best, though, was the small "ORG" section of the convention. The enthusiasm and lack of bullshit was palpable, and it put the salesmen to shame. It made the whole thing seem like two events, one of salesmen, and one of artists. In particular, the Linux Terminal Server guys were cool as shit. (http://www.ltsp.org/) The KDE guys (especially Ian) were also amazing. I was pleased that they all had fresh ideas, but were dedicated to the old-fashioned, core hacker concepts (client/server, language neutrality, extensibility). These guys had a VISION and were advocating, teaching, and arguing for it with great gusto and humor. The sales people, on the other hand, seemed insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb.

    All-in-all, just what you'd expect...

    1. Re:1st time conference attendee by lkaos · · Score: 4, Funny

      Last year I went with two other people from my company. We went around doing the whole business thing and at one both, received a demo from some goober pushing a SourceForge replacement.

      Of course the demo equipment was running RedHat at a time when RedHat defaulted to having edge flipping turned on. The guy had the most horrible time trying to figure out where his netscape kept going, finally to give up in frustration saying, "I wish I had a Windows machine here."

      Needless to say we casually walked away... There was not very much Linux knowledge floating around, just lots of suits. The worst part was that there were _very_ few hot chicks!

      That's the best part of going to Expos, the Booth Babes!

      --
      int func(int a);
      func((b += 3, b));
    2. Re:1st time conference attendee by EvilStein · · Score: 2

      you know what, Linux World has been going that way for a few years now. The first two shows were pretty nice (in SF) but overall it's become nothing more than a buzzword driven show filled with whoever marketing felt like sending to the show. As a wise friend of mine described it, the type was "Have your people call my people and we'll see how much money we can make with this linux thing.."

      The geekfest that it once was has been bought out. =/

    3. Re:1st time conference attendee by Quizme2000 · · Score: 2

      That's the best part of going to Expos, the Booth Babes!


      That my friend was CES in Las Vegas. But like ALL trade shows/expos/conferneces their will be two things slimy sales guys and keynote speakers. Sales and Marketing folks must get some high off spending gobs of money for the oppurtunity to spew sales pitches at complete strangers for hours on end. The only thing I get out of the shows is the ability to get face time with the engineers/programmers to discuss the tech and find out where they hangout online, before the sales guys stuffs a phone book size amount of marketing crap into my arms.
      --
      "Get them before they get....
    4. Re:1st time conference attendee by Moses+Lawn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, this is what will inevitably happen as Linux becomes commercially successful. There are really only two directions that things can go. Either Open Source will remain a comparatively local phenomenon based on the original ideals of the community, or it will become commercially successful and shows like this one will tend towards Comdex. It really can't be both.

      Sure, commercial vendors are selling commercial, proprietary products based on Open Source. That's their job. There's nothing wrong with selling software - it's been keeping me employed for over 10 years. Many, if not most, Linux users may prefer the fact that it's Free, that's true. But that is not the audience for the folks showing on the .com side here. Yes, Linux *is* just another platform, and don't you ever forget it. The sooner Linux and BSD become ubiquitous, the sooner we'll see business software available for more than Windows as the standard. If I was an IT director and I needed to do PHP development or move my users off of Outlook, I would be thrilled to buy $10,000 worth of software to do that.

      Ximian may seem slick, funded, and bullshit, but two of those attributes are awfully important for establishing credibility. As to their stewardship of Gnome, let me remind you of the example of Berkeley Software, who sold the After Dark screensaver for a number of years. It was wildly popular (you almost never saw a Mac or PC back in the day that wasn't running it). They made a lot of money, deservedly, on it, and used those profits to fund (*warning: wayback machine failing*) software for disabled and deaf/blind users. The thing is, if a company is run by people that are not completely greedy, they can, and often will, do Good Things with the money they make.

      It sounds like there are some killer products available for Free and for money. That's great. That's perhaps as it should be, depending on how you see Open Source's future. But don't worry too much about the cloying, claustrophobic feeling you get from a trade show like this. Trust me - they're all like that. Go to Comdex or (shudder) E3 sometime, you'll see.

      As to the sales people, some of my best friends are sales people. Most of them are incredibly smart, sharp and damn good at what they do. They may seem insincere, dumb and clueless bacause they really don't understand what the hell they're talking about most of the time. Imagine yourself plopped into the marketing department for a few weeks, having to do whatever it is they do up there, and I think you'll see what I mean.

      That said, there are far, far too many sales and marketing units out there that seem insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb because they *are* insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb. Unfortunately, these are often the very characteristics the enable them to survive and propagate in the corporate gene pool.

      --

      What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?

    5. Re:1st time conference attendee by jamienk · · Score: 2

      Here's their website

      http://www.das.com.tw/

      Good luck looking into it!

    6. Re:1st time conference attendee by JimPooley · · Score: 2

      ...like Linux was just another platform...

      Linux is just another platform.

      --

      "Information wants to be paid"
    7. Re:1st time conference attendee by q-soe · · Score: 2

      Yeah yeah linux is too hard - Thats not what i said at all.

      I started out 10 years ago on HP-UX and moved from there to solaris and onto BSD and VMS - i have varied experience and worked as a System Admin, NEtware Admin, Server Manager, SOE specialist and Now i manage 15 staff. I hold a CCNE, CCNA, MSCE+1, Exchange admin and various other shit - NOT ONE COURSE - ALL STUDIED FOR.

      In short im not a moron or some newbie MS lover you can throw this shit at - ive been working with MS software in a corporate environment since 3.1 came out.

      Linux isnt to hard - i simply cant be fucked to open a console every time i want to do something simple (and very little in Linux is ever simple)- i have over 60 servers in my environment running Windows NT4, 2000 Enterprise, SCO and RED Hat and i use my home computers for movies and pleasure - linux is not too hard for me its pointlessly complex.

      Ive supported open source, pushed it and even replaced our firewalls with an open source solution, i would never be considered anti linux or anti open source, im anti whiners and religious zealots, be they christian, muslim or linuxite.

      Linux is not ready for the corporate desktop - full fucking stop - if you do a bit of checking on the subject (HINT - Linux sites are just as biased as MS sites - look further) you will find that Linux on the desktop does not save costs it increases them , then add on the costs for replacing all of my backend management and application database, a complete mail system rebuild and replacement for my SAP system (yeah it can run on linux as well, and they only butt fuck you a littl bit if you change over - like about 10 million in programming fees)

      Install another OS and learn about the enemy - i just installed it on this box again (XP) - 41 mins running fully and no issues - guess what it now works out of the box on most machines - in fact having installed numerous linux distros it works better and quicker than even red hat and mandrake.

      As for the wierd hardware this is what put me off my linux systems - Dell CSR400GT notenook, standard with 256 mb of ram and a NeoMagic 128 Video Card (the same card in millions of compaq, Dell and generic notebooks) - Mandrake 8.1 wont even run the Xfree server out of Dev mode and Red Hat doesnt like it much either - weird effects (slakware seems to work ok most of the time tho....) but i simply wanted to see how easy it was to do the simple things like play a div-x (i wanted to give my mother Linux on her desktop) - after downgrading the GCC and attempting several different software installs i gave up in a welter of make and config files and decided this was too much trouble to fuck with.

      until it is AS EASY to do this shit on Linux as it is on Windows it will NEVER be ready for the corporate desktop and may i suggest that if you got out in the corporate world and actually worked in it you would find reality to be very different.

      Linux is a fantastic OS - BUt its an OS - not a religion. It needs improvement and work - like MS products do - but im only saying that if that work doesnt get done and it keeps being a religious movement and you dont progress then MS will do so (XP is a massive leap forward) and Linux will die - and that is a major tragedy

      PS - I read some of your other stuff and seems really interseting and you have some good points but dont you dare throw off at my skills whilst working in the protected world of academia and universities - in the real world its very very different - i admire your knowledge and skills but i pose this point - have you EVER used a MS Operating System - im assuming you have a CS degree and that would have been pretty much nothing but UNIX and then you went to Linux so if you havent used MS Product then how can you comment. Im not being a smart arse im just sick of the /. mentality of attacking ANY disssenting opionion with a personal insult regarding someones skills - it pisses me off and i respond in kind.

      --
      I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
    8. Re:1st time conference attendee by q-soe · · Score: 2

      Its cool - i understand what you mean - a lot of the issue with rolling linux for me on a croporate is increaased staff requirements - we did a small scle rollout for 20 staff testing Redhat 7.1, KDE and K Office etc, the general user feeling was that it was really cool but the issues we had with domain connections (win2k Active directory), proxy and file shares, but the problem i found was it increased the support time my guys needed per call, these are skilled staff who work damn hard for me and they had no trouble understanding the OS it just took longer to do things but im prepared to accept that part of that may be unfamliarity with the OS.

      We simply found linux not up to our standards - were a global company and we require full interconnectedness at all times, linux cannot offer that with our existing backend infrastrucutre(not yet anyway).

      I dont want you to believe i dont like linux, i do actually, rather a lot, im simply frustrated with it in so many ways as its no going forward. Developers dont think about the end user and documentation is not existand, libraries ar the wrong version and software behaves in unpredictable ways, i understand the freedom of the GPL but as an end user i dont want the issues.

      I agree that Linux on UNIX environment is dead easy and if all of your apps and network run it then its dead easy - but you see corporates dont have the luxury - we use stuff like Exchange and SAP on global envronments and that means a change has to roll across them all.

      My point about Linux and i keep singing it is that it will win as the OS for everyman only when everyman can use it with ease, the constant anti MS evil empire stuff and religious zealoutry that leads to attituded of read the source code for doc is defeatis, MS wont stand still forever, they will take the best bits of open source and move ahead unless we as a community work together.

      I personally have never had a problem with a windows OS on a machine, sure sometimes they need a little fiddling but im prepared for that - and linux will work on most machines without to much work - Distros like Mandrake making it easier and for firewall and web serving i would not use anyother solution.

      I apologise if i was a little harsh - its just that im sick of the religious aspect (an attitude which Linus himself dislikes in many ways) and the way people attack me, like you my knowledge is hard won and learned through years of work and the common /. attitude that if you dont rave over Linux youre a mental defective or an MS employee/troll is insulting and defeatist.

      Eveyone has a point of view and if you disagree you point out why, you reply to me is excellent and points out some more good reasons - its a pleasure to talk to you.

      --
      I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
    9. Re:1st time conference attendee by q-soe · · Score: 2

      Im sure you did

      Now play a DIV-X movie ?
      Or a DVD

      Install a game and get it working out of the box?

      You will see what i mean

      Installing the OS is only half the start - anyone can do it - my point is linux has to be as easy to use as windows to get user uptake, it should be - the talent in the open source community is incredible and broader that anything closed source can offer - yet we fight about linux not being another OS or the preffered X windows client or some other piece of fluff without solving the inherent problems in the OS to make it a total alternative.

      --
      I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
    10. Re:1st time conference attendee by Inoshiro · · Score: 2

      "Best propritary software was the guy from Taiwan, selling a program that grabs all relevent Windows config files and translates them to the correct Linux equivs (Sendmail, Appache, SAMBA, etc.). He said his product was big in China. "

      I saw that last year. Let me tell you, if I worked in a shop that had NT4 servers laying around, I'd PAY for that. That piece of software costs less than the money I'd make back reselling all the dumb NT server licences, and I'd get a nice base to work with which is the SAME (on the outside) as the other machines. It makes testing a lot easier.

      --
      --
      Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
  7. Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts by d.valued · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know if anyone here recalls the Brazil Nut theory of Economics. In a nutshell (unintentional humor), it parallels the unusual and easily reproducible fact that in a can of mixed nuts, if you shake it long enough, the brail nuts (the largest ones) rise to the top. I've seen this phenomenon in piggy banks as well. In economics, what this means is that certain companies eventually will rise to the top of the corporate world.

    VA Linux^H^H^H^H^H Systems, IMHO, should've tried to duke it out a little more in the hardware market. Now it's a company basing itself on software and intellectual property (like, oh, Slashdot and other Andover.net aquisitions). Penguin is starting to feel the crunch of smaller margins in this commodity market. Oracle's probably taking a breather before Comdex, or maybe it's laying off the trade show circuit to save some $$ (after all, upholding a legally and ethically built monopoy takes a little work to hold together).

    One of the things to keep in mind about trade shows is that, oh, they are intended FOR THE TRADE. They are pitching their products and services to organizations that could potentially purchase them. So you won't see the Linux-based PDA's except as an item to be resold or maybe as a remote network monitoring tool (think a Sharp Zaurus with an 802.11b CF card).

    Something that slightly itches at me like an Asian Ladybug's bite.. Is Apple there? I know some people are belligerent over the BSD vs GNU/Linux thing, but right now Apple is the world's leading supplier of Unixish systems thanks to the miracle of OS X. (My next system is going to be an iMac2 with OS X.1 and PPC SuSE dual-boot.)

    --
    I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
    Real life is underrated.
    1. Re:Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts by the+Atomic+Rabbit · · Score: 2
      right now Apple is the world's leading supplier of Unixish systems thanks to the miracle of OS X

      Doesn't that title belong to Sun?

    2. Re:Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts by d.valued · · Score: 2

      Nope.

      Apple holds a MUCH larger market share than Sun on the large desktop market.

      This statement from my original post) came almost verbatim from the MIT Technology Review, Oct 01.

      --
      I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
      Real life is underrated.
    3. Re:Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts by the+Atomic+Rabbit · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry, were we talking about the desktop market?

      From the original post:

      right now Apple is the world's leading supplier of Unixish systems thanks to the miracle of OS X

      No mention of that.

    4. Re:Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts by the+Atomic+Rabbit · · Score: 2

      Most of them are probably running Windows, so the distinction isn't moot unless some concrete figures are offered. It may well be that there are more Sun servers out there than Apple desktop systems; I wouldn't be surprised.

  8. Re:VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware -- Oh so proud. by SomeOtherGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just watched that. How ironic the ajoining "stock ticker" table cell to the left of the video reminded me of how proud good ole' Larry A. was to aquire the LNUX symbol and carry the Linux torch high (in what seems like just a few months ago.) The new video in the window in front of me (and just to the left of the LNUX symbol) was 6 minutes of good ole' Larry stressing (in not so many words) how they are "oh so past that yucky Linux thing" now. I don't know about you all, but that makes my stomache churn a bit. (Not quite in the "selling your own mother" category -- but not far off.)

    --
    (+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
  9. VA Software still is supporting Debian by JoeBuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    VA is still supplying network connectivity to Debian, not a cheap proposition given their bandwidth needs. Try a traceroute to www.debian.org:

    ...
    13 s6-0.border1-7206.valinux.com (209.81.23.54) 102.552 ms 86.615 ms 86.868 ms
    14 fe0-0.dist5-3662.vasoftware.com (198.186.202.86) 95.753 ms 134.836 ms 95.819 ms
    15 e2-2.community8-bi8000.vasoftware.com (198.186.202.102) 124.682 ms 88.352 ms 114.626 ms
    16 klecker.debian.org (198.186.203.20) 91.755 ms 96.514 ms 93.637 ms

    1. Re:VA Software still is supporting Debian by tunah · · Score: 2

      And /. Imagine what it would be like to bandwidth costs to be slashdotted every day!

      --
      Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
  10. Pictures of the Event by advtech · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Edge Report has posted a series of pictures from the event. Every day until our 100+ pictures are exhausted, we will be posting a new set. Check out the first one at:

    http://www.edgereport.com/article.php?sid=123

  11. LOL! by raistlinne · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yup, that debian company. I wonder what their stock symbol is...

    --
    They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
  12. ASCI Purple sample requirements... by crt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    (from the 96 page requirement document.. btw - TiB = tibibyte - 2^40 bytes or so)...

    Example: For a 60 teraFLOP/s peak system, requirement 2.1.1.2 specifies that the system shall
    have at least 30 TiB of memory, 1.2 PB globally addressable user disk, 6.0 TB/s intra-cluster
    network aggregate link bandwidth, 3.0 TB/s intra-cluster networking bi-sectional bandwidth, 30
    GB/s system sustained productive disk I/O bandwidth and 75 Gb/s external networking.

    1. Re:ASCI Purple sample requirements... by GigsVT · · Score: 2

      Imagine a beowulf clus.....

      Oh nevermind.

      Man... The NSA really really wants to be able to brute force our strongest keys fast. Any estimates on the price of this thing?

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  13. Wrong, wrong, wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    There were a ton of proprietary software vendors, wholely clueless that Linux users may prefer Linux because of the Freedom.

    Happy to burst your bubble on this one. "Linux users" are not the target of the companies at LW. Those companies know that you can't sell anything to people who are either too ideologically "pure" or just too damn cheap to spend money for anything except hardware.

    Those companies are marketing to the people running big business systems, who see Linux as a very attractive alternative for small to mid-range servers. Whine all you want about commercialism and the lack of OSS purity and all that nonsense, but the bottom line is Linux is very significant success in the real world, even if not on your terms. Live with it.

  14. More Pictures from the Event! by advtech · · Score: 2

    The Edge Report has posted a new crop of pictures from the event. Here's a list of all three sets.

    Set One

    Set Two

    Set Three

    More sets to come after our photography from today and Friday is processed.
    --

  15. Uhmm... I'd assume not by Ghoser777 · · Score: 2

    Why would apple be there? They are using a varient of *BSD, not a distribution of Linux to build and model Darwin off of, and they are contributing back to the BSD community with code, not the Linux community (at least, not directly). I'm not sure what they would do there. Maybe if it was Unix World, then it would make a lot of sense. Otherwise, apple should save the cash and come up with a good marketing strategy, they need one!

    F-bacher

    --
    James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
  16. phonestreamer by abdulwahid · · Score: 4, Informative

    The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer.

    Just to elaborate on this project a bit for those interested. The aim of the phonestreamer project is to provide an easy frame work on which to build telephony applications. The system works by having a series of modules linked together connect through sources and sinks. For example, a source might be a MP3 file pulled from a web site, it might then go through a series of modules that do various manipuplations that convert the audio stream to 8bit U-Law that can be played straight out on an ISDN line. The sink would then be an ISDN card or something similar.

    The phonestreamer project will provide sources and sinks for many different types of hardware starting off with those already supported in GNU Bayonne and PreViking. For example, Dialogic, NMS, Capi and eventually SIP and H323. If someone then wanted to create GUI telephone applications under Linux most of their work would already be done and they could concentrate their efforts more on the application and the GUI functionality and wouldn't need to worry about the low level telephony programming.

    There will also be source/sink modules for all sorts of audio conversion. Many of these have already been written for the GStreamer architecture anyway.

    Those visiting the show, don't forget to come and check out telephony under Linux by making free International calls at booth #13.

    --
    perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
    1. Re:phonestreamer by sfgoth · · Score: 2

      The system works by having a series of modules linked together connect through sources and sinks.

      So they're reinvented QuickTime, but only for audio used for telephony applications.

      Whoop.

      -pmb

  17. Re:VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware -- Oh so proud. by Arandir · · Score: 2

    Well, you can't blame him. Everyone from ESR to RMS was telling him how he could make billions by giving away the software. So he dumped his hardware business and started giving away his software.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  18. Re:Making money - You are wrong. by q-soe · · Score: 2

    You make a good point but think about it for a second - companies (MMM MS, Adobe, Macromedia) already make big money out of closed source.

    Transmitting software on the internet is only of marginal cost if you live in western europe and the united states - the rest of the world pays big bucks for bandwidth and on an overall basis 56k modems are still the standard way to connect to the internet - this is useless for software distribution, and thats not even discussing viruses, corrupted downloads, dropped linbes, insecure payment systems.

    People are not replacing pirated windows with linux, windows XP is the most pirated software on the planet right now and in fact people are replacing linux with it.

    MS are actually having no major issues with XP licensing (despite what the register and certain sites tell you) they had a few glitches but so does anyone.

    The simple fact is this. Microsoft can afford to make their OSes public domain. The company makes money off applications and if they wanted to they could give away the OS for free (and they can do it and still have it closed source)(the very thought of them doing that is chilling).

    In fact MS have never prosecuted a home user for running a pirated windows (and i deal with MS daily - they are well aware of it and dont care as its another user of their product) - they are going more after business and they are looking mainly for breaches in licensing of applications not OSes. The fact is they can give do a cheap upgrade of Office and your software distrbution on the internet model makes it more cost effective thus meaning they could easily do it - and most people dont consider a couple hundred bucks every few years to be a lot of money (shock)

    The thing about your post that makes me laugh is the last line - The danger is that the thing that costs money - software development will die because the companies cannot make any profit from which to finance it. - thus shooting yourself in the foot as the reality is Development costs money and preaching about it to people who think software costs nothing is a waste of time.

    BTW - a defention of "Pretentious" is quoting 2 communist/socialist tracts and then shooting yourself in the foot with your closing line, uber Pretentious is quoting carl marx and uber leet Pretentious is mispelling Pretentious in the first place. (to be uber uber leet Pretentious you would have needed to quote Stallman (who makes marx look like a moderate)

    --
    I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....