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Microsoft starts anti-Linux Group
It started in the Wall Street Journal, but the story has spread all over. Microsoft has started group, much like in the case of Java to get into the minds of the Linux community. At least we now they see us as a serious, despite claims to the contrary.
Are we seriously suppose to believe that just now Microsoft has started to persuade people to use MS products and not consider Linux?
It's just like Micro$oft to try to stop a competitor instead of rising to the challenge and improving their own products.
I think I'll start a group to convince people not to use microshaft... oh wait... I already do that...
--
PacDemon
(I hope to hear back from Rob with my account status soon...)
I remember a Wall Street Journal article
a few years ago, on MS tactics on teams
like this. They would find out the name
of the children of key employees at the
company under attack, and send the children
of the employees birthday cards signed by
the head of the MS attack team.
So basically, we use the tactics of Ghandi,
and they use the tactics of Pinochet.
It's not a mere group of ten, either. The Portland PR firm of Wagner Edstrom has scores of employees working on this too, and they've been busy since last fall. How's that expression about waking up and smelling the coffee go again?
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." - Princess Leia, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
I'd sure like to see this proven: that Microsoft paid agents are scouring the net to disseminate propaganda. I've personally seen circumstantial evidence to suggest I've been targeted by Microsoft agents for surveilance: strange e-mails trying to convert me to the Dark Side, strange IP requests from tide71.microsoft.com, etc. Anybody else seen this?
I will use free software long after both linux and MS are gone. Free software is the un-crushable revolution, linux is just the tool that will be battered along the way.
-matt
If you don't want to use it, there's nobody to cram it down your throat. And, nobody's going to make you pay for it if you don't want it on your new PC.
Have fun with NT, but whatever you do, keep it behind your firewall. NT security is a joke.
-jcr
We should recognize Linux's weaknesses privately, but play up Linux's strengths publicly. NO!!! If there's a weakness, publically acknowlege it, then get it fixed. Thank the benchmarks for pointing out the problems, then invite them to retest when the problems are fixed. Benchmarks are a valuable test bed for configurations that people may not generally have access to (quad xenon + gigs of memory). Lead by example, quietly. Sooner or later, the world will notice.
This is an interesting point: a company which has to pay off potential customers to purchase their products is a company which is driving itself out of business. Admittedly, MS has a lot of money to burn, but something like this happened when Rockefeller tried to drive out competitors from the oil industry by selling at a loss. He may have had more money to burn, but he was also selling a whole lot more oil than they were, so he was losing it faster.
With Microsoft vs. Linux (or anything else), they have as many potential switchers to pay off as they have customers - where they don't, they'll lose them (sometimes), and where they do, they'll lose money. With Linux in particular, since there's no company on whose financial success it depends, this strategy is even more suicidal for Microsoft. With Apple or SG, their smaller market share protects them from the impact of those tactics.
Things MS could do to piss us off:
1) Encourage more proprietary hardware like Windmodems.
The problem with this particular strategy is that as more devices start relying on the processor to do work better done by the device, the whole system becomes unstable (Winmodems can crash the OS even now) and slower.
2) More benchmarking FUD.
This may work for a while but unlike other MS competition which has historically rolled over an died under such attacks, the Linux kernel will be improved to close those gaps, and it will happen more rapidly than MS believes possible.
3) Encourage more closed hardware in general.
Linux still takes a lot of bad press in the drivers department, though it supports as much hardware as NT does. If MS were to make sure future hardware (esp. processors) were closed, this could hurt the Linux movement badly. Unfortunately for MS, chip manufacturers are starting to realize that having an OS out there that supports them and which no one controls is a Good Thing.
4) All out press war. I've already noticed a lot of negative press, starting about the same time as the Mindcraft survey.
This tactic does work pretty well, as long as it isn't found out that MS was paying for the articles and reviews badmouthing the competition. This sort of thing has tremendous potential to blow up in their face.
Things we can do to piss MS off:
1) Improve the kernel. The "No support" problem has fallen. The "No journaling file system" problem will probably be the next to go. Improved SMP support and incorporation of recently GPLed software such as Mosix will go a long way toward making MS very nervous here.
2) Improved user interface. Gnome and KDE go a long way toward addressing this. Gnome and KDE apps should be able to communicate with one another. As long as there are communication standards, it really shouldn't matter what desktop environment you use.
3) Port port port. Linux already has a huge advantage over NT in terms of platforms supported. We need to play this up more -- having an OS that you can run across all the systems in your company is a huge plus in terms of support costs.
4) Improved installer options. Face it, RPM sucks. dselect/dpkg is a little better, apt is a little better. What we need is an installer than can rebuild its databases and can deal with users such as myself who like to compile stuff from scratch.
5) Improved shared library handling. DLL handling is a big Achilles heel to Microsoft. The problem exists to a lesser extent with Linux, but it is still there (As anyone who's ever tried to go from libc5 to glibc incorrectly will attest.) We need to improve how shared libraries are handled.
(jumping in the middle of this) - Currently I'm waiting on a Ghost backup to finish, so I can get in and fix my boss's corrupt registry. That's what goes on MY time sheet - in fact, MOST of my time sheet involves going around rebooting this Win95 stn which stopped printing with a stuck print job, then telling someone else to wait a few minutes untill the MS browse list catches up, going to another machine with a blue screen with "VXD error in VMM 0xfffff01842", which after a half day grepping thru the MS TechNet CD turns out to be a 'corrupt registry' problem and spend another half day trying to save this system, then going to another user getting a 'javascript' error accessing the MS web site - it goes on and on - I'm a full time M$ apologist for a small company - my only defense is that THEY decided on M$, and I've let everyone know it, so DON'T BLAME ME!!! I didn't write this crap, and we can't blame M$ - READ THE LICENSE AGREEMENT for a change before blindly buying another M$ product you expect ME to support.
Haha! What a job.
Ch-Chuck
In case you had trouble grasping it, my point is that the moderator system is not working and needs to be changed or removed. I pointed out an article with a score of 5 which had absolutely nothing in it but the Gandhi quote which everyone has as their signature. I have nothing against this quote or Linux, but I was under the impression that the "moderator" system was to identify posts that were new and insightful. That post was obviously neither, but just mindless Linux propaganda. The moderator system has been reduced to a hunt for anything that is not complimentary of Linux. You grok?
/. (interactive geek news), but I hate the censorship and FUD that is occuring.
I also did not curse, but censored myself so as not to taint your virgin ears.
And in case you didn't notice, you are not a moderator. You are an Anonymous Coward, you are.. ME
And just what is the incorrect thought I have been exposed to? That the moderators should be open minded? That the moderator system is nothing less than perfect? That Linux is not perfect? That swearing is OK? I admit I am "whining", but that is because I like the idea behind
Oh, not to mention that, last I checked, the majority of Linux developers were college students, generally ones who either couldn't code on the job period (Would you like fries with that?), or who were allowed to code whatever, just so long as they help any students who come to them with questions.
Most colleges and universities claim ownership of any Intellectual Property developed using the school's computer systems. For graduate students and staff (I used to work for CMU's computer science department), there are specific intellectual property agreements that one must sign. Schools are getting much more savvy about how much money they can make from IP. Being at a school doesn't mean the students were legally free to turn their IP over to Linux.
Personally, I view Linux as a lawsuit waiting to happen. As soon as someone (Red Hat, VA Research, whoever) starts making enough money to light up some lawyer's eyes, those companies are going to find themselves in a legal battle. It's also not out of the range of possibility that user's (i.e. large companies who decide to run on Linux) might get sued. This kind of thing has actually happened in the case of a small software vendor (no deep pockets) who shipped a product which violated some other companies IP. The IP owner sued the users as well -- the users only got off because they were able to argue that without source code they couldn't tell that they were infringing. This excuse won't wash with Linux.
"The point the original poster is trying to make (I think) is that the
current Linux community doesn't care about anyone who doesn't use
Linux. I don't think that's correct."
Actually, the exact opposite is true. Microsoft doesn't care about anyone who doesn't use Windows. Think about it for a second. What happens to your master boot record when you install Windows? Why do they use closed/proprietary file formats ? Why do they use proprietary protocols, even when those protocols are inferior ?
I'm not even sure they care about Windows users that much. You have to pay and pay for everything, but they don't even give you source code for customization or to fix the bugs which they won't fix themselves.If anyone wanted to start such a suit, they'd lose.
If you don't agree to GPL derivative works, you can't even posses copies of the original. Sure, it's the university's IP, but it is also (virally) GPLd.
I have seen many things accomplished by ms by all means of fud, money, deception and politics. I know you all hate microsoft and think linux will squash them but do not celeberate yet. MS still is and will be very very powerfull for at least a few more years. IBM is still very powerfull and is spending money they earned or I should say stole way back in the 1970's. IBM hasn't even begun to spend there 1980's earnings yet. Microsoft's chairmen Bill Gates makes 60 billion a year and I wonder what microsoft as a whole makes a year and how much money they have total in reserves. Microsoft lies there teeth off when they talk about money because they just buy back there stock to inflate it. MY point it that in a ultra capatilistic country like America you can buy almost anything. Bill Gates seems to prefer power over money and that is even more dangerous to software (linux and freebsd included).
Microsoft could very well kill linux. Dont scoff them off. Remember when java was unstopable and so were network computers. I am not saying linux will die but if everything works right it very well could. Linus said that linux could die at the hands of microsoft and it was possible. Don't thumb your nose at them. Apple underestimated windows 1.0 and 2.0 and called it crap and that everyone would buy macs becuase of its supperior technology. They were wrong. Microsoft just formed an anti mac group and posted messages at prodigy and compuserve bashing the mac and paid Jesse Berst to bash the mac and then on top of this gave windows away on every computer sold. THEN they got even more aggresive and paid all the popular software developers to write windows versions of there software for windows. THEN ms got even more aggressive by making the win32 and gui a requirtemnt on all dos machines by making a new windows version called windows95. WIndows95 is just dos with a forced gui and win32 subsystem slapped on top. WIndows95 was used to force all app developers to use win32 api's so they couldn't port it to ANY OPERATING SYSTEM. Ms ame up with an even more agresive by making vb aeverywhere so people have to stay with windows because all there vb apps would have to be wrewritten to run on linux and if it took 5 years of work to write this app (all the different version and add on's included). THen it would take them 5 years to rewrite the app for linux line by line. Face it guys. The IT would has chosen windows and Bill gates happened to be at the right place at the right time at the begining of the pc revolution and windows will always be chosen no matter what in 80% of all computers. This means that Microsoft will always have money coming in no matter what to spread fud about linux for decade after decade. After year after year IT managers will begin to grow weary of linux and chose windows indeffinetly. THis is only an example of how Bill could kill linux.
Fud and false benchamrks can be bought and even believed among IT managers who invested heavly among NT products. GO look at IT jobs in the paper. Over one half of the programming jobs available require microsoft vc++, microsoft sql server knowledge, microsoft vb, and microsoft vbscript, microsoft index server...bla bla bla. GO look at your local newspaper yourself. With a programing enviroment like this it would be impossible to port to linux and all these companies who invested in stuff like this will use NT for decade after decade because they would lose years of work by starting over from scratch. The IT managers who believed in this read pc magazine and were covered with fud and widnows hype.
Take this latest attack bery seriously because 85% of all other IT managerw are ignorant on what is going on. Over 75% of all IT manager have a positve impression of microsoft.
Bill Gates is very scary and dangerous man. HE has sevre physcological problems and is extremely greedy and self centered. I can't imagine what his childhood was like.
Well, good for you. Best to keep an open mind, I always say.
The only thing I'd say is that in my experience NT installations are not to bad initially, but then tend to run to seed. Things that tend to undermine stability is installing and uninstalling software (registry problems, conflicting DLLS). Also, I find that NT machines that people don't actually use directly (i.e. servers) are pretty stable so long as you don't load them to heavily. I think a lot of the stability problems in NT are related to the GUI. I have itchy fingers; I can't stand to wait for a program, I switch tasks and work on another app if I have to wait for more than a few seconds (Hey -- the computer is their to optimize _ME_, not me for _IT_). NT hates this.
Also, when you load an NT server it tends to get squirrely. I have a NT database box that blows up when I tune the clients to well. I switched to the same company's server (same revision number) in Linux and can tune to my heart's content.
First, I don't think the original poster who says he is switching
to NT is serious, and if he is I'm sure that it is a lover's quarrel
with Linux and that he will be back. He may already be using
NT at home. And if he doesn't already but tries it on a home
system, so what? The tone of the original post in this thread
showed far less manners than telling him to go away. It struck
me as either phony (unlikely) or someone who has a lot of
emotion tied up in Linux and wants to express some very negative
sentiments which have been repressed (more likely).
Surely if he has been using Linux for as long as he says and
also using Windows, at least at work, he has known for years
that Windows in any flavour (including even 3.1) has better
desktop apps than Linux, and that Linux desktops do lock up
especially when using lots of experimental features in combination
with a few buggy apps (even though the system is otherwise
very stable) . Linux is catching up, but that's another issue.
So, unless he was using Linux soley to be "pure" and avoid
contamination by proprietary software, which is unlikelty, he
would be stupid not to also have used Windows in some
form at home or even MacIntosh or an Amiga. Haven't we
all been doing that? Only very recently has it been possible
to get the needed apps and games most home users, including
the nerdiest, would need on a home system *especially* if
they enjoy using computers for a variety of needs.
More importantly, user attitudes in claiming that their systems
were the best or being inflexible and intolerant had nothing to
do with the decline of Amiga, OS2, or Mac. The main cause of
this was that Amiga and OS2 products were removed from
retail chains at the very times they were making very good
profits for these stores because of contracts with distributors
which were anticompetitive. I was there and saw it happen.
The software and the demo machines were removed from the
stores on orders from headquarters, in spite of good sales.
The situation was a little different with Mac because it could
only be bought in special Mac franchises.
Other factors like stupid business decisions by IBM and
Commodore didn't help either. But attitudes among users had
nothing to do with it. I knew very few OS2 and Amiga users
who were not also using Dos or Windows and who were not
eager have some of the good things MS has done in both
marketing and software adopted by their systems. Both OS2
and Amiga had Dos and Windows emulators or subsytems
allowing users to run Dos and Windows apps (or even the
entire Dos and Windows systems) on the same machine at
the same time. Ten years ago they could do much of what
Linux now can do with a commercial add-on (I've forgotten
the name of the product that is not an emulator but allows
virtual machines for other OS's with Linux).
IBM tried to tie OS2 too closely to its enterprise strategy
for large organizations that required IBM mainframes using
OS2 networks and gateways with IBM databases and IBM
desktops. Home users were left out of the picture even
though in spite of this treatment many home users *still*
found OS2 an excellent system for home use and were loyal
and forgiving - failing to understand that the people who
designed OS2 (who were mostly consultants who did it as both
a labor of love and for the money) are not the same as IBM
- a corporation that doesn't care about customers unless they
have the wherewithall to buy expensive support contracts.
Commodore, on the other hand, totally disdained the Amiga's growing
success as a serious system for professionals in the arts and
in some scientific fields requiring real time multitasking and tried
to turn the Amiga into a set-top box to compete with Nintendo.
I was there also. You have no idea the number of serious
apps (as well as good games of course) that were being developed
for the Amiga right before Commodore went belly up and how
well it performed and how most of this was done by third parties,
not Commodore, which cut its engineering staff to one or two
people at the very time top software and hardware engineers
would have gladly worked for Commodore for much less then
they were worth because they respected the Amiga. Sort of
like open source, but not quite.
It is all right to tell people who post here with hurtful comments
about Linux to go away, or better yet to fuck off. They are only
posting such comments to make Linux users and lovers suffer.
There's nothing noble about unnecessary suffering, or wasting
one's time trying to defend Linux to a shill who already knows all
the pro and con arguments but wants to rub it in and watch
Slashdotters make fools of themselves with defensive reactions
and apologies. No, we do not apologize for Linux.
For every such john who goes away, there will be 10 new
people who want to try Linux for many different reasons, some
perhaps unknown to you. Don't waste your time with those
who make it clear that they desire to inflict suffering, but spend
it instead with those who want to learn and find out what their
needs may be and why they want to use Linux. Need help?
So, somebody has a lover's quarrel with Linux and goes to
visit NT and lets the "community" know of his dissatisfactions
perhaps to justify the tryst to himself. He'll be back. Clearly
this individual has indicated (unless he is a paid shill) that
he has too much emotion tied up with Linux to leave himself
out in the cold. But let the door hit him where the dog bit him
to teach him to learn some manners..
It is fair to say that Microsoft has the lead when it comes to the desktop. The support is there from so many other developers because they know that Windows isn't going away anytime soon. Also, you cannot overlook the installation processes of Linux and Windows.
However, Linux is making substantial progress in this field. Standards must be set so developers can code for a single platform instead of making their applications KDE or GNOME or whatever compliant only.
The installation factor is another thing that turns off newcomers. The configuration of a GUI at during installation must be made easier. Hopefully, the support from Dell will help. If a user sees the option of putting Linux on their new computer, they may choose that along with dual booting Windows. Who wants to spend an hour setting up a new OS besides the power user? My mother, father, and brother doesn't. All they want is a usuable machine so they can surf the web and type papers on. If Dell can ship a 550MHz PIII with Linux on it, configured with the latest GUI, a couple apps preloaded with the ability to run straight out of the box (just plug it in and go, Mac style), we're in good shape.
Anonymous Bastard
Linux is only free if you place no value on the time you have to spend futzing around getting it to work right.
I give you license to FooOS and URL to download source and binaries. It's yours. This took no time on your part. What you choose to do after that is your problem. This is as free as any reasonable person expects.
How can you possibly expect us to say, "'FooOS' is free. Just tell us you want it, we'll come in and admin your system, something you already have to do for Microsoft apps, and handle everything, all at no charge."?
Bah.
A lot of people work on it when they're being paid by an employer to be doing productive work to benefit the company. That's called theft.
A lot of employers who are complaining about this probably have slavish intellectual property work agreements. This is theft of another sort, though perfectly legal.
I don't know about other people, but I've only worked on parts of Linux while being paid by my employer when the parts were already developed and under the GPL, and fixing the bug in question WAS productive work for the company. The fact that I complied with the GPL and submitted my patch to the maintainer of the code is not something they can rightfully sue me for - I was bound by law to do so. Sure, I broke a work agreement, but one which should be illegal, and the alternative to breaking the work agreement would have either been to break another legal document, which would legally revoke the client's applicability under the GPL (sure, who'd know? But I'm talking ethics here, and what could be brought up in my defense in a court of law), or to not perform the duties of my job.
Oh, not to mention that, last I checked, the majority of Linux developers were college students, generally ones who either couldn't code on the job period (Would you like fries with that?), or who were allowed to code whatever, just so long as they help any students who come to them with questions.
Double Bah.
OK for a long time I've been noticing decidely slanted ratings for the posts. EVERYONE who posts anything remotely linux positive racks up numbers, while anyone who even remotely criticizes them is effectively censored. At first I thought this moderating thing was a great idea because I would get to see the most insightful comments, but now this! The people in charge of moderation are no better than the company they live to bash. Now kindly dump me to the -'s, while I move to a more reputable news site :P
/. community!
If the MS FUD crew is behind these braindead pro-linux posts, then I extend my apolgies to the
The Lexmark 7000, 7200, 5700, and the 5000 as well all appear to have a driver that works with Linux. Try this URL http://bimbo.fjfi.cvut.cz/~paluch/l7kdriver/
This driver was actually hacked together without the approval of Lexmark. In fact according to this web site Lexmark considers the protocol a secret, but that didn't stop a Linux developer from hacking a driver that works even in color. He says he also intends to hack the protocols for 1000, 2000 and 3200 series Lexmark printers.
Another example of driver writing with very few spec is at this URL
http://www.httptech.com/ppa/software.html
This is a B&W only driver for some HP printers.
The point is drivers can and do get written for so called "windows only" devices, completely independant of any hardware vendor support.
Yes, hacking these things takes quite a bit more effort than if you have the protocol specs, but it is not impossible. With printers the task is not that bad. Winmodems however would probably take a very long time to figure out without specs and so far they have not been worth the effort. I agree that winmodems are not real modems and hacking them might be time better spent elsewhere, like on winprinters which actually are using just another type of protocol. There is nothing inherently "win" about a "win-printer" other than the fact that only windows drivers were written by the company. Actually Lexmark was pressured by IBM and their costumers into writing OS/2 drivers for several of the inkjet printers I mention above. Lexmark also wrote drivers for Solaris which I believe are available at a price. This proves that is printer companies wanted to, they probably could make almost any "win-printer" work perfectly with Linux.
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win." (Ghandi).
type faster - write more code!
world domination is coming!
I was at the sans security confrence in baltimore last week. Everyone laughed at NT, even the people giving the talks. Microsoft was trashed in every course I attended. I have also heard from other confrence goers that if its mission critical dont use microsoft. This person happened to be at an NT confrence. Ask mudge about the security of microsoft products I bet he has alot to say. During one of our lectures the powerpoint presentation blue screened the windows box. In another session the guy had to rebuild his NT box that day because it crashed and hosed the registry. Microsoft lovers need to get a clue.
We need to do what a company would do in a situation like this: counter benchmark with benchmark -- come up with benchmarks that best show Linux's strengths.
We should recognize Linux's weaknesses privately, but play up Linux's strengths publicly.
We shouldn't be too reasonable or fair about this: MS isn't, and being too reasonable will just play into MS's hands and get ourselves steamrolled by MS's massive PR machine.
I read words like "war", "fighting back" and so on. IMHO we don't need this. Why you use linux? Because you like it, you love Linux and it just works.
Nobody could prohibit you from loveing and listening to your favourite music. This is totally equal to using Linux. Just use Linux as you done it in the past. If you have coded some tools and/or programms release them to the public, share your code. If you have some wishes for some programms you use, just write your suggestions to the authors. Most authors will love user feedback. Your suggestions to authors or your own written code enhance Linux. Just ignore Micros~1. Do bussines as usual and use your favourite OS like you listen to your favourite music.
Michael Roth
I've been using linux as my only operating system ever since I got a computer in December 1994 and I've been pretty happy with it.
At work, they got rid of our Solaris and Linux systems and installed NT everywhere. I was so offended by this PHB decision and opposed it strongly, occasionally rudely. I hated NT at first, but now that I'm getting used to it I think it's ok. It's never crashed and now that I have all the FSF tools installed--- things like TeX, LaTeX, dvi-viewers, Ghostscript, PS viewers, gunzip, tar, perl, a great editor, a pager, etc... I like it pretty well. I've even used Excel a couple times and it seems like a pretty nice spreadsheet (haven't checked out Word yet, but I know people who like it.) I have no complaints and while I was reluctant at first, I really prefer IE to Netscape.
At home, netscape crashes, X freezes and basically my system has never run perfectly since I switched to glibc. I'm going to the expo today and am going to pick up Debian or RH-6 or maybe *BSD and give that a go before I drop a few hundred on NT, but frankly, I hate KDE, GNOME, and all that unstable, resource hungry crap that everyone works on. It's clear that linux has moved to a new target audience and left real users like me behind.
I'm still learning windows and I haven't decided yet and hell, I can always go dual-boot, no?
Best wishes, Tony
>How can Linux be serious? Slashdot was
>unreachable for the past few hours.
Which is of course a problem with linux... how silly of us... any time we can't connect to Slashdot, it's obviously a problem with Linux! There are never any network problems or router problems, or... (please note the dripping sarcasm)
> I think they're just there to disperse some of
> the FUD that Linux supporters are spewing.
Right.. FUD like: Linux is free. Linux is open source. Linux is stable. Linux is customizable. Linux runs on older hardware. That sort of FUD?
>So when I'm running NT, and the screen suddenly
;-)
>turns blue, it's not NT?
Man, that happened to me not too long ago... I was sitting here, and suddenly the Blue Screen of Death popped up!
Thank god it was my xscreensaver bsod module
Seriously... I was attacking the posters claim that not being able to connect to slashdot was a fault of Linux. I still haven't seen a post telling me why it was.
We're already making good progress in MS-Office document compatability, and on the Desktop, by the time (2, 3 years?) MS make Office available for Linu, we'll have caught up with it.
I'm not sure how much of the kernel (if any) can be pre-empted, but the I thought the general definition of pre-emptive multitasking was that tasks are pre-empted, and that they certainly are. And Linux does have kernel-level threads, at least since 2.0, so it a multi-threaded app will scale over multiple processors.
I'm pretty sure the GPL doesn't make you submit the patch. It just says you have to make your path (or the modified source) available to the clients (if they want it) and that they can redistribute the patch (if they want to).
---
mjt
-----------
-----------
100% pure freak
It is.
Use Lynx.
that the poster is a troll. His tactic is right out of the original IBM playbook. Personally I thought he was a moron until I got to his last paragraph, where he claims to be supportive of linux. For about a minute I thought he was legit, but then I realized what was going on. I thought it was funny that he stated that people have a choice because Redhat is on the shelves at bestbuy. While this may be true _today_, what about two years ago? Sure maybe there was OS/2, but until systems come either preinstalled with the buyers choice _or_ dual boot so newbies can see for themselves and make a decision based on firsthand experience then the deck is stacked in Micros~1's favor.
On a side note... I just built my 10 year old nephew a homebrew system with SuSE on it (actually we both built it). He's had it for a week and I had to field a sum total of 2 support calls. One was he forgot the command to turn on the sound, the other was because he discovered deathmatch mode in QuakeII and he wanted to know why there was nobody attacking him. FWIW he's using KDE.... It's remarkable for a 3 yo to speak french, unless they live in france, that is.
Airneil, nobody is asking you (if you are a juror) to be convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt. ;P
If you were there to watch Microsoft gangsters lay down ultimatums to top corporate execs and say "It's so nice that you are going with us, isn't it? Because there really aren't any other options. There are x,y and z but they're all going to die, trust us. Don't be counting on that..." you could still argue that you'd been hypnotized, or that they really weren't being pressured or anything, or that it was really RMS dressed up as Bill Gates. Can you _prove_ Bill Gates is not RMS in a rubber mask? Have you _personally_ checked him for rubber masks?
For jurors, it's innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If you'd ever been a juror you'd have been specifically directed to _not_ require proof beyond all doubt- the jury is given such clarifications as a matter of course just to straighten out people like you.
And if you were on a jury you would _still_ have the right to claim no doubts are reasonable, and to an extent you'd be right in so doing- if you _legitimately_ felt the charges were impossible to prove. However, if you simply stuck to 'proven guilty beyond all doubt' for the sake of it, you'd be going against your duty as a juror and insulting the integrity (such as it is) of the US legal system.
_REASONABLE_ doubt. Remember that.
...sorta ;) ;P) I answered that you could, but this was meant to be _different_. You know, the concept didn't even get an unkind word out of this fellow- it simply hadn't occurred to him that it _could_ be any different. It can be... ;) (for some values of 'desktop' != 'not just a rehashing of exactly the way MS or Apple do it)
I'm putting together a small Linux dist for some 486es our shop is able to get real cheap. There are also basic Pentiums out there for almost as cheap. We can sell the 486es for $250 with Windows (an old version that's not much use with modern stuff!) or _$150_ with Linux. This is because it's an eyecatchingly low figure and because we get no nice deals from MS anyway and damned near pay list already.
So Linux has to sell itself. Today a photocopier repairman saw the in-development Linux dist. First thing he asked was whether you could have a start menu. (Answer: not on 240M of HD! Unless you want the losing fvwm95
DESKTOP OR BUST!
There are some nifty essays here. I've been doing essays for a while now, and mostly they've just sat on my website. Occasionally I link to one in a Slashdot post. Please do add my essays directory to your list :)
Linux has one feature that only the *BSD's have, and that is Open Source. In the end, thats all that really matters.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Posted by NJViking:
They will never win. You can't beat something that is inherently superior and can't be bought.
-= NJV =-
"He hath need of his wits who wanders wide,
aught simple will serve at home;
but a gazing-stock is the fool who sits
mid the wise, and nothing knows." - The Havamal
Posted by devriesp:
In all fairness.. a major site like Excite or Microsoft.COM has multiple connections to unique points of the network, and probably an array of server machines serving the same page on a DNS round robin.
Have we any counter-strategies?
Sure I think the counter-stategy is simple -- continue to do exactly what we've been doing. We don't have to respond to this. In fact what would be best is to not even acknowledge it. The Linux commnunity is in no way remotely like a corporation, and because of this we don't have to play M$'s little superficial games. We have no reason to be affraid. And we have no reason to alter our stratagies or make new ones. All we have to do is continue to live by our ideals not by the sweet sweet smell of the all mighty buck. Remember what we are trying to do for the world is right and what M$ is trying to do is wrong, and eventually that will be the fact that leads us to "world domination" (not how much FUD we can spread around or how loud we can be on /.).
There is no difference between Microsoft selling MS-office or MS-office+library. The benefits of having Microsoft cave in and start providing their products on Linux far outweigh the risk of giving them a chance to try an "embrace and extinguish" strategy.
Remember what MS tried to do with Java (and this was their stated goal): extend the language in a proprietary fashion so that Java programs would only run on an MS platform. If you control the platform, you control access to the net. If MS released MS-Office in such a way that it will only run on official MS-Linux, then they still control the OS. If people buy only MS-Linux because it's the only thing that will run MS-Office for Linux, then nothing has changed; MS will still control the desktop, and then they can start re-engineering protocols to suit their own needs, freezing out all other Linux distros.
And don't forget the PR: Microsoft is the only company that can make MS-Office run on Linux, and they had to put a *lot* of engineering into it, so obviously MS is the only company who can make a reiable and robust OS. It's a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Here's an interesting historical note: there were once two competing electric transmission standards in New York (or was it Chicago?), back when the light bulb was new. Thomas Edison was a proponent of DC electricity, even though it would require a DC generator on every block because of impedence. Another guy (whos name escapes me) wanted to install 60Hz high-voltage lines, and transmit everything from a central powerplant.
Edison pushed the DC idea, not because it was technically superior (he admitted it was not), but because he was part owner of a company that produced DC generators.
Can you imagine what life would be like today if Edison had won?
Today, we take 60Hz (in the US) AC for granted. In 20 years, the OS will be just as ubiquitious (and just as ignored) as the outlets in our homes today. But currently, we are fighting a battle just as important as the one fought in Edison's day, with similar stakes, and similar motivation.
Money.
Now, if you are willing to lock yourself into a single vendor just because of a non-unique product that vendor produces, feel free. After all, that is the core of the free-software movement-- to live free, and die free. (Or, in my case, live free forever.) And if you wish to use inferior products because the package has that Microsoft logo, none of us will stand in your way.
We ask just one thing: don't force us to use those same inferior products. And, if you do not take that company to task for trying to destroy all other software, you are implicitely forcing us to use those products.
We offer you choice by the sweat of our collective brow; please extend us the same courtesy.
-Tony
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
To the best of my knowledge the Linux kernel is not pre-emptive (tasks in the kernel being put on
hold) and it does not swap out kernel structures. NT does both of these things...
This does not say anything about quality, a kernel is a set of trade-offs and few features come for free.
In this case the linux argument is that it is better to have all kernel calls fast, than the
complication of pre-emption. Likewise it is better to have a small kernel that can survive without
swapping itself out, than a large one that needs a huge amount of complexity to support this (forced) ability.
Unix, from the start, stated that KISS is an important element of design. An operating system
with every feature is not neccessarily good. It will definitely be complex and heavy though, heh..
that sounds familiar.
Great! That helps Linux. The last thing we need is a bunch of proprietary "ISVs" shoveling their shiteware into the Linux market. Been there; done that. It's a trap. What happens when the software vendor decides that it's no longer in his interest to maintain the program, and you encounter a bug that prevents you from using it for a particular task? You're hosed.
I've been down the proprietary software dead-end with IBM and OS/2, and I'm not going there again!
Open Source is the only sane way to go.
If your office is using Outlook, and you can't get your mail using standard mail protocols, it's time to get a new office.
--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!
World domination: coming soon to a computer near you!
We should give them tons of advice here. They could start each day with a chorus of "join us now and share the software, you'll be free, hackers, you'll beeeee freeeeeee". Seriously, though, I'm happy to hear this little tidbit. It means that Microsoft is joining the peer-review process, which can only strengthen the software in the long run.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:,rekcah lrep rehtona tsuJ)'
Not that i care....i just thought I'd point that out for you. :)
Werd.
Let RedHat, Oracle, IBM, Caldera, Corel, and anybody else who has a vested interest in fighting Microsoft deal with this.
The correct response for Linux users/hackers is to keep doing what you've always done. Use the OS you like best. Code the apps you want to use. If you see a good application for Linux in your company, lobby to get it deployed. That's what will make Linux better.
What happens in the "commercial" world is interesting and I really hope Microsoft gets thrashed, but it doesn't really affect us directly.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Ummm.. ok... can you think of anything good that a Microsoft OS is best at? Lemme know if you come up with something...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Shouldn't be too tough to convince them of all that. After all, they believe what Microsoft is shoveling about Windows/NT being the be-all end-all of operating systems. Windows everywhere! I don't see any reason that they couldn't be convinced of just about anything.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If you feel like writing essays about Microsoft and you need a place to post them I'd be happy to let you use my KMFMS site. I've been gathering links to news articles as references to why Microsoft is bad, and I think some essays on Microsoft's practices would compliment this list nicely. I've been wanting to write some myself for awhile but just working on the list of links has kept me busy.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
now the PR people who were working on the Usenet astroturf campaign can go ahead and admit
they're contracting with MS.?.
Truth is a relative term, and your comment had no relation to the subject at hand.
This is a great opportunity for linux.com and other sites to have their documentation at the ready to combat the oncoming flood of FUD. Everyone should help with documentation, especially graduates from "Newbie" status who can write-up nontechnical HOW-TOs for the upcoming class of newbies.
Chris
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
uh, wasn't that Triumph?
>Microsoft knows Linux is not a company. It's a bunch of employees stealing company time to work on stuff they think is "cool" brings in no revenue whatsoever, and may be aiding the competition.
How is someone working on "Linux Code" at home or their lunch hour stealing company time as you put it?
It really looks like the doctor dropped you on your head a couple of times when you were born...
>I'm only going to use linux when there is an Outlook available.
Then you won't be using linux because a lot of people who use linux like myself have absolutely no use for Outlook and get along perfectly fine without it. The interest for an Outlook clone that runs under linux just isn't there, mostly because Outlook is a really shitty piece of software. In other words who cares if you don't want to use linux? Nobody really.
>Cheap, easy, and fun training: GAMES.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Take a look at the platforms where the most interesting game devlopment is happing these days. It's not on the PC kiddo. The future of games lies with machines from Nintendo,Sega and Sony, not the PC. I haven't bother with playing games on my PC ever since I got my PlayStation a while back. The interest just isn't there anymore.
Weahhh!!! Landscapers cut my coax trunk to my cable provider. Now I can't get to slashdot (or anything else for that matter). It must be the fault of Linux... '-p
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why isn't Microsoft using those ten engineers to make their product better? What can ten engineers do to help the company researcing the competition. It seems like a clueless response some managers must have thought up. Those ten engineers will eventually come to the conclusion:
1) Linux is more stable than NT, that's why people who need stable servers use it over NT.
2) Linux is cheaper, and runs on cheaper hardware.
3) You can't stop people from developing it.
4) Every day, people are less and less afraid of it, wheres many people are afraid of Microsoft and their "roadmap." People are more conciencious about how they are being abused by Microsoft.
5) Even though Linux has weaknesses, and is slower on 4-way Xenon Intel processors with 4 gigs of ram, etc., Linux is continuously being improved and will eventually be superior.
6) Other companies have interest in seeing Linux succeed, and technologies such as XFS are being given away to help OS's like Linux. The goodwill is spreading like Christmas cheer, and the grinches at Microsoft are eager to spoil the party.
Despite the nasty FUD which will no doubt increasingly come oozing out of Redmond Campus, think of it this way: They're wasting their time. And now, they're wasting even more of their money.
Good luck.
"If I was on that "Linux Group", the first thing I would do is read slashdot! "
/.
My guess is that the MS Linux Group is probably responsible for the sharp increase in recent weeks of Pro-MS postings I've noticed on
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
agreed.
My definition of cross-platform is NOT:
Win32 and Solaris, and maybe as an afterthought Mac, BEOS and Linux.
But that seems to be how Sun looks at things. It ain't cross platform at all folks. Not even close.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
we probably SHOULD care how the trial goes.
If MS wins, then FUD mongering will reign supreme. Look at the whole OJ thing (again). If OJ had lost BOTH trials, there's be a LOT fewer people out there proclaiming his innocence.
If MS loses, then we have the incredibly daunting task of punishing them. Breaking up the company has already been analyzed and it looks like more harm than good will come of it. Fining them will result in the same thing; consumers will end up bearing the cost. Writing up an injunction for them to cease and desist the alleged illegal behaviors will simply not work, because we're dealing with a Saddam Hussein-like attitude here. Remember the 1995 injunction? Bill laughed at it, they were dragged to court, found out of compliance, and won it on appeal anyway.
In any case, MS will probably appeal and get it all thrown out in the end, but the important thing is that they must LOSE this initial trial. MS's strength is in it's PR, and that's what they'll lose by losing the trial. Any punishment the DOJ metes out will be trivial compared to the loss of face MS will suffer. This is the critical opportuninty, and probably the last, best chance for any competitor to make headway. The face MS has lost just by the negative press DURING the trial, has already shown itself, and this is why Linux is making corporate headway. I believe that if MS loses, Linux (and others - the whole MS-alternative mindset) will make enough headway, to actually get enough of a foot in the door to become a permanent fixture. Definately not a dominant one, I think MS's future is secure there no matter what happens with the trial (sadly). But the mindset that alternatives ARE available, and that it's NOT going to be an MS-only world will take permanent hold.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I use MS applications like Outlook, Office (Word/Excel mainly) along with Visual Studio to develop C and Java apps on a daily basis. We do a great deal of media work so I have various streaming media players running along with 3 versions of Netscape (and IE of course) and Gecko/ngLayout that I look through regularly.
We have McAfee checking for viruses, various background management apps for keeping applications updated.
I also have the SETI@Home client running (previously I had the distributed.net stuff going).
I DO put this machine through its paces. It's used very heavily every day, and the only time it gets unstable is after 3-4 weeks when various memory/resource leaks start bogging it down.
I think the difference between NT machines here and your normal NT machines is that only *thoroughly* tested applications and system upgrades are applied. Some of these are even tweaked internally beforehand. Things that don't meet standards (like Active Desktop, Outlook98 and IE5 (though I have both of the latter installed anyway)) simply are not permitted to be installed. At first I thought this was pretty weird, not letting people install system upgrades on their own, etc., but it didn't take long for me to realize that this kind of stability was the result. It's worth it.
For all I know the company here had the same experiences when they originally moved to Exchange. *shrug*
All I know today is that my work workstation is the most stable Windows-based computer I've ever used. I crash/lockup/reboot at home at least once a week (Win98) and my previous experiences with NT4 and 95 were not pleasant ones.
In addition to the workstations in my group (which all perform just as admirably), our NT-based servers have no trouble at all (none that I've noticed or been notified about).
I don't know HOW they do it (they may do weekly scheduled reboots for all I know), but they DO work, and perform their tasks well.
Of course, our Unix servers work just as well (perhaps better), but we need both platforms because we have various huge applications that are either Windows- or UNIX-based, so both sets of servers have their own purposes...
"...someone who knows what they are doing."
??? It sounded to me like he pretty much knew exactly what he was doing. I myself remember the days when Netscape under Linux used to crash more often than Win95.
When someone offers the completely valid opinion that existing GUI systems are (FOR THE THINGS HE USES THEM FOR) superior to their under-development Linux counterparts, it might be polite to point out some of the strengths of Linux GUI's, but your "good, go away" attitude does nothing but make the "Linux Crowd" look childish. Try to be a bit more mature when someone criticizes something you seem to value so greatly.
A year ago, the GUI end of Linux wasn't nearly as mature as existing operating systems (some might argue that this is still the case). Combine that with the fact that I do a great deal of Windows-centric development at work.
I currently own two PC's at home. One is running Win98, all of the MS office suites, development platforms, Adobe graphics programs, etc., and one X server. The other is running the latest and greatest Linux distribution without a monitor or keyboard. All of my applications are run via X under Win98.
IMO, this is the best of both worlds.
As I've always tried to say, and someone else mentioned this in another comment, it's all about using what makes you more productive. If you can't afford a second system or the time/resources for something like VMware, you'll need to choose a single operating system. If you can honestly say you're more productive under Linux doing Windows-centric work, fine, all the power to you. For those that are much more productive using Windows for similar work, the logical operating system choice would be Windows. If you can afford it (in time and money), a second system (or even VMware) allowing you to run more than one operating system simultaneously might offer you the best productivity.
It's all about YOU using whatever makes YOU most productive. In most cases, you cannot make that decision for someone else. You need to drop that attitude entirely and wake up to the real world.
When I say I reboot less than once a month, this is my *workstation* I'm talking about.
I have never noticed ANY service outage at all due to a crash or failure of any of our NT servers. We have periods of maintenance, but those are always off-hours and the only time that maintenance has ever gone awry was due to an OS upgrade and improper backups on one of our *UNIX* workstations.
I say this only because I'm trying to point out that NT *can* be deployed successfully *if* you hire competant people.
Never hire a Unix guy to manage your NT systems. Never hire an NT guy to manage your Unix systems.
No I'm just using an older version of X-Win32 X server under '98. All of my X apps run right alongside my existing Windows apps. It's very seamless and even lets me share the clipboard. VERY useful.
:) Very slick!
I've even gone some steps further and have the two systems linked together on some more lower levels, thus allowing selected syslog messages to be routed through MS Agent, etc.
A lot of big corporations tend to insist upon making all of their systems homogenous. This has quite a few drawbacks, obviously.
The corporation I work for blends the two mainstream operating system classes nicely. For our workhorse applications such as databases, most of our web servers, etc., we use UNIX variants.
All of our desktop systems (and some of our production servers, like for e-mail and some web) are NT4.0. I see quite a few people posting comments that say their NT installations crash *hourly* or at least once a day. No offense intended, but this is more of an indication of poor NT administration than anything else. Our computer support group is responsible for all of our major software packages, service pack updates, etc. This allows them to test everything thoroughly on all of the hardware known to be used by us. The result is a fleet of NT workstations that are nearly as stable as my Linux box at home. I'm not saying they're 100% stable, but I rarely even *log out* of NT but perhaps once every couple of weeks. I've rebooted my workstation *maybe* a dozen times in the year and a half that I've been here.
So, you have two choices. You can train/hire competant Unix people to manage your Unix systems, or you can train/hire competant NT people to manage your NT systems. Reading some of these comments, it sounds like some of you are doing neither.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying NT is superior to Unix in the least, but as far as application support and the fact that most of my work is done for clients using Windows, I need to use it as part of my job.
At home, I own two PC's. One running Linux (without monitor/keyboard) and the other running Win98 along with an X server for my Linux apps. IMO this is an excellent compromise and allows me to take advantage of strengths inherent in both operating systems.
Of course, I still have to reboot Win98 pretty frequently (though usually no more than once or twice a week).
The point is, I do this because I work most productively having access to both operating systems simultaneously. Some people may work in environments where a Unix OS will suffice perfectly, and make them more productive than if they were using Windows. However, there are environments where using Windows IS the best option, because that's what they need to work most productively. It's fairly difficult to develop ActiveX under Unix, for example.
Sorry, but I took your original attitude as being 'Dude, That SUX!!; type of message.. I agrere with what your saying here.. Personally, I don't like Outlook, but I see no Linux based alternative in an exchange environment, beside's using the Web interface that Exchange provides..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I think that Microsoft should have a good, long look at The Pentagon Papers.
Remember the 'policing' of vietnam 30 years ago? Linux is guerilla warfare. Microsoft is going to try conventional tactics, and they are going to fail. People are going to use Linux because it WORKS.
Linux. It's oozing. It's creeping. Soon. It will BE EVERYWHERE!
(/sheerlinuxzealot)
My first thought when I read this was:
,hacker Perl another Just)'
"How does the free software community fight that!"
I mean, 10 microsoft employees - that's got to be over a million bucks a year to MS... That's some serious effort to fight a free operating system.
But then I relaxed - because we don't have to fight it - we just keep on using and producing quality products, and fight them on our terms - quality, stability, openness, freedom. Those are terms MS finds it very difficult to fight on.
I'm actually quite happy now that they've done this - it means they are totally serious about the free software community, and gives them more credibility than I could possibly have imagined over a year ago.
Thanks Bill.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I think it's time Rob invested in a H-A Linux server configuration with dual/redundant network connections through different providers. Oh yea, that would cost an assload of money....
-Rev. Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
>...create a version of MS-Office that will only
./configure;make;make install, what's the problem?
>run when a specific library is installed, and
>make that library available only with MS-Linux.
>Since it is not part of the kernel, they wouldn't
>have to release it as free software.
Huh? They already do this. It's called winXX.
Others already do this, they are called 'binary only' releases AKA Star Office, WP8, various X servers. What would they gain by releasing MS-Linux except for performance, stabilty,... IF they do do this, then Linux will have won a major battle. They will have dumped their kernel and architecture. If "their linux" runs the code, compiles, links, and all else with everyone else's distro, then what's the problem? I mean really, if I can take my tar, rpm, deb, or whatever, ftp it to my new ms-linux box type
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
What I mean by that is that I don't think everyone in the Linux community is completely satisfied with the software generated by others in the "Linux community". I'm sure there are some people who want more commercial software. For example, the engineers who are forced to use NT-based design software because their managers say so or because the Unix hardware is too expensive.
Yes, Linux can't be "defeated", certainly not the way the Amiga has been. However, if Microsoft can reduce the growth of Linux's marketshare (or even stop its growth), that will do damage to Linux. Few ISV's want to write software for a stagnant platform.
I don't think your "code and passion" is enough for many Linux users. How many, I can't say. But that's Microsoft's angle. For instance, I can't run Linux at work, because:
- Outlook doesn't run, and our email system is 100% Outlook
- There's no PVCS client for Linux
- Microsoft Office won't run (Yes, I know about Star Office)
- Internet Explorer won't run (many of our internal web sites use IE-specific features)
- The DOS support is medicore, and probably won't run all of my old DOS-based development tools
And so on. There are plenty of other DOS and Windows apps that I need to run because there are no Linux equivalents. Yes, I know about Wine and VMWare, but I seriously doubt they'll be enough.The point the original poster is trying to make (I think) is that the current Linux community doesn't care about anyone who doesn't use Linux. I don't think that's correct. I think most Linux users WANT others to use Linux. But that's not going to happen as long as the software that people need isn't available. And if MS does a good enough job at convincing enough people to NOT use Linux, then the software won't be ported.
Yes, the Linux community has created some incredible software on their own. I especially enjoy the Gimp for OS/2, because every other OS/2 graphics package is mediocre at best. However, I just don't think it's wise to disregard Microsoft's attempt at thwarting Linux acceptance.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
It's at least a valid as the MS EULA.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I suppose that they're going to do the same thing that they've done to every other product they've come in contact with. Instead of defending Linux, people should read into the FUD to find out what Microsoft is attacking. Microsoft is probably going to start poking the tender spots of Linux, the spots that need to be addressed, the very spots that corporations are worried about. People should take Microsoft's FUD as an RFE. Rather than saying, "Our operating system is inherently superior to yours," say, "Hey, Softies, thanks for the tips!" and then program solutions to what Microsoft (and probably the businesses they target) sees as problems.
This is a Good Thing(tm). With Microsoft's eagle eye on the warpath, people are going to be more critical than ever of something that's already blessed with stability and strength. If the cards are played correctly, Linux can use what looks like a negative as an ultimate positive.
Interesting point. So the harder they push, the more we gain? I can see this is true if they actually try arguing with real data, and real facts.
However, if they attack us as they attacked Java, that is, by taking Linux and extending it in a proprietary fashion, we could be in trouble.
How could they do that? I proposed one method: create a version of MS-Office that will only run when a specific library is installed, and make that library available only with MS-Linux. Since it is not part of the kernel, they wouldn't have to release it as free software.
Did you ever read the story, "And Then There Were None"? It was an interesting '50s short story. Very funny. In it, a galactic patrol vessel lands on a planet of peaceful folk. Ever patrolman who goes into the world ends up "going native." Wouldn't it be great? Everyone who joins the "anti-Linux" group turns native?
That'd be a hoot.
I can't begin to count how many times this has happened. I agree completely with the "please criticize us" mentality-- because it gets someone who knows how to do it quickly motivated and satisfied when they complete the work in a couple weeks of hacking code.
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
"Which is of course a problem with linux... how silly of us... any time we can't connect to Slashdot, it's obviously a problem with Linux! "
This is the same rationale that most Linux advocates have used to bash NT.
Witness the story about the Navy ship that had a problem with their system last summer.
There is a possibility this could actually be a good thing. How so you might wonder? Well lets look at the situation, Microsoft has acknowledged that linux is a serious operating system that is making gains in the enterprise market. The enterprise market, is what matters, perhaps as much as the desktop.
So with this insight, microsoft has decided to dissuade people from using linux. By doing this they will cause people to actually evaluate their decision more than before hand. If someone says hey "linux can't serve SMB shares as efficently as NT can" then most IT people will look into it. If they do a good job they will find that its not nescessairly true, and in many situations the information that mickeysoft says is wrong.
We've seen them do this before. Saying that Java development was slow, inefficent and lacked a use. Yet we see that Java is alive and very strong today. Partially because the stuff that mickeysoft said was false, partially because the people behind Java were smart enough to change the system to address those faults.
With all the smart people behind linux its likely that the same thing will happen. By showing where the major bulletholes are, linus, alan and the crew will hopefully be able to make it bulletproof.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Afraid? Who needs to be afraid? If we keep doing what we have been doing and keep striving for perfection, we can not lose. Microsoft has only two tactics that are effective, they are to deny revenue to whatever company "annoys" it, or to spread FUD. Linux is free, and is developed by people who either do this for fun, or are paid by companies who want linux to do somthing that they need, and then pass on that knowledge. And as for the FUD, Microsoft cannot claim that they run a majority of the internet servers in exsistance, Windows cannot claim to be able handle truely fault tolerant situations. Those who really know what they need a network to do, know what Linux can do.
Phoenix.
BTW: as for my "Lock and Load" crack, Ghandi "fought" his battles. He used passive resistance, but he fought. That is what I meant. The battle we'll fight is one of better code, efficient applications, no mud-slinging, and a cuter mascot.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
The Microsoft anti-Java effort wasn't an abject failure. To this day, Java hasn't been adopted as the ubiquitous, MS-killing, networked platform it was initially touted to be. At least some of that would be due to Microsoft's use of FUD and divisive tactics (the IE/Visual J++ contamination as well as behind-the-scenes deals).
I'd say we should start a team whose purpose is to demonstrate the inability for Microsoft products to be used for reliable enterprise applications, but they keep beating us to it.
First there was the Windows development team.
Then there was the OS/2 development team.
Hmmm... and the NT development team.
Um... the Bob development team.
Um... Windows 9x development team.
Windows 2000...
Hmmm... Internet Explorer
SQL Server development team...
Backoffice (if there is such a development team)
And I've got a box of dead Microsoft mice too...
This isn't worrisome, because for every person they've got fighting Linux, they've to 2,000 or more developers working to release products that demonstrate its better!
M$ releases new versions of it's software on a somwhat regular basis so they advance technology. They release bloated and top heavy software, but guess what, the AVERAGE (read that as consumer, you know the general public, the people who you are trying to save) person LIKES IT
:-)
In the words of Brian Sparks "Well, I like air!"
People don't buy M$ because they like it, they buy it because they are ignorant. They are ignorant because they are afraid of incompatibility. M$ tells them what M$ wants people to believe. They think M$ invented the internet (Oh wait that was Al Gore).
People are acting as a result of scare tactics from M$ to make them believe that there is no other way, not because they evaluate the software for what it is.
If mom and pop can't compete put 'em in an old folks home and get back to business.
Very elequent
M$ is not just a business. Legally they are a monopoly. They have over 70% marketshare in the desktop operating market. There is no refuting it. As such, they fall under the laws that regulate monopolies. M$ is trying to convice the public that they are not a monopoly. Monopolies are not illegal, but not adhering to monopoly law is illegal. M$ is trying very hard to convince people that they are not a monopoly. I think they will have a very difficult time doing this. Although, I have met attorneys that could convince me that the moon really is made of green cheese.
Microsoft knows Linux is not a company. It's a bunch of employees stealing company time to work on stuff they think is "cool" that bring in no revenue whatsoever, and may be aiding the competition.
Bull! Pure and utter bull! My employer PAYS me to make Linux things happen. Linux is in place, securing our customer's financial transactions, securing our network, providing version control, and soon providing another version target for our product.
And, if you think that my employer's a small player, think again- we are one of the biggest players in RFID.
Microsoft may convince management to watch out for "those Linux people" who are stealing company time to work on 'open source' projects and giving away valuable IT to competitors in the form of GPL'd code.
What I do with my spare time that doesn't conflict with my employer's product offerings is my own doing- it's not the company's time or resources that I expend on that.
This is pure unadulterated FUD and you know better- any place that would believe this sort of crap is in free-fall mode to bankruptcy as they're going to be hemorraging people left and right with no real influx to offset the damage. (Been there, watched it happen in 3 companies so far- not a pretty sight, let me tell you.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I wouldn't joke about this. Microsoft appears to be very serious with this project. They are trying to protect their market by putting the screws to Linux. Be afraid. Very afraid.
10 people assigned to closely watch Linux. They well, no doubt, be installing, tweaking, and really getting under the hood.
My question is are these people assigned to Linux or people associated with Linux? Do I have a "Microsoft Buddy?" Are they looking out for my interests or do they have their nose in it?
Sometimes the best topics are debates. Good discussions like these are sometimes labeled as flames. Someone with a moderation stick seems to be very opinionated and is trying to unfairly hit people.
That's why I leave my preferences set at -1 so I can see how silly people get sometimes. You should have bonus points for your efforts due to the good points you address. I may disagree, but diversity is what makes the world so great.
Microsoft is a mixed blessing. Without the insane rate of resourse requirements with each "service pack" and such, I feel the hardware industry would have stagnated.
In 1990, I ran Word under Windows 3.1 with my 386sx laptop that had 1MB of ram and it was fast too! It had a massive 40MB hard drive that I filled with movie flicks to entertain the electronics lab. I had no idea that I would ever own a "supercomputer" with 160MB of ram, 30GB of hardrive and 464 bogomips?
I also remember back then that if a person wanted hardware specs, it often came with the computer, or in the case of IBM, you could pick up the IBM Technical Reference Manual with all the neat schematics and such. That made the PC platform great for classroom exercises and experiments and possibly why the PC architecture is so popular today. Open standards inspire and allow people to learn. I never learned much from the several years of mucking with DOS than a few years hacking Linux.
I don't know if it worth feeding the wintel machine. It has grown at a tremendous rate and fast computers are mandatory for today's consumer. Its a big monster.
As that wise man said, and has been quoted here many times before. First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. I have been using GNU/Linux since the days before kernal 1.0 was released. As I have said in this forum many times before, Free Software is the main evolutionary path and M$ is a dead end. The power of Free Software exceeds its own technical superiority because the code does not die when companies go out of business. There is no stopping Free Software now. Three cheers to RMS, Linus, and all the other contributors to the Free Software movement. I also belive that the GNU/GPL is a significant development in world history. Stallman will always be remembered for this triumph of intellectual freedom. Cheers, gbs
The industry evolves fast. MS already has their active server pages, and some IE-only sites.
Is it infeasible that MS would suddenly start putting warning messages up like:
The site you are viewing is not an Active server Page. Microsoft does not gaurantee that the site will render correctly.
Do you want to be warned of this in the future?
How is this different than what they did with DR Dos? If Mozilla fails, IE will be the browser... what's to stop them from leverageing IIS as the standard?
Microsoft isn't a software company, it's a monopoly company. It doesn't develop its product to survive, it survives by attacking the competition's immune system.
This is not to say that their products are without merit. Their products are of minimal merit. Just barely stable enough (99.9% uptime), barely secure enough (C2 Security), barely open enough (Currently investigating open source) and standards complant enough (Posix, OS/2) to squeak past the IT managers.
I wonder if MS will attack Linux with FUD, attempt to sabotage the codebase, or engineer incompatabilities into their OS. For instance extending SMB further to intentionally make it legally or technically difficult to emulate. Make IE not render pages generated by Apache, or perhaps a warning that perfomance is not gauranteed with Apache servers... kind of like what they did to DR DOS.
I don't like this one bit. Don't doubt the capabilites of MS, the history is quite clear, they fight dirty.
The popularity of linux is all that seems to concern MS. Orignially, Linux did not depend on popularity to continue. I hope that is still the case.
why?
if you got functional system which fully satisfies your needs everything you want are bug fixes (security, performance,
IMHO even highly used proprietary system can't outlive theire manufacturer for long (can you imagine windows software still used for example 5 years after MS death?).
if you think about today situation deep enought you realize that this buy&upgrade merry-go-round is mostly nonsense which existense is supported by 100% pure PR (in case of COMMON users of course). importance of support of original manufacturer is lower if you caunt this in.
so i agree with smithdog that free code outlives his creator (of course only when it is good and usefull :) and if it is only usefull, then it is made good so at the end it is good and usefull and outlives it's creators :) it can be ilustrated by HW too, the only bad think is that HW depends on matter
i think there are even examples of this with open-source software: original mainainer stopped development so someone other stepped out and continues to maintain the application
i would like to see someone post concrete names here while i'm bad in remembering things. also proprietary-software-cease-to-exist examples are welcome.
here i wanted to adress the support thing you mentioned but KillRaven and two ACs (on Friday) did it sufficiently
now i just get curious about how the world would looks like if bread (or water, air, beer, sex, ...) would be under some patent, copyright or some monopoly.
this FREE ideas (bread recipe, sex HOWTO, ...) and free things (air, water, ... in some sense) are basics of our lives and perfectly supports smithdog's post (and for example RMS' free software ideas too :) and a lot of other ideas too)
hany
i'm just going to ask you to think about why is somebody risking his/her career just for some "piece of crap" (i.e. linux).
it's not only about "think about this particular product". it's also about "think about this society" too.
hany
better post some facts not curses!
hany
why i'm that hard? because i think that using computers like your company is ineficient, cruel, bad, ... such practises (IE specific code, Outlook only, MS Word only, ...) just makes people stop evolving and after that cease to exist (in global).
try imagine company, which do not dictates you which e-mail client use, which browser to use, where you have to place particular icon, etc.
it's maybe harder to setup such system but it benefits all users thus making them better (and work better).
also try imagine pub which you can't enter just because you are wearing for example white T-shirt (and there is almost no other pub you can enter). or imagine a city/state/country/... you can't visit just because you are left-handed (and there is almost no other country you can visit). i can mention a lot of examples here. what they have in common is somethink we can call discrimination.
that's why i do not like so called "pure solutions" and that's why i'm not employing people just because they know this particular piece of software.
hany
why you want ONLY outlook? after all, ask MS to port outlook to linux. they said that their users do not need linux port of theire apps. :)
hany
[Taken from linux-kernel mailing-list]
;)
:-)
To: Juergen Schmidt
cc: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: Bad apache perfomance wtih linux SMP
References:
From: Andi Kleen
Date: 18 May 1999 15:02:08 +0200
In-Reply-To: Juergen Schmidt's message of "Tue, 18 May 1999 05:23:42 GMT"
Message-ID:
Juergen Schmidt writes:
> Do you have any ideas, what's happening there?
> Or even better, how to fix this?
One culprit is most likely that the data copy for TCP sending runs completely
serialized. This can be fixed by doing replacing the
skb->csum = csum_and_copy_from_user(from,
skb_put(skb, copy), copy, 0, &err);
in tcp.c:tcp_do_sendmsg with
unlock_kernel();
skb->csum = csum_and_copy_from_user(from,
skb_put(skb, copy), copy, 0, &err);
lock_kernel();
The patch does not violate any locking requirements in the kernel, because
the kerne lock could have been dropped at any time anyways when the copy_from_user
slept to swap a page in.
(I'm not sure if running a published benchmark with such a patch is fair though.
On the other hand Microsoft did some many hidden changes in their service packs
that probably everything is allowed
Another problem is that Linux 2.2 per default uses only 1GB of memory. This can
be tuned by changing the PAGE_OFFSET constant in include/asm/page.h and
arch/i386/vmlinux.lds from 0xc0000000 to 0x80000000 or so and recompiling
(the tradeoff is that that it limits the per process virtual memory to ~1.8GB,
but increases the overall physical memory that can be mapped).
[...]
Message-ID:
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:44:25 +0200
From: Juergen Schmidt
To: Andi Kleen
CC: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: Bad apache perfomance wtih linux SMP
References:
Andi Kleen wrote:
> One culprit is most likely that the data copy for TCP sending runs completely
> serialized. This can be fixed by doing replacing the
>
> skb->csum = csum_and_copy_from_user(from,
> skb_put(skb, copy), copy, 0, &err);
>
> in tcp.c:tcp_do_sendmsg with
>
> unlock_kernel();
> skb->csum = csum_and_copy_from_user(from,
> skb_put(skb, copy), copy, 0, &err);
> lock_kernel();
Bingo !!!
This raised performance from 270 rps to 802 rps when 64 clients were
pulling a 4k HTML-page. Single CPU perfomance lies by 890 rps -- but the
new numbers are just from a very short run. (BTW: NT/IIS on 4 CPUs
deliver 840 rps
Or with apaches ab:
ab -c 8 -t 120 127.0.0.1/4k.html
produces:
2.2.8 4 CPUs: 350.95
2.2.8 4 CPUs with patch: 1334.19
2.2.8 no SMP: 1540.22
[...]
If a two lines patch fixed 95% of the problem, I suppose a full de-serialization of the tcp stack (and vfs/filesystems ? please) would allow Linux to beat NT on that test...
This is a much more complex task, but that kind of news help me keeping the faith in Linux kernel developers...
Kernel hackers rocks !!
i'm using QNX at work, BeOS at home and little at work (i need netware support to read my emails) and windows at work to read my emails :)
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I thought they might be forming a group to do the only thing that might hurt Linux: make Windows NT efficient, rock stable, compatible with decades of portable code, truly multiuser, secure, and network transparent.
But naah, they're just going to spread some FUD.
Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Slashdot is the only site I access on a regular basis that goes down often enough for me to notice. Occasionally Excite displays a "standard" page rather than my customized page, but at least the site stays up. Slashdot does have far more outages than most sites so it really isn't useful as an example of the stability of Linux. It really doesn't matter whether it's the fault of Linux or the network or routers since Rob rarely explains what the problem is.
Take today for example. Slashdot was inaccesible for at least 4 hours and the lack of posts sugests that it wasn't just me who couldn't reach it. Is there anything posted to explain the problem or even admit that there was a problem? No. Let's just ignore it and pretend that this Linux based site didn't have a 4 hour outage.
I heard the 'NEW' Wiz98 will spot a box on the
(home) LAN and configure it for gateway/firewall!
Woh! Will those guys' every stop inovating? And
having run a subnet for over a year now, on my Linux boxes, lets me know that M$ is ever vigile!
But, I still think they blow dogs!
[...]the Open Source development process will be vindicated so forcefully that [even] Jesse Burst will declare his undying belief.
Jesse Berst declares his undying belief at the beginning of every column he writes. Then he speculates that "if only it could do this impossible thing, that impossible thing, and the other impossible thing, it might actually have a chance of beating Windows." I haven't actually checked whether the list of impossible things keeps changing, but each column seems to be about hte fact that one more of them has been accomplished, and yet somehow there always seem to be about the same number remaining, and they keep getting harder. The columns tend to end with something to the effect of "Don't get me wrong -- I really like Linux, and I think it has the potential to be a great system. That's why it's such a shame that it's not likely to happen. Too bad, huh?" (He actually sounds a bit like Senator Palpatine regarding his nomination: "A surprise, to be sure -- but a welcome one.")
The result is some of the most effective FUD of all, since he (seemingly) establishes himself as a Linux supporter, but then (reluctantly) "admits" that there are still a few things that keep it from being viable, and, coming from a "supporter", this seems to carry more weight, making it just the sort of thing pointy-hairs need to reinforce their skepticism.
He does the same thing with Apple, too. I first noticed it, I think, a couple of years ago when MacOS 8 came out, and at least several times since. A few times, he has been so subtle that I found I couldn't help but think that maybe he really had come around, but then, Oops! There it is! It's an incredibly insidious technique. Watch out.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
*Star Trek: The Next Generation*
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
I don't believe this. Why is this posted as an AC? Could it be some one of these M$ employee in the story above trying to counter Linux and influence Linux users / potential users? To me, this happy NT story about using familiar unix software tools is most likely complete BS and represents a likely method of attacking Linux.
If this is true, then tell me what company had Unix and linux system and went to all NT successfully? Microsoft? I suspect that any company switching to NT never got rid of *all* their Unix systems.
Here's a good quote:
"but frankly, I hate KDE, GNOME, and all that unstable, resource hungry crap that everyone works on."
And NT isn't unstable, resource hungry and used by everyone (where this AC works)? Nothing about Linus seems unstable to me, beside a few networking quirks that are nothing compared to the problems I have had using Windows.
Here's another:
"I'm still learning windows and I haven't decided yet and hell, I can always go dual-boot, no?"
Yeah, and you use Linux? What is there to decide? Unless you need M$ Office there is no comparision. I think any person who has used Linux much knows a lot about being able to dual boot. That is one of the basic features, since you need it whether you're loading a different kernel or booting windoze.
>More hype than it deserves
I use it, it works, that's not hype.
>Nothing new from what existed 20 years ago (well, >actually Unix is older than that...)
And the problem with that is?
>Lots of special effects, but no real content >(show me something that Linux can do that other >OS's can't)
He he, easy one; Linux does it all at the same time.
>Can't hold up on it's own (you still need to dual >boot to nt or 95 to run your real software, or >get any work done,
Like what? I run it 24/7 at work, doing real work.
The only games I play are chess and quakeII, what else is there?
There is no other OS on my harddrive.
Sounds like this is a troll to me; bet your reversed IP would show tide7.microsoft.com
I rather hope that it's true; because if not your a moron.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
I think we should track tide7.microsoft connections; I realize it would not be hard to
get around.
But I am starting to think there is a bit of
astroturf going on.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
Not any more. That contract was made "null and void" in late 1997 or early 1998.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
This line reminds me of something that happened one night. One night, I was going out to dinner with some people I didn't know. My wallet was empty, so I stopped by the bank to get some more money from the ATM machine. Except for the fact that my ATM card was bad. So, I ended up having to mooch food that evening.
The people I was having dinner with included Richard Stallman. This experience had me asking myself: Am I mouching software from the FSF and the Linux developers in the same way I had to mooch food for dinner that evening?
Needless to say, asking Richard Stallman for free moo shoo pork instead of egg rolls would have been rude beyone rude. It was bad enough I was having to mooch dinner! Demanding someone in the Linux community to make a free Outlook Express clone, or whatever, is, IMHO, just as rude.
To paraphrase a famous quote, The question I need to ask myself is not what Linux can do for me, but what can I do for Linux.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
This obviously leaked story is FUD itself - IS managers see that Microsoft is getting serious about killing Linux. We better not install Linux if Microsoft is about to kill it.
Admittedly, you have a point.
MS is not concerned with their marketshare on the desktops right now. They're worried about Windows NT. Linux can't compete on the desktop right now due to various reasons that we're working on. But, that's besides the point. I'm sure these people were hired to save their server market just as much as they were to save their desktop market.
Let's see what they can't do:
Unless they haven't learned yet, they are not bound to attack Linux by attacking its weaknesses. We don't have a marketing department. We just have a lot of people willing to fix these problems quickly, if they're not FUD.
They can't fight us with FUD very effectively, because the Internet tends to educate the ignorant.
They can't fight us by closing Internet standards because their marketshare with Internet servers isn't high enough to close off standards. That's a big plus for Linux at this point. Their marketshare is dropping, not rising, so this is becoming more and more of an advantage of Linux.
The Internet, Linux's home, is a hard beast to tame. We have a definite advantage, since they have to fight on our turf to win a decisive victory.
So, what to worry about? I think they are already fighting us on all the fronts they can.
Exclusionary deals with hardware manufacturers like Winmodems, Winprinters, etc. It would be a much more expensive proposition to switch to Linux if you have to buy new hardware. They could perhaps make a new plug-and-play standard that works better but only works with special Windows-only devices. There are any number of things they could do on this front. However, the extent that they can do this will diminish as Linux gets more and more acceptance, and with a marketshare of 17% in servers, it will be hard to convince hardware manufacturers to go Windows-only on the PC architecture. Additionally, Windows-only devices won't perform as well as hardware-based controlling devices on the server.
They could continue to threaten OEM's with higher prices for Windows preloads if they offer Linux at all. But, big deal. They're fighting us on the server end, not the desktop.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Litigation is kind of a stretch. Who do they sue? The FSF? Do you realize how much money the FSF could garner for their defense?
Create M$-Linux? I think they have too much pride for that.
I don't think they'd go on either of these routes.
We need a good brainstorming session here to try and have a viable game plan when they make their next move. We were caught by surprise with the Mindcraft study, and while it is helping us now, a different reaction at that point would have been much better.
This is a good strategy. It would dilute Microsoft's efforts and they would be spreading themselves too thin.
I have a point in addition to yours though:
I think the community needs to stop the infighting. I absolutely hate seeing FreeBSDers harp about how the GPL license is harmful, and how we shouldn't use Linux because of that. I hate seeing Linux people say that Linux is the only solution. We need to present a united front and encourage software diversity, like the original poster said.
Additionally, open software development is not the end-all of everything. There are plenty of areas in which closed software development works better.
In the end, every job is different, and no one solution can possibly fulfill the needs of everybody. Linux and the use of other software offers diversity and configurability that is missing if the marketplace is controlled by one company. This is a weakness of Microsoft, with their Windows-only approach. We need to make this point as a counterattack. We need to put them on the defensive.
We need to start looking at weaknesses of Microsoft and play up those weaknesses. I am not talking about just technical weaknesses. What weaknesses are there in their business model that we can target?
BTW: This is probably starting to look like a Microsoft brainstorming session, except, we're brainstorming on counteracting Microsoft.
At any rate, my post was a digression.
Your post was definitely worth the 5.
There are white characters on that blue background when an NT BSOD strikes. I have personally used the information on the page to troubleshoot and fix problems.
Certainly very user friendly dealing with Hex values.
I don't know how NT users can say that it is easy to use, and yet tell you that you have to edit this registry key to this value after installing this in order to get a machine tuned properly, all in the same breath.
I think it takes the same amount of skill to be a competent NT admin as it does to be competent with Linux. This FUD about NT being easy to use needs to be dispelled.
Then again, the BSOD is largely a bit of folklore to many Linux users, who've never used NT and just talk about it a lot online.
I would have assumed that was sarcastic if I hadn't seen the tone of the rest of the message. The reason most people use Linux is because NT hasn't been able to fulfill some need (i.e. stability, speed, whatever), and Linux has.
Our development roadmap is created by the needs of the users of Linux. It's the best roadmap there is. Maybe Microsoft can help guide our development roadmap by talking up the areas that are weak in Linux. If it's FUD, it won't hold up because the Internet tends to expose that. However, if it's valid, then the Linux community will fix it.
Lack of a journalled filesystem? Okay, we'll take care of that, with SGI's help, and also the work of kernel hackers.
Lack of a GUI? Let's get KDE/GNOME more robust and stable.
Lack of a good configuration utility?
Any other perceived weaknesses? Other companies/individuals/groups can come in and fill in and then support that subsystem. There is lots to be made in that. Are you listening? Apparently, SGI is.
Maybe MS can help the Linux development effort after all. Haven't you noticed how the more the weaknesses are talked about by people, the more interest there is in fixing them?
This document shows that in the weeks after the Mindcraft tests, kernel hackers and interested parties have been able to bring Apache and Linux performance to 3 or 4 times what it used to be, and they've identified problems in the kernel that are being fixed as we speak. Sure there are weaknesses, but the biggest advantage of Linux is that there are many eyes to find out where these weaknesses are and how to fix them when they are exposed.
Like someone else here said, this is a guerilla war. The harder MS fights us, the more resources they use to extinguish us, the more people will be turned off to Microsoft and will question their practices. The more desperate Microsoft becomes, the more obvious it is that they are losing.
It's hard to flail at a moving liquid target that cannot be pinned down to one organization or group of people.
Linux grew with the Internet. It grew without any media attention. It grew and still grows because it meets real-world needs. It has nothing to do with hype. It did just fine without media attention. We basically had to force the media into noticing us. As long as it can meet real world needs for the users/developers and has a good chance of providing that in the future, it cannot lose.
If I could summ up my feelings, windows is skeezy, Linux is a tight non-failing machine.
There are issues, and things have a tendency to bomb, but those are UE :) and I just need to keep RTFM. 8) For all those aspiring graphic designers, give Linux some time but use it somewhere.. Gimp, Sketch, Killustrator, soon to be Corel Draw.. We need to shake Adobe's damn tree..I want some signature applications.
Keeping it Real,
Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
>Now that they have appeared to anger Linus, he states that the kernel developers will start to focus on those areas where Linux falls short in benchmarks
where did you read this?
The GPL hasn't even been tested in a court of law yet. Nobody knows if it will even stand up to a rigorous testing by high-priced lawyers.
See a much more extensive article at MSNBC
Your Servant, B. Baggins
With a lot of Linux / open source companies probably going public over the next year I think that Micros~1 will get better defined Targets. It could obviously work in reverse but I am a little concerned with too much of Linux "succes" riding on a few companies reputation and soon "Financial performance".
Help fight continental drift.
I dont think there is a way to keep microsoft fighting fair. Chances are, there never will be... The only thing you can do is beat them at thier own game. They will do anything in thier power to stop the Linux juggernaut... All we can do is keep working and keeping the vision of open-source in front of us... If we loose that vision, there is nothing that keeps Microsoft from crushing linux... in fact, the only thing that makes linux great, in my opinion, is the fact that it is opensource and uses the GPL. I think that is what kept people from using the BSD licensed systems to the extent that Linux has gotten use.
Once again, I say that it's essential for the Linux community to make up their own rules for the game.
One such rule is to *not* defend one's product as the be-all and end-all. That's a business game, not an open community game.
Promote *ALL* other alternative OSes. Promote the BSDs. Promote BeOS. Promote MacOS and QNX and PalmOS(?) and every other OS.
They all have their place. QNX is a major force in the embedded market. Kicks ass on WindowsCE in every way. The BSDs are incredibly well done and kick NT ass. BeOS kicks everyone's ass in the multimedia department. MacOS is experiencing a resurgence, and is a delight to use.
Don't let Microsoft focus on one thing! Force them to deal with *ALL* things, *ALL* the time.
They can't spread FUD on all the competition...
...change the rules! Keep them hopping --- and learn to use the mass media!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Linus upset at the benchmarks? He'll be focusing on improving scores? Credentials please.
--
I found the C|NET blurb to be less than enlightening, and would like to read the original Wall Street Journal article mentioned by /. Could someone provide the date/page of this article, please?
I think this is GREAT!!!! Now that they have appeared to anger Linus, he states that the kernel developers will start to focus on those areas where Linux falls short in benchmarks. THAT IS GREAT NEWS!!!!! What are they gonna say when they have no more benchmarks to trot out? Also, anybody laugh about that remark about Linux not being as secure as NT ??? Ha ha ha ha!!!
Thank you M$ !!!!
==============================
Windows NT has crashed,
I am the Blue Screen of Death,
I know, I know, we've covered this before but
it just seems so obvious it has to be said again!
If they take the same approach to Linux as they
have to Java then they'll attack from the inside.
I reckon it'll start with a highly supported
and easy to install distro to gain boxes then
they'll start to add MS specifics which won't
be open source and probably not as well written
as the NT equivalents.
Slowly they'll tighten their
grip and strangle Linux from the inside.
Seen it all before.
.sheep
- Every OS takes futzing to get it to work right. NT takes futzing to get it to work right, plus futzing to get it to stay working, like regular reboots.
- Prove to me that all or even most LINUX sysops spend 40 hours a week giving advice. Or 10 hours a week. Or 1 hour a week.
- Unix people generally have to hire additional staff only when they do additional work or change things. Linux, like most UNIX oses is pretty damn low maintenance as a server once everything is running. Unlike NT.
A lot of people work on it when they're being paid by an employer to be doing productive work to benefit the company. That's called theft. Look ahead to many lawsuits from companies who can rightfully claim components of Linux as IP that staffers illegally put under the GPL.I couldn't help but notice that there wasn't an ounce of proof in that statement.
Also, I couldn't help but notice that you completely missed the point of my original post.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'm NOT referring to competition on technical grounds - Linux can and will kick NT's ass in a fair fight, as a server at least.
But the simple fact of the matter is that Linux is GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE. The vast majority of people who work on it WORK ON IT FOR FREE. In an economic sense, how does this constitute competition? It's like saying that backyard gardens are competition with supermarkets. The reason the Linux model works is that it DOESN'T depend on sales!
Every commercial competitor of Microsoft's has been woefully unable to generate enough sales to build momentum, even when, as in the case of OS/2, their product was superior and in the market first. Microsoft has too much of a headlock on the sales channel and the mindshare of businesses and corporations. Not enough copies of the OS get sold, and so not enough software companies jump in making software for the OS because the market is too small, which in the turn causes people to not buy the OS. It's a vicious cycle.
The only reason that Linux hasn't fallen victim to this is that Linux isn't being developed for monetary reward. It's like if all the HO scale train buffs decided to build a real train line for the love of it.
Saying that Linux is competition for Microsoft is like saying that ham radio is competition for the telcos. It's being developed completely outside the traditional arena of work for pay. How then can you say that it competes within that arena?
Am I making sense?
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Cheap, easy, and fun training: GAMES. serioulsy. how did all of you learn about DOS back in the day? i know i learned a hell of a lot about it trying to get my games to run better. lets get some great games out, and then kids will want linux to play games, and then when they grow up, and their bosses try to have them use MS stuff, they will rise up and show thier PHB how superior linux is, and they will already be familiar with it.
The difference betewn you and me is that you still have to pay your software, you still have to wait for new versions of your OS to fix problems, and you still have to pay again. While I don't pay, I fix the problems, and will never pay for bug fixing.
My work is done under Linux versions of software, that many times are actually ported from other Unix platforms that are far more stable than windows versions and when I fell like to play games I use my playstation.
The only Linux drawback is that lacks of the Blue Screen Of Death© that is property of MS Corporation...that makes me fell real sad...for you.
Sorry if I had it wrong but I was under the impression that Linux was multitasking but that once a process was in the kernel it was not pre-empted til its timeslice was complete or it blocked on IO. That is pre-emptive multitasking.
As far as threading goes, I was told that Linux has process level threads not kernel level threads. This would mean that threads within a process will not be spread across the CPU's like it does in OS/2. In Linux, I was under the impression that the 2nd CPU wouldn't do anything for on application but only for the next application that was run if the first had CPU #1 close to max'ed out.
I'm not saying Linux sucks, I'm saying that a damn good OS (OS/2) got whacked my MS FUD and I hope Linux can continue to florish as it has in the last 2 years.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Very good. If Linux can show that OSS can improve at a far faster rate than MS could dream of.....
This has to happen because a bad image of Linux by MS PR will be bad for Linux if that is all there is. The press would have to be in on this and be willing to show the new results. I always found it interesting that MS products seem to be benchmarked or marketed shortly before a competitor ships its product. It usually doesn't show up in comparisons for at least 12 months. Game, Set, and Match for some companies.....
I'll be watching this trend to see if the press is more accomidating to Linux.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
He is a pawn played by Bill Gates. He is the marketing director on Windows NT v2 (NT5, W2k). He is the considered to be the head of this Linux Hit Team. He is real and a full blown MS slacky.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I still believe OS/2 was superior to existing products. I'm talking about 1990 and onward. I had paid over $1400 for Consensus UNIX for my 386 and before that it was MicroPort UNIX on a 286. Pretty nice multiuser/multitasking PC operating system. Dos and then Dos/Windows only added a GUI to a poor OS and then IBM did it alone with OS/2 v2.0 (I ran the betas too) that put a nice GUI on a very nice multitasking OS for only alittle more RAM. Nothing touched OS/2 til NT v4 came out and wasn't that around 1996/97? For Six or seven years, OS/2 really didn't have a technical competitor and most of that time it was competing againt Dos/Windows. Paying another $250 for TCP/IP networking hurt but man it was nice playing with client/server development on OS/2 and most of that pleasure comes from its threading model. Guess I'm lazy but I always found thread communications easier then IPCs in *NIX.
I have to seriously start looking into Linux's threading capabilities since my assumptions seem to be wrong based on responses here. I'm seeing parallel now here with Linux and OS/2. In early 1995 when IBM was still heavily advertising OS/2, my developer friends were just starting to ask about OS/2 (after >4 years of my encouragement). All of these people were *NIX and Windows developers and OS/2 was getting enough press to get them interested. I see Linux at the same place today. I just came from a party yesterday where I was talking to a lawyer and he was asking about Linux and a AVID Windows developer friend who has his own business actually put RedHat on one of his PCs. Since Linux has no single PR $$ like IBM has, I hope Linux coverage will continue and some here have said that Microsoft is posibly to thank for that being a likelyhood.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Microsft dropped the OS/2 ball in the late 1980's and IBM brought it into the 32bit world of the 1990's. Oh, wait, you probably weren't old enough to know that. Some of use don't have to do research because we were there.
>MS in fact made most software you know of.
NO. MS made most software bloated. Usually after buying it from some company they first weakened by pre-announcing a competing product that never existed.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No, no, no, you people must be too young to have seen what a Microsoft fed press can do to a superior competitor. OS/2 was annialated in the press with front page stories like OS/2 not having long filename support or that users found it very difficult to use. Even when IBM was selling around 1 million copies a month (selling, not preloads) a Ziff Davis reporter in Europe said IBM was killing OS/2 and the word spread. Later a friend was visiting the head of a Denver Hospitals IT department( they are friends ) and in conversation the IT head said that he had stopped evaluating replacing DOS/Windows with OS/2 because IBM was killing it.
This is what CAN happen to Linux and they have been targetting Linux since October of 1998. Remember the Holloween Document? This is serious folks, they are masters at this.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"they shoould get their own version of UNIX"
They did that once. It was called Xenix. Microsoft wasn't competent to make it an end-user product so they licensed it to Altos, Tandy, IBM and SCO. The attempt at Xenix is where Microsoft got most of the things that differentiate MS-DOS from CP/M, such as subdirectories, I/O redirection, pipes &c. It's only recently that SCO was able to purge the last Microsoft code from their Unix. (I don't know if it's still the case, but Microsoft _did_ own a substantial chunk of SCO).
"the timid die just like the daring; and if you don't take the plunge then you'll just take the fall"-- Michael Longcor
cite the URL or shut up
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> First step, Mr. gates, is to reduce the cist of NT (and do away with that per-licence/per-seat arrangemet).
:)
I've heard NT called something like a cyst before, i assume you mean cost
Seriously, that per-seat stuff is chump change. My company spent like $500 to send me to orientation where they told me where the bathrooms and cafeteria were and showed us a cool video and not a whole lot more. You gotta do that for every new employee. You can re-use a license.
Put your pgp key in a url instead of posting it, okay?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I once spent all day hacking on some perl module I downloaded for a graphing project. Half of it asking about my need for a statistical graphing package, half of it futzing with some internal data to expose it to other program logic. This moved my milestone for prototyping the system by three days. I gave away no IP, my job title and division are public knowledge, I simply said I needed statistical packages for tracking helpdesk incidents. Everyone in the industry knows what that involves. Nor was I compelled in any way to release my work, as it simply wasn't being made public.
That's not theft, that's industry association. I saved the company a lot of time, and my time isn't free.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Like the Mindcraft benchmark/media event, this will wind up making Linux stronger.
It may be hard for us to accept, but some of their complaints about Linux will wind up being true. Then we show them a strength Linux has that they will never have: the Linux developer community. A solution will be created, tested, and deployed in the time it takes Microsoft to organize a project team.
The only way Microsoft can beat us is if we fear looking at our own flaws, and so don't focus on fixing them.
To my knowledge, Java continues to thrive on the back-end where its slow startup times and versioning confusion aren't as relevent.
The main problems Java have had is applets were forced to use version 1.0 for far too long because browsers wouldn't/couldn't support anything better (now hopefully fixed using the plugin - an approach that should've been used from the beginning). And Sun neglected any sort of standardized distribution scheme for Java applications. Which makes starting them harder than it should be.
In short, I think the problems with Java are due to actual Java deficiencies rather than FUD on Microsoft's part.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Acknowledging the competition is a sure sign of trouble. And spreading FUD about them never works. There's no such thing as bad publicity. I have a feeling this is going to blow up in Microsoft's face in a big way.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
- Linux is hyped by those who use it, not by those who are paid to sing its praises.
- The average Linux distribution includes quite a bit of software much younger than 20 years old. Including web browsers/servers that were originally intented/implemented on UNIXen (IIRC).
- No matter what distribution/desktop environment/window manager you use, Linux (and all UNIXen) provides a good engine under the hood. Plenty of good content there.
- "Real software" and games in the same sentance? I think most would agree the Doom/Quake series are good games. And all my work gets done with EMACS, gcc, python, perl, Java, etc. I fail to see how Windows would be of any use whatsoever.
- Linux already gives me more value for development work than Windows ever has. Or likely ever will.
Really, you can't possibly be serious.Ita erat quando hic adveni.
>More hype than it deserves
No, the ability to have a free, stable OS is not hype. It's just good.
>Nothing new from what existed 20 years ago
>(well, actually Unix is older than that...)
Think about what you say before you say it. New apps are developed every day. Besides, if you'll step out of the box and see features as more than command line syntax, you can see that being FREE is a new thing for UNIX. How much did it cost relative to now 20 years ago?
>Lots of special effects, but no real content
>(show me something that Linux can do that other >OS's can't)
It can stay up under large loads without crashing.
It allows you to continue to use your computer for longer periods of time without upgrading.
Forgive me, but I must include the Bewolf clustering and the fact that I don't see a NT cluster making the worlds 16th fastest computer.
Someone please provide the link for that because I don't have it handy.
By the way, how many users can log onto NT Enterprise Server at a time? one?
>Can't hold up on it's own (you still need to >dual boot to nt or 95 to run your real software, >or get any work done, or play any good games.)
The games part was true, but now Quake III, Civ III, Myth II and such are comming out for Linux.
I can't run virues in Linux though. I always have to reboot to Windows when I want to use them.
>We have to wait 3-6 years for it to be worth >anything (who wants suffer waiting for linux to >mature, I'll install it once it can do the >things i need it to do and runs the programs i >need to run).
I can do more with Linux than I can with NT. The only thing NT does better is crash. It does that quite well.
You've obviously either never used Linux or just don't have the disire to be the best. I've used NT. I can speak from experience on both sides. Linux is far superior.
I'm not being mean, but you really just don't have a clue about Linux. Seriously, give it a try. I think you'll be surprised.
Romans 10:9-10
Er..."Grammar" does matter.
(see comment this is in reply to)
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The paradigm shift from closed source / proprietary solutions and standards to open standards, open source, and peer review as a model for software development is simply too fundamental for Microsoft, or anyone else, to do more than throw a momentary splash of cold water on the movement. The free software movement applies the scientific and intellectual paradigm of free information exchange and peer review that has been the foundation of western culture's technological advancement for the last several centuries to a medium ideally suited to foster and enhance it: the internet.
Microsoft, and others like them who cling to the old proprietary, closed, buggy, unreliable way of doing things are much like the old alchemests, with their jelously guarded secret formulas and haphazard methods of research. Bring in the scientific method, with its free flow of information, openly shared knowledge, and (often merciless) peer review. The result? While the alchemests of the day undoubtably dismissed, and then derided the early chemists in much the same way Microsoft does Linux, and the Free Software community as a whole, it was the chemists who thrived, unlocking a torrent of secrets hitherto incomprehensible to humankind. Today chemistry thrives as a science and an industry. Alchemy on the other hand is dead.
Consider the worst case scenerio: Microsoft succeeds in convincing the whole of corporate America, or even the entire corporate world, that Linux and Open Source is a farce. What happens? We keep on doing exactly what we're doing. Sooner or later someone starts a company competing with MicrosoftUser Corp., but likes Linux or FreeBSD better and uses it. We all know the advantages of Linux et. al. over the offerings of Microsoft. All other things being equal, the startup company crushes MicrosoftUser Corp.
Even if Microsoft ties up Linux companies in software patent lawsuits (frivolouse or otherwise) and succeeds in killing Linux in the US, there is still the rest of the planet. The likely result: the United States becomes a backwater in the software world while the rest of the planet rushes forward, applying a vastly superior paradigm which is not only proving itself in the software world in the form of Open Source, but has already proven itself time and time again in every other field of scientific and engineering endeaver. Against the free exchange of ideas and peer review the alchemists and proprietary software vendors, with their secret, mysterious formulas, simply cannot win.
Even with the might of the US Government behind them (which they clearly do not, and probably never will, have), the only way for Microsoft and its ilk to kill the free software movement would be to kill or imprison every last developer, user, and supporter of it, worldwide. Kill Linus Torvalds? Alan Cox steps forward to take his place. Kill Alan? Someone else steps forward. The Catholic church, with its grip on power, was unable to stop the renaissance and the birth of modern science, even by torturing and killing as many early scientists as they could get their hands on. Does anybody think Microsoft will fare any better against us?
This doesn't mean Microsoft can't cause us a great deal of grief with their immense wealth, only that, no matter the grief they do cause us, in the long run they've already lost the war.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ah, this must be Microsoft FUD
Percentage of Web Servers running Linux: 31.3%
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Just taking some time to read the linux-kernel list is very heartening. The features being put into e3fs and the 2.3 series kernel are leaps and bounds above what we have today. The fact is we are progressing on all fronts and as long a we keep up the momentum not even moutains of FUD from M$ will be able to stop it.
I dunno -- I hear from IT types all of the time "We don't care if the product is broken -- we just want the vendor to admit it and fix it." Linux projects do this very well.
Microsoft of course is one of the worst vendors for documenting their bugs and providing timely fixes (although they've been better lately about security problems). Trying to whitewash flaws in Linux or screaming "FUD!" is essentially playing the same game as Microsoft.
(Even when Microsoft promises a feature in Windows 2000, they are essentially admitting that NT4 is broken or feature deficient in some respect. Why can't Linux people do the same?)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Strange, isn't it? NT is utterly demolished at the high end. They've practically given away the low-end. They're trying to tell a story about the middle-high range, but they can't unless they pick what is currently the wrong competitor.
I think Microsoft is painfully aware of this. Where NT was originally positioned to be a viable competitor to OS/2 and NetWare back in the days when "PC LAN" management was seperate from the "Data Center", they've found themselves in the position where people are actually buying $100,000s of hardware and software to run a line of business NT applicaiton and not having the best luck at it.
The only way for Microsoft to keep growing is to get more and more of this "Datacenter" market share, and so they've promised that Win2000 will scale higher than NT4. At the same time they can't let Linux (and Novell) to eat their lunch on the departmental server level. Tough line to walk, especially when you have a one-size-fits all product.
Where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be is *painfully* obvious -- the desktop. Microsoft knows that control of modern computing is centered around the desktop. This is where you can make and break standards.
The only reason the desktop is the center of modern computing is because people have bought into Microsoft-style computing. The average corporate user would probably be served best by a XTerm or an NC, *if* the applications are there. One of the best way for Linux to take over the desktop is to provide a more managable solution than Microsoft does. I don't see that right now, because desktop Linux users+programmers are primarily the home/hobbiest types.
(PS - I snuck my Atari 810 unit in, but someone tried to throw it in the garbage, along with a bunch of valuable EISA cards.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Then again, the BSOD is largely a bit of folklore to many Linux users, who've never used NT and just talk about it a lot online.
Probably true - Most probably are familiar with a Windows 95 or 3.1 blue screen, which could happen with an application crash or just by removing a disk from the A: drive at the wrong time, and are confusing this with an NT BSOD, which only happens with a kernel crash (and is usually hardware related.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actually, OS/2 was evaluated by corporate IT departments and either adopted or not adopted before Windows NT was even released and certainly before IBM tried the desperation move of pushing Warp through retail. (You can take the big retail sales of RedHat at the same face value as the big retail sales of OS/2 a few years back.)
{It's true that OS/2 was technically superior in many respects, but it also had some pretty severe technical problems, such as being very closely tied to IBM brand hardware in the earlier releases, and a UI that actually was difficult to use, and a $300 TCP/IP stack, and so on. However, OS/2 Server's biggest problem it was a PC application server before most people decided they needed PC application servers, and probably was before it's time in this respect.}
Windows NT has stolen server market share from just about everyone (OS/2, UNIX, NetWare, VAX) except the AS/400 in the 1990s. Sure the good press helped, but Microsoft was able to do this primarily because their competitors were bloated and slow and stuck in their own little vertical markets and high prices. A revived Novell, IBM, and Sun are starting to change this equasion, so Microsoft's problems look like they're running deeper than just Linux.
As far as "targeting" Linux goes, what does everyone expect? Every vendor "targets" their competitors. It's not as if Microsoft is going to sit there and say "Well, they're just a bunch of idealistic kids, so let them eat our lunch!"
What's more likely is a very cheap version of Windows 2000 Server to make their products look more cost effective.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
If we let Microsoft, or anyone else, shift the discussion away from creating and improving the OS, we've already lost.
A pithy quotation of someone I've never met.
GrammAr perhaps? :)
Fink
Microsoft is doing it's damnest to kill the open source (read: free alternative to it's products) movement and is picking linux first because it's most dangerous to them in the short run. Bill Gates sees us the same way he saw all the unix gurus and creators way back in the 70's. "Why would anyone NOT want to charge obscene amounts of money for their software?" It's simple, Freedom to Innovate. Microsoft's survey on their website asking if they should be allowed to "innovate" without intervention by an outside party. We can all see right through this scam, they don't care about innovation, just information control. They want to stamp out linux and the entire open source community because it shows people what "Freedom to innovate" really means. Let them make an anti-linux group, it will make more people open their eyes and take a look at us. The more money they throw at us trying to make us back down the more they look like the evil empire. Like many others have also said, their critiques are excellent for us. It gives us a clear direction to move in. Microsoft can point out a bug or a feature that isnt supported and within weeks or months it will be fixed or added. Thats the beauty of open source, you literally have the intelligence of thousands of developers working for you. You're more of a real community when you can share source code and ideas for programs, not some artificial world that you're thrown into to give you a semblence of community and comraderie.
To illustrate the point, think about all of slashdot's users. Many if not all of us work with computers for a living. Many are very talented programmers, others are great at graphics or other multimedia, some may be good at basic design, ect.. If we all worked with each other towards a single goal, in true GNU open source fashion, we could beat the hell out of any Microsoft product. Why? Because it's a labor of love (for many of us) to work towards making systems run faster or better. We also have less limits than a single company with billions of dollars and 96 Compaq Proliant webservers. if you think about it, our livlihood (unless you program, design, ect.) doesn't rest on the product we're making, we can bring in any help we need (free of charge) from the outside, and since it's a community effort, everyone's stregnths are utilized. This is why open source works and works well, the brain pool is basically unlimited, you don't worry about someone else stealing your ideas, and if you do something wrong you dont worry about being fired, or made to work on Windows 3.1 with an 80 MB hard drive.
My scenario already exists, it IS the open source movement. Microsoft, you can't kill the open source movement. Throughout history it's been proven that a good idea and people willing to take up arms (perverbial or literal) to defend it wins out in the end.
Thanks Richard, you've given me something to rant about. LONG LIVE GNU/GPL!!!!.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
There is a major difference when dealing with the Linux community though. The thing that many people (including those at Microsoft) forget is that we don't HAVE to use Linux, we want to. We aren't being forced to use it. I might be a sucker, but I think that human nature will eventually prevail, and that people will eventually realize that with Microsoft, there is no choice involved. Choice is the essence of what makes us human. We chose Linux. And no one can take that from us. :-)
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
I don't think that's going to happen. I've heard of regular users having the ability to write drivers for windows. So any good size company should be able to do it without help from monoposoft.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
The guy running the group is a marketing director?!?! That's like asking a car salesman what that showroom model will/won't do. No thanks. I'll talk to the engineers at least.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Knowing M$'s knack for embracing and extending other company's technologies (so far through acquisition of those companies), what is to stop M$ from e/e the Linux source code into NT 2001?
Is there a fairly easy way for the GPL to be enforced if that were to happen?
Does the GPL cover the entire tree of source code, or would it apply to individual files, or even smaller snippets of code?
Either way, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the MS engineers begin their testing.
Gordo
Get a grip. How is it that everyone except you is a sheep? If you want to give away your democratic rights to private enterprises over which you have no control, fine. I'm not interested in having unrestrained capitalism trample on my human rights. If you think you'd survive a minute in the world you long for, you are a fool.
Every second that I spend at work is mine, not my employer's. I work for my own satisfaction and adhere to my moral principles. Organizations are built from cooperating human beings, not slaves.
First they would have to prove that the person developed it on "company" time. An iffy proposition to begin with ("I brought it in to print it and forgot to delete it"). This is assuming that the company is not paying the person to develop Open Source and/or GPL release. Many companies are.
....
Second they would have to prove loss from the code. Check the copyright laws. If the company did not submit the code to the Feds for copyright, they cannot receive punitive damages. They can receive actual damages, but they would have to prove they suffered damages.
Third, years later the lawyers would get all the money leaving the company out BIG bucks with nothing but a bunch of mad and/or unhappy programmers.
-- There are also afternoons, evenings, nights, days off, holidays, rain days, snow days,
Why be afraid?
Because nobody will buy Linux from us anymore? Don't forget that we're not even selling...
Or because Men in Black will come into my house, take all my Linux CD's, put Windows on my PC's, and zap all of my memory of that great OS?
The worst MS can do is stop selling Windows, so that everybody turns to Linux in the multi-millions. The Linux support infrastructure isn't quite ready for 100 million clueless users... I'm still doubting, would that be a luxury problem or not?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Just disappeared with the release of RealPlayer G2 for Linux. No more reboots just to see an interview.
At work, more and more services move to Linux. The ancient NT server is toddling away at the Lotus Notes database, and with the upcoming release of Domino R5 Server for Linux that machine will be slaughered too...
I'll buy the OnStream 30GB drive as soon as there's a generic Linux driver for it.
There is enough market for Linux for it to be worth it's hype, for it to be significantly new (there is no alternative to Linux for my needs). Linux can be installed and used legally and for free by everybody (that is the 'show me something' that you asked for).
Just my 2ct.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
This is really good advice, and if everyone followed it, it would hurt MS tremendously. A heterogenious environment requires interoperability standards, and simply cannot tolerate the embrace-and-extend strategy. One poster mentioned at he can't run Linux because his company is dependant on proprietary "features" of MSIE and Outlook. But if the company already had some Macs in the office, doing their thing, some Unix boxes doing their thing, maybe even some Doze boxes doing their thing, then MSIE and Outlook dependence never would have been possible to establish.
With heterogeniety, embrace-and-extend doesn't work. Without embrace-and-extend, Microsoft has to compete. With Microsoft competing, everybody wins (except Microsoft stockholders).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Don't complain about a lack of software, do something about it!
The problem is I have way better things to do with my time that reinvent the wheel for the 600th time. I'm not going to write an Outlook clone just so I can use linux. I'm only going to use linux when there is an Outlook available.
Doing something about the lack of software only makes sense if you have a vested interested in seeing the platform survive. I don't. Linux is just an OS.
I pulled Win98 off my computer, and put Win95 back on. I found Win98 to be MUCH less stable, and I need one or the other to operate my HP printer/scanner. (Well, and some other software too. Linux hasn't totally converted me yet. [But with that 2b bill on the horizon, it's going to!])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Illegal? Not if it's being done where US Patents aren't recognized as valid. (And I'm beginning to see lots of arguments for THAT position. Something I never expected of myself.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, when I can't connect to a site, I frequently assume that it's too busy. Not always correctly, but frequently. :-)
P.S.: Look at the number of messages.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You are right, but why did you count Java out? I sure haven't. It's not the be-all end-all, and for system level work C is better, but Java has areas where it is unmatched. (I hate garbage collection in C/C++ Mega-work!)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Many folk seem to have believed that OS/2 was far superior to the alternatives that they were faced with. IBM just didn't see themselves as being in the software business (remember, originally they hired MS to write the OS for the IBM/PC).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Maybe we should be happy for all of the folk who believe that Red Hat is a version of Linux. MS is unlikely to "split" Red Hat.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You are confusing cost with price. The cost to them is only related to the price if the individual in question would otherwise have purchased their product. Since I have already purchased the last MS product that I intend to purchase, I don't think that my use of Linux has any effect on their cost. But rather than use Win98 I use Win95, although I've bought both. And I have NO intention of buying W2K. (Or O2K either, if you must be inclusive).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are a lot of former victims who are former because they no longer exist.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Don't believe too hard what the flacks tell you. Yes, Java was touted as the be-all end-all one language to do everything
(One code to run on all, one code to find them...)
but a lot of that was marketing puffery. Java as transmitted by Sun is an interpreted language. It has the benefits and the drawbacks of an interpreted language. Only if someone were REALLY interested in the JVM-chip would that change, and Sun didn't push that one hard enough to get it off the ground (I think the constant stream of new Intel chips had something to do with that!).
If IEx drops support for Java, then Java may need to retreat to embedded systems and local applications, but the only competition that it faces in dynamic code is from Lisp, Dylan, Smalltalk, et. al. And they don't have the kind of support base needed. (But see also the "Languages for the Java VM" web page (I forget the URL right now) for a *HOST* of languages that link with Java.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I can see Micros~1 getting mighty testy after all this is said and done.
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
This has nothing to do with who has the better multitasking, who has more stability, or who can throughput more data. It's all about politics and money. Already Microsoft hands huge grips of cash to many render-farms to switch away from Macs and SGI's to NT. Already Microsoft spreads propaganda to IT's about NT's server performance.
Can't be bought? Maybe all you Linux fans can't, but the MIS or IT who has to decide between doing work on Linux or getting a fat check from Microsoft for switching to NT can be. I can already name several game developers who've been offered six-figure "developer assistance" to switch their development away from Macs and SGI machines.
By NOT playing their game. Folks, we got where we are by doing things our own way. Once M$ gets you to play their game, you lose. Stop worrying, comparing, or competing. If Ghandi had ever started playing by the old empire rules, we wouldn't even had heard of him. Listen to Linus, he plays his own game with his own rules. M$ doesn't faze him, so it shouldn't faze us. Keep the faith folks, Linux Rules.
Micros~1: "Linux doesn't do this, and Linux doesn't support that."
Linux Community: Gee, thanks for the ideas, we'll go add that now.
You forgot:
~2 weeks later: Here ya go...
This is the real strength of the linux community, that improvements and bug fixes don't depend on any managing entity's approval. There is no formal "Roadmap" thought up by Techno-wonks 30 years out of date on the engineering/technology. (Hiya, Billy!)
I really can't understand M$'s soi-disant "vision" of some "Internet appliance" so easy to use that dogs and small children understand it thoroughly. If I want my freakin' toaster on the internet, I'll be sure and tell you, guys. Meanwhile, how about concentrating on building an OS that RELIABLY does what you say it will, and doesn't hang up the entire (supposedly) multi-tasking machine because the GUI errors, and your kernel doesn't have the kitchen sink folded into it.
I'll give you 'till, oh, say 2010...
The Doctor is OUT!...
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Maybe he meant it sarcastically?
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Actually, this is probably the best way to derail Linux deployment.
Strategically it would operate this way:
1) processor power is continually increasing
2) as processor power increases, the cost of servicing interrupts goes up
3) you can lower the performance hit by using channel processors ( this is how mainframes get more power)
4) add channel processors to the PC by using I2O ( intelligent I/O)
5) pay the HW vendors to only write MS drivers for the channel processors by exclusive agreements including non-disclosure provisions
6) publish the benchmarks showing performance gains with the captive HW.
Of course, we can play that game too......
Been there, done that...
Login to a SCO OpenServer box sometime.
You'll see that there's a line "(C) 1980-1994 Microsoft Corporation".
Funny, huh? They had it, and sold it. I can't entirely blame them. SCO ain't that great. Then again, MS might have something to do with how it works now. I don't see them buying the stuff they sold to SCO anytime soon.
That is *unless* you were being sarcastic.
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
Whups. Didn't know about that. Thanks.
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
There's a common mistake around at techies and techie-companies (I count MS as a techie-company).
..." ...."
The mistake is to belive that every company does think about IT a lot - this is wrong. Some IT's are in a horrible state.
My company works for BIG companies and most of the people in the management haver NEVER heard anything about linux. There are just some pople in the IT department, but they have to buy what the managment tells them to. Often they themselves have no clue at all.
And the managers often DON'T think about TOC, etc...
So imagine the following dialog...
MS-Guy: "Hello, today I want to tell you some bad facts about the Linux-OS."
manager: "Ehm - Linux-OS?"
MS-guy: "Yes, Linux, the so called free operating system.."
manager: "Whaddaya mean, free?"
MS-guy: "Yes, they say it's free, you can download it for free or buy for $1.99, but it's not free at all."
manager: "You mean, no bucks for licenses?"
MS-guy: "Yes, but it's not scalable, it's for small machines only - look, we have a benchmark on this 50000$ machine, and
manager: "Small machines? You mean we needn't to buy another big server for Win 2000 as a webserver? And it's really free?"
MS-guy: "Yes, but
[1 hour later, managers office, IT-guy is there]
manager: "Do you know linux, what is it? The MS-guy told me it's for free. Please find out some facts till tomorow."
IT-guy: "well, eh, I'll see..."
I don't think we can blame Microsoft for Java's "failure". Sun has over-hyped, overpromised, and underdelivered late. Sun has played marketing games (ISO anyone?) but refuses to loosen their grip over Java code and standards.
I don't think Java has failed, though. It's must favorite language these days. It just hasn't delivered what Sun had promised..
cpeterso
On my Windows 98 email machine, I averaged 1.2 crashes per day over a three week period.
My Windows NT Workstation development machine rarely "crashes", but it deadlocks, freezes, and hangs about three times per week.
:-(
cpeterso
The Free Software Song
ouch.. that hurts.
cpeterso
... as long as they were GPLed.
I'd hate to see even commercial OSes disappear because choice is good. Both for the user and for the developer.
But please, how is Apple better than Microsoft? Even with that Darwin thing. Even with Mach underneath.
Eventually all mass consumer software will become free. Whoever wants to escape the wrath of the creditors should think of becomming an ISP or web portal, or whatever.
> Linux brings back the fun in computing.
Yep. I always sat on a computer because it's FUN.... Networking is fun, setting up servers is fun, configging firewals is fun. When I used to use Win95, I was losing touch with the machine. Since I discovered Linux in 1996, I haven't looked back. Linux really puts that sense of Control back into your hands!
W can be written as V/? only in 13375p33|.
W = V/ = VI
umm yeah.
religion is a dangerous thing if misused.
Lowmag.net
Microsoft would never hire script kiddies just to make Linux look bad. That would be a dirty trick and we know they never, ever, ever do anything like that.
Allright. Many many here have responded with great fanfare and great hoopla. It may be justified to an extent. The prevaling thought is that since Microsoft has taken up arms against this community, you will surely sail to easy victory, since you outnumber them in developers. Well...
This could be *BAD* for linux. Here's how:
1) 16% of servers are installed with Linux, or thereabouts now. If they instead were installed NT, they could be turned into about $5 billion in revenue. In other words, for each server NT can win back from Linux, they will have about $10,000 to continue the fight against Linux with. For each server we convert, OTOH, Red Hat has $20 profit and a "convert" or two. The message is clear, don't give them any ground, if possible.
2) They've won before. OS/2, Macintosh, other unixes... Linux has two things: a large developer population, and a medium sized user population (intersecting; as with any OS.) We don't outnumber the M$ heads, NOT BY ANY ACCOUNT. The number of people who not just tolerate M$ but like it (or even LOVE it) is larger than Linux-lovers. M$ software sucks, but it gets better, too. And there are more developers on the dark side.
3) It is rumorred that FUD can be fought in court, that the ongoing anti-trust trial will break Microsoft in two, and vanquish it. Well, maybe, maybe not. Truth is, the recent boom in Linux has been fuelled by the obvious degradation of the Windows platform that comes from Microsoft being in court with it's product's future at stake. The linux community may have played into M$'s hands... Judge Jackson may have been to Office Depot recently, and he may have noticed a competitor on the shelves. If the gov't can no longer prove there is a single monopoly, M$ wins the trial. And when the trial ends, you can bet M$ won't reform itself!
4) Legal action against the GPL. If M$ were to underhandedly (and when hasn't it?) use GPL'd code in its product, and legally defends its actions, two things happen:
a)Whether the GPL holds or not, M$ loses no money.
b)The GPL may not hold, undercutting Linux's basic
protection. And doing it "legally".
Let's face it: In a war, there are casualties. In a war, there is suffering. In a war, both sides
lose something they may never replace.
It's a war, and I don't know what you are so happy about.
-Ben
Anyone who expects 100% uptime from Slashdot is a fool. Rob has made clear that he has hacked tons of code for it, and it's unstable. I'll bet it crashed, and someone wasn't around to restart it, but so what? The OS might have been fine, might have been a full disk, might have been a faulty hardware card (ever notice that some _hardware_ like to be rebooted when it gets screwed up?)
./ed EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!
Slashdot is amazing: it's still up considering that it's
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
So when I'm running NT, and the screen suddenly turns blue, it's not NT?
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
I was simply reversing your logic. Of course, Linux isn't the perfect solution. Neither is NT. However, most (not all) would agree that NT isn't quite as stable as Linux. I have yet to crash a Linux release kernel. I cannot say the same about a release NT kernel.
Yes Virginia, there is a Blue Screen of Death.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
They are also unintentionally
pointing out the stuff that needs to be fixed.
Incredibly stupid move on microsoft's part.
Excellent point. It could really blow up in Microsoft's face if they create a benchmark favorable to them and beat Linux, only to get beaten handily in the same benchmark 3 months later (after Apache and/or the kernel developers fine-tune for that benchmark).
Talk about a coup for open source!
We have to be professional about this. What microsoft are doing will probably raise awareness of GNU/Linux and other free operating systems. They may try to discredit us. If we are to stand up to their accusations, I say the name-calling must stop. For a while it was funny to write M$ or Mickeysoft but this gives the wrong impression. Name-calling is generally used as a last resort when logical arguments have failed - let us acknowledge the strengths of NT (ease of installation for one) but emphasise the benefits of Linux over it (which I don't think I need to list ;)
I agree that on the surface, the snide KDE and GNOME remark was thrown in as troll bait, but I'm not so sure. This person probably has had bad luck with those programs, slowly downloaded over a 14,4 modem and is probably sick to death of hearing about them / reading about them and wants to report it straight away so no one says
We should just remind that going back to fvwm or twm is still an option on a glibc, 2.2 distribution.
Peace.
This also brings up another point. Microsoft has divided up their market. NT for servers, 9x for desktops, CE for embedded. They have realized their mistake and are now trying to merge it again with Win2000 (though we know how successful that will be.) We are already there with Linux! We have Gnome, KDE, and other GUI's for home users. We have an awesome kernal and server software for servers. And work is being done on the embedded side. This, IMO, is Linux biggest advantage! In this, we are a step ahead.
GNU/* is cool. (Sorry for the GNU designation. I know this offends some people. It is just easier type
--
Where do you get this from, have you actually seen this in print?
A large cluster of machines that work together to render 3D animation. This is a cost effective way to get really fast rendering times on 3D animation.
The argument from Microsoft that compition is "thriving" now is driving me insane. The trial is about what they *did*, not what they are currently doing. I can't believe that the DOJ lawyers are going along with this.
I think we need to remind the DOJ lawyers that M$ is in court because of what they *did*, not what is going on now.
If some whacko goes and beats someone with a tire iron, but that victim is able to fully heal and recover. Do you think the assailant would get off by saying "Hey, look! He's fine. There's no perminent damage. Therefore, I didn't do anything wrong."? That's exactly what M$ is doing.
About a month ago, there was a story here from somebody who had done a job search on "Linux" at Apple. I though it was clever, so I did the same search at MS and found one job advertised. It's in the marketing department. I saw no need to fan the anti-MS flames by posting it here, but the job is still listed as of today, so you can check it out for yourself.
Once I tasted UNIX there was no way I could ever be happy with a single user OS again. NT and linux are just too different. Im sorry but PC Anywhere just doesnt cut it. If MS wants to hinder the growth of Linux they shoould get their own version of UNIX to compete. To get a jumpstart, the should buy SCO and offer it as an additional product..
This is a very interesting move on Micros~1's part. Up until this point, they've always been competing with companies, tangible entities that can be defeated.
:) All we have is our code and our passion, and they can never take those away from us.
Criticize us! Please! It only gives us ideas to better our software. Here's my impression of the situation:
Micros~1: "Linux doesn't do this, and Linux doesn't support that."
Linux Community: Gee, thanks for the ideas, we'll go add that now.
The important thing to stress is that while Linux poses a threat to Micros~1, they can NEVER pose a threat to Linux. There's nothing to threaten. They can never take it away from us. They can never prevent us from doing what we want with it. We're not like a company, we can't go under, you can't take us to court, you can't DEFEAT us because there's nothing to defeat. Anything they can do we can do better and faster and cheaper, because we don't have a bottom line to worry about. All we need be concerned with is good software.
We don't even have money to lose
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Linux didn't make it into the company I work for through traditional means (salespeople, marketing presentations, free golf vacations.) It is not supported through traditional means (certified individuals, classes, etc.) There was a need and Linux filled it. The management of the company was desperate for solutions that would keep their web servers up and available for a high-percentage of the day. Just to test various strategies of server configuration was more expensive and time consuming with Microsoft products (and we have Premier support!) We are lucky enough to have several people on staff who are literate with writing and compiling code. The plugins and patches we had to search and wait for with NT are written by enthusiastic computer professionals who don't feel strangled and frustrated by having to wait for someone else to provide the necessary software. We still use NT for our Exchange servers, but we also use NetWare and Solaris. Each has its place. Fortunately there are alternatives to using Microsoft software for everything.
10 people assigned to closely watch Linux. They well, no doubt, be installing, tweaking, and really getting under the hood.
:)
What are the chances that some of them will become Linux converts?
I have to disagree on the NT security bit. NT has a secure mode that beats anything we can code into Linux. You can tell that your NT machine has entered secure mode because your entire screen turns blue.
--The basis of all love is respect
Believe you me, they will. And some of us will react by trying to hide what we are doing from Microsoft. The act of hiding stuff from Microsoft is what may kill Open Source (or at least maim it for a decade or two). Whether Microsoft understands this or not, I do not know.
The chief difference between Microsoft and Linux development models is openness. One of the central theories of Open Source is that a million people, communicating for all the world to see via a medium that supports it, can outthink a thousand people sworn to secrecy.
This isn't just Open Source theory, either; it's cryptography theory. The best cryptographic algorithms are published so that people can try to crack them. Only the keys are kept secret; the code itself is exposed to the light of day, and the attacks of thousands of professional crackers. A cracker from J. Random Big Software House, paid to verify the integrity of an encryption algorithm, can find a bug well before a criminal is likely to. The professional cracker finds the bug, others analyze it and release patches, and the cracker is again thwarted.
Don't worry about Microsoft knowing the strategies of the Open Source movement; they will. We can't prevent that without secretive communications. Once we do that, we're playing the proprietary game, and we have lost. History will see OSS as an unworkably idealistic social theory, and the names of RMS and ESR will be hung up like that of Karl Marx.
When I think of a strategy that Microsoft can use, I post it here so that the OSS can be prepared with a counterstrategy. Basically, I treat any possible Microsoft strategic attack as a bug in the Open Source movement. Sure, Microsoft will be able to see it.
Big deal. I don't have enough ego to think that I can come up with many good anti-OSS strategies that they didn't. I'm not smart enough to give Microsoft a lot of good ideas.
But every time I post a possible Microsoft strategy, thousands of Slashdotters see it. With enough eyes, all Microsoft strategies are counterable. I post Microsoft strategies because we can produce countermeasures faster than they can utilize the strategies.
Post strategies that Microsoft can use. Post counterstrategies if you can come up with them. For God's sake, don't shut up! As the gay community taught the OSS community:
Silence = Death
--The basis of all love is respect
Linux has been ready for the "buzz explosion" for some time now. Microsoft went into the DOJ trial, nad has been failing miserably. They have needed to show that there is competition, that they are not a monopoly.
I believe that tons of money got invested into Linux precisely because of the DOJ trial. Before this trial, nothing was keeping Microsoft from cutting off anybody who supported Linux.
Now that the buzz is in full explosion, MS can show the DOJ that it is competition and attack it as such. Personally, I don't care how the trial goes; the fact that it happened at all has made the difference.
Another side effect of the trial is that Microsoft is forced to spout the virtues of Linux to the courts to defend the theory that Linux is indeed a contender. They then have to turn around and tell the market that Linux is not a contender.
With some money and some lawyers, Microsoft will start finding themselves back in court--for false advertising, slander, and/or perjury. You cannot lie under oath, you cannot make false claims in advertising, so contradicting your testimony with your marketing is a criminal offense of one sort or another.
My question is, who has both the money and the motive to spend it on lawyers? Everybody seems to be investing in Red Hat, but I don't know their budgetary situation. IMHO, the best anti-FUD is to overturn said FUD in court.
The trick is to keep Microsoft fighting fair. They win when they can operate unhindered by the law. They lose when the law catches up with them.
--The basis of all love is respect
Just for the record:
:)
B = 66
I = 73
L = 76
L = 76
G = 71
A = 65
T = 84
E = 69
S = 83
I = 1
I = 1
I = 1
Hey! Those three "I"'s at the end have the value ONE?!?!??!
Make a call; it's either 49 for each of them, or 73 for each of them. Which just goes to show -- you can get anything out of anything if you're willing to fudge it long enough and rationalize hard enough.
... and to think people actually buy into this crapola.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Yeah... it's funny; I just wish it was internally consistent as well. Is that too much to ask?
I mean it explicitly says "take the ASCII representations of each of these characters", and then fudges the last 3 characters. And it ignores spaces.
:)
Coming soon - pyrogyra
>Microsoft appears to be very serious with this project.
Enough with the "serious" nonsense. "Serious" is for the note-monkeys in high school who substitute ambition and drudgework for intelligence. I'll take brilliance over seriousness any day.
You can pretend to be serious. You can't pretend to be witty.
>Be afraid. Very afraid.
Fear is not a good word. Fear is a word to lose by. If we want to win this fight, we will have to overcome our fear. One alternative is anger; it is very easy to convert fear to anger, and much more productive in a fight.
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Absolutely! :)
Microsoft understood the Linux community when they posted their results. They had a good idea how we would react. What they also knew is that more effort would be put into SMP scaling and high-end features. Why would Microsoft do this? It would seem to be to their advantage to get Linux to accelerate its development on high-end features so it could do battle with the the larger UNIX manufacturers.
There's lot of benefits from Microsoft's perspective. They have a poor story to tell on high end systems, so if Linux takes some steps forward there, it is no loss. But what is more interesting is that they begin to encroach on Sun, IBM, HP, etc in the higher performance computing. Microsoft would love for Linux to develop high end features and to take on the major UNIX vendors. Less heat for Microsoft, more heat for Linux.
Heck, if I were Microsoft, I would actually pay coders to develop high-end Linux features!
A few random points...
Documentation is going to help us out here, and I'm *not* talking about explaining the source code or the way the software works. Documenting our activities, and documenting theirs. The number of hours spent on the code, the number of individual bug fixed, the number of new features... they all provide powerful statistics which prove that the Bizaar has overwhelmed the Cathedral.
Aside from documenting our activities, we need to document Microsoft's. When a software developer starts courting Linux does an about-face due to a Microsoft donation/investment, it needs to be recorded. One can imagine the powerful counter to a Microsoft announcement of 'victory' in a certain application field, when it is shown step-by-step the coersion that took place that is NOT related to the quality of the software and why people have chosen it.
May the better PRODUCT win!
That is *NOT* the issue. High-end systems, while interesting, and good to tune for, may not be where Linux should be in the near-term.
The _server_ battle is not won by getting a Linux server performing a major task at AT&T. While a nice feather in the cap, the battle is won (and the dollars are shifted) at the lower levels, where the everyday medium to small company is. And that's where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be.
Where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be is *painfully* obvious -- the desktop. Microsoft knows that control of modern computing is centered around the desktop. This is where you can make and break standards. This is where you can impose the most leverage. (Sun knows this to, which is why they're trying to change the game to fat servers with thin clients.)
Who knows? We may be seeing more high-end benchmarks down the road that are given by Microsoft to independent parties to run. The funny thing is that if you stack NT up to one of the mature commercial UNIX operating systems, NT falls short.
Strange, isn't it? NT is utterly demolished at the high end. They've practically given away the low-end. They're trying to tell a story about the middle-high range, but they can't unless they pick what is currently the wrong competitor.
download the demos
www.qnx.com I think.
one floppy . . . modem or network support
web browser
web SERVER
graphix support
blows me away
Actually, most of you have missed my point, I don't like MS, I hate them, I love the free market concept, and I have stated over and over again Linux will win, but this is not the way to do it. I also bitch about people not doing their research before bitching, I love a good debate. People do have a choice, they make a decision and you can get Linux pre-installed now on some major players systems. I am not trolling (at least not today) I use Linux at home and would be using it right now at the office if that machine wasn't tied up doing backups to 8 DLT drives (A feat NT has no hope of accomplishing). So just a side not, nope not a troll_ _____________
__________________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
I believe I pointed out that two businesses I owned already didn't succeed in the current world, they weren't good enough. Darwinism in the business world, man, only the strong survive_ _______________
________________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
There is not even anything wrong with having that as your primary goal. The problems arise when making that money is the only goal and especially when making money is the only consideration. I know several people where I work who don't want money. They think it is evil somehow. One girl once tried to get a job where she got paid by barter believe it or not. A few months went by an she realized she couldn't live and got a job that paid her money. In any physical system there is energy present performing work. In our economic system that energy is money. The process of making money is simply the action of controlling a portion of that energy. Now you can control it in such a way that good things are created by it, or you can control it in such a way that bad things, or useless things are created by it. Microsoft is simply a case where one man controls huge ammount of energy and fights to keep anyone else from controlling any. This is known as greed and past a certain point it becomes very harmful. Not so much for the effects that Gates has caused as for the ones he prevented others from creating. Now he's putting his effort into stopping linux because it threatens his ability to continue gaining more and more money. I don't personally believe that there is anything he can do to truly stop it. Not because I'm a linux user and therfore biased and myopic, but because of the lessons that history teaches us. Anytime power is consolidated in the hands of a few, and that power is misused, the many will take the necessary steps to remedy the situation. Linux represents only one facet of an emerging phenomenon which I call the Fuck Microsoft phenomenon. This is the same thing that once happened to IBM. There was a time when everyone bought IBM as a matter of course, to choose a product from another company was in some cases to risk your job. IBM obtained that power through unethical practices much like the ones that Microsoft uses now, where do you thing Microsoft learned them from? But then came a time when the tide turned because people began to hate IBM. There were those who would not buy a product if it was from IBM, even if it was the best available. IBM slowly learned from this lesson and with some new blood became the company it is today, a sleeping giant. Unfortunately Microsoft is unable to make this kind of change as long as Gates is at the helm, which basically means for many years to come unless he gets hit by a bus. But that will not stop the revolution which is only now beginning to show itself. Microsoft's position is dependent on its customers and I believe that more and more of its customers are going to choose something else. Linux isn't exactly (l)user friendly and yet it is making progress against windows which tries to be as point and drool as possible. Were Microsoft a good company this would not be happening. If linux ever evolves to the point where your average computer phobic office employee can make good use of it, Microsoft's choke hold on the software industry will be broken and we will all be given the "freedom to innovate."
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
It's always a serious mistake to underestimate the capabilities of your opponent. They aren't devoid of engineering talent, in spite of sneers on /. to the contrary. They have plenty of marketing smarts, and very deep pockets. Plus they'll be fighting for their survival, at least, the NT business will be. I'd have to say that Linux is still the underdog, though it has considerable assets too.
"I see great things in baseball" - Walt Whitman
I once saw a japanese poem at a friends home...and it came right back to me right now, quite suitable:
:)
If you think you are important, go get a jug of water.
Set the jug on the table before you and let the water calm down.
Stick your hand in the water.
When you remove your hand the water will take it's place causing waves...but eventually the waves will go away.
You can move your hand around in the water creating greater waves but as you remove it, eventually even the greatest of waves will calm down.
And this my friend is what happends with you after you are gone. You will create waves but even those waves will cease with time....
Sounds to me like Linux is a jug of water and Microsoft is sticking it's hand in it....
(Of course the poem sounded better when it was in the translation I read with respect of rhyme etc.....this was just a feeble attempt of translation)
Nice. Looks like Microsoft is experiencing
- Fear of the Mighty Penguin
- Uncertainty about their future market share
- Doubt in their ability to compete on a level (somewhat) playing field.
So Linux is now a clear and present danger (like it wasn't before!). I suppose they hope that marketing will succeed where Software Engineering failed.
>only the Mac OS clings to cooperative multitasking these days
Actually, Win9x still relies on it quite a bit, though MS will swear up and down that it ain't so. NT, OTOH, is truly preemptive.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
>Sorry if I had it wrong but I was under the impression that Linux was multitasking but that once a process was in the kernel it was not pre-empted til its timeslice was complete or it blocked on IO. That is pre-emptive multitasking.
It is sufficient that tasks be preemptible _while in user space_ to be considered preemptive multitasking. In point of fact, very few OSes allow kernel preemption - mostly true realtime OSes, which BTW means more than having "realtime" process priorities a la NT or many UNIXen.
Linux doesn't have kernel preemption. NT doesn't either. Oddly, AIX does, but that makes sense when you consider that AIX had to make the kernel pageable anyway because of bloat and paging is a kind of preemption so why not go all the way?
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
This must have been written by one of those on the M$ Kill Linux campaign.
When I needed to to mission critical work (i.e. my Thesis), I counted on Linux/LaTeX/GhostScript and Solaris to never fail, never crash every time I sneezed, and run at a decent speed on a normal processor. I use NT 4.0 everyday at work, and it is bloated and slow. It's so-called superior UI is crap compared to the Mac and isn't much more friendly than CDE on Solaris (Still need to check out Gnome or KDE--I use AfterStep).
I'm sick of people saying that Linux has this problem or that problem 'cause it's SOOO hard to use, SOOO hard to configure, etc.
The real troble with Linux is:
IT IS A HOBBIEST'S OS
...and now it is going Commercial.
The point of this is that people wrote Linux because they enjoyed writing it. This is the same reason that people work in their garden, build model railroads, rebuild old cars, or build model railroads. They never had to, nor should they have, business uses for it. Who cares!
The real trouble is that Linux...the Hobbiest's OS...blows away so-called real-OS's on the lowest levels. The reason: OpenSource licensing, of course.
Why is Win95/98 such a joke in comparison after spending so much effort on them? How about $100M going for advertising of the release of Win95 (aka MacOS '84 + multitasking...a mid-60's technology)!
Why does the MacOS crash so much compared to Linux? Because Apple has to keep their API the same so that old apps still run (but it (8.0+) still crashes a lot less than Win95/98).
The point is that Linux is not made to "compete" with anything, and MS attempts to throw FUD at it will not do much.
I think the next home computers will be made by IBM with the advanced UI technology that they are working on...voice interaction, movement recognition, advanced AI, etc. and MS will be way behind. IBM will have so many patents on their technology that MS would have to buy them if they want it. Linux would be irrevelant in that market.
The problem is that M$ and Apple OS's are founded on ancient technology...and so is Linux. (i.e. they all suck, but Linux sucks the least;-)
Don't underestimate Microsoft; they can deploy some very smart people, if sufficiently concerned.
They are now sufficiently concerned--the giant has awakened. Indeed, the point of this group will not be to generate FUD, as so many of you seem to be assuming.
Has the Open Source Community imagined all the possible moves open to Microsoft?
Have we any counter-strategies?
Doubtless, Microsoft is already thinking three and four moves ahead.
Let the game begin...
That's funny, the screen never turns blue when I run linux... so I always figured that when it did that with NT, it WAS NT...
It's a hardware problem!
Bullsh1t! Gee, I guess I've never seen a machine without serious hardware problems, but that doens't make sense, they never crash after installing linux on them. That's all that comes out of that place in Redmond! Pure bullshit!
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
You know, that is really funny... Ironic that you say that. You don't trust OPEN SOURCE that you can fucking look at(it doesn't much matter who wrote it then does it?), but you trust code from a company who's been shown to write programs that send personal information/id number etc. back to them...???? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU???
Sorry about the language, I just can't help being so hostile towards people as stupid as you...
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
What if this team is not about to spread more FUD, but actually tries to get hardware vendors to support NON-standard protocols. Although this would be difficult to do, but this is the one area that FSF is vulnerable.
If MS succeeds in making large numbers of hardware proprietary, this would hurt Linux and FSF. Yes we can always reverse engineer (if it is legal) but that takes time and in the business world, time matters.
If this team is just spreading FUD, then I say "good". That would help more than hurt. But if they are going to come out with a plan to hide standards from FSF developers, and maybe even make it so that reverse-engineering is strictly prohibited, then we might have a problem.
If I was on that "Linux Group", the first thing I would do is read slashdot!
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
MS setting up a team to combat Linux! :). Linux can survive without businesses. And its roots are with the technical developers. Although management is MS focused, the real work is always done by techies. And that group favours the better OS. We don't like to have our hands held by a system. We want to control it!
War has been declared. The one thing that I don't think MS has realized yet, is that Linux is NOT a company. Sun, Netscape, IBM, and Apple, are all companies, where as, Linux is a community (although I will say Apple is close in this respect
MS may convince management to watch out for those "Linux people" who will not play by the rules, but it's time that us techies start talking to our management. Make this an internal vs. external (Microsoft) battle. I've already have given two seminars on Linux that was focused towards management. I request others do the same.
Call for arms here!
P.S. This was always my signature, I didn't updated for this response, although I see others have this Ghandi quote....
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Just to set the record straight:
I have used and seen the NT BSOD - it is bold much help in determining the cause of the crash. I haven't worked with Linux much, but I know that it didn't crash on me - it exited gracefully with a system shutdown - giving a proper error log (which I also imagine might have been saved on the drive - not sure though).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
That should be "it is not much help..."
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
>show me something that Linux can do that other OS's can't
OK - I am a Linux newbie - struggling to break the bonds from M$. My first install happened to be on a laptop over a network connection to my Win95 machine. I had installed extra memory, and at the time I didn't know it, but the laptop was bad, and the extra memory would cause it to crash randomly (remove the memory, no more crashes - and it wasn't the memory, because I had the same memory installed in a different laptop, and it works fine). I began to _install_ Linux using a boot floppy - the install was going great, then the machine dumped - did the Linux based installer die? NO - it gracefully exited, giving me numerous (too numerous) information on why it exited, and shut down the system (very similar to the "shutdown -h now" command sequence) - the message was good enough for me to diagnose what had happened.
I can only imagine what would have happened had it been Windoze (can you say blue screen?)...
So what is the one thing that Linux can do that other OS's can't? Simple:
It can't crash.
Seriously - do I really think Linux can't crash? No - any OS on any machine CAN crash. Do I think that Linux crashes often (as often as my Win95 box)? Hell no! My own experiences and anecdotal stories refutes that!
Just another Linux Newbie...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I find it "interesting" that Microsoft is telling the world about this group, and even supplying quotes from the team leader to the press...
I think that Microsoft is happy as hell at this point to see Linux pop up, because they need something to point to for competition in their antitrust suit - it's still going on, you know!
They've been clutching for something to call competition - Paul Maritz is quoted as saying under oath that AbiSource's word processor, AbiWord, is competition for MS Word, even though it's still WAY beta and not fully functional.
I'm wondering why the original post, which
seems obviously off-topic to me, got a 3, while
your own got a -1. I think more appropriate
scores would be -1 for both, or perhaps -1 for
the original and 0 for your reply.
P.S. Linux hooray, Windows boo.
-- $SIGNATURE
Any operating system can be made secure - just never power it up. Don't have to worry about network or local attacks.
But I must agree that NT has far worse security. I did have my linux box cracked a few months ago, but I knew little about security (stupid me..). Now I consider my linux box as secure as anything with an ethernet card.
We certainly aren't fans of Microsoft's stated intentions to provide only DX8/Fahrenheight as a supported 3D library. Already WGL is seeming an orphan child. It's weird, but right now John Carmack is worth a lot to my business, cause he's holding to openGL.
IMHO this is a monumentally stupid blunder on Microsofts part. First, if they are aiming this at the real-time games market and the speed over quality requirements of that market and can't even get Carmack to bite,......HELLO
Secondly, they are in effect forcing companies like mine aiming for the future when high end interactive visualization goes onto desktops to make plans for ports to other systems, for the simple reason they've now tarted their platform up too much for the game developers.
Finally, this effort of theirs is helping the mass market for 3D games software, but it hurts everything else. Already, companies like Dell, Micron, and others have high markup workstation lines. Wintel workstations are usually treated as a high margin item. Gee, guys --- wouldn't it be better if we drove these systems into the mass market at the mass market price points. Exactly who gets to say, OK thats enough power, you'll have to pay premium beyond this point ? I understand supply and demand, I argue that across the board demand for intellegently applied processor power is still a big sea.
So maybe we shouldn't make a peep, just be quiet and smile. When Linux and its friends are the first to provide workstation level features and performance and mass market interfaces (GUIS,SUIS) at a mass market price point....Game over. Microsoft looses. Because then the development equation becomes one of "well, it would cost us X to make this on Linux and 10x to do it on the Windows Game Playplatform" So lets do it on Linux first. Cool for Linux, pathetically stupid on Microsofts part.
Dracosystems - Virtual Reality Engines and Applications
Who will Microsoft Fight? As M$ itself has agreed they have to fight the process, not a company. It is going to be Gulliver against thousands of Liliputs. He can never win.
The key areas for battle are going to be Training, becos if you look at the early success of Unix (I am not suggesting that it is not now) it was becos of its free availability in the campuses across the world. Linux too has to be omnipresent in all the teaching places in the world. All students should learn Linux first. Linux and maybe Windows. In such a scenario the weakness of NT will automatically surface. Also people will start wondering why they should pay for NT when Linux is free.
Linux will not need a voice. Linux will be the voice - the voice of conscience. Let us ensure that the next generation of students across the world know Linux before they actually come to work and see OSes like NT. They will laugh Nt out of the market. Meanwhile let us counter the NT threat by ensurign the one more college or school installs Linux to learn all about operating systems and applications. For evey threat one school. For every bug in NT one person (that itself should cover the world including bugs)
This will also mean training and certification courses which will help people. And please dont have exams like the MCP exams by Sylvan Prometric. The easiest exam to pass is the MCP in NT. I have seen (I am not kidding) people who have not seen the NT OS who can write and pass the exam. People in my country have mastered the system of exam passing by going thru braindumps.
We need more poeple who can conduct training programs on Linux. LUGs should take a more active role now to counter. LUGs should adopt and help schools, universities and colleges.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Ah poor lit Microsoft, Has to grow up and act like an adult, They have been a kid to long, But wait, is it to late for Microsoft? hmmm....
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Bill Gates: Antichrist Superstar I can't belive this everytime I read it, it gets better, You wouldn't belive what this has to say, and it really gets you thinking.... As I believe in the Lord myself, But makes you wonder ya know...
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It's a joke guys... Just for fun.. sheeesh
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What do you make of this part???? For those of you who still have the old excel 95 (not office 97) try this out: (this really works) 1 - Open a new file 2 - Scroll down to row 95 3 - Click on the row 95 button to highlight the entire row 4 - Press tab to move to the second column 5 - Now, move your mouse and click on help at the top 6 - Then click on "about Microsoft excel" 7 - Press ctrl-alt-shift and click on the tech support button at the same time. A window will appear with the title: THE HALL OF TORTURED SOULS. This is really eerie, okay! It has a doom style format and you can walk all around the hall using the arrow keys. On the sides of the walls are the names of the tortured souls....now walk up the stairs and then come back down, facing the blank wall. Now type in EXCELKFA; this will open the blank wall to reveal another secret passage, walk through the passage and do not fall off. This is difficult to do. When you get to the end you will see something really, really weird. As of this point in time, countless witnesses all over the world have verified that it is a real eye opener. It could be a joke by MS programmers. Or is it? Would it be too surprising if Bill Gates was the antichrist? After all, the bible foretold that someone powerful would rise up and lead the world to destruction. And Bill Gates definitely has this kind of power in his hands. More than 80% of computers in the world today run on windows and DOS (including those at the Pentagon). If all of his products have some kind of small program embedded, like this "hall of tortured souls," that can give him control to set off nuclear arsenals, create havoc in security systems and financial systems all over the world, etc. All from his headquarters. This isn't too far from reality. Just by using the Internet Explorer may just allow him to map out what you have on your computer bit by bit each time you log on. Perhaps the end of time is near and this is just the tip of the iceberg?
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Hey,
Sadly, I'm not afraid to admit that Microsoft's plan could work against Linux. Think about it, most of the world's computer users consists of average, net-surfing people. They probably use Windows, or Mac OS also.
See, if they ever hear about Linux, and start liking it, they might want to test it out, but the ploy Microsoft will begin using will drag them back to their familiar user-friendly enviorment. And maybe, because of those other supposed 'better' benchmarks, and other anti-Linux propaganda, Linuxites might revert to the Windows OS.
Another point to add, I don't think Linux will be widely used by the general public, it's mostly used my computer gurus, for networking, or programming. Linux is just not ready to fully compete against Microsft.
But, what the hell, maybe we'll win, eh? Even if we don't I'll still be using Linux.
- Evan, Kaworu on Dalnet