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Google Gives Reason Why it is Built on Linux
Rob writes "A common reason why more governments and enterprises around the world are moving to
open source software is unhappiness, it was revealed during a panel discussion at the
LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday. Google Inc open source programs
manager Chris DiBona said the search giant has stuck with Linux throughout the company's
life, in part, because it
was unhappy with the terms of another software company. Which borgware company is he referring to?"
He was refering to Microsoft!
Freedom.
Which borgware company is he referring to?
It's Apple.
Surprise.
SCO OpenServer!
Seriously-- yeah it is MS, but the problem exists with any proprietary technology. The company doesn't need to be borg-like, just closed.
I've had plenty of jobs where we got locked in on the O.S. or on applications and it sucks. It is a rotten feeling when you want something changed but it is either impossible or it will cost you an arm and a leg. (Then you have to wait on their timing too)
I know throwing apple out there is a bit inflammatory around here but it proves the point. There are plenty of bad options out there without even pointing out Microsoft.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Google does a lot of things differently than most OSes are meant for. It's only logical that they'd choose one that they can customize to their needs...
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
It was just cheaper.
He was refering to Microsoft!
The article seems to imply that. But on closer reading, it indicates that Microsoft was just used as an example. The same would have been equally true of Sun, SGI, IBM, etc. And when you really look at what they were doing with Google, I think that Sun is actually more likely to have been the target than Microsoft.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Strange, I didn't see the word 'borgware' anywhere in the article. I guess that was just creative editing.
Does anyone wonder why Open Source and Linux in general have a bad rep?
Ok, simply put:
A. Open source can never be very easy to use and easy to run.
B. The common model of making money with open source is to sell you a support contract.
C. If you make an open source OS that is blindingly simple to install and use, you won't get any money from your support contracts.
Viva La Penguinista!!!!!!
Fear is the enemy; the one true enemy. {Sun Tzu-The Art of War}
Thanks for letting me know that those proprietary OS/SWs are owned by somebody else and not me!! OMG!!
Why can't I run the really cool stuff like Google Earth on my Debian machine
I had a circuits professor who had either done some contract work or worked at Google back in 2000. He told me and a couple other students that they used Salckware and ran the entire site from RAM, OS and all. Before that talk I never new you could run entire systems directly from RAM. Wild.
Unhappiness drives open source adoption
... I have to rip things out. But why would I want to spend money on something for which I only want to use a small part?"
... so we think it's going to happen," he said.
10th August 2005
By Rhonda Ascierto
A common reason why more governments and enterprises around the world are moving to open source software is unhappiness, it was revealed during a panel discussion at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday.
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Google Inc open source programs manager Chris DiBona said the search giant has stuck with Linux throughout the company's life, in part, because it was unhappy with the terms of another software company.
For instance, DiBona pointed out that if Google used Windows, or any other non-open source software program, to make changes to that system he would be required to essentially ask permission from that vendor. "Why should we hand over the control of our software support to another company?"
Other benefits of Linux for Google was being able to determine exactly what was running on any server at any given time and being able to plan what kind of power that machine would have, according to DiBona. This would not be possible, he said, using proprietary software. "Worse than that, if I want to expand
While showing a slide show of Google's hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of "spare computers that were lying around Stanford" (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google's current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.
Research firm and LinuxWorld sponsor IDC projects Linux revenue would reach $35bn worldwide within the next three years. "It's growing twice as fast as Windows," said CEO of Open Source Development Labs Inc Stuart Cohen. "If you're skeptical, just visit the SAP booth -- here for the first time at LinuxWorld."
More governments in the US and elsewhere are adopting Linux and to help pave the way are striking down software patent legislation, said Red Hat VP of corporate affairs Tom Rabon. During the past few months, governments in India and the European Union have struck down software patents and the US Congress is currently considering patent reform, Rabon said.
In addition to reducing total IT purchase costs, governments in several countries have opted for Linux as an economic development decisions, he said. "They hope that open source would encourage [the] growth of an indigenous software industry," he said.
Also, "Unhappiness with the United State's lead in software" is driving some countries' governments to move toward open source, Rabon said. Some governments see open source as "a way to move away from US-based software company products," he said.
More than 125 national open-source policies have been proposed worldwide
during the past few years, Rabon said. Governments are using open source to run applications, entire agencies and, in some cases, entire governments. He highlighted the Venezuelan government's decree on July 13 that within 90 days all government institutions in the country must present a migration plan to move to open source software. "This is a presidential mandate
if they've relied on it so much, it would be nice if some of their apps would run on linux.
When you look at copyrights like a government regulation that controlls how people use information, rather than some kind of "property" right. Then it becomes clear that Linux is truely more accountable to free market paradigms, and in the information age - as information becomes commoditized, that will be even more so - as the companies that treat unrestricted copying over the internet like a threat will loose, and those that treat it like an advantage will win.
It's good to see some company finally step up to the plate and publicly admits that free/open source software provides independence and freedom. IBM, Novell, HP always put out the "cheaper" argument which is seen as "less value".
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
This is offtopic, but because it didn't survive the submission I did I thought it would be best to post it attached to another Google story.
A few days ago I noticed several websites which are linked by default in the Google Personalized Homepage show staggering increases in web traffic and page views. According to Alexa.com Wired more than doubled and also Slashdot , the NY Times and the Washington Post show remarkable growth at the end of july.
Is this a redefinition of 'slashdotting' or is there something else going on?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Google can't pay $90 a CPU for Windows XP Professional Global Oppression Server or whatever. (I'm a Mac guy so I don't know exactly what Windows is calling itself now.) I bet both Microsoft and Sun are kicking themselves for not cutting Google a deal. Imagine the PR Sun could have gotten by using Google as a reference customer.
Tristan Yates
Even if he is referring to MS, it's not as if google can be considered impartial. They must have known they'd be competing with redmond on one level or another. How would it sound if someone said to them, yeah but doesn't your search technology run on Windows? Not horrible but not great either. Especially if the competition becomes even more heated.
Besides being customizable, Google uses oodles of servers. At $300 / seat for something proprietary, they are saving ungodly amounts of money.
In the end though, it is always about control.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
With well known companies like Google and IBM endorsing Linux, I wonder why it isn't more widely used in the enterprise?
I wrote some thoughts about that in my website earlier today.
Expert Java EE Consulting
I wish I had mod points. This is far more news-worthy than some of the slashvertising that gets approved.
Why else do you think there is so many google stories? The owners of Slashdot are kissin some serious ass to be on that page.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Hahha I totally agree. (And I am not biased, I am dual bootin Ubuntu and Windows 2003 EE)
implement a change because they don't see a need to. Of course they don't see any need to. They're not in your business, so they get in your face.
And your product goes begging.
Closed source has probably killed as many good ideas as PHBs.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
In their computer technology. Lego to server farms!
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
I blame it on stupid managers, e.g: "I don't want to use Java because it's rubbish at interoperating with Microsoft Word." ...from someone who makes IT decisions for a large government dept.
Hey guys,
Question: how would the web services proposal of GPL v3 affect google's web service's? Because the are linked to GPL licenses products, would it mean they need to distribute their web services code?
Are you going to back up your bullshit statement or are you just trolling?
IDC predicts Linux revenues at $35bn worldwide within the next three years.
I wonder how much "Linux revenues" google has contributed to? How many Linux licenses have they purchased for their 100k machine farm?
Amiga?
No, no wait... DEC. Yeah! Google is so fast because it does NOT run on a PDP-10.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
lol!
It's been a long time coming, but we RT-11 users are finally getting revenge for that crappy GUI, 32k memory limit, and hype-driven "plug and pray" jumper architecture. It's time to say goodbye to proprietary "ODT-ready" keyboards and a system that locks up even doing simple tasks, like loading a CSR without disabling interrupts.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Linux is successful many say because of Google- Google being the free 24/7 searchable customer support for your Linux problem. Somewhat ironic that Google's success is in part from using Linux.
Maybe you'd be biased if you actually had to pay for 03EE.
Who the hell are you?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
When a popular web site links to another web site, the link target gets a lot of hits.
Slashdot is one example of this. Fark is another. SomethingAwful's Awful Links of the Day are another. Netscape's "What's Cool" is one of the first. I don't see what the big deal is. Google could start soliciting payments to link more sites -- oh wait, as a company that makes nearly all its money from advertising, that's what Google always does!
For more information, click here.
Given their elitist, academic background, they were probably raised on BSD. So why didn't they go with BSD?
I'm thinking it was a bit random at the beginning.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
When you have a few 100,000+ machine server farms, slashdot might care what sort of software you use. Until then, posting about what OS you deign to use is totally offtopic.
I always wondered what would happen to licencing if somebody invented a computer with no seat, no monitor, no keyboard and no definable cpu - just a big expanse of FPGA chips connected at the edges to network and power.
Personally I am much more impressed by the fact that Oracle runs almost their entire business, including business line apps off of Oracle RAC on Linux.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oh boo hoo, you poor sweetie, dry your tears. Just because someone said something mean and nasty about Microsoft it isn't necessarily a personal attack on you.
In my 50-node-and-smaller networks, it's just so much nicer to be able to install the OS on the machines and not have to mess with licensing. I think that goodness would be that much sweeter on a 500-node network.
:-).
They could have used *BSD, but that would have been like Harvard boys using Yale locks. A bunch of Stanford grads use Berkeley-derived stuff? Get real
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
The selection of Software available for Graphic and Media are simply pathetic for Linux.
Pathetic? You have got to be kidding. First off, video support sucks under Windows. Let's see... I need Windows Media Player for wmv and mpeg, Quicktime for mov, RealPlayer for real, a proprietary DVD-codec for DVD's, etc. etc.
Linux? mplayer
Let's go to the audio now. First, you get Windows Media Player that can play mp3 and wav. OK. Then, I need to search through the Internet to find codecs for all of my ogg's and numerous other streaming formats, etc.
Linux? gstreamer
Even the performance of Linux is vastly superior to Windows when it comes to audio and video. A whole flame war almost erupted on the kernel-mailing-list because Linus changed the hertz polling time to a sane value instead of 1000Hz. This caused some audiophiles to cry out because they would miss a couple frames every now and then. BTW, just for comparison, Windows is set at 100Hz.
If you want to flame Linux, do it based on its shortcomings (for example, Office suite, video drivers, games). But, don't do it in the area that Linux shines under - especially when so much development is ongoing with projects like amaroK.
- Stan
It's BeOS.
so does amazon and many other huge names. But lets not get carried away: Your busines can use Linux, and it probably won't become the next google or amazon. Linux is just a small part of the equation that made google a success. And hey! ebay uses windows, WTF? do your own research at http://www.netcraft.com/
While showing a slide show of Google's hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of "spare computers that were lying around Stanford" (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google's current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.
Forget software licensing, I just want to see the slide with their server room!
Any links?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It is not uncommon for things to operate to the benefit of each other. Another way of putting it is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This kind of thing is an unpredicted benefit. It gives open source a competitive advantage over proprietary software. Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day and it will be a long time before Microsoft's domination is broken but things like this assure that the day will come.
I find it interesting that there didn't seem to be any mention of Linux' technical superiority over Windows. That doesn't seem to be one of Googles' reasons for going with Linux. This is interesting because many people claim Linux is far superior to Windows in terms of basic architecture and technical design, yet Google didn't see fit to mention that reason, if that is one of their reasons at all. And it MAY BE one of their reasons and they just forgot to mention it, but it's an intersting, ah, Freudian non-slip I suppose :)
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
The past is receding on me, too, it would seem. I meant 512KB, not 512MB. And it would take 64 DRAM chips!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Lol, calm down.
And the price of OSS is not its main draw. I chose to develop a number of projects with Java rather than Visual Studio because VS was expensive to buy, while Java cost nothing. But then I was frustrated by my dependence on Sun to fix problems in the closed VM and class libraries. So I'm now developing on an OSS language and framework.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We'll pump it so full of Prozac, you'll feel happy just walking by the shrinkwrap.
He's someone who objects to the constant poking at Microsoft present on this site. The article summary would have made perfect sense without the borgware reference. So, it was completely unnecessary, and you'd realize this if you'd pull your head out of the collective Linux fanboi drove's ass. You're right; they made a big decision to use Linux. That is what we're interested in; not in the constant jabbing at Microsoft. They're not even a part of the article.
A better question: who the hell are you?
Asshole.
0 liscenses, 0 revenue. you don't have to buy linux liscenses. They might have bought a liscense or two for dev boxes, but they don't need any for their production servers.
If more people speak up it will help blow out the SCO-FUD.
What an annoying poke at Microsoft, but I suppose I shouldn't expect anything less from the ass-puppets at Slashdot. It must be nice to have all your worlds problems boiled down to one fucking target... a FUCKING HUGE target.
Chill, we would still be bitching about OS/2 or DrDos if they were around. But they are not. I bitch at the KDE/Gnome teams as much as I want too.
Linux works fine, but it doesn't allow me to be productive. I leave Linux to do its job where it really shines: Office labor, Servers, etc. The selection of Software available for Graphic and Media are simply pathetic for Linux.
Ok, its your choice. But if you really wanted quality sound you'd still be running an Apple 2GS with 32 simultaneous channels. If you really wanted quality video you would still be running that Amiga 4000 with a video toaster. Generic Dell/Gateway whatever Windows PCs wont give you either. Neither will generic Linux PCs.
My Wifes $200 Naked PC equipped with Audigy and ATI running SuSE gives me a little of both worlds without the cost of a Windows license. I invested a day to learn how Audacity and Broadcast2000 work. It took me two days to teach her how the programs worked. We do video/audio editing just fine.
I prefer to use a Mac or XP for that.
Knock yourself out. I have two Macs here at the compound (no XP). I was trying to be helpfull, and please don't trash what your not willing to experience yourself.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
... but I'd hate to pay for the first one!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
But what runs the mission critical db backends to those business line apps? Sun 12k servers. So yeah, commodity linux boxes fronting the Big Iron. Hey, kinda like how Hotmail (Microsoft) ran FreeBSD..fronting Sun boxes doing the real work and hosting the real data, for the longest time. (probably still doing it, at one point, Hotmail was the largest consumer of the Sun E4500 line of servers.)
This was at the bottom of the article when I read it:
/CBRincludes/related_news.asp, line 137
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e31'
Timeout expired
But! You would have the comfort of knowing that you are running a Certified Microsoft(R) Product!
I personally never visited Wired until I added it to my google homepage. Now I visit whenever a story catches my eyes (generally two to four times daily). I could definitely see google dramatically altering sites traffic.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
"SCO provided the opperating system for the Abrams Tank."
'Long haired smellies' the world over quake in fear at the news....
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Okay ass-puppet. How about giving me some viable solutions to replace MEDIA APPLICATIONS. I provide 3D images, vector images, bitmaps/photomanipulation, etc. Currently I use products by Adobe, Corel and Macromedia. LOL... woooo Linux can play MOVIES and MP3s. Wow. So can my friggin stand-alone DVD player.
Give me mod points to mod this dude up!
It's all well and good if the kernel is open source, but an operating system is much more than a kernel.
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
"With well known companies like Google and IBM endorsing Linux, I wonder why it isn't more widely used in the enterprise?"
Why do you think it's not widely used in the enterprise? There may be as many as 30 million hosts running Linux. What was the estimate of the maximum number of OS/2 installations, by the way?
How many businesses use Unixware? (A large supermaket chain in my region does, their inventory, bookkeeping and personnel systems run on it).
It's all over the "enterprise"
where I work -- a very large, very well known publicly traded telecommunications company. Every place where we don't actually need huge Sun hardware or specific Solaris application support, we've got Linux.
Where do you believe Linux *isn't*?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I was complaining about the obvious jab at what is supposedly journalism at Slashdot. I don't care who hates MS, nor why.
I really do expect a lot from the Slashdot crowd, and especially the admins to keep their biases to a minimum. We all have our favorite apps, OSes and Hardware. But I cannot take anything at Slashdot seriously these days, because the final solution is going to be "Linux".
Ever tried to consult a small business and convince them to go to Linux? They paid $25,000 for a license to use a Proprietary System... they aren't going to DROP Windows just because I say so. Especially when that Proprietary System doesn't support Linux.
Could I bring this question to the Slashdot crowd? FUCK NO. Because the solution will always boil down to "Linux will be cheaper in the end".
We've gone way off topic. My original gripe is about the Admins obvious jab at Microsoft- which was totally uncalled for.
According to Alexa.com they gather their statistics from a toolbar the user has to download. Since my work as a systems administrator has allowed me to visit thousands of users and I have never seen this product it leaves me to believe that Alexa is just pure bullshit. On top of that your conclusion is obvious. No wonder your story never made it, it's a stupid story.
Not that I know much about mass production of computers, but how I do it is with a hotswap sata controller and 2 removable drive bays. One with a hotswap ide-sata adapter pluged into the back of it, and the other a regular sata removeable drive bay. The newest version of Ghost supports imaging a drive without rebooting, so it makes a great combination.
Article mirror:
http://firepacket.net/mirror/unhappy.html
That one tripped me up. A communist nazi would be a very conflicted person indeed.
Let me help you out with some terms:
Communism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Fascism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Nazism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
Stalinism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism
All very similar but not all the same thing.
I don't think "$300 / seat for something proprietary" really matters that much. Even if they re-bought that license every single year, it is less than $1/day to match whatever they are paying the butt that sits in the seat. I have to imagine that even peons are getting more than $100/day.
More likely, they just found that Linux did what they needed, and the non-cost, per seat, was a bonus.
It's the "big idea" that google is, that makes it a multi-billion dollar enterprise... not the fact that they may or may not have pinched a few pennies here and there.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
it runs exceptionally well under qemu.
Why would I want to release any code under the BSD license when I know someone could just jack it, repackage it, and sell it under my nose? That's why a bigger community has gathered around Linux. After all, if I want dinner on the table, I'm not going to give my work away to what is essentially the public domain.
So let's say google makes some tweaks to a BSD OS. But they don't want to contribute back to the BSD maintainers because they don't want people to jack their code. Now, whenever they want to upgrade, they have to merge their tweaks in. Compability is a harsh mistress, indeed.
With Linux, google has the option of submitting their patches into the main tree and ensuring that others will likewise have to share any changes (IBM, Redhat, et al.)
That's why linux is so much bigger than BSD. You get a bigger community and support thanks to the genius of the GPL.
I'll bite, just in case someone else who doesn't know is reading this -- you're a lost cause, but they might not be.
3D Images -> Blender works great
Vector Images -> Open Office Draw, SodiPodi, Inkscape to name a few
Bitmaps/Photomanip -> Gimp (better than photoshop, I've used both)
I suspect I produce much higher quality work than you do with these tools.
Get a clue, or go back to hiding under your bridge.
For some strange and unknown reason, you believe that the value is in your code and NOT in you. I suppose you are happy with the idea of being out sourced since under your definition of "cool" and not being a "nazi/communist" you have placed ALL of the value in the code. If this is what BSD is... then you can have it!
GPL protects ideas and people. Unlike BSD and other licenses which ONLY serve to support patent protected software farms. Rather than supporting the ideas of "dead projects" and "forgotten shelfware" and "replaceable people" (the BSD way you've defined here), the GPL ensures that good ideas, good people and good software do not go the way of the dodo.
Figures that you are a Microsoft...err.. I mean Solaris fan.
If there's any good news to your post.. its that not all BSD folks think like you.
Linux works fine, but it doesn't allow me to be productive.
Hum. Maybe you should change the user than.
Solaris 10 is free and there's always OpenSolaris which functions fine now to.
Solaris is as free as any other OpenSource OS now.
Hell, Solaris 10 commercial from Sun is FREE to use in any enviroment.
I agree... 100% Google has a huge database of user info.
:)
The thing is, this is one time were I AGREE to it. Their services are good, and make me lower my walls a bit. I am generally very anal about companies collecting information, but this is one time were I am a hypocrite.
Google is just another company to me and their "Do no evil" policy is meaningless (I mean do other companies actually sit around in high backed chairs and think of how to "do evil"?) Unfortunately the provide great services, and their "spying" has little impact on me... so if they need to do it to survive and provide good things, then they can have it.
This once... period... you other fuckers be warned
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
The parent poster didn't mention whether or not they've been around for a while. He said that they won't make money. Last I checked, Debian and FreeBSD don't make money. Hell, does either group actually employ a single person?
I don't respond to AC's.
I assume they need to bring a lot of threads on those machines, so performance difference may be a factor.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
3D images? Blender
Vector Images? Inkscape
PhotoManipulation? gimp
I can open many many things created by other applications.
Right now, the only thing I'm finding is movie editing and flash development. Eh.
Here.
Remember, they're running a cluster made of hordes of cheap, little machines -- vastly more machines than they have employees.
Also remember that they didn't always have that market cap, or any.
Though diskless workstations were very very common in *nix networks of the late 80s/early 90s (disks were *huge* physically and the only feasible approach was to have them somewhere far from the workstations and share them), the amount of the base system that ran in memory was typically just the kernel, which had the network support built in and booted nfsroot. As constrained hard drives were, memory was even tighter back then, consuming it as a ramdisk would've made the systems much less powerful.
Ahh, the days of running systems nfs off of 10base5 hub networks connecting to the huge servers with the 540 meg hard drives that took more than 4U (been so long, cant remember) each.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Haven't you heard?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
It's a little more thana kernel really. Only the OSX GUI is really closed.
But Google would not need that part for a million headless boxes in a rack. Being able to modify Darwin would let them do as much customizing as they have done with Linix.
However of course when you have a million boxes any licencing fee is too much, so they are really better off with Linux anyway as it's been hammered on a lot more, even though they could have just grabbed Darwin and gone with it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like whoever moderated your comment as Insightful?
If you take away your flamebait tone and your off-topic remarks about graphic and media software support which are not relevant for Google's server farm it sounds like the point you're making is to "use the right tool for the job". From this article for Google it looks like the right tool for their purposes is an OS that lets them make their own customizations.
If that is an annoying poke at Microsoft and other proprietary vendors then so be it. For this particular job they aren't the right tool.
Transmitting energy without a license.
They also didn't state the sky is blue and they need a mix of oxygen and nitrogen to breathe.
:-)
Some things just go without saying...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'll bite back too... as I wish Linux had better media creation tools.
:)
Blender -> crazy interface, substandard third party support (if any)
Vector Images -> open office draw was very limited, and not meant (IMO for any intensive vector work... more for office charts and such stuff you add in to documents) I don't do as much vector work anymore, but when I did, Illustrator and Freehand (strangely my favorite) were much more advanced then anything I've seen on Linux to date.
Gimp -> If you think it's better then photoshop, all the power to you, many do not, I included.
I use Linux, Windows, and *BSD extensivelly, and as soon as the free tools are up to the job, I will replace them. But for now, sadly no.
Don't even get me started on audio... yes, Audacity is nice... Where's FruityLoops, Logic (Damn APPLE for this one), Reason, Rebirth, Cubase...etcetc.
Multimedia... where's Premier, After Effects, and stuff like that... I know Linux has a pretty high end composite application (forget the name, but it uses a server-node model), but you need a farm to run it on.
There is a Linux version of Maya, SoftImage, and Houdini around, but a lot of artists I know use 3DS Max/Lightwave... and trying to change an artists tools can be quite difficult (if not impossible)
I'm not trying to downplay Linux, what the community has done is phenomenal, and I applaud them. I anxiously await the day I won't need my windows machines anymore...except maybe for games
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
Gee, Mister Coward, that's spiffy: you can open and play with files. But show me one graphic design or 3d modeling professional who uses any of those packages (with the possible exception of Blender) for any significant quantity of their daily work. (Hint: it's not going to be easy. Know why?)
('Nother hint: it's not because we love spending thousands of dollars on software, or because we've never tried the Open Source alternatives, so kindly take any condescension and shove it.)
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Perhaps the whole reason Google was created in the first place was someone sick of trying to find how to change resolutions in X-Windows for Linux using only AltaVista wanted a batter way.
I could see that being possible...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, Borgware. Microsoft crushes both its competitors and its 'partners' alike. What's really cool about the success of Google is that, first, it comes on a non-Microsoft platform, and two, Google's success comes at the expense of Microsoft. Google is taking business that Microsoft wants.
Google is doing this by using a business model that is orthogonal to Microsoft's model; Google is open, non-proprietary, platform agnostic. Google does not restrict browser traffic, does not exclude 'competitors' sites, browsers, platforms, etc.
Google helps provide more for less. If Google helps bring Microsoft to heel, that's a good thing.
Best regards.
Given that the nature of F/OSS is to assimilate things, wouldn't that make it the real borgware?
"Since my work as a systems administrator has allowed me miss the existence of Alexa.com, I'll just shut up now."
A lot of people get way too hung up on licenses and the BSD vs GPL vs XYZ debate. It all depends on where you sit in the giant technology ecosystem.
Our own niche is that we write specialised business software and then license it to people in exchange for money. We also sometimes also sub-license it to other people, which then further license it themselves.
We use open source as much as possible since it is free, open and empowers us. We often give back along the way by contributing fixes, etc., and also by freely attributing our own success to the platform we use (e.g. Linux). However, giving back to the community is NOT our primary goal - that is making enough money to pay ourselves and feed our families.
Our particular software is not of a variety that we could open source it and then make money off the services side. It is also not of a variety that we could release it under GPL, build up a demand and a hobbyist/tinkerist user base, and then sell it under propetary license for money. These are perfectly valid - but different - ways that other people make money in the open source community.
Based on all of the factors, we have a particular view of the merits of different licenses. Thats view is quite different from someone who gets their money by consulting off some open source software which they have contributed to - and different again from someone who lives at home, who's aprents buy their food, and who is immersed ni the community with a capital C and gets purely emotional reward from that.
So in our own, selfish view:
1) GPL is quite acceptable to us as long as we don't link to it. Therefore we use linux - after all, its a great OS. Linking to any GPL code is a complete no-no, as this would force us to release our own code when we sub-license.
2) Where we don't link to something, eg web server, we don't give a rat's arse. Currently its linux/apache just because those are great products. Who cares what license they fall under - we don't link to them thus it doesn't affect our ability to sell our own code.
3) Where we do link to something, it must be either LGPL, BSD or similar. This allows us to sub-license our code - one of the ways we survive as mentioned earlier.
4) We have absolutely no intention of ever releasing our code under any form of open source license. In fact, when we sub-license it, the terms explicitly forbid the licensees to do that either. Were they to do so, this would destroy our ability to earn money off our code.
My long-winded point here is that if people on slashdot were to calm down and consider that other people have quite different viewpoints - based on how they need to earn their money - or in fact whether they need money at all - then the pseudo-religious arguments about GPL vs. BSD would be seen as what they are - academic.
Perhaps we are evil because we sell our code, and build on the back of the open source community. I don't think so, since we do give back, and frankly, the nature of our software is so specialised that an open source version would never survive.
I personally feel that other open source approaches are more "evil" - for example, getting people hooked on your stuff under the GPL and then making them pay money for a commercial license - but hey, everyone has to make a living.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Premier, After Effects: try Jahshaka (jahshaka.org), which looks suspiciously similar to the effects tools used by Peter Jackson's Weta Digital team. Also CinePaint (a high-bitdepth version of GIMP) is written by and widely used by the big movie studio pros, for whom Photoshop doesn't cut it. Not to mention linux farms (getting a little closer to the original topic) used by ILM for Star Wars II and III (and Weta use these too). Duh. For sound studio work, really serious stuff, who uses PCs anyway? Amiga maybe, or propper DSP equipment. I find JACK on Linux to be okay if you really heavily tweak it (or hack the kernel). But if you are using a general purpose PC, then you're screwed whatever OS you run -- they just don't cut it on the latency. Oh, unless you are a "live performance" DJ and have everything pre-mixed... And yes, you can even spend money and commercial product running on Linux if you want. I would prefer that to having to pay for every Windoze seat and hoping I don't get a BSOD, or having to wait for Windoze to stop swapping so I can have my frigging mouse back (a problem I currently have right now at work).
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
Erm... ALL of it?
there something else going on?
Google has a very different model then the traditional news sites.
Remember how the News companies work: Traditional news websites & TV stations, like CNN, MSNBC have news editors who pick their news tidbits as they see fit, either subconsciously or purposely, regardless of what the viewers find interesting. They pick the stories based on how much ad revenue the story will bring. This can be a very flawed analysis-- Sometimes they are right on, other times they are way off the mark. Do you ever watch the news and wonder why they spent 30 seconds on an important news story while discussing Star Wars for 3 minutes?
There is a disconnect between what the viewers find interesting, and what the news editors believes that the viewers will find interesting. It's a somewhat flawed model.
News.google.com and the Google Personalized Homepage works differently--there is no news editors. The top news stories make it to the top of the list because people find the stories more interesting, and click on those links more often. Google analyzes the viewer's behavior to determine which headlines should be at the top of the page. Everything is done programmatically, and some people claim it's more democratic.
For instance, the morning of the Spanish Train Bombings the Spanish Government first blamed the bombings on the Basque separatists. As such, the news was not very interesting to the news editors at CNN, MSNBC, Good Morning America, etc. The big news stations and news websites were mostly discussing results of American Idol and the Laci Peterson Murder Trial. Later, when Al Qaida entered the picture, the news stations started covering the Train Bombings nonstop. All of a
On the other hand, News.google.com always had the headlines in the correct order-- as the visitors selected the news-- Spanish Train Bombings were top topics, Laci Peterson & American Idol were way at the bottom of the list. Google's model works pretty well.
I remember this pretty clearly-- I could not find any news on the Train Bombings for an hour, except for one line of scrolling text at the bottom of the screen.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Clearly it was Commodore.
The guys at Google did stuff differently from the way you'd have done it if you had been in charge.
The only thing I take from that is, they were monumentally successful, and you're talking down to them about "putting food on the table."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Having been a Cal grad from the time that BSD was getting started.
http://www.al-qaeda.cjb.net/
You could look at it that way. I prefer to think about how much code Google have contributed back to Linux to help make it faster, more flexible and more stable. This in turn helps make Linux more attractive to purchase *preloaded* on a server a company may want to purchase.
Also, the $35bn figure is probably referring to the projected total spent on server sales that ship with Linux, not on the distro's and support alone. Do MS server sales with MS OSes on them only count the OS price? I think not.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is probably the most ignorant post about Linux I have ever read. I love the way he bashes the GPL for not generating money when the philosophy of the GPL is not to just make money, but to better society. I also love how he ignores that most GPLed software is written by coders who are paid to write it. Remind me where in the GPL it says that you cannot sell a product under the GPL? It is possible to release source and make money. Damn flamebait.
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
"Unfortunately the[y] provide great services"
Have we become so cynical that we find it unfortunate when a company provides us great (not just good!) services?
So you really like to TAKE BSD licensed code, but I guess you're not too keen on writing it...no table, no food and all that. If you like taking BSD code for your closed software, that's cool, but you probably shouldn't be lecturing people who prefer not to have the open code re-released by freeloaders like yourself.
Lets see, after you copy various DLL files from a Windows install, which neccessitates first INSTALLING those codecs onto a Windows box (or downloading from just the needed DLLs from the net), and depending on your distro follow a different convoluted set of steps to get any other missing codecs installed, and work your butt off every time there are any major changes to the codecs that you need to update. Yah; it all just works. ...
Oh on Windows? ffdshow and Winamp. Yes you need to install Real Player as well to get Winamp to play EVERYTHING, but hey, nothing is perfect. As a bonus, Winamp also comes with an INTERFACE.
An additional plus, the total time needed to download and install both ffdshow and Winamp on Windows is going to be far less than the equivilent time to get the equivilent alsa/mplayer trifucktica working. Actually I never HAVE gotten ALSA working on this one machine of mine (I shouldn't say that, it works on RANDOM REBOOTS, great, that is so freaking reliable, what type of software works randomly when you reboot your machine? What the hell am I using here, Windows 95??) and when it DID work I could only have one app playing sound at a time, OSS solved both those problems, though I don't get any pretty graphical mixers.
Misinformed aren't you?
ffdshow plays all of those as well. Alternativly Winamp plays almost all codecs by itself (with the exception of Real, for which you have to download Real Player, install a plugin, and then it works. All of which is STILL easier than messing around with a Linux box to make it work!)
In theory? Sure. On high performance systems designed for doing A/V work on? Sure.
On my laptop?
BROWSING THE WEB MAKES MY FREAKING AUDIO SKIP.
Ok granted this is more the fault of Firefox sucking down, well, let me check:
Yah well, there is that. It is a 2.6GHZ machine BTW. Mind you, X is not much better:
44% of my CPU is being eaten up by processes that SHOULD be nearly idle. I cannot PLAY VIDEOS in Linux without massive skippage. This is a Gentoo box, SuSE was worse.
Granted the problem is I am running KDE, (and all you pro-KDE people SHUT UP, bloat looks like this:
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?
Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?
Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Why does logging into gmail require accepting the same cookies that you get from "google.com" (for searches), as well as the "gmail.com" cookies?
Why do you have to get the google cookie in addition to the groups.google.com cookie?
And the IP is logged server-side, not in the cookie itself. Check the recent article from CNET that "revealed" personal info about google's CEO for more info.
People *think* that when you type in a search and the previous search history comes up is a cookie. We know better of course :)
I had a mate who I convinced to use firefox and he complained that these "cookies" were staying there even when he told FF to remove them! Heh, the public have no idea sometimes :)
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
If you were using linux you wouldn't be so frustrated because you could fix your problems without asking /.
So ebay runs windows, and from the netcraft page:
Last reboot 11 days ago
This is my Sig.
"First off, video support sucks under Windows. Let's see... I need Windows Media Player for wmv and mpeg, Quicktime for mov, RealPlayer for real, a proprietary DVD-codec for DVD's, etc. etc.
Linux? mplayer"
Funny, because I need every program you just mentioned PLUS VLC to run video on my Mac.
Here's a hint: Windows Media, Real, and Apple all have shiny new codecs that ONLY work in their own media players. MPlayer can't play them all - believe me, I've tried it, and I have no reason to believe it would work in Linux if it doesn't in OSX.
As for audio, I've never seen (heard?) an audio file that WinAmp couldn't play.
And just for the record, the Gimp is still inferior to Photoshop.
Where do you believe Linux *isn't*?
My grandmother plays solitaire on a 486 running Windows 95.
I'll sell my machine with lots of RAM integrated on board. It uses a state of the art 6510 and it can play the fastest Jumpman games! And best of all, you don't need a hard drive for it to boot up the operating system!
It's made by a little known company by the name of Commodore...
..bright screens for bright people, but now I've got to wear sunglassess.
Google is "successful" in that the service they provide you is "inexact". If I enter a search term into Google today, the results I get may be different from the results I get a week from now. This could be due to the dynamic nature of the Web, or a change in the algorithms; either way, Google has a lot of leeway when it comes to providing the "right answer" because there really isn't a "right answer". The results only need to be "good enough".
This is a different goal than a lot of other software products and services and means that the Google-customer's level of expectations is lower than that of your normal software-customer's level.
If you enter a combination of key strokes into a word processor, the behavior should be predictable and reproducible each and every time. If you enter a query into a company database, the behavior should also be predictable and reproducible each and every time.
Ultimately, this is why Google can "get away" with using Linux and OSS, while other corporations should use caution. The only real criteria for Google is that Linux (or the Linux cluster) be up 24 hours a day and be able to serve customers in a timely fashion. If a Google "customer" gets a "wrong answer", it's no big deal.
Two words:
Apple
Apple
According to Google engineers, Linux is a lot more scalable than any Windows server offering. This is why Orkut is such a dog--it was originally built on Windows.
I don't want to start a "Why you young 'uns today...and we LIKED IT!" thread, but how can you describe yourself as an oldtimer?
./ who predate me.
:-\
I started out on punch cards in the late '60s, early '70s. There are most probably guys here at
Kids today...!
Is this why Google Earth, Google Desktop Bar, Google Web Accelerator all support Windoze only ? Google might be harnessing the power of Linux behind the scenes, but all of its innovations for desktop users are on M$ only. Granted, that they are Beta/Preview versions .. but Linux could be a great candidate too !
Google isn't worth worrying about
I did a contract job for Google over the past four days. There is a silver BMW M5 in the lot over by building 42 that has a license plate that says:
I[Heart]LINUX
I should have snapped a picture of that car with it's two little penquins in the back window. Poor little things are being subjected to 368 lb/ft of torque on a daily basis.
Storm Shadow "The Hook Up" http://www.pe
AFAIK Oracle is moving more and more of their stuff to 10g clusters running on x86. Dell has also moved the majority of their european operations to Oracle 10g running on their own x86 servers. In fact if you look through the Oracle ROI press releases almost all of them involve running a business line app on oracle RAC and/or 10g with Linux and x86. Obviously it's not just Oracle that thinks this stuff is ready for prime time, a LOT of their customers do as well. Since you are already paying boatloads for Oracle licenses it's not like the selection of OS is a big consideration as far as cost is concerned. Running Oracle on x86 hardware and Linux is just a smart move for many of their customers.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"\"SCO provided the opperating system for the Abrams Tank.\"
'Long haired smellies' the world over quake in fear at the news...."
So yeah, when some poor sucker commits suicide by 'diving' in front of an Abrams Tank, any connection to that persons relationship with the 'Santa Cruz Operation' is *purely* coincidental.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You say you're running into a lot of contracts where they put a Windows box on your desk for Java programming... it's probably just that everyone else in the organization uses Windows on their desktops, the IT guys know how to admin them, and it's thus easier for them to give the developers Windows boxes too. If you work for a company like mine, that has a mix of UNIX and Windows and a lot of developers using both, you get whatever you need/want. If you work for a bank and there's 3000 managers using Windows and 150 developers, don't expect the IT dept to hire Linux admins just to give some of the developers Linux desktop machines. Get a better job.
The history of your searches are not in the cookie. The cookie is a key to some data structure in a hash table or tree that resides in the server, which stores further information about you.
Please look into how this stuff works before you start posting.
This space intentionally left blank.
And when you get those mod points, you can't give any to this guy because you have posted in this article...
Didn't think that comment through, did you?
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
www.google.com/ig does not work on my P900 running the Symbian UIQ OS. Platform agnostic I think not. If the bastards really cared about interoperability I would be able to use my custom google page on my phone. Got 1,000 shares at 90 bucks. w00t. GOOG could be running on a cluster of servers running who gives a dick OS playing mindwalker on amiga. Shareholders are happy :-)
The history of your searches are not in the cookie. The cookie is a key to some data structure in a hash table or tree that resides in the server, which stores further information about you.
And this key works even though I set Firefox to delete cookies at the end of each session and I regularly obtain a new IP from the DHCP server?
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
And content rating preferences and so on. Or would you rather reset them each time? But unless you signed up for an actual account (e.g. gmail), Google had no idea who you were dispite the cookie. All it knew was that someone, somewhere, kept looking for free porn.
And I know how cookies and servers work. It's my job. But read the sentence, "...the same cookies [sic] that store the IP and info of every single search that is done on google."
Given that sentence, is it obvious that the OP understands these things? For that matter, was it not obvious from the tone of the reply that I was being just a little sarcastic?
Please reread the posts before responding to them...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The formatting is screwed up, but it would take too long to fix it. All the information is there. You can see that Microsoft's own site won't stay up as long as the sites listed running Linux (those with known uptimes). There could be a lot of reasons for that, however; I'm sure Microsoft has some extra troubles just because it's so huge. Also note that not all Linux-run sites stay up much longer than Microsoft-run sites, but on average they seem to win hands down.
Esoteric reference.
I believe that it's different because they're not trying to hide what they collect, and why, from anyone.
Google does not restrict browser traffic, does not exclude 'competitors' sites, browsers, platforms, etc.
unless you live in China.
Sorry, I jumped to conclusions, as is common here on Slashdot. :-) Over the years I haven't come to expect much from the Slashdot crowd and that makes me sort of agressive around here. So if you see an angry AC (never bothered creating an account, or, I did a few times and forgot the passwords and usernames) and it happens to be me, mea culpa.
:-) I think, when it comes to the corporate world, "Do no evil" doesn't exist. Google really does find itself in a position with a lot of power, and power is something I don't trust. Maybe that makes me in line with the tinfoil hat crowd, or maybe I'm just crazy like a fox.
I do agree (and thought about putting in my post but was too lazy) that it's not a HUGE problem, as, first, you can delete the cookie, and second, it'd take a lot of extra work for Google to really take its data and use it for malicious purposes -- work that no one has the time to do for each and every one of google's millions of users.
But. I too am a bit suspicious of Google. Why would a company have to come out and say "Do no evil" unless they had something to hide?
I thought it sounded like a scam just reading the documentation, and I've never seen a technical explanation of the "black magic" that enables it to magically outperform Oracle or even MySQL.
This is completely confirmed on reading Mike Spille's blog. Spille's a solid, no-bullshit kind of guy, and his technical calls are right on every time I've had independent knowledge, so I trust him on this. Check out the link:
http://www.pyrasun.com/mike/mt/archives/2004/12/25 /15.02.00/index.html
"The key thing to realize here is that the "transactional" capability that Prevayler is giving you here is serialized execution of Transactions, and that it won't write to the log if the transaction can't be pulled off. And of course, on success it will write to the transactional log. That's it. There's no rollback/undo, no locking, no thought whatsoever for concurrency in any form."
Yay. I feel so safe.
Will.You must be running Linux For Masochists. Don't do that. Try Ubuntu, there's a nice "w32codecs" package. Add the respository, select the package, install, done. Updates are through apt / synaptic.
I almost got my ass kicked for using the word "borgware" today.
Yes, you communist nazi's, if you do work, you should get paid for it. [...] Those who go GPL and they go "dude, I have no income!! But I have a penguin sticker!!" yeah, I hope that Penguin sticker gets you chicks because it ain't puttin' dinner on the table..
In case you did not notice, selling mods to the OS is NOT Google's business. They are earning their money from advertising and doing just fine. Giving away a few enhancements to Linux will hardly be visible in their financial results.
Concerning the SCO business, if you follow the news at Groklaw it becomes increasingly clear that SCO's case does NOT look good. SCO can consider itself lucky if it reaches a settlement that allows it to survive. So I would not worry about that angle anymore.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Prior to my getting hired by the company I presently work for, there was a painful BSA audit. I can say with 100$ certainty that the BSA is the main reason for our migration to Linux.
>> Google is open
Bullshit...again as a previous poster explained, go ask them for their search algorithms and you'll realize how just how open they are. It's simple, it all comes down to the almighty dollar my friend. Took me a long time to realize it, but it is the immutable fact.
Put it this way. If Google was in the OS business...it wouldn't be open, period.
A communist nazi's what? An interface?
They have licensed out their servers for other businesses now, doesn't that mean they're required to disclose their changes to the Linux kernel and other relevent software? Or do they get around this somehow by licensing their servers under a lease of some kind, where it's still google's property to avoid GPL requirements?
I also know that some kinds of proprietary drivers can be made to work with Linux due to more lax licensing requirements, so perhaps their changes are all in driver forms. It could also be purely userland stuff, but I doubt it.
Other companies had to disclose their modifications too (e.g. Linksys, TiVo), so if Google could get around it, why couldn't they using the same methods?
I Doubt It
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
Well, I have Maya Unlilmited for Linux, I just need Photoshop 7 for Linux (not wine-d) and I would like to run Delphi for Linux, not Kylix. Given that I throw the Windows out of the window :). Unfortunately I will never do that :(
sex is better than war!
Ever heard of a tracking cookie?
I'd bet if you're running windows, you have an alexa cookie on your computer right now.
None, but that figure has nothing to do with licences, so whats your point?
OH NOES!!!
teh cookeys!!!111!!1!!one!
First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?
Actually many forums use storing/sending/receiving/checking session ids along with requests (...?sid=xxx to and fro) if cookies are disabled and/or e.g. firewalls make impossible correct cookie or session handling. It's nothing new.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Slashdot. The place on this planet where ignorance can get you insightful.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The bad reputation is all FUD.
end of July?
just a thought, but maybe traffic is up on those sites because all the schools, colleges and universities have closed for the summer?
No, if you remove the cookie you remove the key so Google no longer knows who you are.
Alternatively, if you log on to Google before searching it makes no difference.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
For bringing more people to Linux, I saw Hooray for unhappiness. here's how I think the whole process works:
Step 1 - Cluelessness - Buy Windows 95
Step 2 - Anger - Buy Windows NT
Step 3- Unhappiness - move to Linux
Step 4 - Confusion - move to Macintosh
Step 5 - Bankruptcy - move to Tibet and become a Buddhist monk.
You heard it hear first, folks. move to Tibet now before the rush comes in!
Alternatively, if you log on to Google before searching it makes no difference.
:(
What is this "logging on" of which you speak? I have never "logged on" to Google. Is this for g-mail or some other service?
Can you log on for additional search engine features?
I am curious. Perhaps there is a world of search features that I am missing out on ?
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
This might not be the best example, because the software world for OS X is full of pissy shareware applications of stuff that you get completely free (in both senses) for Linux. In fact, this was probably my greatest shock after switching from Gentoo (after the usual mouse thing) -- some guy wants $15 for something that Gentoo had out of the b- ah, off the wire. I still can't believe that the only decent DVD/CD burning software, Toast, is commercial.
Don't get me wrong, Apple has some beautiful platforms out there and the time I save because it "Just Works" is important enough to keep me with my iBook instead of going through the hassle of installing Gentoo on a ThinkPad. But the free selection for Mac OS X is a disaster.
I was a Linux/FreeBSD zealot for SO many years. I wrote all my code with 23423 platform portability in mind, things were good. Then I realized that I didn't have any real experience writing apps for Windows and I thought I should give it a try. I picked up some books on VS (Visual Studio) and started with C# (I had quite a bit of Java experience all ready so it was pretty easy to pick up the language). Then something very strange happened. I began to really like it. I found I was able to write applications which would have taken weeks in C using VIM or even a week in Java using Visual Age. I became a much more efficient programmer. Mostly due to .NET and the absolutely amazing IDE that is Visual Studio.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a pure Windows guy now, but I do have an XP SP2 workstation and I spend quite a bit of time in VS.
What is this gmail system? You mean you don't have your own email system on your own website? What, has Slashdot been taken over by a herd of little old ladies in flower hats?
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Not to come off as a Google conspiracist (I like and trust them... for the moment), but there are several misconceptions in your post:
"First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?"
As others have noted this can generally be adequately accomplished using session ids stored in the URL. Now, there might be things that session IDs can't do, but the only one I can think of offhand is "track users between visits", which is exactly what people are objecting to.
"Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?"
Basically, yes, but not in the way you think. It's far simpler (and more technically correct) to capture all your user-behaviour at the server, and record it in a database. Your cookie merely stores a unique user id, and Google's servers capture that userid and use it to lookup your records stored in their database.
All you need from the cookie is to store a unique number for each user, and you can store a hell of a large number in 1K (8 * 2^1024, off the top of my head).
My maths is a bit rusty, but for reference, the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be about 10^79. So, with 1K of memory per userid, we could index every atom in the universe, more than 900 times over.
1K is plenty big enough.
"Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!"
The sad thing is, it's trivial, unoriginal and obvious, and it's probably already been granted.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
It does if you're logging in :). If you log in, I can chain the cookies or update the current cookie you are using. Simply store the one TRUE cookie in the login context and use that cookie to 'bind' them all or to replace as necessary.
I wouldn't say a world of search features but it's definitely handy.
Are you telling me that a webserver actually logs a requesting IP address? Does this apply to all websites?
Man, I'm trading in my computer for an abacus.
BTW, what does a webserver logging IP addresses have to do with the CEO's personal information?
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Wired, NY Times and Washiungton Post are default RSS feeds found in Safari under Apple's 10.4 (Tiger) OS.
Is there a record of how much Google has actually contributed back to the Linux kernel? I've heard they don't send patches upstream. They wouldn't have to, after all, since they're not redistributing it (though I suppose those servers they sell to companies for internal searches must count as redistribution).
Also, the vanilla kernel probably has little use for Google's additions, since few Linux users have much use for the ability to run a cluster of hundreds of thousands of machines with the entire OS and data in RAM.
Anyhow, does anyone know if/what Google has contributed?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
If you look, most BSD's have a "lite" version, and a pro version, and you get the lite for free, and the pro version requires money.
What. Mind pointing out evidence of that? Because I've used FreeBSD and OpenBSD and there's absolutely no mention of free and pro versions of it. Well, I've heard of a free version, and a pro version, but since they're the same thing, I don't think you can really call them versions. You want a BSD? You go download it. You want to support the developers? Buy the CDs, but remember that you're getting exactly the same OS as you would if you'd just downloaded it.
Free and Pro versions of "most BSD's"??? Have you even gone to their websites, much less used them?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Booting and running OS plus apps across the net is all nice and dandy but you shure-as-hell doesn't want to page/swap across the net. It slows the machine down to a crawl. We had a few of those back at uni. We used to call them dickless workstations....
TCAP-Abort
They're required by GPL to distribute the kernel mods if they distribute the kernel.
Somehow I doubt they need to give away the software, and as GPL allows, use the modified version "only internally" at the company.
That everyone with a net access over the planet can benefit of those "mods" is irrelevant. They aren't redistributing nor selling their modified kernel.
Simply store the one TRUE cookie in the login context and use that cookie to 'bind' them all or to replace as necessary.
One Cookie to Rule Them All
One Cookie to find them
One Cookie to bring them all
and in the OS bind them.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Google homepage gave some massive exposure to a few websites when it was first released, which would naturally increase traffic to them. I don't think its the same as the /. effect though. Maybe it was at first, but as they add more optional content to the Google homepage, things will sort of get lost in the crowd, so they probably won 't see the same traffic increases as at first, when there were only a few options. However, getting /.ed is like having a targeting laser pointed at your site, its a strong focus that only points to one thing at a time.
I for one would love to see Google release an open-source Linux distro with all the clustering, IO & management extensions that I am sure they have made.... They might consider some of that their secret sauce though, so I assume we'll never see it.
I also notice you have this huge "post push down" thing in your account history to attempt to hide your older comments. Dude, you're even more paranoid than I am.
Has anyone tried to see what entering "linux" on google gives you now a days? At-least on my Canadian "copy" of google (actually, even on google.com/linux), I get an interesting sponsored link at the top of my search results (not on the right side as usual):
Windows vs Linux
www.microsoft.ca/getthefacts Read In-Depth 3rd Party Performance Analysis on Linux & Windows!
Microsoft's marketing/advertising department working hard...
[alk]
Simple.
Google does not ship a version of Linux out to their customers. Linksys and TiVo do.
Google does ship a Linux kernel with there Google Search Appliance. But, I think that technically, you don't buy it and it is leased as a service, unlike Tivo and Linksys.
So I guess they are using that loophole.
Well, it looks like DrDOS is still live and kicking and still being sold for 25 bucks.
6 33491511
URL here:
http://www.drdos.com/products/buyout.htm?rnd=1079
The difference is important.
Your grandmother fits in where in the "IT Enterprise"?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I don't get it, if Google was unhappy with Microsoft, why did they go with a GNU/Linux system instead of FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD? The BSDs are actual UNIX systems that have been around for decades.
I really can't wait for the day when you don't have to justify why you use anything other than Microsoft's products.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Interesting article, but I think it has very little to do with the life of the average programmer.
Let's face it, there are very few applications that would actually benefit significantly from changes to the O/S kernel. Certainly Google is one of them, but how many Google's are there?
If you're writing a web store, an internal corporate application or most other applications, choosing Linux just because you can hack on the kernel is not really relevant.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
It also enables you to use Personalised Searching based on your search history. Head over to https://www.google.com/accounts/ to see all the options.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
> (though I suppose those servers they sell to companies for internal searches must count as redistribution).
Good point, I hope someone asks them to provide the source code. Then again, does "leasing" of appliances count as redistribution (in case that's what they call it)?
>Anyhow, does anyone know if/what Google has contributed?
If anything came out, it'd probably be contributions to the kernel, which can be searched, grepped and "wc -l"-ed.
I don't have the source at hand, though.
erm... Your math's a bit off. 1K of memory == 1024 bytes == 8*2^10 bits.
Yes, exactly right. IIRC it originally began as a legacy log-on when Google acquired DejaNews; my Google login is exactly the same as my old DejaNews login, and works with all Google services which allow login, such as Google Maps and Google Local which can remember where I live.
The amusing counter-anecdote about this is, of course, that my email address and personal profile which was carried forward from DejaNews ceased to be accurate about ten years ago. In fact its funnier than that; my sign-on email address is a "nospam" adulterated address of a subdomain under an ISP I stopped using way back when.
Which makes me wonder exactly how much evil anyone could get up to with Google's data, which is, after all, completely unverified. It's about as useful as that survey which asked people their passwords in exchange for a bar of chocolate. "Yeah, sure, my password is, erm, iwantsomefreechocolate. Yeah, honestly, that's my password. Honest, guv'nor."
I mean, really, does anyone actually tell the whole truth on these sign-up forms?
Take my free IT industry magazine subscriptions. I know they're only going to send it if I say I'm the finance director of a large company. So that's what I say. Now imagine how confused any evil data miner is going to be when they sell my name to a bunch of fraudsters thinking that I sign the cheques. Or, indeed, imagine how said evil data miner is going to be kneecapped by said fraudster's burly pals.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Right im going to be anal (|) here... Its the same method as a barcode.
I take this statement to be representing the views of Google's open source programs manager, and not as from Google itself. If you think about it, most people in that position are going to do the best they can to pump up open source. If Larry Page, Sergey Brin or Eric Schmidt made this statement, it would represent Google. It is misleading to declare Chris DiBona's opinion as the truth behind the corporate decisions of Google.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
But the parent poster is the person about whom the article is written. I think we can consider him an authority on what he actually said.
(And he thinks Windows XP is good? Google loves Microsoft! We knew it...)
You're not being anal, you're being a pussy.
We have found that regular chairs work fine for this.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Besides, what is Google going to do with my hundreds of queries about Linux problems? Are they going to hunt me down for it?
To me, it's almost like that program that encrypts your e-mail for you (can't remember what it was called). If you have nothing to hide, why are you hiding it?
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds
I use gnu/linux exclusively at home and if I had my choice I would use it exclusively at work.
In addition to Google many organizations say the use linux because of licensing issues and/or cost.
There are always discussions about how/when linux will have matured as an operating system.
I say it will be the day when organizations that are not necessarily OSS enthusiasts say the use linux because it is the most reliable and easy to use operating system.
Apple has proved that nix can be absolutely easy to use.
The Free/SecureBSD people have proved that the nix back end can be made easier to deal with, more secure, and more solid.
Obviously you didn't have a hotmail account before Micro$oft bought them. No cookies were ever needed.
Fortunately, there are still some sites out there (notably message boards) that do not require cookies. I only enable them when I have to.
One Cookie to rule them all
One Cookie to find them
One Cookie to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
When I'm feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor's dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.
Beat to the punch.
When I'm feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor's dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.
Seriously, what updates have there been to Office since '97? I have a feeling someone else will probably ask the same question, but going back as far as Office 4.3 on Windows 3.1....
Hate to post anonymously, but the fact is, that is a move to drop solaris and integrate Linux, not a move to drop FreeBSD.
It's a filesystem: http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-files ystem/gmail-filesystem.html
I'm planning to use it to host my imap folders for my squirrelmail server.
Congratulations.
Google is the biggest spyware company on the planet! They are just clever enough to use a search "honeypot", instead of invading your dinky system.
Proof? This is slashdot, we don't need to prove what we say here.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
OSS Software's advantages are often cited as being 1: free, and 2: Open. Both of these are strong advantages in some situations, but not necessarily in all. Most companies aren't firstly concerned with direct purchase price. In fact, many OSS projects have commercial components that provide custimization and support for a fee. Open software is a strong pull for those of use in the software field, but usually doesn't translate for the end user of software directly.
For me, the biggest advantage of OSS is that of availability and access. If I need a widget right now to solve a problem, I don't have to go through a formal purchase process with PO's and the like, I can just find what I need NOW. Then the other advantages kick in, because I can now modify it to exactly meet my needs. Yes, this translates to price via time saved, but not actual dollars. And yes, we do support OSS project with cash.
}#q NO CARRIER
Actually pretty much everything runs on OS X, just look at suppoted apps on fink or the OS X version of ports.
Google wouldn't really care about many sorts of apps though for the large farm they have, certainly not GUI ones at any rate - it would be mostly management tools that would probably work out of the box with a make configure.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
or maybe they're just more successful at that hiding?
does any major web services run on MSFT (other than MSFT offerings)????
It would be retarded to even consider as an option, how is this comment not aimed at the other "realistic" choices - Solaris and various unix flavors...
Dibona - we love you but please, you're a recent add-on to Google's team and unless I'm mistaken the work Google did on the Linux filesystem occured many years ago
(I mean do other companies actually sit around in high backed chairs and think of how to "do evil"?)
Have you ever had dealings with a credit card company?
Just askin'.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
I never log into google to do searches. And yet it keeps cookies. This stores my language preferences and keeps track of my searches so that they can target advertising and who knows what else.
Get out the tinfoil hats... That's how they make their money. You didn't think Google was about search did you? The search stuff is just there to keep you looking at ads. Take away the ads and google is just another gas4uonline.com
If you don't like paying (via ad views) for your search then set up your own, or find some idiot on the net who is giving it away.
"I mean do other companies actually sit around in high backed chairs and think of how to 'do evil'"
Mr. Burns, Dr. Evil, and Darl McBride come to mind...
Always a possibility. But then if they're hiding it that well, it ceases to be marketable, I suppose.
"Or would you rather reset them each time?"
All that's needed is a url with the settings in them, which is even possible in most cases: to turn off SafeSearch there's &safe=off. You could ask yourself why Google doesn't mention this.
the sun is god
doesn't make any difference where the session id is stored if you are actually logging in as well - cause u can 'track users between visits' with that.
This guy needs to get a clue. He mocks Sun for being in bed with Microsoft and says that if Sun releases Solaris under the GPL they will give them laptops with Windows preloaded because Sun and Microsoft are friends now. The audience snickered, because they are stupid. HP has been Microsofts bitch for AGES, please Fink, at least make statements that make sense, you use a Windows laptop, admit it. HP only sells Windows desktops, at least own up to the stuff you sell.
Which is why MSN.com is on the bottom and Google's on the top.
In the non-sexual sense, of course.
It's often said that with great power comes great responsibility. I prefer to think of the "Do no evil" mantra as an ever present acknowledgement of that fact.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I once spent a summer figuring out how to write device interfaces by trial and error. ODT was my closest friend.
Alas, I think slashdot is going the way of the PDP-11. I post a joke in response to a story about nothing, and I get marked "off-topic".
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I am generally very anal about companies collecting information, but this is one time were I am a hypocrite.
... what?? :-o
You are generally
Of course they do, they just describe it in code words like "synergize our value add", "optimize our risk senarios", "innovate", or "increase shareholder value".
You wouldn't swap/page across the network, if that were occurring the w/s would be outfitted with a local drive for that function and that function only. Planning and testing were critical to environment functionality to ensure that swap/paging did not happen. If something went wrong with the internals of the w/s, you swapped the pizza box out for a new one, updated the MAC address in the servers bootptab and reboot the w/s. 5 minutes later you were online with the application running on a CDE desktop. And this was all done on a 10BT NIC in the w/s and 100BT LAN backbone.
See...I will let them do all this as long as they do not shove said ads down my throat...
Google does not do that...they can collect and sit the text ads in front of me all day, as long as 1) they dont give me popups and 2) they dont give me spyware that eats up system resoursces and takes away from my valueable WoW time.
And which doesn't change the fact that the next time you type google.com into the address bar you still have to reset your preferences.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Yes they are. Google licenses out their google search appliance to businesses, that's teh whole point. I even stated in my comment that was the case, but two people missed that. They physically hand over a little 1U server to a business to search their own stuff.
I mean, really, does anyone actually tell the whole truth on these sign-up forms?
Apparently it occurs every day. In fact I think my wife regularly puts in personal details into these sign-up forms. But then, my wife tends to trust the world for no apparent reason.
As for myself, I do not. If it is required (for purchasing stuff for example), I put in my PO Box, and then if that is not suitable, then only my real address with the greatest of reluctance.
Thanks for the information on Google's extra services BTW.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
Cool (I think ... hmmmmm ..... I don't have my tin foil hat on today ... perhaps I should be more paranoid about signing into Google)
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
i'm still waiting for the dupe on this one--thought it would be in a few hours ago? /** slashdot source-code pwn3d! */
public main(String[] args) {
for (int i = 0; i SIZE_OF_INTERNET; i++) {
if (URLs[i].topic().equals("google")) {
URLs[i].post();
}
if (URLs[i].topic().equals("linux")) {
URLs[i].post();
}
}
}
"look into how this stuff works before you start posting"...
Look who's talking.
Sigs are for wimps
and the number representation that you can do with 2^13 bits is 2^(2^13) or 2^(8192) wich sums aproximatelly (considering 2^10 = 10^3) 4 * 10^(2457) a rather large number
Sorry about my bad english, isn't my natural language
America starts in Tierra del Fuego and ends in Alaska
No wait, that would be the ol' Berkeley Surprise!
^^
Winzip? I don't use Windows, you insensitive clod. /usr/local/bin/zip doesn't keep track of anything.
Does anyone else notice that the only people who are getting extremely angry here are the people who take the side of the "anti-cookies". Anyone who is..."pro-cookies" is just sort of joking around and couldn't care less about Google logging what I search.
;-) Just kidding....
:-) We all do. Is it because I am feeling guilty about somethign or am afraid of retribution if a fact was known? No. But I would have to cancel accounts, report credit cards lost/stolen, etc.
First there could be all sorts of good reasons for Google to store the search information. They store more than just user searches too. Click-throughs, etc. are stored. So theoretically, Google can tie your cookie to sites you viewed too which might be a bit disturbing...
But.... Think about it.... Most of us are not too concerned about things at work where we might have proxies, but at home, where we almost certainly have a trackable IP address, we have already given up any possibility of anonymity on any sites we visit.
Besides, what is Google going to do with my hundreds of queries about Linux problems? Are they going to hunt me down for it?
Maybe if you apply for a job there, they will reject you because your queries are for basic problems
To me, it's almost like that program that encrypts your e-mail for you (can't remember what it was called). If you have nothing to hide, why are you hiding it?
Which one? Outlook/Outlook Express both handle X509-based encryption. I presume most FOSS clients do too. Or maybe you are thinking of PGP.
Anyway, it is a bad analogy. I could have all kinds of legitimate needs to hide information. If you don't believe that, care to post your credit card numbers and bank account info in reply to this post?
Similarly, what about customer lists, etc. for a company? What about emails that include trade secrets? Should these not be encrypted? Do I have anything to hide? Sure
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm afraid so. DuPont, Monsanto, Bayer CropScience
You forgot:
Tolkien wouldn't be pleased. Then again, you might not have read the famous book trilogy, The Cache of the Cookies, too well.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
One of the main reasons a lot of companies were afraid of GNU software in the early days (as recently as the mid 90s, maybe even today) was fear of just this. While OSS has a lot more inertia and acceptance, and the GPL and its drivers have certainly helped in that arena, trying to force this on companies would be a death knell.
It would be seen as attempting to force communism down the companies' throats. That'll play in a few countries, but not in many.