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Gates: "Linux Can't Compete"
An anonymous reader writes "Theres a curious little article at
WUGNet, talking about a Bill Gates' speech on his new book, where he cites that Linux isnt viable because its openness. According to him, theres "no central point of control", and "Windows offers far more functionality and features than Linux ever will". So much for their Anti-Trust case. "
Hey, I called up my machine by phone, installed a new kernel,
ran LILO, told it to reboot, and then called back a few minutes
later to be answered by the new kernel.
Can NT do that?
Just curious, as I'm not a lawyer, but could the KDE, Gnome,
or XFREE86 people sue for slander? These are lies, and I
can even see how those groups could be harmed monetarily
by them.
If the kernel that a Linux user already supports the SCSI or Ethernet card being added, they don't have to rebuild the kernel. Additionally, the user can have the drivers for new cards already compiled as kernel modules that can be started and stopped at will. Let me ask you a question, what service pack of NT are you running? When Micro$oft issues SP's and hot fixes, what do you think you are doing to your box that is any different than rebuilding a kernel in Linux? The difference is that the fixes for Linux actually get made whereas with NT half of the fixes get made and another whole new set of bugs gets generated by the SP because MS decides to slap a bunch of new functionality into the SP. Hope you are happy with your NT box because what you are saying will not convince anyone who is happy with Linux to even consider changing.
"Microsoft Deliberately Limiting NT Workstation 4.0 as a Web Server"/ win95.update/ntwk4.html
http://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/info/OReilly/windows
Furthermore, who's surprised?
Thirdly, who's going to listen to this FUD? Do you honestly believe that some IT techie type who is considering moving to Linux is going to hold back because Bill Gates said so? Gates, along with the rest of the Microsoft marketing juggernaut, has been forced into a position where he has to fight for the very life of NT Server. This being the case, we should expect him to start laying on the FUD and various other desparation tactics. It's about all they have left.
But it's no reason for concern; imagine, if you will, the CEO of Coca-Cola coming out an urging the public to ignore Pepsi. Anybody with a pulse knows what Gates' motivation is here. Similarly, anybody with a pulse will summarily dismiss this and all of the other arrogance coming out of Redmond.
One might argue that when Gates has stooped so low as to rely on the "no device drivers" and "no graphical interface" FUD, he has effectively lost the battle. Step aside, Bill. You're quickly becoming irrelevant.
The inability to ditch the video was the fundamental reason we couldn't use it as an embedded system in a commercial network appliance we built.
:-)
Thus, the box shipped with Unix (well, FreeBSD, but had we been a bit more prescient, we'd have chosen Linux).
Being able to rebuild the kernel is a feature of Linux, not a requirement. Linux supports loadable modules. The feature is as others have clearly stated - the ability to customize the environment for specific needs, especially the need to *reduce* standard functionality. NT can't do that. On top of that, NT just plain sucks as an operating system - a feature Linux will never have!
See subject ... I bet there are more Windows machines than there are NT machines. Now where is the problem ? I really doubt Linux on the desktop should be an issue at all. It is the wrong direction and letting us force into that will Linux and Unix only deprieve of resources which are better applied to the software where we *can* compete hands down. Look forward.
Anti-trust law is over one hundred years old. The chances that it is arbitrary and vague are just about zero
Antitrust law is based on the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1898. The section Microsoft is supposed to be violating makes "restraint of trade" illegal. That's it. If that isn't vague I don't know what is.
As for arbitrary -- the vagueness leads to the arbitrariness. Since the law is so open-ended, it is essentially up to the enforcement agencies to determine which cases to prosecute (or just threaten to prosecute).
And, of course, the enduring level of debate about the meaning of various parts of the Constitution -- the First and Second Amendments in particular -- demonstrate pretty clearly that the age of a law bears no necessary relation to its clarity. Both of those amendments have huge bodies of precedent, but those are basically dominant interpretations. Suffice it to say that I doubt any of the MS haters would fall into silence if the judge ruled in such a way as to "clarify" antitrust law in a way favorable to MS.
Also, let us not forget that just because you, Bill Gates, or anybody else doesn't like a law doesn't make it okay to break it.
Yes, those immoral bastards Martin Luther King and Gandhi sure deserved what THEY got, all right.
As for IE, selling a product for less than it cost to manufacture in order to gain market share is called dumping, and it is illegal. Simple as that.
Another example of arbitrariness, since of course Netscape did the same thing yet you don't see them in court. (Doesn't matter that they did it after MS started doing it; the law doesn't make any allowance for that. Vague, remember?)
Furthermore, there is a body of economic theory much older than antitrust law suggesting that dumping can't work as a long-term strategy unless barriers to entry in the market are astronomically high. That may be true in airlines or railroads (though even those are questionable) but certainly not in software.
There is an old joke about antitrust (heh) that goes like this:
If you set your prices higher than the competition's, that's price-gouging, and it's illegal.
If you set your prices equal to the competition's, that's price-fixing, and it's illegal.
If you set your prices lower than the competition's, that's dumping or predatory pricing, and it's illegal.
-Ananda
Except for 1, and maybe 8, your list is incorrect.
1) Per CPU-licensing, when MS practiced it, was perfectly legal and a good way to crack down on piracy and simplify accounting. Nothing nefarious in that. OEMs didn't have to participate.
2) The error messages were (a) only present in a beta, and (b) were there to check that the beta was being run in the proper environment, not to attack DR-DOS. This is anti-MS FUD.
3) IBM is at fault for this one, they screwed the deal not MS. MS didn't have some secret plan to dump OS/2 while saying differently. More anti-MS FUD.
4) MS doesn't use undocumented APIs. This is easily checkable with a debugger and watching OS calls. Sheesh. More anti-MS FUD.
5) I think you mean OEMs (not ISVs) placing icons on the desktop. MS never prevented this, MS only prevented removal of the standard icons. Still more anti-MS FUD.
6) MS never attempted illegal market-spliting deals. This is a total frabrication and probably the most outrageous example in your slanderous list yet.
7) MS didn't hire a PR firm to simulate "grass roots" support. MS hired several PR firms to come up with various proposals. One PR firm, proposed such a scheme (without checking with MS first). MS rejected the scheme, it was never acted on. The anti-MS crowd just tried to spin this into something they could use to attack MS instead of this particular PR firm. Amazing how far the anti-MS lynch mob will go to slant the truth in their attempts to make MS look bad.
8) MS didn't intentionally provide misleading evidence. Yes, the video tape could have been edited better. But the demonstrative evidence they meant it to depict was succesfully shown later, proving their initial intentions were valid.
Yes, the list put together by Microsoft's competitiors is longer. And it's equally full of lies. Just in the responses to this article alone, I've seen several of these false tired things (like the Gary Kidall died mysteriously thread). Microsoft didn't have anyone killed. Sheesh, this just shows how nutso these anti-MS wackos are.
Yes, Microsoft has a dominant position in software today. And they worked hard to get there and deserve it. But they don't have a monopoly, there are plenty of other choices.
Not if the programs/support aren't there. Anyone was free to rig their own wiring and compete with ATnT as well, how many could afford too?
...Mesa, OpenGL...
Not left over credibility, left over monopoly via IBM and the cloners.
not ok == illegal.
Sure, I don't have to and don't follow laws I believe are wrong. What I believe is wrong is probably different from you though.
Guess we have to get rid of the Constitution then.
The barrier into the market is high. If you invent something neat, chances are MS'll take it and bundle it, so no one has a reason to buy your software.
The Internet has no central point of control, how can that work? The TCP/IP protocols are completely open how can that work?
It's CLUE time Bill!
wasn't this the exact same logic Emperor Palpatine used to justify his New Order?
All you're pointing out is that the makers of YOUR SCSI card only wrote their drivers for Windows. *IF* they hadn't, there's no way in hell you would have been able to get that SCSI card to work with your Windows ystem.
With Linux, you had to patch the kernel - but you were ABLE to, and could. Once the driver for your SCSI card is made part of the kernel distribution, then you won't even have to worry about that.
Lacks features? Which features is it that he's talking about? I've racked my brains and I have come up with some that it lacks now. Good printer support is one. Ghostscript works once you get it setup if you have a printer that it will work with, and if you've got a postscript printer you're set period, but not everyone is in either of these catagories. Windows has better support for 3d cards (more varieties at least). Things like winmodems will of course not work at all under linux, not that we'd want them to since winmodems are an absolute downgrade of any computer they are installed into. But these are all hardware compatibility issues. When it comes to the software side of things Linux has any version of windows beat hands down. The only "bad" thing you can say about linux is that it won't run windows programs, although wine is making great progress in this area. Windows won't run unix programs either. I'm not sure if Gates really believes the things he's saying or not. The most rational idea is that he doesn't, but I for one hope he does. The more he underestimates linux and the free software community as a whole, the greater our advantage. The explosion of the internet bit him in the ass, lets hope it happens again. If anyone's butt is in need of a good chewing (and kicking) it's his.
Huh????
How the hell can a site be specialy made for an operating system that isn't released yet?
Maybe I misunderstanding the comment.
And when is that moron going to admit that Linux DOES have a GUI?? One that is much better and much more configureable than anything that Microsux has ever created.
The somewhat vague faults that Gates described are issues for a desktop operating system for the most part. It is true that device support is where windows really shines compared to linux. But his statement that linux "doesn't have the graphics interface" should be news to anyone who's ever used X. His statement that there is no central point of control is true, and in many situations it might even lead to chaos as he tries to say that it will. What makes linux different is that although there is no central point of control for the operating system as a whole, the component pieces of the OS are controlled by the people who develop them. The kernel is controlled by Linus, the C library is controlled by the GNU project, X is controlled by the open group, and the list goes on. Some people can and will make custom versions of portions of linux, but these versions are not likely to proliferate outside the areas they were created in. If they do, it will mean that they are a good enough idea to be incorporated generally and that will be what happens. What he describes is a situation where multiple standards emerge that begin to do war with each other. This is exactly what would happen if linux were a proprietary system, where money rather than technical merit dictates what one group pushes for. But as long as linux is free this isn't as likely to happen because companies that spring up around linux and make money from it won't have the ability to increase their profits by making proprietary changes to the operating system. This doesn't stop anyone from creating proprietary applications, but that is a different sort of problem in most cases because only a relatively small group of add on programs need to work with a given application, whereas everything has to be able to work with the operating system. Linux is based on open standards and any changes, no matter how stupid, will not be made if it makes linux incompatible with those standards. Gates was wise to avoid comparing Linux to windows in the server arena for reasons we all know well. In nearly every area linux beats NT like a red-headed stepchild. He knows it and he'll be damned if he'll draw attention to it. NT 5 (or whatever..) will have to be ten times better than it is right now just to keep up with linux. This is because the development cycle that linux enjoys is far faster than anything Microsoft can do. Linux is crafted to be the best based on technical merit, not on marketing or "features" that lock users into using it or otherwise limit their choices, which is something that Microsoft would be wise to learn from. The only area where Linux is lacking from a server standpoint is that you have to be competent to use it. Any idiot can administer an NT network, maybe not well but come on. His dollars are just as good as anyone else's and lets face it, there are a lot more people like him out there than there are people who know what they are doing. The server market is expanding and will continue to do so for a while at least. NT owns more of the server market, but NT's growth rate is much smaller than that of Linux. This means that linux's slice of the pie is growing and the pie itself is getting bigger all the time. This is all fine and good for the present, but what about next year? There is no guarantee that this growth rate will continue. In the computer industry you are either going up or going down, there is no steady state. We want linux's growth rate to increase because that is the only way it is going to win in the long run. An important step to making this happen is creating an idiot friendly administration tool, the more extensive the better. Something that will help your below average MCSE make use of it. Not because we like him or because we'll use that tool ourselves, but because if he can use it and likes it, it will help linux grow and that is good for everyone.
Lee Reynolds
leereyno@hotmail.com
Slashdotters just love Bill. Everything the man says or writes is cherished, argued over, and fought over here, like a holy relic. Bill is a nerd, and the fact that he's been very successful isn't the point. Bill Gates is a nerd with charm.
I've seen Bill on the Today show. He comes across as somebody who is sincere, who means well, and is often misunderstood. Talk show hosts who start with aggressive questioning finish by laughing it up. He comes across as very human. For example, his showing signs of great discomfort on television, emotionally and physically, during questioning in the antitrust trial, did not work the way detractors hoped. Rather, it engendered sympathy for a guy who is being interrogated like a common criminal on NYPD Blue. I've seen how people react, including older people. It's like Bill is their son.
It seems that Bill Gates believes many of his own lies, or doesn't regard them as lies. He may really feel that by saying positive things about Microsoft products they will magically become good products, and I don't think he would be so convincing unless he believed some of that himself.
Even the stories about Bill missing a few showers because of his dedication to work come across in a favourable light. The average businessman who has worked long hours can understand.
Like it or not, even at his age Bill has a certain boyish quality which helps him at this time. A more "rugged" type, at least in appearance and mannerisms, would be disasterous for MS.
You will get nowhere attacking Bill Gates. You may get somewhere by continuing to educate the public about software (like RMS is trying to do only more diplomatically) and getting Linux, which is the focus of Free Software right now, into more retail stores. Even small stores, where people can see it does have a desktop, etc.
Linux will do quite well in the corporate world - already is as a server, and it will do just as well on the desktop. But that's not enough.
It was not enough for MS to inherit a monopoly from IBM (because IBM didn't realize its value).
MS also appealed to home users and small business people more, at least at first, than to big business. Windows was originally for the "little guy" and OS2 for the corporations seeking integration with IBM mainframe enterprises. That was one of IBM's mistakes.
Very strange that Linux, written by a home user for home users, cannot attempt to do the same more openly and is being marketed as a cheap unix for impersonal corporations seeking to cut expense and workers.
There is much hope in parts of the world where consumers aren't so affluent and tire of using, at best, bootleg MS software. That loses its luster when a better system is free. Fortunately these consumers vastly outnumber Americans, and the international community is not so taken with Mr. Gates' charm.
I just want to know whether these statements can be used against him to weaken his defense in court when the trial resumes.
If they can, he's contradicting his own efforts to show that Linux ^is^ competitive! (Maybe he's more concerned about Linux than the DOJ
Any lawyers out there that can answer this?
*Linux* (the OS kernel) doesn't have any of these things. Only various distros have stuff. So he gets off on a technicality.
A very shaky one - the techies are going to recognize this as blatant lying, the computer-illiterate don't know anything about Linux, just "RedHat" - and Microsoft can't get away with saying that kind of bullshit about RedHat.
Paul Thurrott here, publisher of WinInfo. I'm not surprised to learn PC Week is reading WinInfo,
but my "Linux page" (actually, it's an Alternative OSes page) is still up. You can find it at:
However, WinInfo *is* a Windows news and information newsletter, not an email version of slashdot. What the heck do you expect? The same issue that contained the Gates comments about Linux (not my opinion at all, Linux *is* a threat to Windows) contains a scathing review of Gates' new book as well. Far from being a PR lackey for MS, WinInfo just tells it the way I see it.
Shame my butt. You should be ashamed to work for an organization that consistently makes up news.
"We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fun for university developers," I guess he is right, you know stuff like NIS+, and other tools doesnt have anything to do with university developers. Second unix machines need less management, because they dont scew up every 2 hours.
|me at work fixing nt problems while the unix box works perfectly|
SOT - People actually buy winmodems?
>Gates said. "... It doesn't have the graphics >interface. "
;) (kde, gnome )
>It doesn't have the rich set of device drivers.
HAHAHA (I'm trying to keep from falling out of my seat)
>So certainly we think of it as a competitor in the >student and hobbyist market.
The very people who created this market to begin with.
>But I really don't think in the commercial >market, we'll see it [compete with Windows] in >any significant way."
Now the number 1 operating system for web
servers (27% and climbing). Apache holding steady at number 1. And more importantly at the top of the list of new OS installations in this market.
>Meanwhile, the Gates book, which is widely >regarded as a snoozer, soaked up most of his >other comments.
Don't worry Bill just rename it to the apt title of "Mien Komf" (Hitler's autobiography)
I'm sure sales will start perking up.
I once was a Win95 user, wanted internet so bought a modem, didnt know all about modems, just that USRobotics is quality.
So I went to the store and payed 360,- HFL (dutch guilders) for a winmodem 56k, (didnt know winmodem meant passive tho).After some time I downloaded Linux to experiment with it and got hooked, so I needed a solution for the winmodem, there wasnt any, so i bought this external 56k modem from a crappy brand (but had etech chips)
for only 150,- HFL the modem btw is better too, speeds are faster and that is (in win95) probably purely for the cpu which has to fall in for missing chips. I ask you, do you buy a faster cpu so hw vendors can save money on chips? Think not!
i love active hw instead of passive and am willing to pay more for it too!
And should hardware (peripherals) stand apart from whatever software you want to use it with?
Packages? Hell, this does the trick for me:
configure; make; make install
The occasional need for a library aside (and that's no worse than going and getting VBRUNx00.DLL, anyway), configuring and installing a complex, current piece of software on my crufty ol' Slackware '96 machine is just as easy as chatting with InstallSheild in Windows. I do both frequently, so I should know.
Often the tar.gz that I'm installing from supports Solaris and HP/UX, too. That's what you get when your OS ships with a standard C compiler and a set of system calls that people have been using for 20 years, I guess.
Actually, I'd like to have a civil chat with Mr. Bill and see what he really thinks of this stuff. Back in high school, he was, we are told, a genuine Computer Nerd. Surely in talking crap as he has, he's just playing to the glossy-magazine crowd?
Mind the Gap
It comes down to the MS philosophy that since you don't have source code to the OS, you can never be sure when you need to reboot. So, do reboot for everything. That way you can be assured the computer will re-read the registry, etc and load all the new settings.
In Linux, I know shutting down a device with ifconfig, and bringing it up with a new ip does just that. So there's no reboot necessary.
Microsoft contends that it is not even legal to use a 3rd party web server package such as O'Reilly's with NT Workstation.
That's certainly interesting, but where do you get it? Is there something in the workstation EULA that says you can't run server programs?
This is a common attitude I've seen as well. For computer geeks like myself (except that they are MS-lovers), I've gotten them to not immediately dismiss Linux by showing them my system and all I can do with it; things like IP masq'ing your home LAN to the Internet, the LRP (it does all that from a floppy?), KDE (it really does ease their minds that Linux is this terrible/difficult OS), Samba (so they can keep a Win box around and communicate with it), VMWare (though it'll cost money, it's still worthwhile), INN and Suck (mirroring all newsgroups that I want), Apache (for custom bookmark homepage, or web development at home instead of having to upload pages to the ISP), etc.
That works great for computer people, for others this approach works to an extent. Concentrate on end-user apps, KOffice will be powerful once it's out (or maybe it is now, haven't gotten around to trying it), or StarOffice/WordPerfect, various EMail readers, stability, etc. Although one thing these people like to do is just shut off the power without properly shutting down. Then they end up with bunches in lost+found. Perhaps mixing locate with md5sums of files, then automatically moving things that match up out of lost+found to their proper location would help a bit.
Most people can be swayed by real-life demonstrations. Show them that they can do what the do currently, only better, more of it, most stable. And on top of all that, most all of it is free.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"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?"
I guess he hasnt seen Enlightenment, Window Maker, Blackbox, KDE, fvwm, even twm looks better than the look he stole from OS/2 and made look trashy (just to name a FEW). Hell.. even color-ls kicks the pants off of DIR.
.
How _do_ we know he's not stupid?
Because he's wealthy?
He was _born_ wealthy.
Sure , maybe not the wealthiest man in the world,
but he _never_ had to worry, he was set for life
from the get go.
I offer the following URL as proof.
http://photo.net/bg/
Now if you should doubt the veracity of this info,
consider the recent pressure put on Segfault and UserFriendly.
As a further indicator of Micros~1's penchant for
quashing information about Gates that isn't 100% factual,
go look at Bill Gates Secret Diary.
The last entry is almost a _year_ old!
Representative Democracy cannot work, thus all countries with them will fail. Simlarly, to a president of a standard model corp. an anarchy based management system will fail. This is not FUD, it is simply Mr. Bill's myopia. We should pitty the man, and hope that his Billions keep him warm at night.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Yep, my Linux box can do that. Or, I can recompile the kernel and compile in support for only the hardware I need, and not have a significant portion of my kernel be sitting there in memory doing nothing. I can also do it from across town, or from across the world for that matter. Can NT do that?
Okay. You've said that twice. You've said nothing to actually back it up or show why it might be true. I can say the sky is green an infinite number of times; oh, look, it's still blue.
When laws are passed, whether vague or not, they will get challenged in court. Those challenges either get the law struck down or set precedents which focus the intent and coverage of the law. Anti-trust law is over one hundred years old. The chances that it is arbitrary and vague are just about zero. Whether or not it is over-reaching is a matter of opinion, but I doubt it would have lasted this long if many people (and let's be honest, large corporations) thought that. Also, let us not forget that just because you, Bill Gates, or anybody else doesn't like a law doesn't make it okay to break it.
As for IE, selling a product for less than it cost to manufacture in order to gain market share is called dumping, and it is illegal. Simple as that.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that you don't need to? Just because a given capability doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean that nobody wants or needs it.
I also have a feeling that were it possible to recompile the NT kernel with only the necessary hardware support and no GUI, people would be doing it every day. Now, people don't necessarily need to do this in Linux. But they can if they so choose. And that, my friend, makes all the difference.
Which means that no distinction exists, right? I would submit that the case law shows how the definitions are applied in specific instances. Now, I suppose you could interpret that as changing them to fit the current bad guy if you really wanted to; and as you said, you've let your biases show.
What about the tax code? It has been around for over fifty years, and there is not a lawyer alive who understands all of it. It is riddled with arbitrary, vague, and even contradictory rules. The fact that a law is old does not make it good.
Don't confuse complex with arbitrary and vague. And although I have to give you that tax law can seem arbitrary at times (it's usually a case of not knowing the motivation behind it, rather than there not being one, though) it's hardly vague.
As far as beating up corporations being a good way to score political points, that's only true sometimes, depending on the political climate. There have been times in American history when doing that was sure political suicide. Contrast that with a given official's ability to get elected with and without large corporate support. Then wonder why those same politicians that take millions in lobbying (and other) money still allow anti-trust law to exist. Do you really think if big business in America wanted to eliminate anti-trust it would still be in effect? Keep in mind that Microsoft benefitted enormously from IBM's anti-trust problems with the U.S. Gov't. It's only now that they're on the other side that they have a problem with it.
I disagree. I have no moral qualms about breaking laws that I believe to be unjust. The fact that some Congressman says I should do something does not obligate me to do it.
Which is easily your most illuminating statement. Someday, though, you'll grow up and move out into the real world; perhaps then you'll understand it better. Or perhaps everybody should adopt your attitude, and I can send somebody "with no moral qualms" and a bad attitude 'round to discuss how I feel about people who disagree with me. ;)
_Sun_ is competing with MS on the consumer desktop?
Perhaps you'd prefer anarchy, or fascism?
If you like the way the USA does things, you might read some of the thinking as the government was formed. I always refer to Federalist Paper #10 here... if you seriously don't believe large factions inevitably want to oppress smaller factions for their own self-interest... if you seriously believe the diversity of smaller factions has no value, that smaller factions have no rights and obliteration by the Winning Faction is their only just fate, then you are a fascist.
This talk of 'compete in the free market' is ludicrous. What you're really saying is, 'Let's obliterate actual choice, and end up with only one option, which we can claim is perfect by means of Darwinian selection!'
Well, even in _biology_ this leads to mass die-offs, the collapse of the system, and that happens exactly _when_ one 'competitor' 'wins' to that extent.
In society we can decide to not fall _into_ that trap. In fact we can decide to consciously look into preventing abuses of the 'losers' and thus keeping a sounder idea 'ecosystem', in politics, and now, it seems, in computer software.
Do we decide this?
Or do we want to conduct business like animals?
With the power of Microsoft's(tm) clearly superior operating systems, and our soon-to-be President Al Gore, The Father Of The Internet(tm) blazing new paths, computing will be better for all. Not only am I formatting my ext2 partitions and installing Win2000(tm) and Office2000 (tm), I'm going to subscribe to both AOL(tm) (which Al Gore invented, since AOL(tm) is the Internet(tm)) AND MSN(tm) (since Bill Gates also invented the Internet(tm), modern operating systems, the PC (tm), the World Wide Web(tm) and modern civilization).
PS - the above is sarcasm
Slightly related....
How about a "SlashHelp" section for those with Linux/BSD/etc. questions? Would redirect some noise back to signal.
Take a look at Arkadia Software or EST Inc.'s products for Linux (Arkadia Backup, BRU). Both support enterprise-wide backup and restore onto a central Linux server.
Look, I managed over 200 mixed Linux and SCO Unix boxes scattered across a two state area -- single-handedly, in less than 2 hours a day. Every night those systems backed up their data to their district office, even the ones not hooked up to a WAN (thanks to the power of UUCP and dialup modems!). Only an idiot can't do network-wide management of Linux boxes with tools like "rdist", "rsync", "ssh", etc. available.
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
He's just telling his lemmings what they want to hear. No biggie.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Posted by ReticularActivatingSystem:
/. cause this isn't the "proper" place to ask for help. Sorry. Can anyone offer me an URL or some idea of where to go for help? I have no unix friends so I feel alone w/o help in this.
I have a feeling I will regret this...
Ok, please, please don't flame me. Maybe somebody can help me out because I have used all the resources I know of and am at my wits end.
I'm new to Linux. I've installed it on two computers thus far and I'm having trouble with a device.
I can't get my Diamond 500 AGP vid card a Linux driver. I've dl'd it at work to a win 98 zip disk and I have a zip disk on the Linux computer with the AGP card. Is there a way it can read the win98 formatted disk to copy the driver over? I would just dl it via modem on the Linux computer but I can't get the modem config'd right.
I've done the usenet thing and tried other options, read a few different sections out of borrowed books but I'm stuck. This is my last resort to post to
Posted by mborgerd:
A phone modem is not an essential piece of equipment for a lot of people.
Cable modems are getting much more popular in major cities. I've had one for just over a year now. Most of that time I was using 95. Last month I installed Linux on a junker machine and most of my connection problems went away magically. Also, I can now see download speeds > 280KBYTES/ s (almost twice the speed I got in 95)
With 95, I didn't really care for the fact that in order to share a resource with another machine on the network -- I had to share it with ALL machines on the network -- now someone needs a password to access my Samba shares.
Posted by Mike@ABC:
Sure, Bill can point out Linux as a potential competitor, but I'm reasonably sure that's for the DOJ to hear, not us. I think his comments in this article are closer to what he really thinks.
And yes, I believe he really thinks that, or has convinced himself of that. Microsoft's internal development is totally in "cathedral" mode, and in the past year or so, hasn't been able to keep up with Windows 2000 design and other stuff. But I think Gates, who built his fortune on a proprietary model, just can't wrap his mind around the concept.
Complacency breeds ignorance. Ignorance breeds FUD. 'Nuff said.
What really bothers me about the whole thing my system is better than yours is that for a newbie, linux looks like DOS and XFree isn't easy to configure... so maybe Gates is such a newbie... but lack of features? like what?
like not being able to telnet to the server to fix problems by editing simple text files? (sorry, that's a feature NT is lacking)
No Quota??? (mmhh... same again...)
and what's the true meaning of an application server?? a file server on which the application can be loaded? Sorry, that's not what I meant, I meant remote applications, where the display is actually exported to a thinner X-terminal client... Ah! Sorry, that's a *nix/Linux feature again!!!
How come I have to PAY to have more than 10 users accessing a file server when I can do that for free on Linux using samba??
What about the cost? what about the cost of having a DUMB sysadmin (sorry sys-tem-ad-mi-ni-stra-tor) in charge of your network?
Yeah... I'm pssed off, and I have a right too, because a system is not all about features, it's about a small number of core features that makes a server a server... like... stability? Is there a 3rd party stability module for NT? How come I get a BSOD when the cursor moves over a window?
Oh! and How come I get a screwed-up linux partition when I launch win98 on my dual boot laptop? (yes I keep win98 on my laptop, 'coz i have a WINMODEM!!!!!
Really I don't care if I have integrated browser in my system or not! I want stability and ease of administration... vi/telnet does if for me, I don't have the bandwidth for pcanywhere or vnc (needed for any kind of remote NT administration!) but Linux is getting there in terms of ease of use... microsoft still struggles with implementing core features in their system... 64/128bit readiness anyone???
Yes, Micro$oft is scared of Linux... because people like us know exactly what's working and what's not... a few more years, and a lot of pssed-off people of the linux generation will become sysadmins and CEOs, and I know what those people will NOT use...
---
"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
That's the attitude I've adopted! The only way
to kill Microsoft is to simply ignore them.
It's their worst nightmare that everyone will
grow tired of their games and move on to better
platforms and more robust tools. Migrating to
other platforms is always a pain but it's soooooo
worth it. Things are so much easier to manage
over here in Linux land.
Microsoft just doesn't matter to me anymore.
Let Bill and gain talk out of their ass -- who
cares. They only expose their own ignorance
even further.
Look no further that Seagate Software (err, soon to be Veritas) and our product WinInstall. Email me for more info.
TedC
I didn't think of that -- could be.
I did think "graphics interface" was a sort of odd, but I think it's probably just more FUD.
TedC
I was listening to Marketplace on NPR last night on the way home from work. I caught the tail-end of the interview with Mr. Bill (ooooh, nooooo, Mr. Bill!), and the wierd thing is he sounds so reasonable. If I wasn't in the business, I would not have a problem believing what he says. "Bad, DoJ! Leave the poor mans alone!"
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
He is very successful, no quibble with that. It is self-evident that MS and Mr. Gates have come to be - for a large majority of people - synonymous with software and OSes. But, the quality - or lack thereof - of the software, the limitations placed upon users and the industry as a whole, and the blatantly illegal business practices of Mr. Gates and his company DO warrant investigation.
In addition, the "newspeak" that is an MS and Gates' stable point out the inherent weaknesses in both his business model and his software. On top of that, a company like MS - or any other monolithic corporation - reflects the personality of the top man. The revisionist, content-free pronouncements from MS corporate spokespersons and Mr. Gates further support the fact that his software wouldn't be able to compete in a fair market, and that the only reason MS is in the position it is, is the stranglehold the licenses have on the OEM's. That is not competition, nor is it innovation.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
LOL! Thanks. I needed the laugh.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
First off, Bill wants his cake and to eat it, too. He wants the DoJ to leave him alone in his quest for PC OS dominance, and he can't stand any interference. Natch, obvious. Also, he will say anything in any way to get his view - skewed though that may be, across. Remember, the rich are different than us. They truely see the world in a different way. Gates truely beleives he can do anything at all and not be criticised. He just does not believe that other folks don't view him the way he paints himself, the way he paints his vision, the way he spins his software.
Not to put too fine a point on it; Gates is delusional.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
"In fact, as I am sure you are aware, this stranglehold is weakening, and the DOJ had nothing to do with it."
/.-er, do not believe Linux is the 20th century version of the Ten Commandments: Novell works fine as a file/print server; Solaris works fine as a heavy-duty server; AIX is a wonder for CATIA; AS/400 rocks for mid-range stuff. Windows is okay for desktop use; MAC OS works for graphics, as does IRIX. I would argue OS/2 is a better client OS than Windows. Linux fits in rather nicely as a news/email/web/file/print server as well as a nice router/firewall/gateway OS. The problem is, Mr. Gates would have people believe that the above don't cut it, that his OS is the One-AND-Only.
Timing, as the sage says, is everything. The only reason the OEM's are even considering mentioning Linux now is because the DoJ has MS by the shorthairs. Previous to the widely-covered, well-documented foot-shootings that happened during the trial, not one OEM had the intestinal fortitude to even whisper the name Linux. I'm sorry, but your statement is just not accurate.
I, for one
You also follow the typical MS line that most people are stupid, and can't figure things out for themselves. Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, that is one of the negatives of MS and Mr. Gates' domination: The dumbing-down of computing. And, in closing, 90% of the population would not need to recompile their kernel - at least not right away. That comes after they've re-discovered they can think for themselves, and have found again that learning is fun.
Well, enough of this. Neither side will convince the other. The weekend is near - or here depending on the timezone. Time to relax.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
No. The one I always saw people doing was putting in, say, twenty entries to run every hour or something.
:)
They need a decent cron service, but that would probably die to, and... well, why not just run UNIX?
Hey, why not put the call to AT at the beginning of the batch file? Or fork it off, at least NT can do that with its command interpreter.
Linux ran fine on my old P133 (better than DOS, running DEFRAG on my old DOS partition back then was *much* faster in DOSEmu than in DOS because Linux caches so much better...), and NT4SP1 was a pig, and somewhat slow, but NT4SP3 with the IE integration stuff is incredibly slow. I think they call that progress.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah.. I gotta agree with this. It's sad that Bill can simply lie about whatever he wants whenever he wants and get away with it. Since we can't really sue him or anything that would make the press take notice and get off their asses and do a little investigating for once instead of just reprinting whatever Bill says, he gets to get away with outright lies about Linux. Makes me pretty sick.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Bill is supposed to be "chief technology officer" or something like that. It appears that he's actually "door-to-international-door salesman" but that doesn't seem to bother him. Either way, I would think that he knows quite a bit about anything that competes with Windows. He's just lying because Linux is starting to make Windows look like the crap that it is.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There is nothing arbitrary about anti-trust. Those laws exist to prevent a corperate entity from gaining enough economic clout to damage the public good and the economy. MS has already crossed over that line (They said so themselves "If you don't allow us to innovate our browser, the US economy will be damaged").
Keep in mind that part of thge public good includes a strong and diverse economy with prices driven by supply and demand through competition.
There's more to it than being too lazy. For example, try to find a laptop without windows pre-installed (and paid for). Why do I have to buy a MS product I don't want to use? Because Bill Gates says so (and will financially ruin any vendor who doesn't go along). That's too much power in the marketplace for anyone to be allowed to have.
That takes me from zero choice to one choice that STILL doesn't have an OS I want on it (or even just not have an OS.
And that is what we have. The price of Windows is driven by the fact that people are willing to pay for it. Microsoft has competed and been very successful.
So then why does MS REQUIRE every PC retailer to either ship nothing but Windows OR pay a price that puts them out of the market? That's a significant part of the problem.
How will Windoze ever have more features than Linux? Windoze will only have those features that Billgatus decides to put in there. Linux users can add whatever they want.
It would seem that the DOJ case did absolutely NOTHING to change his ways.
was that Windows has more buttons and doo-dads than Linux ever will! It is easier to get lost in Windows than Linux, therefore it has more features. Cave in Linux Users! Windows is here to stay!
tak*
PS. Um, NOT!
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
Wrong. Sound in RedHat is modular. You don't really need to complie anything for basic sound support under RedHat. Get your facts straight.
Bill knows he's lying, we know he's lying, and he knows we know he's lying.
He just doesn't care.
He'll keep on spewing the lie until enough people start repeating it in the press. Shouldn't take long, people would rather believe sound bites than check things out for themselves.
It's a war, apparently, and Bill's main weapon seems to be FUD. Fortunately for Linux, we have more substantial weapons.
You can't use Windows video drivers on Linux systems. Check the XFree86 FAQ to see which server you need, preferably before you buy a video card. Then download the server (where to get this depends upon which Linux distribution you're using). Email me if you get stuck.
HIBT...?
--
W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
Let me also say that, out of the box, Windows NT Workstation is useless. There's nothing you can do with it. You could run IE, that's about it. There is absolutely no functionality.
Constrast that with, say, Red Hat Linux which out of the box can run as a web server, POP3 server, has numerous email clients, has a full featured, high-quality C/C++ compiler, programmable text editors, a full range of text processing tools (sed, awk, perl, grep), can provide nice typeset output (TeX, LaTeX), can make beautiful graphics (Gimp), etc.
For crying out loud, you can't even setup tasks to execute periodically under NT without buying additional products. Linux at least has cron! For example, I wanted to record one hour of audio from the sound card input each day, compress it to MP3 and copy it to a Jaz disk so I can take it and listen to it at work. I have to do this at home on a Linux box because there's no way to script that up under NT easily.
Gates has got a flashy interface, but it's on top of a mess of nothingness underneath.
You can quote me on this: "Windows tells me how I have to work. I tell Linux how it's going to work for me."
Gates says that you get proliferations of different versions and everybody can go into the source code, and everybody does. I see Gates' point---he thinks that, for example, Red Hat and Debian are really different, and if I know Red Hat, that I'll be clueless at a Debian machine. We all know this is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, I think this "fractioning" of the market is a good thing. Different companies can market their distributions at different customers. Slackware is marketed towards the Linux experts who want complete control, Red Hat is marketed a newbies and people who want an easy to use system. Debian is geared towards those who want a truly free system. There are distributions of Linux for those who want to run it on tiny machines as routers. On the other hand, Gates only gives you one version of Windows NT. It's a one-size fits all scheme. He'll tell you it's better for you since it's all the same, but I'd rather see many different solutions geared towards different people so each person can pick what fits them best.
Gates says that Linux has no central point of control. How does that make a system bad? Contrast a company like Microsoft with the Linux movement. Having a central point of control for Microsoft certainly hasn't made Microsoft products more reliable in my opinion, or the opinions of many others.
Gates says that Linux's biggest feature is its price. No, it has to do with price (again, real freedom versus free beer). I'd like to say that I'd be willing to pay $200 for Linux, but I can't really say that since its freedom precludes that. But, let's put it this way: if Windows NT were free, I'd still pick Linux over Windows NT in a heart beat.
Gates says "We put things into our system like systems management that's not much fun for university developers". I work at a large company with hundreds of Sparc boxes and Dell machines running NT. The sysadmins will always tell you that the NT machines are a bitch to administer, and the Sparc and Linux boxes just run without any maintanence. At the last company I worked for, I setup an HTTP/FTP/POP3 Linux server. I left over a year ago and it's still running without any maintenance. Try that with Windows NT.
Gates says "It doesn't have a rich set of device drivers". Well, USB support isn't in there, but other than that, it supports my scanner, ethernet, SCSI, video, and multi-port serial card. NT, on my namebrand Dell machine here at work often can't recognize even the simplest namebrand hardware we try to add (between blue screens). And we're not idiots, either. As long as you don't buy brain dead Winmodems and pick decent hardware, there's nothing out there (again, with the exception of USB) that Linux doesn't work with.
Gates says "I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see it [compete with Windows] in any significant way". I guess he's ignoring all of those Apache equipped Linux boxes out there.
Pretty much the standard FUD we've come to expect from Microsoft. After all, this article was posted on WUGNET, Windows Users Group Network. Ha.
I'm glad to say I've never paid for a Microsoft product, never recommended the purchase of one, and probably never will.
Actually, the only distro to call itself "GNU/Linux" is Debian, which has a far more effective central management system than any other --- as reflected in the dpkg/apt package management system.
Basically, all you're asking is: can Linux read a zip disk that's been written under Windows 98? Short answer: Yes. (I've done it myself with Syquest SparQ disks). Long answer: All you need is to have the appropriate filesystem support (I think vfat is the one you want in this case) compiled into your kernel, and it's the rare distribution that wouldn't have that compiled in these days... Just do a mount -t vfat /dev/pda1 /mnt/zip (replacing /dev/pda1 with your ZIP drive's device name if it's different, and /mnt/zip with whatever mount point you choose). Voila! You can read all the files on your Win98-created zip disk.
Now if you need help with the drivers once you've got them on your system, or with setting up X, I'm afraid I can't help you. I'd suggest you try the comp.os.linux.x newsgroup in that case. But hopefully this will get you started.
HTH. HAND.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
And, as someone else (also named Robin, apparently -- Hi Robin! :^)) pointed out, this won't do you any good unless those drivers you downloaded were drivers for Linux. Win 98 drivers won't do you any good.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
Uh, yes, so the less you know, the more money you have to spend to get the same amount of work done. This sounds reasonable to me.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Who's gonna sue MS for claiming that Linux has no
Someone. Please?
--
You need perl to do an alarm clock? :-)
/usr/local/share/mp3/foo.mp3
0 7 * * * splay
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
If you just care about the programs being the same you can use Coda/NFS to mount /usr and /home and get centralized programs that way. If you actually want the same software physically installed on each computer, you can create a Packages.gz file indexing all the .deb packages that contain your custom version of the software and point sources.list at it for each computer. Not that that helps if you aren't running Debian. Guess you'd have to resort to rsync or some similar thing (CVS update!!) in that case :-)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I don't *think* that the Debian or RedHat default kernels have sound compiled in, so most people will recompile at least once. Debian does have Alsa as a package; I don't really know how well it works though since OSS works fine with my card.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I don't much like the VMS user environment, but it has a well deserved reputation as a reliable and secure OS.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Sounds like he's confusing Linux with linux applications. He doesn't get it that just like in windoze land, every developer is responsible for his/her own apps, same goes for in Linux. I guess the confusion comes from the linux distribution being called just "Linux" and not "Linux and misc. software".
Linux is only the kernel, and like you said that's controlled by Linus. Unlike in MSWin where that 60MB of crap in its entirety is considered Windows and not "Windows software." At least Win95 was something like 60MB, I hear '98 is alot more.
[ If progress is to move forward, is Congress to move back? >8-} ]
Back Orifice and Netbus, heh-heh.
[ If progress is to move forward, is Congress to move back? >8-} ]
Or just use 'at', but it's no fun mentioning the easy way to do things, or people become lazy. ;)
Personally, I don't think we have to compete with Windows in the typical way. The way I've seen things happening is via word of mouth advertising.
I personally make it a point to mention Linux every single time I see someone complain about Windows crashing. I don't push it at this point, I just mention a few websites and tell them they should look into it.
After a while, you can catch them *just* after a crash. At this point you mention Linux again, so they agree to try it. Assuming they get a little help to get off the ground, they generally are happier.
Now, people like to know what they have, and so they start to investigate the bundled applications, and will generally come back to ask what certain things are: "What's this 'perl' thing". So, you explain it's a programming language and so on, and you slip in a little about freedom here. You make a point of saying. "This is given away for free, in the hope that anything you make with it will be given away as well."
Now, at this point everyone has at least one small task they'd like to be able to do easier, even something as odd as an alarm clock that plays mp3s at a certain time.
So, you dig out your copy of "Programming Perl" which you *do* of course own. *grin*
You lend this to them, and they work away at their little script, then they submit it for your approval. You make a few changes and send it back, they start to get into the spirit of sharing at this point, rather than slapping a free on it and trying to cash in.
Maybe they decide to send this little alarm clock to a few of their newly found friends who run Linux, and one of those suggests a copy of ideas to add to it. They attempt to add those, and the few friends submit patches and changes that they spotted.
Thus, another convert is born. I'm seeing this happen all of the time at the moment, and I think it's the one real way Linux will win.
Who do you trust more, advertisers or your friends? Exactly.
I agree! We don't want anyone to regulate the industry-- next thing you know, they'll start closing down innovative software companies just because they will "unfairly" compete with some other, larger, company. They'll start forcing other software companies to give away their products. Any truly innovative and competitive product (like say, another Operating System/2) will be unable to find a large-scale distributor because of all the "restrictions."
God, that world would suck! And even more! I can imagine they would start regulating that competing products can't work together, thereby *forcing* people to buy products from only one vendor. Even worse, they'll start collecting statistics on all the operating system users out there, and storing them in a database, so they can track us. They will force gratuitious inconsistencies in file formats, forcing people to upgrade products that don't require upgrading.
And they won't stop there, I'm sure. Given a chance to start regulating, they'll go after internet service providers, regulating what software they can give away or advertise. Once they start regulating, they'll be unable to stop!
No, I agree. I don't want any damned regulation in *my* software industry.
-Tony
Just one thing they stole?
The Intellimouse.
*sigh*
There are two incorrect assumptions with Rand's philosophy.
First, she basis her entire philosophy on Enlightened Self-Interest. ESI is certainly the way educated people conduct themselves; altruism is not often altruistic, entirely. However, this works only when the entities involved are all on equal footing.
In other words, once someone gets the upper hand, it is in their best interest to maintain that upper hand. Individuals cannot do this, because, in a group, one person will have problems overpowering the entire group.
But in corporations, one corporation can become larger and more powerful than all its competitors combined. When this happens, it is no longer in its best interest to play nicely; it is in its best interest to bully, push around, and dictate. Since its strength is greater than the combined strength of all its opponents, nothing can be done. Essentially, *we have to take it.*
Now Ayn Rand suggests that consumers have the power to overthrough a corporation. But this is not true; in the case of Microsoft, until recently, consumers had no option. Anytime a competitor arose, Microsoft would use its strength to destroy the competition before consumers ever got the chance to choose. So consumers never got the choice.
Once corporations get that large, and that powerful, they have no incentive to pander to the consumer. They have only one concern-- shareholders. And since shareholders are only concerned about the bottom line, the corporation is only concerned about the bottom line. And since it is easier to extort and bully than innovate and develop-- when you don't have to worry about the consumer, anyway-- that is what monopolies tend to do.
The second misconception Ayn Rand makes is that corporations deserve the same rights, priveleges, and protections that individuals deserve. This is patently false. A corporation is nothing more than a charter, an entity legally bound to the terms of the charter. In the goverment of the United States (which is the representative body of the people of the US), corporations are charterred under the terms and laws of the United States.
Individuals within the corporation are granted the same rights and privileges as every other citizen; however, the *corporation* does not have the same rights. Even though it is the duty of all people to protest laws by ignoring them ("Civil Disobedience"), corporations do not have that luxery. Our rights as individuals are unique and embodied in our citizenship; they are not granted by charter.
Is it right? Yes, it is. Without such restrictions, a corporation could control our lives much more than the government ever could. Our government (in the US) was formed and designed with "checks and balances," as any third-grader could tell you. Corporations are not. When they have no self-interest in serving the public, they will not do so; and when they are so powerful nobody can challange them, they have no incentive to help anyone but themselves.
And so I contend that Ayn Rand was wrong.
1) Correct. It wasn't illegal. And if OEMs wanted to ship any MS products at all, they had to agree to this.
2) They were discovered in the Beta before the actual product could ship. It checked *specifically* for DR-DOS, and was also the *only* encrypted code in MS-Win3.x . Although the code checked for DR-DOS *specifically,* the error code made it sound like an actual technical incompatibility. And memoes that have surfaced during this trial indicate they had no intention of removing that code until it was discovered.
3) MS did plan on dumping OS/2, although you're right-- IBM screwed that one. That was just a business deal gone sour. The stuff that MS did to OS/2 *after* the divorce was kinda shady, though-- releasing MS-Win3.11 (the only numbered upgrade in the MS-Windows 3.x family) served one purpose only-- it broke Win/OS2 compatibility. There was *nothing* else in that pack-- the "bug fixes" had already been released (quietly) as MS-Win3.1 , and later as MS-Win3.1 .
4) MS does, has, and will use undocumented APIs. This is easily checkable by reading "Undocumented DOS," and "Undocumented Windows," both released a few years ago. The authors did exactly as you suggest-- they used a debugger, and found out that MS products used undocumented OS features.
5) Correct. The question is, though, is IE5 a standard icon? When this was an issue, IE5 was still nothing but an add-on product.
6) This is still in contention. But it is certainly silly. So what? So they proposed a market split? So although I am not convinced it was a fabrication, I think it isn't a very big deal.
7) There is every indication that MS *did* know about the grass-roots campaign, and had given tacit approval. The scheme was in preparation when a San Jose Mercury reporter found out about it; only after that was there scrambling, PR campaign cancellation, and denials.
8) "The tape could have been edited better?" You mean, they shouldn't suck so bad at lies and deception? And they never proved anything later; the second attempt was equally bogus, with different types of hardware. But since it was an internal modem, MS had hoped nobody would notice. And they were caught red-handed for the second time.
Sorry, your defense is just as bad as Microsoft's. And I don't believe MS had anyone killed, either.
MS does not deserve its dominant market position; and now that the market has a choice, it is slowly loosing its lead. So though there are plenty of choices today, there have been no effective choices until recently.
So, you're saying that the only operating system to challange Microsoft in many years has been written by thousands of people donating their time (recently estimated at a worth of close to a billion dollars) and the market entry threshold is *low?*
Microsoft has stiffled innovation by buying out and destroying innovative products. (When it looked like Java was going to be a success, MS purchased *many* companies with innovative products in the works, squashed the products, and said they were buyint "talent.")
OS/2 could have been a real competitor, but IBM screwed that up. I agree, there was once a potential competitor.
But, in the early days of DOS, every major PC maker signed a deal with MS tieing OEM licenses of DOS with every processor sold. At the time, this was not a big deal, as there was not other OS, and everyone was happy. But when DR-DOS came out with a version of DOS that was *far* superior to MS-DOS (with on-the-fly disk compression, true multi-tasking on 386 equipment, and good MS-Windows 3.0 support). But they could not gain entry in the market, because of the per-processor licensing.
Slimey licensing. Yes. Not illegal. No. Because MS was not the monopoly then they are now.
But until recently, *people have been afraid to piss MS off.* *Several* of the industry witnesses in this case have stated they have made decisions based on how MS would react, because they were afraid to make any other decision.
You say:
"The only way Microsoft could ensure that no one could compete with it, would be if they could forcibly prevent anyone from writing a competing product."
See? You *do* understand!
They have managed to keep people from writing competing products. The only platform to compete on is MS-Windows-- and by controlling MS-Windows, they control who will compete, and how they will compete. They controlled the Desktop operating systems by controlling desktop distribution channels.
Ayn Rand wrote her philosophy at the height of the industrial revolution; at that time, the producers controlled the market. Now, the distribution channels control the market (which explains Wal*Mart). MS controls (or at least, controlled) the desktop distribution channels.
Lets use one of your operating systems you mentioned as potential competition-- Be. Recently, the Be CEO offered every single desktop system vendor free licensing for Be if they would pre-install Be on their systems. Yet not one US vendor was willing to do that.
Why? Why have distributors never considered installing a competing OS on their platforms? If you can explain that to me without invoking the name of Microsoft, I will be thrilled. And maybe I'll believe that MS has not ever held a monopoly. And don't try to tell me the customers choose Microsoft; I didn't. I wanted OS/2 pre-installed, and not one of the big vendors would pre-install OS/2. So customer choice has nothing to do with it. (There were tens of thousands of OS/2 users at the time.)
Hmmm. I still don't agree with you WRT the idea that a corporation can have the same rights as an individual; and I am firmly convinced that, since MS has been able to intimidate very large corporations (IBM and Disney and DEC), they hold an effective monopoly.
However, I think we both agree on one thing-- since the net has essentially de-commodotized MS-Windows, the only monopoly MS has held (essentially, the MS-Windows platform itself) is becoming worthless as a club. And so, in the long run I suspect we do agree that, even if MS held a monopoly at one point, it will be hard pressed to maintain it. So I don't know what I'm all het up about.
Did I just say Microsoft has the monopoly on MS-Windows? Yep, I guess I did. I believe that that in itself constitutes a monopoly, since it held the vast majority of market share. Since you do not believe that constitutes a monopoly, we are destined to disagree on that point.
And I know of no company that can start from scratch with a bunch of college kids and hope to start with a billion dollars. So I disagree that the barrier is low. Disagree strongly. But I guess that's semantics.
Since I understand your viewpoint, I don't have much more steam to argue with you-- I can see the argument from both sides, and that just destroys the fun. I don't agree with you on a lot of points, but I do understand where you are coming from.
Personally, I don't want a modem to take up 20% of my cpu just so Icould save a couple bucks, thanks...
I dunno about linux being competitive, it seems to be already.
How do you fight it? Take every innovation for which Microsoft has claimed credit and show its real inventors.
He takes credit for the GUI: point out that Xerox invented the concept (right down to the mouse) and Apple invented the GUI as we know it today (before you flame me, take a look at Xerox's GUI: It is very, very different from the GUI M$ ripped off (and wrecked) from Apple and which everyone else but NeXT was stupid enough to rip off from M$). He takes credit for the Web: point out how it was invented years before on a NeXTStep box.
See what I mean? Microsoft has never invented a thing in its life. It sucks the blood of the innovators, turning them into its slaves, knowing or not. That company never earned its money; every dollar of it is stolen from someone.
Oh, and for the "if not for him you would be stuck 20 years ago" bit, here's your defense: point out the innovations in all of the products Microsoft has killed or tried to kill. Use them to prove that if not for him we would be stuck 10 years in the future.
He's not the smartest, most influential person. Well, maybe he is, but he's nothing but an exceptionally clever thief.
...Linux is too hard. It makes me use my brain. I can't stand having an OS with so much configurability. I like a straight path with no deviation.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
My own effort can be found at http://billwatch.net/. I never have thought of Propaganda's fine mix of text concerning Microsoft with the constructive effort of producing high quality backgrounds for Linux (using one right now!). No doubt other people can come up with completely different projects.
-cjr
For years, people in Redmond have been telling each other and the rest of the world that paranoia is a bliss.
Believing that all of the world conspires against them, without seeing any evidence for this is concerned sensible. Thus the line between thought and reality has been cut in Redmond. They believe it is better that way.
Gates doesn't have to check reality to check if his beliefs are true. He simply believes and that's both the beginning and the end of it.
The man is stark-raving mad.
-cjr
We're a threat, we're not a threat, we're a threat, we're not a threat. MAKE UP YOUR MIND! I'm starting to get dizzy from all this turning around.
But in all seriousness, It seems that Bill is trying to badmouth Linux by telling it's strong points in such a way as to add the elements of FUD. We need to write an article that points out all of Microsoft's good points in a similar light...Well heck! I'm stumped. ya'll got any ideas?
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
...we (DONT) think of it as a competitor in the student and hobbyist market..
i couldn't help but noticing last week brosing thru a local technical bookstore ( http://www.mcgills.com.au ) that M$ is vigerously attacking this market with certification books stacked 3 levels high, 30 feet in length (that cost mind u in the order of $'000's) for m$ certification. The number of books is quite staggering..with snappy titles like, 'Microsoft TCP/IP'...
i draw this to fellow '/. ers' because the M$ book publishing market reflects one aspect of microsofts current mindeset, 'to get a large pool of people to invest time (and more importantly $) in M$ products. there is nothing wrong with this, it just doesn't wash with what they say.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
For Windows 98, the argument of device drivers being available might be true (but just you can't sell any hardware without Windows 95/98 device drivers). For Windows NT, however, i don't see more device drivers than Linux, the exact opposite seems to be the case. And finally in terms of
supported file systems, i still have to find a system which has wider support than Linux.
-- Jochen
According to an ex ms employee who is alex st.John at www.maximumpc.com and www.bootmag.com, everyone lies to bill. When he worked for microsoft when windows 95 was still in alpha and beta, a pcmagazine interviewer aksed him about the windows postscript interface and he said we are working on it and it still needs some work. Bill emailed him back and said"YOU IDIOT! DONT YOU KNOW THAT TEH WINDOWS POSTSCRIPT DRIVER IS THE BEST OUT THERE AND ITS EVEN BETTER TEHN ADOBE"S!" He did a doubletake. Bill actually thought that adobe's postscript driver for the mac was infior to the one the comes with windows. He emailed him back and said its not true. YOur product manager lied to you. He emailed him back and Bill was in deisbelieve and said "THE MAC's POSTSCRIPT DRIVER IS INFIOR TO EVEN WINDOWS 3.1! GO GEt YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!". He evenutally met with Bill Gates to show him that the widnows postscript driver needed to be scraped and we need to use adobe's postscript driver instead. He agreed but the fact of the matter is Bill is paranoid because he knows everyone blows smoke up his ass. Its not Bill's fault its the fault of the ms employee's. Bill is very ignorant and I bet the NT product manager told bill this fud about linux because Bill was asking why NT crashes so much and he didn't want to admit that he fucked up. Bill is just repeating what all the NT product managers tell him and he has no clue about it.
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
You can create a whole bunch of scripts with the at command. Its mostly boring network and system tasks but for average work stuff its ok. I admit that you won't be able to record mp3's at specific times but you can run standard bussiness tasks. Their is a windows 95 scheduler that runs apps at specific times so you can add a programing extension to the program to interact with the schedule so you could theoretically record mp3's. I believe microsoft is ading this to windows2000.
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
And he's just right there: Linux doesn't need to compete commercially with Windows. It's nice, that all the big Software Companies are now porting the important Applications over to Linux, but you don't have to use them and still have a very nice Operating System (and working environment) on your hands.
And I think, that that's exactly the point Bill doesn't get: Linux is out for world domination, but not to sell more copies than Windows. It is no competition in terms of stock market or whatever, Linux just quietly takes over niches (and lately even Desktop space) where Windows has roamed before.
Well, it's his own fault if he is only able to think about "commerce, commerce, commerce" nowadays. I suppose, that sometimes one could feel sorry for him.
Ralph
That'll give you a complex.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Hey Bill, there's still money to be made as an internet portal. Why don't you go look into that.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I think we should take Linus, Alan, and Richard and move them to a secure location. Look what happened to Gary Killdal.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Ever try to alt+tab out of a windows game and do something else? (ha) I have civ:ctp running right now on another desktop and have 80-90% system resources free.
it's only a matter of time 'till folks figure out what the better gaming platform is.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Last I heard, there was like a $5000 barrier to getting the DVD decoding specs. Now I have $5000, but I need it for tuition and food. I would be happy to donate however.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Doesn't mean he ain't gonna git his scrawny ass kicked.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I used to respect Paul Thurrott for covering other things apart from Windows in his mailing list (unfortunately I still have to read it as a journalist, because he gets stuff before we do in the UK). Lately, however, he seems to have been sucked into Microsoft's PR spin. The DoJ trial has had a polarising effect on commentators, and now people's true colours are showing through. He used to have a page about Linux which (as far as I remember) was quite objective, but now I can't find it.
Shame.
--
Barry de la Rosa,
Reporter, PC Week (UK)
Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk,
tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My
Apologies to WinInfo, the Linux URL is still up, at http://www.wugnet.com/wininfo/win2000/not_nt/defau lt.asp.
So, Paul, when's LinuxInfo launching? ;-)
--
Barry de la Rosa,
Reporter, PC Week (UK)
Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk,
tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My
Well, Bill Gates must know what he's talking about, so I've just reformated all my ext2 partitions to make more room for windows 98 applications and microsoft products.
-Eric
PS - Not.
Bill is just paranoid and overconfidant enough to make a mistake. His FUD will at some point backfire. I don't know if I relish the tumult when the empire comes crubling down, but I hope linux is up to snuff when it does.
It's interesting to see what Mr. Gates DOESN'T know, but, one point, I think, is valid. From a systems management, it is much easier to manage a Linux box over a NT box. But how about network management. None of the big network monitoring vendors (HP Openview, Netview 6000, centralized backup and restore scheduling like ADSM, and etc.) don't support Linux, and it's almost a MUST HAVE deploying Linux in a large environment (300+ application servers)
Maybe as IBM, HP, and the like start supporting Linux, this will change!
Like most interviews with him that I've read, I come to the conclusion that Bill Gates is either very stupid or a lier.
I don't think he is stupid. He is smart (though not wise).
So I wouldn't be complacent. I doubt he believes his own nonsense. Behind the scenes he is probably doing everything he can to forcibly kill Linux.
You're telling me. Even if we were to assume that Linux and NT take the same time to boot n equally configured systems (which I find to be untrue, but let's assume), why is it that changing a NIC's default gateway requires a reboot in NT? Even changing an IP address brings up the "Do you want to restart now?" though you can ignore it.
I love the smell of burning FUD in the morning...
Did our dear friend Bill make a single assertion that hasn't been shot down a couple dozen times?
The tidal-wave of marketing BS contines.
--Mark
...can be done. I've even done it. And DAMN, but it was a pain in the ass.
First: Start the Scheduler service, which is off by default (not a huge deal). All scheduled taskes run under a particular user's access privaledges. Not a big deal.
Second: Start a task with the "at" command or "Winat". WinAt is fairly easy (GUI). AT is wildly undocumented. It'll tell you what arguments it expects, but not their format, and since you don't have the source, you can't just look it up.
After a lengthy web search, I found a working example of a command line.
Ouch.
--Mark
> I think we should take Linus, Alan, and Richard and move them to a secure location. Look what happened to Gary Killdal.
:-)
Huh? Gary Killdal died of cancer, if my memory serves me well. And he died well after Gates and Microso~1 had pretty much wiped out DR-DOS and the other Digital Research products. Besides, Linus works for TransMeta - if that isn't a secure location, what is
Cheers
Eric
Okay, I did a little research on this. Gary Kildall (note corrected spelling) died on July 11, 1994 of head injuries sustained in a fight in a bar in Monterrey, California. No one was ever prosecuted in the case. The most through article I could find in a brief search suggested that he rode his motorcycle to a biker bar, got in a fight over how he was dressed, and suffered a fatal head injury. The article suggested that he was wearing Harley Davidson patches, and the patrons of the bar took exeception to a 'yuppie' dressing as a biker.
Now maybe Microsoft was able to lure Gary Kildall to a biker bar where somebody picked a fight with him and killed him, but somehow I doubt it. It seems to me to be more of a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong clothes.
Cheers
Eric
I don't think that Gates commented the kernel but Linux as a whole system. And it is definetly no central point of control over XFree86, KDE, Gnome and glibc2.1. And certainly not on how Linux is configured. But contrary to Gates I find that this is a good thing. But that the implementors follows standards are very important. (And not make up their own, like Microsoft)
I am with you bunge. :-)
Gates only pashion is to make more money. Linux (and programming) is my pashion.
Worse than that, try talking to a filesystem on Win95 from an NT box using 'at'. The problem seems to be that NT defaults to a null username, which brain-dead '95 can't handle. The offical Knowledge Base fix? Upgrade to '98. Upgrade to '98! Just because I want to do something that free Linux can do with three registers tied behind its' scheduler, I have to pay $120.00. Not in this century.
---
Er, um, ping.
I am running an smp machine at home (dual). When I installed windows NT it was ready to go for smp(multi processor.)
Of course if I didn't run smp, I have to drag that code along anyway. Kinda like always always towing a boat trailer on your car just in case you decide to buy a boat. Easy yes. Effecient... well duh.
People don't have to recompile the kernel, it's their choice. Would you want to read a hour of instructions if you choose to make your car have more pulling capcity, or make it more fuel effcient, or make accelerate faster.
I thought so.
Not to mention an automated kernel config is close to 1.0. Now you can push a button on the dash to optimize. Try that in a pinto^H^H^H^H^H windows.
The auto configure can be found at...
http://ma.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/199
...soon to come to a distro near you.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
"They've ruined everything! And yet, if I were to have them killed... I'm the one who would go to jail! There's democracy for you."
(after Marge stopped Burns' run for [some political office] using a three-eyed fish that his reactor was responsible for.)
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Actually, there is a central point of control over glibc2.1. The core of GNOME is controlled by people (including that guy who gets interviewed a lot.) The rest of GNOME is coordinated by gnome.org. Similar stuff applies to KDE. XFree86 is controlled by the XFree group. While they could, most distributers don't differ much from the upstream sources on any of those.
Billy reminds me of Mr. Burns from the simpsons...
excellent
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Microsoft hasn't sped up progress most of the time. It's slowed them down.
Let's look at a few things. Multitasking. Other PC OSes had it for years, during which MS was saying "Nobody wants or needs that." Until finally Windows could do it.
How about preemptive multitasking? Same thing. GUIs? Same thing. Memory protection? Same thing.
Microsoft's rise was based on convincing people they didn't want features their competitors had, until years later, their software had those features. You can see it in practically every market MS has been in.
It's made Bill lots of money, but I don't know how much it has helped the consumer.
This has been a test of the emergency moderation system. This is only a test.
Yes! Another lawsuit!!!
support gun control: take guns from cops
I was just talking to my students (middle school) about this. They see Bill Gates through the media's eyes as this incredibly important and wonderful guy. I asked them today what he had created. They said that he had created computers--I said no. They said that he had created the web, the GUI, and word processors. i said no, no, and no. The real problem is that people mistakenly perceive this guy. He created a company--a giant, dominating, ultrapowerful company. That's an incredible thing. I'm impressed, I think everyone should be. I don't think we should hold him up as something to be admired, but that's beside the point. The point, and I think I have one (at this point I'm not sure), is that our culture generally perceives Bill Gates as a technologist and as benevolent when he really is an opportunist and self-interested. That most of the world trusts him to take them where they want to go is what worries me. For what all that's worth.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Oh, man.... My stomach hurts from that one! The best part? "Linux doesn't have the rich set of drivers..." LOL!!! RICH??? Try "BITCH!" I guess he has to say things like this, but it's completely ignant! I guess I don't need to point out the obvious, but his argument is pathetic at best. No GUI? Huh?? This is like turning your back to a freight train as it's about to run you over....
Thanks for the laughs, Bill!!!
Freakin' disaster, no doubt.
--
--
This signature left intentionally blank.
Seriously, though, NT does ship with Internet Information Server...
NT Server does, not NT Workstation, which is what the previous post was about. And I concur, NT Workstation is useless without add-ons. It doesn't even have APM support unless you buy it third-party. Who's got better hardware support???
You don't even need to bring it down first,
ifconfig will do the job.
oops, even "plain old text mode" doesn't like some symbols...
I said:
You don't even need to bring it down first,
ifconfig device new-ip
will do the job...
The biggest problem with "The tidal-wave of marketting BS continues" is that Bill buys ads- Big ads- in the "important" industry papers (look at ZDnet). His advertising gets him some extra visibility with the editors/publishers of these rags.
Linux doesn't have the same visibility- there is no multi-Billion $ company purchasing ads for Linux. Heck, this is one of the reasons geeks (like me) *like* Linux- up until recently it wasn't being hyped by clueless marketdroids.
*SIGH*
BTW, one reason that geeks/nerds/techies seldom suffer from a mid-life crisis is that...
...having a life is a pre-requisite.
Techies who don't wear ties don't have heart attacks- the ties increase the need for blood pressure, so suits need the extra pressure to get ANY oxygen to their brains. Of course, once they retire (and take off the tie) they have strokes...
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
Linux folks recompile the kernel because features that aren't commonly used are not compiled in by default. In NT, all the features are compiled in by default. That's why NT is slow and clumsy when compared to Linux running the same services on the same hardware.
NT users need to be able to tune the kernel to decrease system overhead and increase stability, but they can't. Not being able to do something is generally not an advantage.
This article was posted on the Windows User group Network. Bill gates could have said just about anything about his competitors and not been questioned among that audience.
The sad thing is that many press folks are not computer saavy and will just parrot Gates' words as if they were true. They don't know any better and they won't check.
The same reporters that trumpeted the release of GNOME will turn right around and quote Gates saying Linux does not have a GUI. You don't have to know anything about Linux to recognize that one of the two stories has to be inaccurate.
X predates MS Windows. Do you think Microsoft just snatched the name "Windows" out of thin air?
Not only that, Microsoft released a version of NetMeeting for Linux. And do you think it's even remotely possible that he's unaware that Netscape and WordPerfect run on Linux. Please.
For Gates to sit there now and claim that Linux does not come with a graphical interface is just a baldfaced lie. The sad thing is that the audience he was addressing probably sucked it right up without question.
We know he isn't stupid so...
When BG says there is no central point of control
he must be refering to GNU/Linux
And there he is correct.
Right ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Water simply can't compete with Pepsi Cola. I mean, water has no cental point of control, causing water to vary in quality from city to city; with Pepsi you are assured to get the Pepsi experience. Pepsi has considerably more to spend on advertising and support. Water has no flavor, and is not available from commercial vendors. Despite the hype, the "free beverage" market is going nowhere. Most users simply don't care whether or not they have the chemical source code for their beverage.
We have numerous statistics showing Pepsi has generated significantly more revenue than water. This obviously means that Pepsi is more popular than water.
Therefore, we see water becoming competition in the student and hobbyist market, but it simply doesn't stand a chance as a beverage in the corporate market. Besides, why take the chance of losing your job installing a water cooler?
I remember struggling with AT on NT as well. I was never able to make it schedule a job at specific intervals. IE, I wanted the job to run every five minutes. The best I could do was put another call to AT at the end of the batch file to make it run itself again in another five minutes.
The obvious problem here is if the batch file dies half way through, no more jobs get scheduled.
Is there a cleaner way to make the NT scheduler run a job at regular intervals?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If he thinks having no central point of control is bad, would Bill prefer that we all continued to use mainframes rather than PCs?
Didn't he (and the press) do the same thing with OS/2?
To start with badmouth the features, then later when Windows implemented the same features (not always as well) they were heralded as being the best thing since sliced bread.
Seriously, though, NT does ship with Internet Information Server, which lets you run HTTP and FTP services out of the box. More or less. But that sure as hell doesn't justify the price tag involved.
That is NT Server not workstation.
Fact: Free unixen ala Linux and FreeBSD, and NT are the only two server OS's gaining in market share (if I may group Linux and FreeBSD together there). They are dividing the world between them and MS can't dispute the numbers. Samba does CIFS better than NT. Apache earns plenty of respect on its own merits. Serious database software has been ported to Linux, including monstrous vertical application suites like SAP/R3.
So when will Linux and, well, every other OS that isn't Windows stop rolling over and playing dead in order to "get" Microsoft for antitrust. Claiming on one hand that the OS is far superior, but when a judge asks, whimpering quietly "but we really suck compared to windows". Look, the OS is superior or it isn't, it's growing or it isn't, it competes or it doesn't. Time for a little honesty and a lot of courage.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
"University Developers"? Excuse me? Somehow I don't think that the folks in HP, IBM, etc., who are writing stuff for Linux are exactly "university developers". Hello, Bill! Wake up! Time to smell the coffee! It's gone mainstream!
Rowr! Hiss!
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
Check out http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~bart/billg.html 10,000 murders a year, not even including boot time.
Hmm, Billy is getting old, that was a pretty weak FUD he got off there.
The lies were much too easy to spot.
It's no wonder that he is rarely let out of his cryo-chamber...
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
"640k of memory should be more than enough for anybody"
-- Bill Gates
"Given an infinite number of penguins hacking on an infinite number of computers, sooner or later you will create the Ultimate OS."
...a statement that will later be on the list of famous Gates-isms, second only to his "640k" comment.
That is ridiculous. Hitler was a brutal thug. Bill Gates is a software CEO.
He may make crappy software, but that does not make him equivalent to Hitler.
I know this is flame bait, but...
What right does the DOJ have to dictate the way Microsoft does business?
It seems to me that he is simply a very successful software developer, and the anti-trust suit is a combination of envy from companies who can't compete (like Netscape) and self-serving politicians. If Linux is a better OS, it doesn't need any help from the Do(in)J to win.
That is not the point. Hitler's thugs killed people. Gate's programmers write bad software. Writing bad software is not anything like killing people.
They have the authority granted by Congress under various anti-trust acts. Microsoft is not a person, so has no natural rights.
Microsoft may have no rights in and of itself, but it has rights derived from the rights of its shareholders.
One of the laws in question has to do with leveraging a virtual monopoly in one area (like desktop OSs) into another area (like browsers).
Anti-trust is an arbitrary and unjust mess of a law. It is written in a way that is so vague and far-reaching, that one can go after just about anyone with a large market share. Microsoft has only about 90% of the OS market, and anyone who wants to is free to switch to Linux, or to buy a Mac, a Sun machine, etc. Any idiot can download and install Netscape in a matter of hours.
Microsoft voluntarily signed an agreement (consent decree) some years ago that they would not engage in certain practises, so that the DOJ would drop proceedings against them at that time. The DOJ (among others) now feel that MS has reneged on that agreement (violated the consent decree).
There was nothing voluntary about it. Microsoft faced the prospect of years of court battles over a law that as I just said is arbitrary, vague, and overreaching. Microsoft should certainly live up to its committments, but I question whether they should have been put in the position in which they signed it in the first place.
I just responded to a very similar post above, but I want to address this...
/.ers want to believe that Linux is the One True OS for ever purpose, but the fact is that 90% of the population would be scared to death of reformatting their hard drive or using a command-line interface, to say nothing of recompiling their kernal!
The revisionist, content-free pronouncements from MS corporate spokespersons and Mr. Gates further support the fact that his software wouldn't be able to compete in a fair market, and that the only reason MS is in the position it is, is the stranglehold the licenses have on the OEM's. That is not competition, nor is it innovation.
In fact, as I am sure you are aware, this stranglehold is weakening, and the DOJ had nothing to do with it. I think to a large extent, the reason MS has maintained its market share in recent years is leftover credibility from pre-Linux days, and the advantage Windoze still has in the non-geek market. I know that many
Okay. You've said that twice. You've said nothing to actually back it up or show why it might be true. I can say the sky is green an infinite number of times; oh, look, it's still blue.
I suggest you study the history of Antitrust, and at the risk of revealing my biases, that you start with Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. I also suggest that you examine the law itself. The body of antitrust law is full of phrases like "Combinations in restraint of Trade," "Unfair Practices," "Predatory Pricing," "Attempt to Monopolize," etc. Each of these phrases can mean anything to anyone, and in fact if you examine the case law, the definitions have changed to fit the current bad guy. To take the "predatory pricing" phrise, for example, I can see no distinction that can be drawn between "fair" price competition and "predatory" competition.
Anti-trust law is over one hundred years old. The chances that it is arbitrary and vague are just about zero.
What about the tax code? It has been around for over fifty years, and there is not a lawyer alive who understands all of it. It is riddled with arbitrary, vague, and even contradictory rules. The fact that a law is old does not make it good.
Whether or not it is over-reaching is a matter of opinion, but I doubt it would have lasted this long if many people (and let's be honest, large corporations) thought that.
If you want honesty, I think you will agree that beating up on big corporations has been a good way for politicians to score political points for as long as they have existed. It is the David-and-Goliath instinct at work--we instinctively root for the little guy. A lot of people (you included, apperantly) believe that antitrust is a good way to keep those big corporations in check. That is in large part what keeps it popular. That says nothing about whether it is good or effective.
Also, let us not forget that just because you, Bill Gates, or anybody else doesn't like a law doesn't make it okay to break it.
I disagree. I have no moral qualms about breaking laws that I believe to be unjust. The fact that some Congressman says I should do something does not obligate me to do it.
As for IE, selling a product for less than it cost to manufacture in order to gain market share is called dumping, and it is illegal. Simple as that.
This says nothing about whether it is wrong. I don't think we should take the laws we have on faith, and assume that because some wise Senator passed a given law, it must be okay. Antitrust (and anti-dumping) laws are attrocious, and have historically been used by weaker competitors to win politically when they can't compete in the free market.
I guess I don't see the problem. You argue that the reason that Microsoft has a monopoly is that people are too lazy to shop around. But that indicates to me that it must not be too important to them, and it may even mean that they (gasp) prefer Windows. So if these users are happy, who are we to complain? There are enough users to keep Linux, MacOS, and other alternatives alive, and if users are as lazy as you suggest, that is their problem. Microsoft is not responsible for the character of its customers.
For those of us who do care, there are alternatives. Not just Linux, but if you want an easy-to-use OS, there is the MacOS, which I would argue is better in any case.
You are entirely right when you say that there should be a presumption against government involvement, and your post indicates to me that there isn't really a problem. Those who care can use another OS, and those who don't are responsible for the result.
There is nothing arbitrary about anti-trust. Those laws exist to prevent a corperate entity from gaining enough economic clout to damage the public good and the economy.
This is nonsense. The terms "public good" and "economy" are both too vague to be able to clearly define what constitutes "harm." Every action has dozens of consequences both good and bad. There is no way to tell if the net effect of a given action is beneficial to so amorphous an entity as "the public good."
Keep in mind that part of thge public good includes a strong and diverse economy with prices driven by supply and demand through competition.
And that is what we have. The price of Windows is driven by the fact that people are willing to pay for it. Microsoft has competed and been very successful. They still have at least one major competitor (Apple) and a number of minor ones (Sun, SGI, Linux, OS/2, etc.) IF Microsoft does not keep itrs customers happy, they will fall. It is only a matter of time. And in the meantime, anyone who really wants to is free to switch to another OS.
Get a Powerbook. That doesn't have Windoze on it.
I have several objections to what you said, but I want to focus on your allegations about Microsoft. You claim that once a company gains sufficient market share, it acquires an almost omnipotent power over its customers, and they have no choice but to take whatever is dished out to them. This is patently false.
If you look at the history of the computer industry since the early 80's when MS first got control of the OS market, you see that they have *never* had a monopoly. In the early days, there were several versions of DOS. Later, there was OS/2 and Be. Now we have Linux. Whenever there are a large number of users dissatisfied with the status quo, an OS is built to fit those needs. Throughout that time, users were also free to buy Macs, NeXT machines, Suns, SGI's, etc.
This argument is particularly ludicrous in the PC market, because the barrier to entry is so low. As the Open Source movement has shown, software can be written by individuals in their spare time, with essentially no start-up capitol. Entire Operating Systems can be written by a few dozen people in the space of a few years. To obtain and keep an absolute monopoly on the PC market is impossible. There are simply too many people with PC's who have the potential to become competitors.
This brings us to one of Rand's central ideas, which I think is entirely valid: only government can grant a true monopoly in most markets. This is true in the computer industry. The only way Microsoft could ensure that no one could compete with it, would be if they could forcibly prevent anyone from writing a competing product. In a capitalist society, that requires the force of law. This is why it is dangerous for the government to get involved--ultimately only government can permanently stifle innovation.
In fact, I don't think they were. I believe that AT&T was a regulated monopoly, and as such was given priviledges that competitors would not have had. Plus all of the local phone services were government monopolies, so you would have needed help from Ma Bell to connect to anyone.
How can they "take it and bundle it?" If they buy you out, then you get make a profit and it encourages others to compete with MS. The other possibilty is they can make a competing product, but even MS cannot afford to compete with every product on the market.
So, you're saying that the only operating system to challange Microsoft in many years has been written by thousands of people donating their time (recently estimated at a worth of close to a billion dollars) and the market entry threshold is *low?*
Actually, yes. That is a billion dollars for a complete OS and a bunch of programs for it. Microsoft spends a lot more than a billion dollars for R & D in a year. Apple spent $400 million for NeXT, which was just to prop up their OS. And in fact I suspect that there are many companies that would be willing to pay a lot more than a billion dollars for Linux's market share. So yes, I don't think 1 billion dollars is a high barrier to entry.
You are also ignoring Apple. They have undoubtedly absorbed many of the anti-MS users that would have supported an alternative OS had they not been around.
My point is that both Linux and the Mac show the Windows is not a monopoly product. A monopoly implies that customers have only one choice. Consumers have at least three, and arguably many more.
As for Be, it is undoubtedly true that many vendors fear Microsoft's wrath. But that does not mean that consumers do not have a choice. You can order a Be CD for $100 and have it installed in a matter of hours. Consumers do have a choice. At worst, it is somewhat less convenient than it otherwise would be.
You are right, Windows 98 and Sun are targeted at different markets. However, Sun and Windows NT are competing in the workstation market. Granted, that's not really what the discussion was about...
As I posted above, antitrust law is arbitrary, vague, and over-reaching. It gives the DOJ a blank check to prosecute anyone who is successful no matter what they do, and it should be repealed...
It isn't envy that causes a rich thief or con artist to be prosecuted.
Just who has Microsoft stolen from? Just how does creating a product that they give away for free count as theft? I suppose you could say that they stole the browser market from Netscape. However, Netscape does not own the browser market. If Navigator was a truly superior product, it will maintain its market share. I have used both Navigator and Explorer, and I don't think either is clearly better. I frankly don't see how Microsoft can be characterized as either a "theif" or a "con artist."
I was thinking of rsync when I read this. I believe it predates SMS as well.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Does Slashdot need to constantly post blatant flamebait? What was the purpose of this story? We all know Gates makes the occasional idiot of himself, so why does it need to be news every time it happens?
Now we have yet another forum for indignant slashdotters to rant about Microsoft, call Gates naughty words, demand that Microsoft be bombed/dismantled/whatever, and pat themselves on the back for being users of Linux, the cool OS which 99.9999% of them had nothing to do with... all without ever once considering that there could be more to the story than what they think. I could probably quote you half the comments on this story without having read them.
Come on, admin types! Need I point you to your own slogan? "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Does this sort of thing matter? Sure, if all you want out of slashdot is a 24/7 flamewar. That's what slashdot has been turning into for the past couple of months, and stories like this encourage it, even with all the moderation system stuff. You want a flame site? You got it... but I'm outta here.
- Slarty
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Well, I'm working on some in Africa, but they're not really in style anymore. You know I won an award for Norway, though. :-)
- Slarty
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Hitler was the leader of the brutal thugs,
Gates is the leader of a group of programmers
hitler didn't personally commit any of the actual physical crimes any more than gates personally codes his software.
but they both lead the groups and give the orders therefore they are the dirt bags who are responsible.
Yet. Gates' software hasn't killed anyone yet
Actually, IBM has released an ADSM client for Linux. They claim it's unsupported, but it works as well as their other Unix clients. I've been backing up my workstation for several months, and, yes, I have tried a restore, and it works :)
I have to wonder if M$ is dropping the 'Linux is a competitor' line because a settlement has already been worked out. Either that or Bill's brain is running Windows 2000.
Bite the hand.
I do this now via an NFS mounted /usr/local filesystem for most my programs.
You also have rdist or better yet scp which unless I'm missing something would accomplish that same goal while leaving you in total control of the process. I've had enough problems with installing software sitting in front of a windows machine that doing it remotely scares the hell out of me.
Here's a question for you. If you ever needed or wanted to rebuild the NT kernel, could you?
I see no reason for a typical "mainstream" user to build a kernel. Its easy enough to add items without rebuilds and RedHat (one example) provides RPMs for kernel upgrades much like your NT service packs. So a "mainstream" linux user can apply "major OS patches" without ever touching the kernel. Exactly the same as an NT or Mac user.
Here's the key difference. If I want to or for some reason need to rebuild the kernel I CAN do it. I have done it. Why? Because I can, because I wanted to learn how, because I wanted to run a leaner kernel configured for my exact hardware specs, because I didn't need a generic kernel that could run on a 386/486/586 but instead I wanted one optimized for a P2 class machine. Notice I never mentioned a reason I HAD to do it, it was my choice. Was it hard? No, a nice set of menus let me choose what I wanted. What if I ever want a choice not on the menu? There's the source code ready for me to dig in if I choose, to learn about it if I choose. If, while sitting in front of that NT box, you decided you want to dig in and learn how it works, could you?
So yes, my linux box can go with kernel recompiles if I so choose, but in the end it's my choice.
> I have to edit the kernel source code every time I upgrade my system.
:-)
Then supply the kernel hackers a patch to be included in the next release.
As far as hardware support goes, I know linux does have weak spots. So did NT when it first hit the market, I forked over ~$60 to get the beta of NT 1.0 er I mean 3.1 from MS (young and stupid I know) and the hardware compatiblity list was pretty short. It still has issues, I have a ScanJet IIc sitting outside my office that's dead weight now that NT is on the computer it's hooked to. Sure NT supports the scanner, it however doesn't support the scsi card that came bundled with the scanner. I had to fork over $80 last week and order a new scsi card and now I wait for it's arival. So I know how screwed you can be when your OS doesn't support your hardware and you can't change it, about $80 worth of screwing in my case.
Does anyone know what systems management features we lack that they have? The only feature that comes to my mind is the "reboot" feature whenever I make a minor systems change.
I've got a few but I'm not sure how to make MS look bad and us look good.....
1. The inherent instability in the windows product line encouages administrators to apply core component updates as soon as they are available in an attempt to reduce system downtime. The numerous security flaws also encourage this behaviour. Thus users on an NT network are pretty much guarenteed to be receiving the latest "innovations" from MS soon after release.
This is in contrast to a *nix admin who may be reluctant to down his system for a kernel update due to
a. everything is working fine, and has been for months
b. it will take over 3 months to get his uptime command to display triple digit day values again
2. The ever increasing minimum system requirements for the windows product line helps to support the computer hardware manufactures. More jobs for everyone.
This is in contrast to the *nix camp who seem dedicated to reusing old 386/486 machines.
3. The lack of scalability and lack of stability encourage people to have multiple machines performing a single function often with backup machines in place(PDC, BDC, BDC, app server, file server, db server, etc, etc). This has the same effect as #2 in providing jobs in computer manufacturing.
Obviously once again the *nix people seem out to hurt the computer industry. They encourage running multiple services using a single low end box. The fact that *nix seems perfectly capable of handling the load on these older machines just encourages this bad behaviour.
4. The forced upgrade cycle and lack of backwards compatibilty in MS products helps to insure that the clerical workers will always be in high demand. The re-entry and/or cleanup of important documents, coupled with the frequent crashes (see #1) will help keep people employed. It also has the nice side effect of preventing these same people from finding on the clock time to learn new job skills. That helps insure the employee will not leave for better paying positions.
Again, the unix people clamor for open standards to reduce the amount of work required during system chages. They also encourage people to think for themselves and learn about the system they work on.
I could go on but I'm starting to feel bad about all the awful things *nix advocates like me are doing. Anyone know how to put a positive PR spin on this stuff so that MS looks bad instead of us.
Of course, given that the competition in this space is Unicenter TNG and Tivoli TME 10 (which cost much more to purchase and deploy), I can see where some people would say that isn't a lot of money. What they fail to realize is that a skilled group of admins can design and implement similar functionality for practically nothing (yes, nothing, you're going to pay their salaries whether they implement SMS or not). Given that SMS doesn't scale to 5000+ nodes like TNG and TME do is something else to consider.
The bottom line is:
I would submit that, given the awesome array of tools available to the typical UNIX/Linux admin, purchasing something like SMS is a waste of time and money.
-- ultra1
DOS...
Huh? Gary Killdal died of cancer, if my memory serves me well
:-)
I think you're memory's not serving you well
Gary died from internal bleeding caused by a mysterious bar fight, AFAIK. And DR was still alive and kicking.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
You joking, right?
He was talking about file systems.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Has any one taken a look at their front page?
They have a link to an article on dual-booting Windows98 and Windows95, of all things!
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but most people get a license of Win98 as an upgrade to Win95, and that license forbids you to keep on using the old copy of Win95.
So either they are advising people to break the license agreement, or they're targetting people who are so enthusiastic about Gates' bank account , that their willing to pay a full Win98 license whilst retaining their win95 one.
Some people truly deserve what they get...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
like the internet, you mean?
And hard as it may be for Gates to understand, that is exactly why I strongly prefer UNIX and Linux to Windows.
Actually, YES, linux can. Modules allow exactly that. RedHat configures the kernel for your system through the use of modules. When you install it scans for your SCSI card, NIC, etc. and loads the appropriate modules for those cards. Or you could have a MASSIVE kernel w/ all of the drivers compiled in, I would recommend against this, but it's possible.
-matt
Microsoft may only have 90% of the market and people may be free to install linux but that doesn't mean it will happen. People (especially in the US) are incredibly lazy. They want everything and they want to do nothing for it. The average computer user doesn't want to know how to install Linux or how to install Windows or anything else for that matter. They want to buy a computer and have everything work out of the box.
Now do you think that someone is going to spend hours downloading and installing netscape when IE comes with their computer? Most people don't have T1s or cable modems at their disposal. The same goes for Linux. Do you think the average computer user is going to install linux or use what came with their computer. They are going to use what came with their computer, they are lazy. Despite what most people will say Linux w/ KDE or GNOME installed isn't that much more difficult to use than win95, certainly not any harder than DOS + win3.1.
The reason Linux doesn't come pre-installed is that the revenue gained by pre-installing linux is far less than the revenue that would be lost by upsetting microsoft and putting oem contracts in danger. Most(all) computer companies are more concerned about making money than doing what is fair and right for the industry. Microsoft is the same way.
Anti-trust laws are NEEDED. You might think that the law is overreaching but I fully disagree. Monopolies are very dangerous, and while they seldom are 100%, they don't need to be to be effective. Sure anyone can write software and sell it, but what happens most of the time, if the product is anygood, the company will soon be aquired by microsoft and the competition dies. If the product is bad it will die a natural death.
In short, as much as I hate when the government gets involved in things, since it has a tendency to mess things up worse that they were originally, sometimes it is required for the government to step in when someone oversteps their bounds. I believe microsoft has not only overstepped its bounds it deficated on them.
-matt
> A group of Nvidia Riva 128 and TNT based cards
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
I meant a "group of people who own those cards",
although it would be pretty cool if the cards up and called Nvidia asking them to support the cards under linux.
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
Hi.
:)
A group of Nvidia Riva 128 and TNT based cards are trying to get a groundswell of support for Riva 3D drivers under linux. Please mail os-info@nvidia.com with your wishes for Nvidia and linux, and bcc to either myself (bogart@rice.edu) or cmiller@surfsouth.com. You can also look at http://www.chad.org/dev/ and look at the link for riva-tnt to see some letters we have already sent, and the one response we got from Nvidia. Please send Nvidia mail, or they won't know that there is a large number of linux users who want to use the 3D capabilities of their Riva cards. Tell your friends, if you like.
Thanks,
Mike Y.
Hmm, it seems that the server is not allowing access. I'll try to set up a page on my account with letters sent to nvidia, and if you want the address, send mail to bogart@rice.edu.
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
But then, like I said, NT doesn't need to! Is a shame about not being able to rlogin, though.
It also installed just fine on my Red Hat system - after I manually edited the kernel source code! This goes straight to the heart of my gripe against Linux as a mainstream OS.
You can't take away the GUI, but believe me, NT does not carry around hardware baggage like Unix. There's no bogus /dev directory with precompiled hooks for every device or port you can imagine having.
NT may (cough) not be the world's best operating system (cough cough), but it totally kicks butt over Unix when it comes to adding new physical devices. Assuming a driver exists, which goes both ways. Its autodetect is just as good as RedHat's, its drivers are more modular, and you never have to fsck with the kernel source code or command line options.
Yes, I installed SP3 and SP4. I even clean-reinstalled once or twice. (Course, I did that with RedHat, too.) But it's not the same. I didn't have to muck with the stupid thing. I didn't have to edit any Makefiles or run any configurator telling it what services or hardware I might conceivably need in the future. I double-click the installer and go. When I get new hardware, I install it. Period. Any kernel changes are taken care of by the MS installer, and any hardware dependencies are taken care of by the hardware vendor. I don't have to beat my head against the internals of the system. That's the difference.
I'm not saying at all that I prefer Windows NT to Linux. In fact, my NT box is running Red Hat right now. I'm just saying there are some things you cannot realistically claim Linux does as well as Windows, and kernel/devices/support/upgrades is one of them.
So there's the difference: No source code, no comilation, total separation of drivers from kernel.
I'm not arguing against the benefits of being able to performance-tune your kernel (although I think it would be better to do that through user-selectable parameters). I'm saying Linux' inability to accept new hardware without explicit kernel support is a crucial flaw. Please refer to my other posts in this thread.
Thanks. Do I sound like a Microserf? Read my other notes in this thread and see if you still think Linux' magic module support will help me.
What the do you mean "NT can't do that"? The entire system is modules! What do you think a DLL is?
Finally, you should NOT have to type command line options to boot the OS! Read up on "Multiple ethernet cards" and see if you don't agree with me.
ouch.
That's the essence of free software, isn't it? As a matter of fact, the makers of the SCSI card in question are working to get support built into some distributions (don't ask me why they don't talk to the kernel team). My whole point way back at the beginning of this thread was, SOME operating systems let you add new hardware species without compiling device specific module hooks into the kernel. Like Windows and MacOS. That's all.
Yes, although I've had Linux for nearly two years, I'm still fairly new to it. So perhaps I could us e a pointer on LILO. In order to use two Ethernet cards of the same type, I have to specify the IRQ and base address of each on the boot: command line. I tried to put two "ether=" statements in lilo.conf, but it rejects those. I tried to use an "append=" statement with both "ether" parameters in it, but it seems to have no effect, either writing to my hard drive boot sector or to the boot floppy. (I do love having the floppy immediately access the HD based kernel, though.) Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
:-)
Regarding DLLs: You are correct, but it's not just apps; most of the OS is implemented in DLLs, too. Get yourself a white-chocolate-macadamia-nut cookie.
So here's my point about modularity: In NT, you don't have to compile hooks into the kernel for every new card that comes down the line. I bought a SCSI card that didn't even exist when my NT kernel was installed, and just plugged the driver right in and rebooted.
In Linux, I had to: 1. Install GCC 2. Install the kernel source (making sure to get the proper version) 3. Download the driver source 4. Patch the kernel sources and makefiles 5. Build the new kernel 6. Install the new kernel 7. Edit lilo.conf and rerun lilo 8. Reboot -- all this just because I used a new kind of SCSI card! Furthermore, I have to repeat this process _EVERY TIME_ I want to upgrade or patch my kernel, since the driver is not part of the standard distro! Bleagh.
...into the Linux kernel? That's exactly what I am objecting to.
I've had my Windows NT machine for over two years and never needed to rebuild the kernel. Not even when I added new SCSI and Ethernet cards. Not even when I applied major OS patches. Ditto for my Macs. Can your Linux box do that?
The need for end users to mess with the kernel - ever - is one of Linux' biggest barriers to mainstream acceptance.
Windows has far more features than Linux? What age does he live in? 1991?
http://ward.vandewege.net/blog/
Well, I must be on drugs... I sitting here in front of my linux box thinking that I'm looking at a GUI, but Bill says there is no GUI, so I must be looking at the best Text interface ever. How did I get that cool image from "Phantom Menace" as my background without a GUI?
And why the heck am I wasting drive space on the WindowMaker thing???????
Grrrrr............
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Give Gate's software enough time and it will kill people.
Unfortunately I have to administer Windows NT boxes along side the Linux boxes I maintain. At work the users are all on Win NT. I would love to know the names of some of the Software packages for NT that allow remote install of software packages. The network has 20 to 25 users. So we can't afford to spend a fortune, but it would be worth $2000 or so.
Heh heh. Heeeee.
Seriously, though, NT does ship with Internet Information Server, which lets you run HTTP and FTP services out of the box. More or less. But that sure as hell doesn't justify the price tag involved.
Doh! Apologies. I must've been in my old Server=Workstation + extra registry entries state of mind. (Incidentally, anyone remember this scandal? Some folks at O'Reilly basically demonstrated that Workstation and Server are more or less identical. Didn't get nearly the press it deserved.)
Come on.
Anybody who reads Slashdot already knows why Linux is good.
Posts on "Linux development is better" are pointless since we dont have a crowd.
For us Bill Gates' articles are as much as Troll Flamebait posts,
there is no point stating the benefits of OSS development.
Everyone is hyped up,
thinking Billy's going to read Slashdot,
but infact we're just stating the obvious to ourselves.
This have been discussed a hundred times before.
Personally I think Bill Gates is running out of ammo.
FUD's not going to hold againt OSS.
soon enough he's just going to join with MS-Linux.
then he would just slowly sink to the death of Microsoft,
or as Alan Cox said it "Corporate Suicide".
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Yup...it's all university developers....
And we all know no good software has ever come out universities like Berkley or Stanford, eh?
-tak
Well, Bill, if Linux "can't compete", why is it growing faster than your oh-so-innovative OS? If the versions are so incompatible, why can I grab packages from Caldera and Debian distributions and (assuming proper package format conversions as needed) drop them into my RedHat system? If it doesn't have a graphical interface, what are KDE and GNOME then? And why is one of the biggest complaints about Windows the sheer size and complexity of the API?
And most important, why is the Linux community concerned with your opinions? We're winning without competing on your terms, why should we change that?
I hope for MicroSoft that it will get cleaned up and awake from it's own self-delution. Likewice I hope those IT-boesses who still believe in MicroSoft's words and marketing - to listen to their technicians and ask: "do MS products work or not ?" and let the technicians give a full and honest answer.
In my professional career I have only found a few MS products I like. MS natural keyboard. It help me unstress while typing - and so far I know it have still not made my computer crash - ok... I have not installed the software that the keyboard package included....
Another thing I like is the Internet Explorer. Ok - there have been tons of problems and so on - and my coworker have used 1/2 making SMS install IE, without 100% luck - but still I like IE.
SQL server - both 6.5 and 7.0. 7.0 have rich functionality for administration. To bad SQL Server don't run on a proper OS, but have to run on MS.
Thats all folks.
Sincerely
Bent Mathiesen
Is anybody actually surprised by this? I mean, Gates is truly scared sh*tless, and he's just not letting on.
Its common knowledge that when he goes back to his henchmen at Fortress MS, he'll be asking "How can we use our enormous user base to illegally undermine this OS which is of higher quality?"
But Jerk, what about file sharing? (duck)
The article was talking about NT Workstation which is not legal to use as a file server for more than a few clients. If you want to do file serving, you are supposed to buy NT Server, which is two to three times the price of NT Workstation, and an order of magnitude more expensive than The Official Red Hat Linux box (which is more expensive than the CheapBytes Red Hat CD by an order of magnitude). And that is before you pay for client licenses, each of which for NT server are close to the price of the Official Red Hat boxed edition.
NT does ship with Internet Information Server, which lets you run HTTP and FTP services out of the box
Again, this only applies to NT Server. Microsoft contends that it is not even legal to use a 3rd party web server package such as O'Reilly's with NT Workstation.
Linux having no "central point of control" is considered a problem? Couldn't you say the same about Democracy? Is that worse than a dictatorship?
With Linux, what the people want, the people build. I think what Bill means is that there is alot of duplicated effort (e.g. Gnome and KDE). However, when profit is not your main motivating factor, duplicating effort is not a problem. As long as people get what suits their needs.
There's an idea in psychology called learned helplessness--if you shock an animal enough times in an inescapable way, and then shock them in an arena where they CAN escape, they won't. They'll sit there and take the pain, even if they don't have to, because it's what they know. A developer friend of mine uses this idea to explain the dominance of horrible programs in the market today.
The question is, what should the role of the government be with respect to this behavior? Should they try to break the inertia of the masses? To argue that they must is somewhat frighteningly parental, I agree. But realistically, what power does the DOJ have over MS? Are they gonna confiscate computers with Windows on them? Are they gonna strong-arm the MS lovers into using another OS? No. Even if MS breaks into 20 pieces, Windows will still be installed on millions of computers. The DOJ is not going to take away people's freedom of choice. It's going to try to make more options, ultimately.
From http://www.rpi.edu/~veliaa/linux-dvd/
;-) please do me a favor and email them at devsupport@creativelabs.com, asking them to help me (or write their own driver, which they are for some peripherals now). I can only do so much with one voice. While I have a number of updates and have some various info on the Ziva now past what is given below, I no longer wish to work blind, and neither do I have the time to reverse engineer every detail. "
"Creative Labs was talking to me but then stopped. If you want me to finish my driver, then instead of asking me "what's going on with DVD?" (I get a lot of these
Funny, I was just about to post a comment similar to this one. He must be very naive about the environment that free software lives in. Does he have any idea what a "package maintainer" is? Apparently not. All the software in Linux distributions have a maintainer, usually the author, who distribute official cuts. Gah.
:-)
I'd say Bill Gates is spreading FUDS - FUD + Stupidity.
M.
You sure can! Linux can mount, read and rite your zip drives.... send me an email to gocho@undp.org and I'll help you out
If you people are pissed off, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! :)
When the Halloween memo surfaced, it pissed me off so much I started an entire project hell bent on quietly destroying Microsoft..Got picked up by Themes.org two months later.. And now, I'm getting several thousand hits per day on my site, many of them refugees directly from the Windows camp. When the last volume of Propaganda was released, I had nearly 10,000 copies move in the first 24 hours alone.
The more Gates pisses me off, the harder i'm going to work at pulling people away from Windows.. Its as simple as that.
While my effect on Gates' user base is appreciably small, it still exists. It is possible to do something about the stuff that pisses you off. Thats whats so cool about the Linux community. One person can not only make a difference, but help _others_ make a difference as well.
Bowie
Bowie J. Poag
Well Debian and Red Hat come with a generic kernel built with the most common drivers, and many loadable modules. Many end users never need to mess with the kernel, unless a new release comes out with features they want.
Your system has probably been patched up to SP3 or 4, right? In that case, you too have messed with your kernel.
I spy drivers written by Inito corp themselves.
If they don't work, it's a reflection on the
authors, not the linux kernel
Actually, the compiler is about 3M on my system.
Throwing in the C library and headers makes it
another 10M.
I don't know about SCSI, but the kernel doesn't
in general need/want to know about loadable modules.
I have several installed w/o touching my kernel.
Remember that article that was here a week or so ago, about a linux cluster built out of NetFinities equalling the performance of a 5.5 million dollar cray system. Wonder if they tried that with NT? Lacks features like a fox!
If a so called low-features OS can do that, well hell, I'm going to make a no features OS. It'll run at light speed!
Does Bill Gates really believe this? I know many attribute statements like this to the FUD machine, but remember that Bill has a family now, so he's got less time to devote to ruling the world. He is surrounded by executives whose jobs and stock options depend on Mr. Gates' good will. They've got every reason in the world to feed him lies to keep him happy. It's entirely possible that Bill's arguments aren't based entirely on maliciousness; they may be based on stupidity and ignorance. I think stockholders would forgive their CEO for spreading FUD and lying (it's part of the job description), but there is no way in the world that I would ever invest in a company led by a man so out of touch with reality as to believe that a product which had better market penetration and a higher growth rate was a hobbyist system that posed no threat.
I hope someone is archiving all these quotes by Bill and company so that we can laugh about them in five years when Linux rules the OS world and Microsoft is one of many application developers for the Linux platform.
Wouldn't it be funny if Solaris refunded all of Microsoft's money and then revoked the licenses on all Sun's software running on the Hotmail servers? Give them something like an hour to comply, and then prosecute them for civil and criminal copyright violations if Hotmail is still up when the time is up.
MS is tryin to move NT into the embedded systems market. That has me scared spitless, because in that market, an OS failure CAN kill people.
Systems management features refers to the ability to remotely manage other machines - he's probably referring to their SMS (Systems management Server) software. The idea is that an IT guy can sit at a server and completely manage all client systems - take inventory of their hardware and software, install new software, see if someone has opened the case, reboot the machine, that sort of thing. You can also do mass software upgrades over the network - upgrade everyone to Windows 98 or Office 97 or whatever.
If you've got Linux for a server and Windows 95 for clients, gates is basically correct. But if you've got Linux for clients, then what he says is total FUD. i'm no linux expert, but (correct me if I'm wrong) all configuration is based on text files, which are easy to manipulate across the network. You can telnet into a Linux box and make all the changes you need without leaving your chair. You can write scripts to make mass changes on all clients across the network. In fact, anything you can do while sitting at a Linux system, you can do remotely.
The only thing that may be lacking in Linux(again, correct me if I'm wrong) is the ability to do a network broadcast to update the software on multiple machines simultaneously. I don't know if SMS can do this, but there are packages for Windows NT that can do this.
NT wouldn't bother me so much if it were at least consistent.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Jerky wrote:
>Gates says that Linux has no central point
>of control. How does that make a system bad?
Bill Gates was born to make money. That's what he does best. Having no central point of control means that there's no one at the helm with a rabid profit motive, requiring users to upgrade at least once a year, every year for an additional $100. With Linux, there's no central point, but that's what makes it so great. Everyone helps out from all sides and miniscule upgrades are added every night. Gates is also a control freak (do you know anyone at Microsoft? Ask them about the building security.), and the communal nature of linux development is a threat to people like him.
I've never seen anyone else who could lie so easily and so often
Oh, come on. What about the other Bill, in the other Washington (i.e. DC)?
(Sorry, I couldn't pass up a line like that. The rest of your comment is spot on.)
-- Alastair
That which can be explained by stupidity.
Maybe Gates is deliberately lying, maybe he really is that stupid. Maybe both.
-- Alastair
Right?
They have the authority granted by Congress under various anti-trust acts. Microsoft is not a person, so has no natural rights. As a corporation it is granted certain rights (limited liability, right to issue stock, etc, etc) so long as it conforms to the law.
One of the laws in question has to do with leveraging a virtual monopoly in one area (like desktop OSs) into another area (like browsers).
Microsoft voluntarily signed an agreement (consent decree) some years ago that they would not engage in certain practises, so that the DOJ would drop proceedings against them at that time. The DOJ (among others) now feel that MS has reneged on that agreement (violated the consent decree).
It's the same right that gave/gives Judge Greene the authority to dictate (to a degree) the way AT&T and the Baby Bells do business.
-- Alastair
So what's X11, chopped liver? Or svgalib?
-- Alastair
It's not worth your time arguing with idiots like that.
Oh, you might point out that (until he was killed about a year ago) the richest man in the world was actually a Columbian dope dealer (I forget the name), or that two other of the top 5 or 10 richest are the founders of Amway (and while some folks might have a problem with Amway, I've never heard anything but praise for the high ethical standards and contributions to the community that De Vos and Van Andel have made, no jealousy there). Or that Steve Jobs (whatever else you may think of him) was doing a darn good job of expanding upon and bringing to the public the kind of work going on at Xerox PARC, while Bill Gates was still pushing CLI and DOS and saying 640K would be enough for anyone.
But I've gone through that sort of argument with people before, and if their heads are so far up where the information isn't getting that they believe what they've said in the first place, nothing is going to change their mind. They'll only hate you for causing them to doubt.
-- Alastair
It is illegal (violation of anti trust acts) for a company to use its effective monopoly in one area (like desktop OSs, say) to leverage its position in another (like browsers, or dialup service provision).
When Windows 95 was release, MS was sued because the prominent MSN icon on the desktop was viewed as illegal leveraging by the likes of AOL, Compuserve, etc. Microsoft settled, signing a consent decree saying that they'd never do anything like that again. They also agreed not to impose the "per processor" licenses for the OS on the hardware manufacturers (aka the Microsoft tax).
Then Microsoft discovered the Internet, and started bundling Internet Explorer with the OS.
Oops.
It isn't envy that causes a rich thief or con artist to be prosecuted.
(Of course, the degree of actual lawbreaking is up to the Judge to decide. But judgements have gone against MS in the past.)
-- Alastair
Maybe with a card BIOS hack . . .? --
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
What good are features if they have and cause bugs.
Microsoft make their OSs so bloated with features that they add bugs to the system which, in turn, makes them more unstable. I think he has tried to appeal to someone who looks at the command line and makes the association of the command line with one of the past presents that Microsoft presented us with; "MS-DOS". This type of person will never master the powers of multitasking from within a single terminal session.
"Because it's free software there's no central point of control"
I can't see how "being free software" has anything to do with "point of control". Once again this is misinformed and incorrect - (Surely, Bill, you can do better than that!) The fact that software is distributed freely has nothing to do with who controls the software. The Linux kernel, for instance, eminates from a single source, surely this is the point of central control? Yet Linux is free. Linux proves Bill's statement to be a paradox in itself...
Anoter Bill quote
"We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fin for university developers, Linux doesn't have that stuff. It doesn't have the graphics interface. It doesn't have the rich set of device drivers..."
Sorry, errr, you've really lost me there... Systems Management? does he mean User Manager for Domains? (RedHat have a GUI based user management system and there are others out there that support the shadow password suite) I've heard the some people don't like the GUI that comes with Linux, but I've never heard anybody claim it didn't have one!!!! For me X is customisable to the extent where you can make it anally so. Oh Bill, Oh Bill, you really don't understand, do you. I guess you've seen the bash command prompt and thought that that was the full extent of this little operating system.
I hope that the Microsoft backlash begins with earnest soon, I don't think I can stand listening to this for much longer...
but surely if he is to make a public comment on Linux he should be well informed...
He could at least pay someone for the truth, after all, it's not as if he can't afford to!
I was happy to see the article also mention how his book is a load of drivel..
Why does Bill Gates have a multi-billion dollar
stock portfolio? Same reason McDonalds is synonymous with hamburger, or people think Intel
when you say microchip, or Kelloggs for cereal. Not because they have a better product (none of them do, IMHO). Marketing.
Linux has begun this process. We've just had a big trade show in San Jose. There'll be another one in Raliegh in May (can you say, Red Hat?). I'm not so sure the commercialization of Linux is so bad... we're beginning to show up on people's radarscopes. Exposure of the product is what it's all about.
Sure, we're not in it for the same reason Borgie Boy up in Redmond is. But the way to dispel all this MS-FUD is to get the truth out there where it can be seen. And if it takes cozying up to somebody and convincing them to sink some ad bucks into the project, as long as one's general principles aren't violated, then go for it. Word of mouth will get you the little guys. And there are a lot of little guys out there. But to really go after the 800 pound gorilla, you need somebody to fund your safari and get you some weapons.
Yet another confirmation of Dilberts Salary Theorem.
For those that havent seen it.
Postulate 1: Knowledge = Power
Postulate 2: Time = Money
Power = Work/Time
Since Knowledge=Power and Time = Money
Knowledge = Work/Money
Solve for Money and you will see that as
Knowledge approaches 0, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.
**** Sworn to Fun, Loyal to None. ****
He's only saying it because now, Linux poses a threat to his evil empire! In the early-mid 1990s, when Linux wasn't much of anything, Micro$oft didn't pay much attention to Linux. Now that Linux is growing in popularity and threatening M$, it's taking notice and spreading the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
Bill Gates wouldn't really care that Linux is out there if it didn't pose a threat. The reason that he's trying to build up the FUD is because it _is_ a threat! He's scared!
fre-style
Also Stampede GNU/Linux
at what point in one's success does one become blind to the competition of others?
"My husband invented the internet, and I censored all the naughty stuff on it. .
Then again, there is no "central point of control" over the Internet, and that has forced Microsoft to change its ideas
Mr. Gates:
.ini files and now the registry. Where does it end? They limit features that we have to pay extra money for in windows (like hacking the registry to change icons, something you'd have to buy plus! to do.)
The reason linux has become so popular is not because it is free, but because it is open. There is a significant importance to Linux being open that you cannot see with your closed-source blinders on. You cannot see that if your software were open to peer review instead of exploits it would have greater stability. The easiest way to find vulnerablities is to look at the code. Unfortunately, when your programmers look at the same code every day, bugs easily slip through. They need open minds to parse the code for errors. The closed source model cannot go very far from its own campus before the code becomes un-readable. This is another failing of the closed corporate culture. While standard coding processes may be in place in an office such as yours, outside the office they are meanningless. For all you know, somebody out there may have better ideas than the "best and brightest" of Microsoft; they may be able to pull some things out of their collective hat that you could not.
Stability of your os is also at issue. We recently had our mail server go down due to a lack of swap space at our local office. While we were able to reboot the NT server, this should not have been necessary as the server had 2 gigs of RAM installed. This was due to a bug we could not see or diagnose or work around. Reboot was our only option. This is another strong feature of our beloved Linux. Heck, it's even a strong feature of UNIX in general.
Your OS (NT) is not scalable. Wolfpack (or whatever they are called this week) servers have not made any progress. If programs want to collaborate between machines, the authors of those programs must come up with their own solution, such as the Ligtwave or 3DS MAX renderfarms. They go about this by using their own drivers and support software. The OS really isn't involved in the process. On the other hand, Beowulf servers have been proven to scale very well (as was evidenced by IBM's $150,000 supercomputer built from Netfinitys running Extreme Linux) matching speeds approaching a T3E!
Now I will quot you directly, sir:
"The main thing that has held that [free software] back is that because it's free software there's no central point of control. So what you see with Linux, and other things, is you get proliferations of different versions and everybody can go into the source code, and everybody does."
The Linux kernel, I will have you know, does have a central point of control. Their names are Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox. They are the core of the kernel development. When somebody submits an idea for the kernel, or perhaps a patch, Linux and Alan decide if the patch or idea would work out with the overall design. This model allows steps to be taken for the inclusion of new features in an official capacity. Can somebody just modify their kernel for their own purposes (say for an embedded project)? Of course! They don't even need to sign a NDA to get the code to the OS! This everybody to which you refer is not actually the case, however. I personally do not delve into the kernel internals too often, as I would expect all but the seriously interested or curious would. But it is there if I need it, and I really don't have to give it back and "pollute", as you would put it, the original source.
Another Quote:
"We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fun for university developers,"
System management tools abound for Linux! there's LiSA, sysconfig, programs that make life easier like ezppp or kppp et cetera. They may not all share the same global UI and they may require some test file tweaking, but they are system management. There is no reason to dumb-down system management tools; they are meant for people who know what they are doing. UIs mask the real facts of your
"It[Linux] doesn't have the graphics interface."
Linux does not have a built-in graphics interface. It does, however have many OPTIONAL graphics interfaces. We have X-Windows (xfree86) with the choice of at least two desktops (gnome & kde) plus the look and feel of: twm, fvwm, Afterstep, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, Icewm, kwm, fvwm95 and dozens of others. We have the choice of our favorite web browsers, thank you very much.
"But I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see it [compete with Windows] in any significant way."
In case you haven't noticed, Mr. Gates, Linux is competing, with a 17% gain in the server market (a commercial market one would agree) with Apache (a free, open web server) leading the world for httpd servers. the basic Email transports are open source, as is every version of tcp and ip.
When given a choice, the market will choose freedom.
angelo (anrkngl@lm.com)
Lowmag.net
one of my biggest beefs with mac o/s is that it had been stagnant for the last ten years. memory management or lack thereof, same low-res icons, etc, are all the same. (shields on double front :) nomex suits at the ready ). now we have gates' recent spew regarding linux, but the innovation too is gone from windows. how much of a change will win2k be from win95/nt. it will look the same, it will be more bloated, it will still fall down too much, etc. the change from dos to win3.11 and from win3.11 to 9x was revolutionary but now microshaft like apple before it (or any large resonably successful organization, think goverments in the historical point of view) is mired in a deeply conservative slow (if the consumer is lucky) evolutionary cycle of change. it's the dont rock the boat we have something that works institutional mentality that has taken down men bigger than herr gates, or at the very least turned any dream of excellence into the quest for mediocrity.
linux by being an open decentralized project seems to be avoiding these traps. surely there will be new pitfalls associated with a differnet model, but hey i think its a better organizational model to start with....lets see a democraticly based model rather than an autocratic one, have we been down this road before, you think?
ancient chinese curse: may you live in interseting times
use Signature::Witty;
--begin rant
The problem is that when Bill says things, the great unwashed masses (win-users) will listen with slackjawed idiocy. Bill says that Linux is splintering, and a Linux-deprived person, may look and see RedHat Linux and Debian Linux. Do they know that if one knows how to mantain a Debian machine that one would have not trouble with a Redhat box? No! A non tech would just nod and say, "oh, look so many different types of Linux, that means Bill was right! I better go buy Windows 2000"
The problem is that though his arguments are wrong or only true on the surface, what he is insinuating is insulating the average Joel User from ever thinking about trying Linux.
When Ed Muth had his infamous interview we saw a sudden proliferation of released statements, and rebuttals. This was good. A better way would be to find a way to get these truths out to those that the FUD has infected.
It's all good to impress each other here on Slashdot with the virtues of Linux, and pat each other on the back for having such a wonderful OS, but really, in order to gain a large user base, and prove Bill wrong, we have to respond where everyone can see us, not just to other techs and each other.
--end rant
--------------- "Well HELLO MR FANCY PANTS! I've got news for you bub, you ain't leadin' but two things, Jack, and
Bills in town to talk up his book (at better than $1.50 list per page it needs a lot of talking up especially given reviews like the ones he's got). Bill therefore wants publicity. Linux is media friendly currently. Hence mention Linux just to get yourself more publicity.
:-)
Am I cynical....
By "graphics interface", I wonder if he's talking about a graphics API like DirectX. GUIs like Windows/KDE/Gnome/whatever are usually referred to as "graphical" interfaces.
Of course, I may well be reading too much into the difference in terminology. This may well just have been more FUD.
Bill Gates is either very badly informed, or spreading FUD. Quotes like "because it's free software there's no central point of control" demonstrate this. Linux's development model is cool because, whilst anybody can have a go, there is a "central point of control", i.e. Linus, who ultimately decides what goes in and what doesn't.
Quite right!
If Linux is unable to compete, why are they scared like hell. The crisis when OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released cannot even be compaired.
Because aside from being a killersystem, there is no head they can chop off (The last time there was a head...IBM...and they even messed it up themselves). Another big difference from the last time (with OS/2 there where no organisation), is that the Linux community actually is quite well-organised.
In short: Linux can not be controlled! Microsoft must have control to survive, how else will they be able to sell their flawed fat-ware.
An example is the Microsoft bidding om the Linux.com domain.
Oh yes I forgot the little detail of the commercial Linux support of HP, IBM and Compaq (Did I forget somebody?).
And HP's initiative to let the Linux-community port Linux to the PA-RISC. Quite a signal!
Live long and prosper...
Every word that Gates pointed against Linux may be forgeted. /. articles) so then you may find why trust in Linus and in their development decisions.
If anyone read "The story of Linux kernel" (see past
IN LINUX WE TRUST.
Hopefully it won't take an airliner going down, like the Arianne rocket, on a floating point problem. Let this happen a couple of times and "software engineers" will have to be licensed. Might be a good argument for open source though.
Gates also said the Internet would go nowhere. Well, with a history of predictions like that, I think Linux is going to do just fine.
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison
Looks like he found Linux' two strongest points: there's no central point of screwups ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontrol, and it's not hidden under a heaving mound of features.
Ok, maybe I'm just tired or dumb... but in what way is that site any different from the true MS site?? The links all seem to eventually go to Microsoft or msn or something... the text appears identical...
Mmmmhmm, good idea. 'Course, it would take a lot of time going through various media sources. I mean, how long ago did he say that oft quoted nonsense about 640k being enough for anybody? I bet there are other gems further back in the mists of time (ha!), and a helluva lot between then and now.
:)
Speaking of quotes, there is a list of Linus and Linux related quotes somewhere on the net. (Can't remember exactly where.) And, damn, some of them are FUNNY!
You're a suburbanite.
Geez, invoking Godwin's law so early on?
You're a suburbanite.
He truly is insane, isn't he? I've never seen anyone else who could lie so easily and so often. Witness the Halloween Document, which he admitted was genuine. How can he then turn around and claim he doesn't consider Linux a threat?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I never trust anything Bill Gates says unless I've heard it confirmed by people who I know don't like Windows. His word is definately suspect, and should be taken with about a gallon of salt.
As for Windows being more fully featured, can someone please pick me up off the floor? I'm laughing too hard to get up myself. The only reason I like Windows NT is that it's better than 95/98. Here's a list of my OS preference from least favorite to favorite: Windows 95/98, Windows NT, then Mac/Linux equally.
Maybe if we all just ignore him, Bill Gates will go away? Then again, probably not. He's like that nasty flu virus that hangs around for months, despite your best attempts to get rid of it.
Anyway, I think that's all for today. Thanks for taking the time to read another of my near rants.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
Oh, come on. What about the other Bill, in the other Washington (i.e. DC)?
*snicker* True enough. I try and not think about him though.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
The very fact that Gates mentions the fact that "Linux is not a threat" means that he already considers Linux a threat. The momentum has been building for the past few years.
I must admit that until very recently, I was running NT4/NT5/98. Not that I have anything against Linux, I just wanted to play games and game support for Linux, sadly, sucks. That should change soon when Q3A and a few other games are released commercially for Linux (maybe that will kick NVidia into realeasing drivers for their card and I won't have to reboot to play games at all). The reason I switched is that games became unimportant to me (relative to grades at least) and Linux has more functionality outside of games that Windows ever has (you wouldn't believe the amount of software available to me on MIT's distributed system, Athena).
Even though I only installed Linux a few months ago, I have been using UNIX since 1990 or so, and I toyed with Linux on my family's 486/33...I know countless Linux users that will never experience the joy of downloading the ~ 20 slackware disks on a 14.4 modem from sunsite, creating the dreaded root and boot disks (make sure they don't have a single bad sector before you RAWRITE them, or you'll ruin the disk!), etc. Linux is where it is today because there has been a push to make it more user-friendly...even in my day you had a color boot disk and the ability of UMSDOS, both of which made the transition from a DOS environment to Linux a bit easier)
So Linux has made definite progress in the five or so years that I've been using it. There is no reason to think that it will stop or even slow down. I doubt Gates loses sleep over Linux right now, but the fact that Linux is free and there are free alternatives to all of M$'s applications has got to at least make him sweat when these same applications get media coverage (for free, no less).
Wasn't it Ellison that had a comment on medical embedded systems running Windows? Something to the tune of a heart monitor running Windows being a product that creates its own customer base...
Could you be a little more specific on the multiple ethernet cards thing. I can't figure out what problem to do with multiple ethernet cards would force you to have to use command line options (I'm assuming you're talking about LILO here) to boot Linux. In what situation can you not just configure LILO to do it for you? Or, if you're not using LILO to boot, what are you using that doesn't let you configure it with boot up options for the OS? :)
Also, I thought a DLL was a library that's dynamically linked to a program at runtime rather than when the program is first compiled. Do I get a cookie?
But seriously, I don't see what Linux is lacking here. I've recompiled my kernel a number of times, it's easy and it only takes minutes to compile. In theory, the first time I did it was because I wanted sound support to be compiled in instead of being a module, but in reality the main reason for doing it was because I'd never done it before. I certainly didn't do it because I was forced to. The modularity available with NT is available with Linux too, it's just that you have more flexibility.
By the way, I don't think NT is quite as modular as you may think. At least, not as far as the typical end user is concerned. Just try pulling bits out and replacing them with your own and see what happens.
X runs on Linux. X (and whatever window manager)
:)
is the GUI.
Linux doesn't require X, and X doesn't require
Linux. Just because it's packaged with
every (?) distrib doesn't mean it's part of the
OS, any more that MSPaint could be considered
part of the Windows OS.
Thus Linux doesn't have a GUI, but it _can_ have
a GUI.
Windows has a GUI, because windows _is_ the GUI
(originally just a graphical DOS shell).
If you take this pernickity viewpoint (and
any lawyer would) then he is correct.
It also happens to reinforce the fact that with
Linux you have choice, with Windows you have
Bill
Just out of curiosity (and since I wanted to see if any "fud.*" domains were available), I tried FUDNet. You might find the site.... amusing.... and it's too close to WUGNet to not be funny :) Oh, by the way; death to M$... heh.
--------------------------------------
Precisely. The site www.fud.net exists, apparently, only for the purpose of redirecting to www.microsoft.com. This happens a lot to them. People with some humorous domain name will make their entire site a redirect to Microsoft; thus, visiting fud.net is identical to visiting microsoft.com. Isn't that funny? haha? <sigh>
--------------------------------------
seems like a monopoly to me...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
If you want some really fun truth, I just read an article (I think it was on c|net) about the servers running Microsoft's HotMail. It seems the folks in Redmond have been trying for months to get HotMail to run on a WinNT server to no avail. NT just can't handle the load and has a tendency to crash when it's really put to the test. (Duh!) So, instead of serving HotMail on NT (as MS would prefer for all of the obvious reasons) it's being served on Solaris (64bit version for Sparc). Yes, Solaris, a product of Sun Microsystems. The very same Sun Microsystem who has MS in federal district court for violating agreements re: Java.
While MS tries to patch together a version of NT which can handle HotMail scale loads, Solaris just plugs along, happily doing it's job. MS is discovering that making the hop from 32 bits to 64 bits is much harder than they ever dreamt. Remember what happened to 16bit compatibility when Win95 was released? Promises that 16 bit apps would still be supported were dropped like red hot rivets. Don't expect any supportable promises of backward 32 bit compatibility when MS finally figures out how to handle 64 bits.
Meanwhile, those of us in the Unix/Solaris/Linux/... world have stable 64 bit workhorse systems up and running today.
D. Keith Higgs
CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Sorry, I don't understand.
I don't use Linux (I'm not smart and/or persistent enough), and maybe I've been contaminated by several years of hacking out chunks of embedded stuff.
But why does the word kernel turn it into some kind of black magic? It's software, dammit!
Ok, Ok, it talks to the hardware, and users need to keep fingers out. But still, it's software. If you need, or want, or feel like, modifying it, go ahead. From what I've seen, most of the majors even give you nice templates to help keep track of stuff that you could screw up.
It's software. Word processors are software. Device drivers are software. Kernels are software. Window managers are software.
Install or change when you like.
The first entry in the rdist's ChangeLog is from 1992 when it was already at V6.0. It seems to have been distributed within BSD4.3 and older.
rsync is fairly new in comparison. A paper on the rsync algorithm is from 1996 (also included in the rsync distribution as tech_report.tex).
I don't know how old it is, but it is way older than MS' SMS. You can basically push packages to other systems by using the rdist facility. This can be exactly used for that purposes you refer to.
>Gates also said the Internet would go nowhere. Well, with a history of predictions like that, I think Linux is going to do just fine.
And less us not forget abot 640k...
Let us also not forget that the first menu-driven interface (the father of the modern GUI) was created by a group of Air Force programmers who were told "it couldn't be done". Two of them, in fact, join Xerox when their service term was up, and help lead the programming for that GUI.
>Xerox invented the concept (right down to the mouse)
Just want to correct you here about the mouse; it was actually designed and constructed by someone at Stanford (someone help with the name, I'm drawing a blank) back in the late 1960s. The same guy is also credited with a whole slew of things generally believed to be created by others (like the like graphical Internet browser... only his ran on ARPANet in the '70s). I cannot remember a lot about his inventions (I only know a little about him); perhaps someone could help us with this and give credit where credit is due...
yes.
--begin rant.
Mainframes died. Why? Tried to turn mainframe into a mess of PCs. Ineffective and costly.
Windows NT. This will bring back the mainframes. "Zero Administration" -- BIG LIE.
Central Point of control. Another BIG LIE. Conway's law is basic. I don't remember the exact quote, but it goes something like "The structure of a software system is isomorphic to the structure of the organization that produces it." Try Control Panel with a different configuration goodie hidden behind each hieroglyphic. Other configuration in other strange places. Still more only via registry. Microsoft Centralized Control? Hardly. Ken Iverson had control over APL. Linus has control over Linux kernel. Probably a few others, but not many.
>what would happen if those technical decisions were made by software engineers?
Windows might be useable.
PS. Don't tell M$
almost as good as google search of "evil empire"
Microsoft has two things going for it. FUD and the BIG LIE. Combat FUD with information. Combat the BIG LIE with, preferably, the TRUTH, but in any event with something. Say it often enough, loud enough, and people will believe. Personally, I like to be able to, any day, any hour, go to slashdot and (live in living color) see what the people who understand computers are saying. BTW, I am a Windows (ab)user.
If Bill Gates tells lies about us, we will tell the truth about him.
Ignore him and you will get more of him. He probably believes his own hype. What do you think his divisional managers tell him? What do their departmental managers tell them? Etc? (However the chain of command goes.)
...flaw. That's because it's almost always the flaws that are hidden.
He is more like a carnival barker who has gotten the public (and PHBs who believe/hope the Gates magic will rub off) to believe. Wow! Look what I can do! (Just don't look too close. Don't stress it). Silence is affirmation. Satire and ridicule, a constant barrage, is the only solution. Seriously, would YOU want to be Bill Gates? Not me.
Contrast Bill with Linus. In a recent post, Linus is using the term "stupid" rather often. This is the same "stupid" as in KISS (Keep It Simple, STUPID). Translated it means "Do not outsmart yourself". The targets of KISS are not dumb or what would normally be thought of as stupid. The object is to try to keep unknown unknowns from killing people. Murphy's Law rules. Mother Nature sides with the hidden. Yeah, I know.
It is not as simple as it works or it doesn't. There is a vast spread between (among?)
1) it never works, by any definition of works
2) it sorta works some of the time
3) it usually works, for most things
4) works, except for exceptional cases
5) never fails, except isolated freaks
6) never fails any circumstances
Bill's definition of works is about #3, aiming for #2.
Linus' definition of works is #5 aiming for #6.
You can count on the following: Windows is worse than you think it is. Linux is better than you think it is.
Explains a lot. ;-)
Now, with all levels trying to put the best face on things, try to imagine how bad the W2K bug (or is it virus? nah, too big for a virus) really is.
The 'Mein Kampf' of the 1990's.
Another great reason to watch the new show - Maybe we'll see if Windoze 2000 has been released yet and is bug free!
rd
Right on! I'm currently waiting for the UPS man to deliver my new TNT card.
3D support in Linux would make an already awesome video card that much better, IMHO.
Ted
Unfortunately, I recall reading that the DVD decoding specs are very heavily guarded/licensed. This was agreed upon to prevent pirating of digital movies. Whatever. So open source drivers are pretty much out. Reverse engineer it? I'm sure you'll be hearing from lawyers from each company in the DVD consortium shortly after it's released.
---- The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. -Thomas Jefferson
Yea, get out of here Bartfast, head on back to magrathea and work on some fjords.
(good points though)
+&x
I recently sent an e-mail to my "normal" friends bashing M$ and gates and extolling the virtues of Linux.
However I met with much resistance, to quote:
"No one gives two shits. People are too
busy to worry about stuff like this. You are denouncing arguably the
smartest, most influential and successful person to grace the world during
our lifetime. If it was not for him, you would be stuck 20 yeard ago with
computers. Stop worrying and feeling bitter about who is getting richer and
making more money than you. Have you ever thought to give them credit??"
(My friend has a bit of a confrontational personality)
The FUD is deep and long, and powerful b/c it rests on a kernel of truth. (update, in our continuing _conversation_
"I want to save this conversation and give it back to you in 30 years and laugh at you. It pisses me off more than anything to
see pathetic souls, denounce the hard working man whose business,
technological and common sense have happen to have made him millions" I'll send this back to him in 2 hehe.)
How do you fight this? Is it worth trying? Should we leave the weak and ignorant at the mercy of market share and expensive upgrades?
Bill is not the problem, the problem is the millions who "believe the hype". $60 billion US can buy a lot of PR and a boatload of TV. Fighting against the poster child of capitalism is not the way to go. Well?
+&x
I'd rather just ignore them.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Don't blame Bill for his lack of knowledge in Linux, because he's just a great salesman. That's how he gets MS to be today. Try to stop his audience to listen to his sh*t. That should be our goal.
Don't blame on Bill for lack of knowledge in Linux, because he's just a salesman. That's how he gets MS to be today. Your goal should be to stop his audience to listen to his sh*t.
I think Bill contradicts himself. Linux is free, so why does it need to compete? Linux is the OS of peoples' choice, because it is 100 times better than Windows NT & 9x.
Does he mean that people compete w/ restaurants, because they like to cook for themselves?
Bill barks at the wrong tree, guys, do you agree?
He may rephrase it and say, "people are too lazy and afraid to try the new OS." So, MS can still continue to rip them off.
However, as little as he realizes that Linux User Groups are growing rapidly everywhere. These groups are educating everyone and make them aware of the good of Linux.
Gates is getting very good at lieing lately.
I have a feeling that he won't be talking so much when the gov't deciedes to take the sledge to MS after they lose this legal case. Linux is based on not having a central focusing point! Grasp the concept of freeware. Bill is a fool as all of you should know by now.
I will be laughing long and hard when Bill is worth less than dirt.
If it's not Microsoft...I like it.
Ok, on the server-side, it can compete.
On the desktop-side, a whole heck of a lot of things have to happen before it will ever be competitive, besides Gnome and KDE.
People have to write programs for Linux; a lot more people than are currently writing programs for Linux; and they have to make a profit at it; and PHB's need to see this happening; I could go on, but I'll stop for now.
Oh yeah. And Winmodems / Host Modems have to be able to work under Linux. Get 3Com and Rockwell to support it under Linux. Who wants to spend 3 or 4 times as much for a modem, so that they can run a "free" operating system. I've seen 56K win-type modems going for $22 a piece. Ok, that's just my peeve. I had to get it off my chest.
Spoken like a true Microserf. I guess you've never even compiled a Linux kernel. You have the option to compile drivers directly into the kernel or make them modules. VERY handy. NT can't do that...and you can't make a lightweight, bare-bones kernel with NT either. Anybody who bitches about command-line options should NOT be a system admin. At least in Linux I don't have to worry about my video card driver causing a GPF and taking down my whole system.