Or maybe just shutdown before going home? Why is that everyone thinks it's fashionable to leave your laptop "running" (ie: sleeping) while going from place to place.
Is it honestly that difficult to shutdown and reboot when you need it? My 1.2GHz P4 is faster at starting up than any of my laptops are at waking up.
I really don't understand the supportability issue with Linux. There are plenty of solutions available for maintaining your Linux system (IBM, RedHat, Suse,...). In fact, this is the primary purpose for most companies selling open source solutions like Linux --- they are there to support you.
Furthmore, unlike closed-source solutions it's possible for extremely large companies to support themselves. They have access to the source code, go ahead and maintain the software using an internal group.
This "argument" is moot. Your migration to OSS will be the last migration your company ever makes.
Re:Just one of many companies with the same proble
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's worth keeping in mind that stock option incentives are designed to mimic a royalty-based scheme...
The real problem here is the business model (IMHO). Whenever a company is successful (eg: Ford) a large field of imitators popup. Well, Microsoft was enormously successful with their software licensing model -- so now we have a large field of imitators out there attempting to execute the same business model.
Unfortunately, there is only one Microsoft. For that matter, take a look at the consolidated automobile industry -- even Ford is a bunch of companies now (Janguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, etc.); that industry has consolidated.
The days of prospecting software are over. If you work for a sofware company that doesn't already dominate a significant product segment, then you should get out now. Only a few leaders will be tolerated in this kind of market, especially given the compatibility issues posed by multiple software programs on many platforms.
Sun needs to learn this and then decide how they want to expand their business. They dominate(d) the big-iron in your backoffice server room, now they are getting pinched by others looking to expand into that area (Microsoft, Apple). Make an alliance with one of these companies if you want to grow your business; otherwise, bunker down and focus on delivering the best turnkey server solutions out there.
There's been a lot of games played in the academic market.
First there was DEC; if you were a university there were all sorts of discounts/deals to get you to setup a VAX with a farm of VT terms.
Others then recognized the potential value of these kinds of contracts, which helped to get IBM entrenched in academia. Not to be outdone, Sun and Apple recognized the potential for making money here and during the late 80's / early 90's they offered some excellent academic discounts.
Microsoft has tried to borrow a page from this book, but since the mid-90's this landscape has changed significantly. Hardware is extremely cheap now and the operating system is free (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris).
I agree with your statement that Sun has been unable to attract younger developers, but I think this is a more general problem for all commercial software/hardware companies. So why is Microsoft doing so well? Is it a fluke, or are they equally doomed by OSS...
AOL is deeply in debt and there is some speculation they will be spun off from the Time Warner media arm. This would not surprise me, AOL has failed to make significant inroads into broadband Internet access and they continue to infest PC's with failed software upgrades. Even more significantly, the media division of Time Warner has feeble integration with AOL services - users have not seen any real content benefits from this failed merger.
Microsoft would be happy to extend into networked software services (utility computing perhaps?) and maybe even feed you some topical news stories in the process. Right now, AOL is the primary barrier to entry for a Microsoft offering.
If MS keeps AOL happy, I think Dick Parsons will have a false sense of security and they will continue to fail to execute both broadband and Time Warner media integration. There are a lot of fat-cats at both of these companies, but MS has the financial coffers to win in the long run.
The best thing that could have happened to AOL would have been to get their proprietary AOL client bundled as a service with XP. This US$750M is petty cash for MS, AOL has missed the boat on this one -- they need business deals right now at least as much as they need cash.
From this interview, I'm getting the sense that SCO is trying to argue that IBM wrote some code with SCO and took this same code and transfered it to Linux. Assuming the new code was somehow bound to the SCO UNIX license agreement, this argument might tred water if IBM released this same code under another license (ie: GPL).
The real FUD here is that SCO is trying to claim the Linux codebase is fundamentally a copy of UNIX System V. From SCO's original letter:
"We believe that Linux infringes on our UNIX intellectual property and other rights."
Oops... Clearly SCO does not own the IP to UNIX, this belongs to Novell. SCO is a merely a clearinghouse for managing the UNIX licensing. These words may come back to haunt them.
The new code developed jointly between IBM and SCO could be in question here, but this does not warrent a mass mailing to everyone in silicon valley. There will be reparations made, SCO has misstated the facts.
More FUD can be found here. The Stallman quote is most telling, "There is very little new stuff in Linux.". Stallman is not implying that Linux is a copylefted UNIX (as SCO would have you believe), but rather that Linux borrows the UNIX paradigm (pipes, processes, small programs for each command, etc.).
Don't be surprised when IBM, HP, Novell and others slap SCO a classaction lawsuite putting them in violation of their glorified UNIX policeman title.
Check out the TIOBE Programming Community Index -- the current language frontrunner is Java, although the combination of C/C++ would be considered dominant.
Your 90% list is probably more like Java, C/C++, Perl and VB...
I like different languages, there are applications where Perl is more effective than C and where object oriented makes more sense than procedural.
It looks like Microsoft is going to provide me a dream palette of languages to pick from. Maybe this will help make things like Design By Contract a little more mainstream?
OTOH, there is a right way and a wrong way of approaching this. In the example of DBC, MS would do good by providing an Eiffel implementation for their CLR. In the example of F#, MS would be more correct to introduce Scheme and LISP dialects rather than invent their own.
Not because these languages are perfect, but because developers are already familiar with these environments. We can't continue to "invent" new ways of doing things, the software industry has been introducing new standards at such an astonishing rate that we may jeopardize our ability to maintain legacy systems that are generationally distanced. Systems that were maintained 10 or 20 years ago rely on technologies that a recent college grad will be entirely unfamiliar with.
Very few industries have this kind of halflife, let's not make it worse with [Aa-Zz]#.
The new Floyd Dark Side is actually CD+SACD, so you're paying to obtain a DSD encoded recording. This is expensive because it is not as easily fabricated as a traditional audio CD, and IMHO it sounds much better.
I think I'm done buying CD's with so many of these anti-pirate copy protection techniques in play. From now on I plan on buying SACD and LP. While I may be unable to digitally copy my SACD's, at least I am aware of this and will be able to play them back on my SACD players. The cloddishness of the record industry in these matters of protecting CD data is sickening, and they will continue to lose customers in this new "format" war.
The site www.sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux.
I don't think SCO is looking to slam Linux -- I think they are trying to embrace it. I deeply suspect that their issues with IBM are truly legal matters, and not just a means to end of the IBM/Linux arrangement.
With that said, I suspect SCO would happily consider a buyout option -- especially something from the likes of an IBM -- given their current fiscal situation.
There were many alternatives to http when it started, does anyone remember hytelnet?
It was basically a frontend to telnet that would let you surf to multiple telnet sites using onscreen menus. Gopher improved on this slightly, but it really wasn't a quantum leap. Search was separate from surfing, WAIS was quite popular for documents and Archie made ftp viable.
The Mosaic GUI really made things intuitive, I remember the first time I started it up on a Sparc -- I couldn't believe that I was getting a graphical view of things.
Of course, if you were speaking to your computer rather than typing to it on a keyboard, this argument would be irrelevant. It's not difficult to imagine that within 100 years we'll be talking to computers.
No kidding. While this sounds incredibly cool, it really has not practical application and it's potentially dangerous. We've had the technology to build "smart" homes for quite some time now, but people are discovering that there really is no need.
The truth is, when it's time to cook something to eat you really do need to be there anyway.
Someone at work has a WinCE device (this is the flashy looking Compaq iPAQ) The display is excellent, it's backlit and colors are brilliant. However, within 5 minutes of use this device had crashed on me 3 times. Granted, we were attempting to use a wireless network with it, but I think it could recover more gracefully from this.
In contrast, my Plam 7 continues to operate flawlessly. It may not be as flashy, but it effectively provides wireless access, a phone directory and access to my email. IMHO, Microsoft has a long way to go with both the UI and the WinCE PDA platform.
I don't know about chemical bullets persay, but my initial thinking on this is they should get together with Toshiba.
A fuel-cell laser weapon might very well be the future. Given that this technology is currently being perfected for automobiles as well, it seems like this is a near-ideal springboard for military applications.
Agreed on this one, I would really like to see SVG support pickup in Moz. While it's great that our bookmarks have gotten a retooling, SVG is a new feature that was only ever semi-completed.
Right now there are no alternatives, there is an SVG plugin from Adobe but it doesn't work in anything beyond the legacy Netscape 4.x. We sorely need an industry standard for scalable vector graphics, and in this case SVG fills a huge void.
Here here! I know this example is old, but imagine if another industry sold you a broken product -- consumers would be demanding their money back in droves.
A good example is a book. What if your new Stephen King novel "crashed" every so often and forced you to start reading it from the beginning again. This wouldn't be much fun, you would spend a lot of time reading materials you are already familiar with.
Then at some point the paper develops a problem that causes it to change colors and become unreadable in spots. This is an occasional defect, and by replacing individual pages you can save your book.
Eventually, the publisher realizes the book has too many issues to keep fixing -- so a new version is published. While you are offered an upgrade, you have made numerous notes in your copy. Therefore, a replacement would require a migration of this content.
Unacceptable. Software needs to be approached differently, when people really use your programs they don't want to always have to start over again. The next generation of software needs to reflect a continuous upgrade path... I think Gentoo is on the right track!
Currently a little slash-dotted, but your proxy looks excellent. I'm definitely going to check it out, especially with the caching and the regex.
I've been using another NTLM proxy server available here . It's Python so it can be readily tweaked, I've got mine sharing the same authentication file that's getting used with my SMB mounts. Very handy & works quite well for a single-user environment.
I believe both the VIC20 and the PET are older than the C64. While there isn't any networking support on these yet, it does basically work (or so they claim....)
This is a good point. Silicon Valley has a tech-heavy workforce that is well educated in matters of computer technologies. Today you stand as much of a chance getting employed in the valley as you do just about anywhere else.
Take your skills to another region where things may not be so tech-heavy but your skills will be even more valued when there is an opportunity.
Every weapon has a countermeasure, should we advertise the weapons we are building so that everyone else can anticipate our machines of war?
I agree, it stinks not knowing what our trillions of dollars are buying us - but I would rather forsake this knowledge with the comfort that whatever we have will be a surprise for the enemy.
TBPH, I'm thinking exactly the opposite. The turrets were built a few years ago, and at this point they've had almost a year of ramp-time. I suspect the military already has the ABL in some quantity.
btw, we have been sharing similiar laser technologies with our allies.
In the meantime, while I think these projects are way cool I'm not keen on seeing coverage of this in the press. Our enemies do not need to be aware of either our military tactics or the weapons we may use for our attack.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe just shutdown before going home? Why is that everyone thinks it's fashionable to leave your laptop "running" (ie: sleeping) while going from place to place.
Is it honestly that difficult to shutdown and reboot when you need it? My 1.2GHz P4 is faster at starting up than any of my laptops are at waking up.
I really don't understand the supportability issue with Linux. There are plenty of solutions available for maintaining your Linux system (IBM, RedHat, Suse, ...). In fact, this is the primary purpose for most companies selling open source solutions like Linux --- they are there to support you.
Furthmore, unlike closed-source solutions it's possible for extremely large companies to support themselves. They have access to the source code, go ahead and maintain the software using an internal group.
This "argument" is moot. Your migration to OSS will be the last migration your company ever makes.
It's worth keeping in mind that stock option incentives are designed to mimic a royalty-based scheme...
The real problem here is the business model (IMHO). Whenever a company is successful (eg: Ford) a large field of imitators popup. Well, Microsoft was enormously successful with their software licensing model -- so now we have a large field of imitators out there attempting to execute the same business model.
Unfortunately, there is only one Microsoft. For that matter, take a look at the consolidated automobile industry -- even Ford is a bunch of companies now (Janguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, etc.); that industry has consolidated.
The days of prospecting software are over. If you work for a sofware company that doesn't already dominate a significant product segment, then you should get out now. Only a few leaders will be tolerated in this kind of market, especially given the compatibility issues posed by multiple software programs on many platforms.
Sun needs to learn this and then decide how they want to expand their business. They dominate(d) the big-iron in your backoffice server room, now they are getting pinched by others looking to expand into that area (Microsoft, Apple). Make an alliance with one of these companies if you want to grow your business; otherwise, bunker down and focus on delivering the best turnkey server solutions out there.
There's been a lot of games played in the academic market.
First there was DEC; if you were a university there were all sorts of discounts/deals to get you to setup a VAX with a farm of VT terms.
Others then recognized the potential value of these kinds of contracts, which helped to get IBM entrenched in academia. Not to be outdone, Sun and Apple recognized the potential for making money here and during the late 80's / early 90's they offered some excellent academic discounts.
Microsoft has tried to borrow a page from this book, but since the mid-90's this landscape has changed significantly. Hardware is extremely cheap now and the operating system is free (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris).
I agree with your statement that Sun has been unable to attract younger developers, but I think this is a more general problem for all commercial software/hardware companies. So why is Microsoft doing so well? Is it a fluke, or are they equally doomed by OSS...
This deal is really bad for AOL.
AOL is deeply in debt and there is some speculation they will be spun off from the Time Warner media arm. This would not surprise me, AOL has failed to make significant inroads into broadband Internet access and they continue to infest PC's with failed software upgrades. Even more significantly, the media division of Time Warner has feeble integration with AOL services - users have not seen any real content benefits from this failed merger.
Microsoft would be happy to extend into networked software services (utility computing perhaps?) and maybe even feed you some topical news stories in the process. Right now, AOL is the primary barrier to entry for a Microsoft offering.
If MS keeps AOL happy, I think Dick Parsons will have a false sense of security and they will continue to fail to execute both broadband and Time Warner media integration. There are a lot of fat-cats at both of these companies, but MS has the financial coffers to win in the long run.
The best thing that could have happened to AOL would have been to get their proprietary AOL client bundled as a service with XP. This US$750M is petty cash for MS, AOL has missed the boat on this one -- they need business deals right now at least as much as they need cash.
There's no deal here...
You're right; "Linux is a copy of Unix..."
From this interview, I'm getting the sense that SCO is trying to argue that IBM wrote some code with SCO and took this same code and transfered it to Linux. Assuming the new code was somehow bound to the SCO UNIX license agreement, this argument might tred water if IBM released this same code under another license (ie: GPL).
The real FUD here is that SCO is trying to claim the Linux codebase is fundamentally a copy of UNIX System V. From SCO's original letter:
"We believe that Linux infringes on our UNIX intellectual property and other rights."
Oops... Clearly SCO does not own the IP to UNIX, this belongs to Novell. SCO is a merely a clearinghouse for managing the UNIX licensing. These words may come back to haunt them.
The new code developed jointly between IBM and SCO could be in question here, but this does not warrent a mass mailing to everyone in silicon valley. There will be reparations made, SCO has misstated the facts.
More FUD can be found here. The Stallman quote is most telling, "There is very little new stuff in Linux.". Stallman is not implying that Linux is a copylefted UNIX (as SCO would have you believe), but rather that Linux borrows the UNIX paradigm (pipes, processes, small programs for each command, etc.).
Don't be surprised when IBM, HP, Novell and others slap SCO a classaction lawsuite putting them in violation of their glorified UNIX policeman title.
Check out the TIOBE Programming Community Index -- the current language frontrunner is Java, although the combination of C/C++ would be considered dominant.
Your 90% list is probably more like Java, C/C++, Perl and VB...
I like different languages, there are applications where Perl is more effective than C and where object oriented makes more sense than procedural.
It looks like Microsoft is going to provide me a dream palette of languages to pick from. Maybe this will help make things like Design By Contract a little more mainstream?
OTOH, there is a right way and a wrong way of approaching this. In the example of DBC, MS would do good by providing an Eiffel implementation for their CLR. In the example of F#, MS would be more correct to introduce Scheme and LISP dialects rather than invent their own.
Not because these languages are perfect, but because developers are already familiar with these environments. We can't continue to "invent" new ways of doing things, the software industry has been introducing new standards at such an astonishing rate that we may jeopardize our ability to maintain legacy systems that are generationally distanced. Systems that were maintained 10 or 20 years ago rely on technologies that a recent college grad will be entirely unfamiliar with.
Very few industries have this kind of halflife, let's not make it worse with [Aa-Zz]#.
The new Floyd Dark Side is actually CD+SACD, so you're paying to obtain a DSD encoded recording. This is expensive because it is not as easily fabricated as a traditional audio CD, and IMHO it sounds much better.
I think I'm done buying CD's with so many of these anti-pirate copy protection techniques in play. From now on I plan on buying SACD and LP. While I may be unable to digitally copy my SACD's, at least I am aware of this and will be able to play them back on my SACD players. The cloddishness of the record industry in these matters of protecting CD data is sickening, and they will continue to lose customers in this new "format" war.
I'm way confused on this one too.
The site www.sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux.
I don't think SCO is looking to slam Linux -- I think they are trying to embrace it. I deeply suspect that their issues with IBM are truly legal matters, and not just a means to end of the IBM/Linux arrangement.
With that said, I suspect SCO would happily consider a buyout option -- especially something from the likes of an IBM -- given their current fiscal situation.
There were many alternatives to http when it started, does anyone remember hytelnet?
It was basically a frontend to telnet that would let you surf to multiple telnet sites using onscreen menus. Gopher improved on this slightly, but it really wasn't a quantum leap. Search was separate from surfing, WAIS was quite popular for documents and Archie made ftp viable.
The Mosaic GUI really made things intuitive, I remember the first time I started it up on a Sparc -- I couldn't believe that I was getting a graphical view of things.
Of course, if you were speaking to your computer rather than typing to it on a keyboard, this argument would be irrelevant. It's not difficult to imagine that within 100 years we'll be talking to computers.
No kidding. While this sounds incredibly cool, it really has not practical application and it's potentially dangerous. We've had the technology to build "smart" homes for quite some time now, but people are discovering that there really is no need.
The truth is, when it's time to cook something to eat you really do need to be there anyway.
Someone at work has a WinCE device (this is the flashy looking Compaq iPAQ) The display is excellent, it's backlit and colors are brilliant. However, within 5 minutes of use this device had crashed on me 3 times. Granted, we were attempting to use a wireless network with it, but I think it could recover more gracefully from this.
In contrast, my Plam 7 continues to operate flawlessly. It may not be as flashy, but it effectively provides wireless access, a phone directory and access to my email. IMHO, Microsoft has a long way to go with both the UI and the WinCE PDA platform.
I thought JPEG was an open standard, why does Forgent stand to profit from this?
Unlike GIF, JPEG was established by a standards body (ISO). Now they want to renege on that.
Register has more info on this one. Weird.
I don't know about chemical bullets persay, but my initial thinking on this is they should get together with Toshiba.
A fuel-cell laser weapon might very well be the future. Given that this technology is currently being perfected for automobiles as well, it seems like this is a near-ideal springboard for military applications.
Agreed on this one, I would really like to see SVG support pickup in Moz. While it's great that our bookmarks have gotten a retooling, SVG is a new feature that was only ever semi-completed.
Right now there are no alternatives, there is an SVG plugin from Adobe but it doesn't work in anything beyond the legacy Netscape 4.x. We sorely need an industry standard for scalable vector graphics, and in this case SVG fills a huge void.
Here here! I know this example is old, but imagine if another industry sold you a broken product -- consumers would be demanding their money back in droves.
A good example is a book. What if your new Stephen King novel "crashed" every so often and forced you to start reading it from the beginning again. This wouldn't be much fun, you would spend a lot of time reading materials you are already familiar with.
Then at some point the paper develops a problem that causes it to change colors and become unreadable in spots. This is an occasional defect, and by replacing individual pages you can save your book.
Eventually, the publisher realizes the book has too many issues to keep fixing -- so a new version is published. While you are offered an upgrade, you have made numerous notes in your copy. Therefore, a replacement would require a migration of this content.
Unacceptable. Software needs to be approached differently, when people really use your programs they don't want to always have to start over again. The next generation of software needs to reflect a continuous upgrade path... I think Gentoo is on the right track!
My bad -- here's the actual link;
NTML APS Proxy
Currently a little slash-dotted, but your proxy looks excellent. I'm definitely going to check it out, especially with the caching and the regex.
I've been using another NTLM proxy server available here . It's Python so it can be readily tweaked, I've got mine sharing the same authentication file that's getting used with my SMB mounts. Very handy & works quite well for a single-user environment.
I believe both the VIC20 and the PET are older than the C64. While there isn't any networking support on these yet, it does basically work (or so they claim....)
This is a good point. Silicon Valley has a tech-heavy workforce that is well educated in matters of computer technologies. Today you stand as much of a chance getting employed in the valley as you do just about anywhere else.
Take your skills to another region where things may not be so tech-heavy but your skills will be even more valued when there is an opportunity.
Every weapon has a countermeasure, should we advertise the weapons we are building so that everyone else can anticipate our machines of war?
I agree, it stinks not knowing what our trillions of dollars are buying us - but I would rather forsake this knowledge with the comfort that whatever we have will be a surprise for the enemy.
TBPH, I'm thinking exactly the opposite. The turrets were built a few years ago, and at this point they've had almost a year of ramp-time. I suspect the military already has the ABL in some quantity.
btw, we have been sharing similiar laser technologies with our allies.
In the meantime, while I think these projects are way cool I'm not keen on seeing coverage of this in the press. Our enemies do not need to be aware of either our military tactics or the weapons we may use for our attack.