I am a linux customer. I buy distributions regularly. I buy them for the convenience of a cdrom and the odd chance that I might have an installation problem.
My business is to provide technical solutions to business problems. I don't sell distributions, I sell services. My use of linux is confined to solving problems using the platform. My clients use UNIX for the same thing. These are fortune 250 and the occasional e-business company. They don't make money off the software. They make money by providing a service or selling a product. Of all of the businesses in the market, these comprise 99% of the total. These are the customers that should be foremost in the community's mind.
GNU/Linux is a superb platform to address a commodity computing need or for solving problems. Stable, fast, low maintainence. You build your solution on top of a proven platform. Because of this, linux is enjoying tremendous growth.
What bothers me is that Ransom is largely addressing his needs and the needs of commercial software developers, not necessarily his customers. Myself and my customers need support. They need standards. They need a product that gets better, faster, more secure, and more stable over time. And it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. They need to know that if something goes wrong with a machine, they can call up a vendor and have it fixed. Whether they do it through a proprietary license or the GPL largely does not matter to them. It is in their best interest, whether they know it or not, for the code that they buy support for to be GPL, because it gives them the most options.
IBM gets it. They are supporters of the Linux because they can sell hardware, services, and support to help the 99% of businesses to get things done. They aren't in the news about the GPL, because they have aligned their interests with their customers. Sure, they still sell proprietary software, and they do it for Linux. More power to them. But I think that they know that computing services as services provided by computers become commoditized, their revenue from that sofware will dwindle.
So let Ransom Love ramble on about making money on commercial software. He doesn't understand where his own business needs to position itself. For that he and his shareholders will pay dearly.
OK, you are trolling and I'll bite. Both SunOS and NT are popular and mainstream. Both have bugs (some more than others:) ) but both have a clear means of escalating support issues. You just have to have the dough to shell out. Since my work is also software development, for the evil Corporate nightmares that people on this site are scared to death of, money is rarely a problem. Clear, understandable problem resolution is at the heart of this.
If I have problems with a release, I check support sites, contact the vendor, check more support sites, and maybe raise it in an open forum (like Slashdot) where someone with more knowledge than me might be able to help. My previous post is step 4 of the process. If you don't have anything that helps, hey, you are just part of the background noise. I think that people venting frustration with a release, raising problems, is confusing for some people because a forum like this potentially blurs the distinction between public relations, publishing, tech-support, and group therapy.
What was particularly vexing for me (BTW, my thanks to the RH guy for replying) was how my support question got sh*tcanned without giving me any additional vendor options. I don't care about shelling out money for a support call, but RH never gave me a path to escalate the problem to where this was an option. Which is bad business on their part, because that is/will be the core of their business plan as it evolves.
I'm not so sure about this statement. I installed 7.0, used up2date to install all updates, and then tried to recompile packages from source.
All I got were abends. As a registered user, I reported the problem. I was met with silence from Redhat.
/* begin rant:)
I am not bashing Redhat. I have purchased 4 distributions from you guys over the years, and this was the first time I was received like this. But once was enough. I have since reinstalled Immunix and am trying to get back to a stable state. Still, I have problems with SRPMS. When I compile from tar.gz I have no problems. So what's broken, rpm or the compiler?
end rant */
I posted this earlier, but I'll say it again. You guys have problems with recompiling from SRPMS. But nobody seems to have the fix. And when I can't get the answers, I certainly can't expect a client to have a better experience.
If you have answers for these problems, I sure as heck would like to hear about it.
>does the new RPM version cause any incompatibilities with "older" RPMs? I upgraded RPM on RH7.0 and had some problems like that... anyone find the same thing?
I had so many problems with the 7.0 version that I had to reinstall 6.2. In particular, I had problems with rebuilding SRPMS in general. I was in the situation where I could install the binary, but --rebuild or --recompile abended.
I installed a recommended update to gcc, only to find that I could not recompile the SRPM with the compiler I had just installed. I couldn't recompile the compiler.
When I contacted Redhat support through their web page, and then through an email to their support line, I received no response. This was VERY disappointing for me, as I have used Redhat distro's since my first exposure to Linux in 1997. After that experience, I have soured on Redhat altogether. I am primarily in the business of selling software solutions, and when it comes to vendor relationships, I have to trust that all aspects of a solution I sell will be supported. I can't say that I can recommend Redhat to any of my clients at this time.
Their up2date stuff is fantastic in concept, and pretty impressive, but if they don't support the concept of recompiling their binary packages to optimize for the architecture, it is all for naught.
I imagine that if I formalized my relationship with Redhat as a vendor partner, maybe these support issues wouldn't have come up. But they I did purchase and register my distribution, so this should never have been an issue to begin with. Anyway, I like to see the vendor through with the same perspective as my clients. What good would my getting preferential treatment do for the customer when I know full well that they will have support problems the moment I walk out the door?
Anyone have a similar experience? Anyone from Redhat care to respond?
The vast majority of growth in the Linux market is for servers, this is a good public service announcement for all of those administraors who are new to linux.
The real problem with this plan is it presupposes any revenue will come from subscriptions, as opposed to advertising revenue, which presently is very low. People, we just need to realize that this is media. On steriods. Bi-direction, on steriods, media, in which ANY content can be replicated with 100% accuracy and supplied for nearly zero marginal cost. When the marginal cost is zero, the price naturally falls to zero (echos of "information wants to be free...") but there are fixed costs to doing business. These costs are virtually impossible to recoup because of competitors ability to cannibalize (remember the ability to replicate with 100% accuracy?) and thus must always be tied to a revenue stream from other markets. In otherwords, boys and grrls, there will never be a pure play internet media venture which is profitable. The best you can do is recoginize that there is a risk associated with NOT providing the service, so you do so at market prices (which will be driven to zero).
Given my argument, I would say that this is a forgivably stupid move by MLB, which has it's head in the sand (or up its ass) about the realities of the new media. It will only irritate computer fans/users, with the rest of its fan base oblivious to its existence. Someone will stream copies of it for free, and the industry will spend more money on trying to snuff that practice out than all the money they made on licensing to begin with. Eventually, it will be free again. Just give it a couple of years.
>So this disc is the size of a quarter. A quarter of what?
A quarter as useful as an open standard, a quarter of that as timely for consumer tastes, and a quarter of that as likely to succeed.
It smells like a dog with fleas to me. I know I won't be purchasing anything on that format. And if anyone from the RIAA is out there listening, yes, I do purchase CD's. The sound quality of an MP3 generally sucks. I demand high fidelity and I get it from CD's, but when I am on the road I listen to MP3's.
All that the RIAA as bought with their actions as of late is I purchase all of my music from second hand stores. No point directly financing their lawyers. I wonder if the artists realize how bad the RIAA is for business...
>no one would run without the service packs. I might as well run my car with a broken transmition.
Well, that's pretty much what running on any MS OS prior to the the 3rd service pack is, right?:-)
The only difference is when you go back to the dealer, they tell you that it is perfect just how it is.
Actually, I had to go to college before I got stoned, but that whole torched and quartered thing is foreign to me...:-) Also, my company hasn't seen too much downward pressure outside of the telco vertical, and they'll be baaack....
The advances in parallel computing today are driven by three factors, as I see it. Marketing, homogeneous (relatively) environments, and Mathematics & Methodology.
1.) Marketing - Computer manufacturers and systems integrators/consultancies purport to be able to solve bigger/more ambitious problems. Moreover, it makes good business sense to be able to do so. Business got a hit from the crack pipe of information and they got hooked. These problems now fall outside of the realm of national security. Furthermore, government work can be precarious for many companies, and by diversifying their wares and selling to public corporations, vendors spread the risk around.
2.) Homogeneous (relatively) dev/prod environments - Not too many people can claim knowing how to program for a Cray or Thinking Machines box, but a lot of intelligent people can move around in/administrate a UNIX environment, and some of them can code to a messaging interface. For that matter, some know tools like Ab Initio or Orchestrate and can create parallel applications very easily.
3.) Mathematics and methodology have changed - People now recognize the conceptual and practical challenges of parallel computing, and can tailor the algorithms, hardware, and OS to accommodate the challenges of that paradigm.
Seeing random poster's on Slashdot recognize that compartmentalized data and code is necessary for distributed computing to be effective is a tribute to how far this field has come. The engineering has come a long way, as has the marketing, and overall level of conciousness.
As for the new adjective, I would say that wider is o.k., but you have to recognize that a machine does not have to be uniformly wide. I think of parallel programming as a stream metaphore, with speed (CPU), width, (#of CPU's or units of work/data ways parallel) and depth (depth of queue/instructions between checkpoints). How about liters?:-p
>I don't have a landline. I don't need one. I don't talk on the phone enough to warrant paying an extra $20-30/month for a landline.
>
>Unfortunately, I can't get DSL as a result.
Actually dude, according to Telocity, at least, you don't need to have a local carrier for DSL service. You need the copper, but not the service. I was having major problems with my DSL in May-June (which was SBC/Ameritech's fsckup, of course) and it wasn't until I threatened to cancel my _local_ service that they (Ameritech) turned around and fixed the problem.
Check into it with the DSL provider's in your area, you might be surprised.
Did you know that they have retired a huge number of people in the Ameritech region, and are laying off an additionally large number? They are driving toward double digit profitability growth this year, and doing it by cutting expenses.
Just how good of service do you think that you will have when the shit really hits the fan? The project I am on has been gutted, even though it is an initiative with a very high priority and protected status.
My prediction: Next year, SBC will have the WORST customer service and MOST fsckups of any of the local carriers. Period.
Good, fast, or cheap.
Pick any two. Those are your options.
There are multiple comparisons to existing industries in this article, but they are not relevant from the standpoint of cost v/s complexity. Of course, aircraft are complex systems, and they are now produced with very high levels of quality. But look at the facts:
- They cost hundreds of thousands to millions each.
- They do not produce a completly new model of the 747 every 6 months to counter Airbus' new model.
- The operators of these complex wonders are licensed and trained to do so.
- When they came out, there were a lot of people who either fixed the defects in the machines themselves or died. The one's that died are not around to talk about the poor quality of production in the earliest days of flight.
I found an excellent way for HP to keep their IP locked up tight and I still get excellent print: I bought a Lexmark Optra color 40, added 32MB of RAM, and said fsck it to HP.
My Lexmark does PostScript level II in hardware, keeping my CPU usage to a minimum, and it cost less than $100 US.
THIS kind of message is the only message that HP exec's will ever understand. You vote with your wallet every day; don't loose sight of that.
Amen to that. The other thing, Hemos, is that the Justices have in recent history consistently been shifting the power _back_ to the states, not away from them, and I fail to see how this request for clarification reverses that trend.
Did anyone else notice how the commercials were all geared toward the IT crowd? Sun, IT jobs sites, and fast food (KFC & Pizza Hut) were all dead on, and the Mitsubishi ads were o.k., if a touch downscale. Only one crummy psychic's network ad. Kinda makes you think that this was pretty well thought out by the network and advertisers.
If it's the kind of brownie I'm thinking of, I'd pop $10 for it. Provided the wrapper had DeCSS printed on it. This is after all Slashdot, not Smokedot.:-)
While I sympathize with your abhorence of complex tax codes, which do in fact make it simpler to conceal who pays what, the flat tax is a bad idea. A flat rate tax structure is simply too regressive to be socially just. Note that I use the words "socially just" because any taxation system _DOES_ involve social justice and value judgements, contrary to what you may have been indoctrinated into believing.
As for the type of micromanagement you allude to, people have become so imbued with the idea I don't think it can be engineered out of society immediately. It can be exposed, however, which is really the only area in which the flat tax really shines.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a linux customer. I buy distributions regularly. I buy them for the convenience of a cdrom and the odd chance that I might have an installation problem.
My business is to provide technical solutions to business problems. I don't sell distributions, I sell services. My use of linux is confined to solving problems using the platform. My clients use UNIX for the same thing. These are fortune 250 and the occasional e-business company. They don't make money off the software. They make money by providing a service or selling a product. Of all of the businesses in the market, these comprise 99% of the total. These are the customers that should be foremost in the community's mind.
GNU/Linux is a superb platform to address a commodity computing need or for solving problems. Stable, fast, low maintainence. You build your solution on top of a proven platform. Because of this, linux is enjoying tremendous growth.
What bothers me is that Ransom is largely addressing his needs and the needs of commercial software developers, not necessarily his customers. Myself and my customers need support. They need standards. They need a product that gets better, faster, more secure, and more stable over time. And it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. They need to know that if something goes wrong with a machine, they can call up a vendor and have it fixed. Whether they do it through a proprietary license or the GPL largely does not matter to them. It is in their best interest, whether they know it or not, for the code that they buy support for to be GPL, because it gives them the most options.
IBM gets it. They are supporters of the Linux because they can sell hardware, services, and support to help the 99% of businesses to get things done. They aren't in the news about the GPL, because they have aligned their interests with their customers. Sure, they still sell proprietary software, and they do it for Linux. More power to them. But I think that they know that computing services as services provided by computers become commoditized, their revenue from that sofware will dwindle.
So let Ransom Love ramble on about making money on commercial software. He doesn't understand where his own business needs to position itself. For that he and his shareholders will pay dearly.
A Beowolf cluster of these?
;-)
:-)
Somebody had to say it.
OK, you are trolling and I'll bite. Both SunOS and NT are popular and mainstream. Both have bugs (some more than others :) ) but both have a clear means of escalating support issues. You just have to have the dough to shell out. Since my work is also software development, for the evil Corporate nightmares that people on this site are scared to death of, money is rarely a problem. Clear, understandable problem resolution is at the heart of this.
If I have problems with a release, I check support sites, contact the vendor, check more support sites, and maybe raise it in an open forum (like Slashdot) where someone with more knowledge than me might be able to help. My previous post is step 4 of the process. If you don't have anything that helps, hey, you are just part of the background noise. I think that people venting frustration with a release, raising problems, is confusing for some people because a forum like this potentially blurs the distinction between public relations, publishing, tech-support, and group therapy.
What was particularly vexing for me (BTW, my thanks to the RH guy for replying) was how my support question got sh*tcanned without giving me any additional vendor options. I don't care about shelling out money for a support call, but RH never gave me a path to escalate the problem to where this was an option. Which is bad business on their part, because that is/will be the core of their business plan as it evolves.
I'm not so sure about this statement. I installed 7.0, used up2date to install all updates, and then tried to recompile packages from source.
:)
All I got were abends. As a registered user, I reported the problem. I was met with silence from Redhat.
/* begin rant
I am not bashing Redhat. I have purchased 4 distributions from you guys over the years, and this was the first time I was received like this. But once was enough. I have since reinstalled Immunix and am trying to get back to a stable state. Still, I have problems with SRPMS. When I compile from tar.gz I have no problems. So what's broken, rpm or the compiler?
end rant */
I posted this earlier, but I'll say it again. You guys have problems with recompiling from SRPMS. But nobody seems to have the fix. And when I can't get the answers, I certainly can't expect a client to have a better experience.
If you have answers for these problems, I sure as heck would like to hear about it.
>does the new RPM version cause any incompatibilities with "older" RPMs? I upgraded RPM on RH7.0 and had some problems like that... anyone find the same thing?
I had so many problems with the 7.0 version that I had to reinstall 6.2. In particular, I had problems with rebuilding SRPMS in general. I was in the situation where I could install the binary, but --rebuild or --recompile abended.
I installed a recommended update to gcc, only to find that I could not recompile the SRPM with the compiler I had just installed. I couldn't recompile the compiler.
When I contacted Redhat support through their web page, and then through an email to their support line, I received no response. This was VERY disappointing for me, as I have used Redhat distro's since my first exposure to Linux in 1997. After that experience, I have soured on Redhat altogether. I am primarily in the business of selling software solutions, and when it comes to vendor relationships, I have to trust that all aspects of a solution I sell will be supported. I can't say that I can recommend Redhat to any of my clients at this time.
Their up2date stuff is fantastic in concept, and pretty impressive, but if they don't support the concept of recompiling their binary packages to optimize for the architecture, it is all for naught.
I imagine that if I formalized my relationship with Redhat as a vendor partner, maybe these support issues wouldn't have come up. But they I did purchase and register my distribution, so this should never have been an issue to begin with. Anyway, I like to see the vendor through with the same perspective as my clients. What good would my getting preferential treatment do for the customer when I know full well that they will have support problems the moment I walk out the door?
Anyone have a similar experience? Anyone from Redhat care to respond?
The vast majority of growth in the Linux market is for servers, this is a good public service announcement for all of those administraors who are new to linux.
They have been warned.
Did he have have to bang on an R2D2 unit's head to make this work? Or did R2D2 just give it up without a fight?
:-)
The real problem with this plan is it presupposes any revenue will come from subscriptions, as opposed to advertising revenue, which presently is very low. People, we just need to realize that this is media. On steriods. Bi-direction, on steriods, media, in which ANY content can be replicated with 100% accuracy and supplied for nearly zero marginal cost. When the marginal cost is zero, the price naturally falls to zero (echos of "information wants to be free...") but there are fixed costs to doing business. These costs are virtually impossible to recoup because of competitors ability to cannibalize (remember the ability to replicate with 100% accuracy?) and thus must always be tied to a revenue stream from other markets. In otherwords, boys and grrls, there will never be a pure play internet media venture which is profitable. The best you can do is recoginize that there is a risk associated with NOT providing the service, so you do so at market prices (which will be driven to zero).
Given my argument, I would say that this is a forgivably stupid move by MLB, which has it's head in the sand (or up its ass) about the realities of the new media. It will only irritate computer fans/users, with the rest of its fan base oblivious to its existence. Someone will stream copies of it for free, and the industry will spend more money on trying to snuff that practice out than all the money they made on licensing to begin with. Eventually, it will be free again. Just give it a couple of years.
That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
>So this disc is the size of a quarter. A quarter of what?
A quarter as useful as an open standard, a quarter of that as timely for consumer tastes, and a quarter of that as likely to succeed.
It smells like a dog with fleas to me. I know I won't be purchasing anything on that format. And if anyone from the RIAA is out there listening, yes, I do purchase CD's. The sound quality of an MP3 generally sucks. I demand high fidelity and I get it from CD's, but when I am on the road I listen to MP3's.
All that the RIAA as bought with their actions as of late is I purchase all of my music from second hand stores. No point directly financing their lawyers. I wonder if the artists realize how bad the RIAA is for business...
>no one would run without the service packs. I might as well run my car with a broken transmition.
:-)
Well, that's pretty much what running on any MS OS prior to the the 3rd service pack is, right?
The only difference is when you go back to the dealer, they tell you that it is perfect just how it is.
You need a wonderbra. Keep other geeks away, though, or you'll have to remove sticky residue.
Anejo!
Actually, I had to go to college before I got stoned, but that whole torched and quartered thing is foreign to me... :-)
Also, my company hasn't seen too much downward pressure outside of the telco vertical, and they'll be baaack....
The advances in parallel computing today are driven by three factors, as I see it. Marketing, homogeneous (relatively) environments, and Mathematics & Methodology.
:-p
1.) Marketing - Computer manufacturers and systems integrators/consultancies purport to be able to solve bigger/more ambitious problems. Moreover, it makes good business sense to be able to do so. Business got a hit from the crack pipe of information and they got hooked. These problems now fall outside of the realm of national security. Furthermore, government work can be precarious for many companies, and by diversifying their wares and selling to public corporations, vendors spread the risk around.
2.) Homogeneous (relatively) dev/prod environments - Not too many people can claim knowing how to program for a Cray or Thinking Machines box, but a lot of intelligent people can move around in/administrate a UNIX environment, and some of them can code to a messaging interface. For that matter, some know tools like Ab Initio or Orchestrate and can create parallel applications very easily.
3.) Mathematics and methodology have changed - People now recognize the conceptual and practical challenges of parallel computing, and can tailor the algorithms, hardware, and OS to accommodate the challenges of that paradigm.
Seeing random poster's on Slashdot recognize that compartmentalized data and code is necessary for distributed computing to be effective is a tribute to how far this field has come. The engineering has come a long way, as has the marketing, and overall level of conciousness.
As for the new adjective, I would say that wider is o.k., but you have to recognize that a machine does not have to be uniformly wide. I think of parallel programming as a stream metaphore, with speed (CPU), width, (#of CPU's or units of work/data ways parallel) and depth (depth of queue/instructions between checkpoints). How about liters?
What do you have against Madagascar? I don't think that they have done anything to deserve such a harsh sentence... :-)
>I don't have a landline. I don't need one. I don't talk on the phone enough to warrant paying an extra $20-30/month for a landline.
>
>Unfortunately, I can't get DSL as a result.
Actually dude, according to Telocity, at least, you don't need to have a local carrier for DSL service. You need the copper, but not the service. I was having major problems with my DSL in May-June (which was SBC/Ameritech's fsckup, of course) and it wasn't until I threatened to cancel my _local_ service that they (Ameritech) turned around and fixed the problem.
Check into it with the DSL provider's in your area, you might be surprised.
Did you know that they have retired a huge number of people in the Ameritech region, and are laying off an additionally large number? They are driving toward double digit profitability growth this year, and doing it by cutting expenses.
Just how good of service do you think that you will have when the shit really hits the fan? The project I am on has been gutted, even though it is an initiative with a very high priority and protected status.
My prediction: Next year, SBC will have the WORST customer service and MOST fsckups of any of the local carriers. Period.
Good, fast, or cheap.
Pick any two. Those are your options.
There are multiple comparisons to existing industries in this article, but they are not relevant from the standpoint of cost v/s complexity. Of course, aircraft are complex systems, and they are now produced with very high levels of quality. But look at the facts:
- They cost hundreds of thousands to millions each.
- They do not produce a completly new model of the 747 every 6 months to counter Airbus' new model.
- The operators of these complex wonders are licensed and trained to do so.
- When they came out, there were a lot of people who either fixed the defects in the machines themselves or died. The one's that died are not around to talk about the poor quality of production in the earliest days of flight.
I found an excellent way for HP to keep their IP locked up tight and I still get excellent print: I bought a Lexmark Optra color 40, added 32MB of RAM, and said fsck it to HP.
My Lexmark does PostScript level II in hardware, keeping my CPU usage to a minimum, and it cost less than $100 US.
THIS kind of message is the only message that HP exec's will ever understand. You vote with your wallet every day; don't loose sight of that.
Amen to that. The other thing, Hemos, is that the Justices have in recent history consistently been shifting the power _back_ to the states, not away from them, and I fail to see how this request for clarification reverses that trend.
>as high quality as television all the time
:-)
Dude, you gotta be kidding... Since when is anything on TV high quality?
/* Insert quote about TV being a medium because it is neither rare nor well done here */
;-)
Did anyone else notice how the commercials were all geared toward the IT crowd? Sun, IT jobs sites, and fast food (KFC & Pizza Hut) were all dead on, and the Mitsubishi ads were o.k., if a touch downscale. Only one crummy psychic's network ad. Kinda makes you think that this was pretty well thought out by the network and advertisers.
If it's the kind of brownie I'm thinking of, I'd pop $10 for it. Provided the wrapper had DeCSS printed on it. This is after all Slashdot, not Smokedot. :-)
While I sympathize with your abhorence of complex tax codes, which do in fact make it simpler to conceal who pays what, the flat tax is a bad idea. A flat rate tax structure is simply too regressive to be socially just. Note that I use the words "socially just" because any taxation system _DOES_ involve social justice and value judgements, contrary to what you may have been indoctrinated into believing.
As for the type of micromanagement you allude to, people have become so imbued with the idea I don't think it can be engineered out of society immediately. It can be exposed, however, which is really the only area in which the flat tax really shines.
Well Said!!!! Mod this guy up!!!