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CeBIT Tidbits
MadMan2 has sent us a report
from CeBIT. Little
bits about bigass Samsung Dimms, Not so upgradable Palm Pilots,
SuSE, AOL-Scape and Applix. Hit the link below to read MadMan2's
machine gun of little bits to read.
MadMan2's report from CeBIT:
- Siemens offers Linux servers with a free tux!
- more than half of the Intel people present never heard of Merced (one thought it was a new product in cooperation with Mercedes (g)))
- I was not allowed access to an online machine, otherwise these tidbits would have arrived sooner :( ). They say they all fear hackers. They are: UUNet, Netscape, aol, M$, compu$serve, Telecom Deutschland and various smaller companies. Oh yes: I found no cybercafes, even amidst the companies who sell them.
- AOL, Sun and Netscape all officially refuse any comments on the future of netscape server products. About the browser Netscape ackowledged the cooperation with mozilla.
- 3Com officially denies it will offer a hardware upgrade or trade-in to Palm IIIx and V. They claim a memory upgrade of 2M is the same (I don't know about the US, but in Europe the upgrade is more expensive than the Palm III. There was a company who offered 8M simms for Palm III, but I forgot who it was.
- Samsung displayed a working 1 GB dimm on a dual Xeon motherboard. Not bad for a workstation *g*
- The suse stand was very popular because they were distributing the 6.1 beta for x86 and alpha
- Linux International as well as MadDog can be visited at Hall 6.
- While speaking of Linux: only free Suse and Caldera CDs can be found. Redhat said the forgot to ship the CDs in time
- The linux Sap demo wasn't working quite well
- The German word for gridlock is "stau"
- according to the German keyboard manufacturor Cherry a company called "Linux" will be ordering Penguin keys. When I made a note of this on my palm a Cherry technician told me he was amazed that "thinghy" worked without a keyboard ;)
- HP Belgium is according to HP International Supplies "just a local distributor"
- According to StarOffice the world still exists of the USA and Germany.
StarOffice still doesn't have presentation runtime viewsers because they don't see a need for such an program! Not really nice of them, is it? - Almost all of the exhibitors seem to forget that CeBiT is an international expo. German docs by the millions, English specs are very hard to come by.
- People at SCO acknowledged they will be capable of running Linux binaries. But they still didn't know whether one has to compile the programs on a linux box or on a SCO machine
- General impression: not enough gadgets & freebies, too many visitors, not enough nice babes.
- Buzzwords were: erp, ewe, superb superior sales system solution (I guess they forgot "silly")
- Next year's CeBit will be in coorperation with Expo 2000. It will be from February 24th till March the 1st.
Star Office only has US and German versions.
Isn't the Gnome coodinator (I forfot his name) a citizen of Mexico?
The company you spoke of is TRG. 8M in a Pilot goes a long way. ( Had to have more room for the Pilot verion of the PHP docs ; ) Clevo
the english word for German 'Stau' is :)
traffic jam, imho
anyone want to discuss?
write the-devil-himself@usa.net
Actually, English vies with one of the Chinese dialects (I forget which) for the title of most spoken language on the planet. I think English wins in terms of the most countries in which it is the primary language, and comes second in terms of the number of people speaking it. IIRC, Spanish comes third in both categories.
Why shouldn't they? They were approached with a proposal by the GNOME people (Miguel is Mexican), and presumably it satisfied their needs. Why else would anyone use a piece of software? I personally use neither KDE nor GNOME (KDE because I tried it and hated it, GNOME because I haven't tried it since an ancient version that wouldn't compile on Solaris). I may give GNOME a go at some point -- it certainly looks hopeful, although I'll probably just wait for Red Hat 6.0, rather than try and put it onto my existing systems.
Of course English is the biggest language!!!
I'm a non-natively English speaking/writing/reading schmuck. And I have been able to get along "anywhere" with English. Even in Germany.
The reason why many Germans are poor at English is about the same reason as for Latinos: "Why bother? We are more than 100 million heads anyway". Put in another way, it is some sort of arrogance.
I rather put up with American arrogance (or if it is just ignorance?!), than trade my English for a zillion alternatives.
Native English-speakers!!! Stand up for your right to speak your native tongue!!!
Ugh
Probably the most important news, KDE winning the award for best software! Deserved more than a quicky
post, considering that it beat every commercial vendor...
Definitely! Congrats to all the KDE developers!
And maybe that's why all the major Linux-backing companies ran KDE. HP, Compaq, Corel, IBM, Siemens, SuSE, Caldera, Linux International, Star Division and many others.
> English is neither the most spoken language on this planet, nor ... [one of] the three fastest growing
:-).
>
Be that as it may, English *is* presently considered to be "the
international language."
Once-upon-a-time, "the international language" was French. It may
have been others throughout history--I no longer recall.
Pilots are required to use English at all international airports.
Most professionals in most countries speak it as a necessity.
This does not mean English is the "best" language. Nor does it mean
that native-English speakers are somehow superior to those for whom
it's a second tongue. Nor to those who speak it not.
All it means is that, at present, English is commonly accepted as
"the international language."
I suggest that you consider getting a life and finding something else
over which to rage. This is not an issue that anybody really cares
about.
With the possible exception of the French
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Seriously.
Shame on /. for only mentioning KDEs award as a mere Quicky.
Love it or loath it, any free program that wins an accolade like this should be put up on a pedestal as an example and inspiration to other developers.
Congratulations to all the KDE developers.
And before French it was German. But that was a while ago. Like the 13th centaury or something.
Mandarin is about twice as widely spoken as English,
while Spanish and English are roughly equal.
(i.e. 900 million for mandarin, 400 million for
both English and Spanish.)
Hindi is fourth most widely spoken.
probably dropped "outside" between the exists and of
I seem to recall that English is spoken by some 750 million people worldwide. I cannot be 100% sure though
It's just a shame localisation is so poorly done compared to the Amiga OS 3.1 locale system -
which is cool!!!
Is the Amiga Magic User Interface API available for linux? GNOME is the closest i've seen, and the web site even references Amiga MUI as an inspiration, but, IMHO, GNOME 1.0 is far, far clunkier than the joy to program that is MUI 3.8
Perhaps Stef could be persuaded to release the MUI source... MUI on CORBA - that would rock!!!
Also, system-wide AREXX support was great on the Amiga - libguile seems to be sortof the same ideaas far as macros go, but, how do you do the interprocess communication stuff - that was cool... Could all GNOME apps have the equivalent of an MUI AREXX msgport ???
( all MUI apps accept certain standard commands through their arexx message port such as HELP, CLOSE, QUIT etc...)
I think getting along with English is easier in Germany than in many of the other bigger European countries. (France, Spain etc.) At least, Ive never heard someone complaining about major problems so far. But then, Im German and never really tried... (Well, in France and Spain I tried...)
The reason why many Germans are poor at English is about the same reason as for Latinos: "Why bother? We are more than 100 million heads anyway". Put in another way, it is some sort of arrogance.
I think one of the "disadvantages" of bigger countries like Germany is that we get our American movies dubbed in native language. So you probably get less used to English than in smaller countries.
Freaking MEXICANS make GNOME? No wonder its a
peice! Goddam wetbacks can't do shit right!
Stick with KDE!
I am glad Latinos are so damn arrogant about
not learning english. Thank god our supply
of landscapers, produce pickers, cleaning
people, and busboys are not going anywhere.
Why did the mexican gov decide to use gnome? They probably looked in a mirror.
Several people approached Mr. Aldama and offered to help add some KDE applications to the software package they were creating for the mexican schools.
His answer? "I have been told KDE is not free, and we don't have the budget to pay for it".
Gee, wonder just *who* told him that?
I was at the COMDEX fall last year and I went to CeBIT two years ago.
I know you americans think that COMDEX is the largest computer fair in the world but CeBIT
is more than twice the size of COMDEX. They're expecting 700,000 visitors to CeBIT.
Still it's easier to find what you're looking for at CeBIT and you don't have to take the bus or a cab to visit all halls.
Better stay away from any show that Microsoft is at, then..
Probabally:
Staroffice thinks the world consists only of the USA and Germany.
or something like that.
I read the internet for the articles.
Posted by liver:
The GNOME coordinator, Miguel de Icaza, is indeed Mexican. And one of the things GNOME brings to the *ix desktop that was either not well organized or nonexistent is internationalization. Every GNOME-compliant application is internationalizable if i'm not mistaken.
p.s. hey gnome-cutting-edge-people, is 1.0.3 or CVS better than 1.0?
Posted by linuxlab@sap.com:
... if you want to see four SAP systems on four different databases running on Linux smoothly on one server.
Cheers
Your SAP Linux team
even though i only had one day at the show, i managed to check out most of it... here's my thoughts:
people smoking everywhere inside really sucked.
i got online with no worries at one of the compaq stands... and checked out Slashdot.
finding my way thru the crowds and clouds of smoke was dufficult at times.
even though it is an international show, alot of exhibits were presented in german... fair enough there are alot of german companies there, but even many multi-national companies had german only info :(
i got refused a nokia T-shirt because they were only for german Club Nokia members :( (i aint german)
i got really sick of people blowing smoke in my face.
i picked up a few freebies: mouse-mat, several t-shirts, cap, balls, beer, keyrings and lots of sweets and drink coasters (CD's).
:~)
in summary, it was really great to see so much kit on show, and most largish companies put alot of effort into their exhibits. i'll try to go again next year so have a longer look. i'll also wear a suit so that exhibitors will put a bit more effort in selling something to me
Second: It is extremely hard to get a larger booth at the CeBIT, not even money can't get you one! You have to order your booth at least a year in advance, and to get a big one you have to be one of the big guys (MS, IBM,...).
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/
uhmm.. no international support in StarOffice?
so how come i've got staroffice with English(UK), Spanish and Dutch support installed???
shurely shome mistake, missh moneypenny?
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Sorry... What I meant was that according to their websites and the people of StarOffice I spoke to, StarOffice only has customers and resellers in the US and Germany.
They were slightly amazed that in neighbouring Belgium there is a rather big German speaking community.
Peace & Long Life,
Peace & Long Life,
MadMan-2
I suggest you try to buy one officially from a "local reseller" when you are not living in the US nor in Germany.
Peace & Long Life,
Peace & Long Life,
MadMan-2
That's fairly old news. They have a paper on it in trhe '98 Usenix procedings (at least the abstract of it is avail at www.usenix.org). It will run many Linux binaries. No recomplation needed, and I don't think they have a Linux complation enviroment. I have forgetten if they do it with syscall emulation (like FreeBSD), or with shared lib interposition (which would be 100% useland, but wouldn't run quite as many things).
See the paper if your intrested. Personally I was more intrested in how humbling it must be for SCO (and other comercial Unixes) to have to emulate the free ones to widen their software base!
Is offered (or soon to be) by efig (see wfig.com, or www.efig.com, or something like that). They claim they'll charge about $150 to upgrade V, and very short turn around, or you can buy a "new" V from them (no price listed).
The upgrade does void your warentee, but efig will offer their own (apparently on the whole unit), no details on that yet.
So apparently it's a little early yet to decide to buy the upgrade, but it is coming...
Pity 3COM didn't offer a $600, or $550 Palm Vx with 8M. Maybe they will now.
- pics of the 30 box AlphaLinux cluster rendering POV-Ray images in parallel.
- masses of people panicking over a power failure that immobilized them at Friday evening because the metro was frozen.
- A few Linux cameos
- IBM praising VisualAge COBOL (no joke!)
Warning! The images are on a German university server and are about 200k each, so downloading them might take a few hours for you guys from the US.I realize the author is not a native English speaker, but what does he mean by the following statement?
According to StarOffice the world still exists of the USA and Germany.Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Doesn't sound so fun. I'll stick to going to shows where the people handling the booths know what they're talking about.
I will drop by on Wednesday.
:-)
By the way are you looking to hire some people?
But English is at least a semi-official second language in most contries, making it "international" The reason English isn't the biggest language is China. and only china and chinese territories speak it.
Lowmag.net
I guess that's why the first menu on my version is called Fichier...(french for file)
BTW French Staroffice is included with the french version of SuSE 6.0
I seriously doubt that. Considering there are ~300million people in the US alone, along with the population of Canada, and the UK, PLUS all the people who speak english as a second language. I think it's far more widely spoken than Mandarin.
Nocturnus
He probably means that they don't ship the software or docs in other languages than german and english.
maybe international and english are not equal? English is neither the most spoken language on this planet, nor (except for the internet) under the three fastest growing ...
why did the mexican government decide to use gnome?
I got a redhat 5.2 + gnome 0.99.8 CD at the RedHat stand on CEBIT...
;)
It was Thursday though..
Probably the most important news, KDE winning the award for best software! Deserved more than a quicky post, considering that it beat every commercial vendor...
Cebit 2000 is before the Expo, not in cooperation. But it's on the same place. SuSE had two stands. One was close to the other Linux distributors, the other one was bigger. Comdex is tiny compared to Cebit. You can browse everywhere on the CeBIT. No problem to find an unused computer. SuSE had the best giveaway of the CeBIT. A small penguin. (Everybody wanted to have mine.) Who cares for giveaways anyway? Boring stuff. I didn't search for it, but I got a whole bag full of mouse pads etc... Anybody want one?