What worries me is that new acquisition of InnoBase by Oracle a few days ago.
InnoBase is the maker of InnoDB, which is the full featured dual licensed storage engine with transactions, referential integrity, hot backups and more.
The GPL version of MySQL will not be affected should Oracle decide to misbehave.
What may get affected is the commerical version of MySQL. Oracle can demand a hefty price for relicensing InnoDB, when the contract is up for renewal hence choking MySQL AB financially, by depriving it from the revenue stream of commerical licensing MySQL with InnoDB.
This may in turn cause long term trouble for the community by depriving it from contributions by MySQL.
I hope Oracle does not do that, but still, they are a corporation with no open source culture, and may have the mentality of choking the competition, using the very rules of open source dual licensing.
Or, they may be softening MySQL to buy them cheap in the near future....?
I am not a defender of Microsoft by any means. I loath them for all the good reasons that you listed, and more...
However, it is not only about Microsoft. It is a general comment on how people here react to companies.
If you look at the general populace of Slashdot, as large and varied as it is, you will find that companies fall from grace easily. Think about SCO, which was positive to neutral only 2 or 3 years ago. Think of Red Hat and how they fell of favor after they stopped selling to individuals, earning the wrath of Slashdotters.
This is very well said in some Funny posts saying: "Umm. I am confused now. So are we supposed to hate company X" and "Who are the good guys now"?
I don't know if you are an older guy like me or from the younger crowd, but IBM, as innovative as it is, was REALLY REALLY loathed in the 70s and 80s. The term FUD was invented as a direct result of IBM tactics. There is a whole slew of jokes about IBM (the salesman wife making fun of him promising how it will be awesome, and nothing happens. The IBM engineers in a car getting a flat tire,...etc.). The "no one got fired for buying IBM" adage, and more.
It was its business practices that earned it its reputation, and not whether the products were good or bad.
Many rejoiced when it started sliding before Lou Gerstner was hired to put it back in shape.
So, I agree with you to some extent, but innovative or not, the key behind hating a company is its practices, not its technology...
How will Microsoft be perceived when they start to fall (a decade or two in the future?) I don't know, but I am sure that universities will be studying them, at least in economics and business courses...
Whilst it's popular and fashionable here on Slashdot to dismiss large corporations
You must be new here!
IBM are the good guys around here these days, since they embrace open source, promote Linux,...etc. Also Apple are among the good guys this week...
The bad guys are often Red Hat, and always Microsoft...
Seriously, IBM use to be the big 800 lb gorilla of the IT industry (before it was called IT). They bullied everyone else, used Fear Uncertainity and Doubt (FUD), and in the 70s and 80s were everything that Microsoft is today: monoplistic, greedy, arrogant...
After the minis and client server era of the 90s, they came out humbled and seem to have changed for the better...
In the corporate world, it is like international diplomacy, there are no permanet good guys or permanent bad guys... everyone changes over time..., including SCO, and maybe Google in the future...
a cheap media volume that contained "recorded media, prehistory - to
- 2050ad
This is indeed possible. If I think back 20 years, and how much information was digitized vs. today, it is just plain staggering.
Think about Britannica, Project Gutenberg, CCEL, Perseus, Alwarraq, and many thousands of other sites that offer reference works in digital form. Think about the commerical CD-ROMs that have that.
All that in just 20 years.
So, 100 more years, we can have all the heiroglyphs off of Egyptian temples, all the Sumerian tables, all the manuscripts in hundreds of languages in libraries around the world.
It was not Microsoft who dethroned IBM. It was the minis then distributed computing that did so.
IBM was the king of the mainframe: highly reliable and expensive centralized computing that is accessed from terminals.
The trouble for IBM started with the minis with proprietary operating systems, such as DEC VMS and the like. Then it was the UNIX minis made by several vendors like Sun, Pyramid, HP.
Much later it was client server computing that finally toppled IBM from the position of dominance they had. There was Novell Netware and Banyan VINES there as well, way before Windows networking was something to go by.
They changed from the arrogant top player to a much humbled, yet respected company. This was in the early to mid 1990s as I recall.
Microsoft's role in all this is not that great, apart from providing the operating system for PCs in the client server world.
For business (and other fields) do not have the need or mandate that they educate everyone in their jargon. They can keep it to themeselves as long as their gear works as part of the bigger machine.
But in our case (IT) it is inescapable. The genie is out of the bottle for good, no matter what we think. Computers are used by secretaries, clerks, kids at home,...etc.
Our field has become pervasive, and it is not going back to the 1970s and before.
Some things were better then (no spyware, no upgrades to dumb terminals,...etc.), but the world has changed now. We need wordprocessors, spreadsheets, games,...etc. to be in the hands of everyone for business to function the way it is today...
Every field has its jargon that is virtually undecipherable for outsiders.
Think about medicine for example, and the names of medical conditions.
Or think about botany, or construction engineering.
Where the problem lies is that unlike the above fields, computers have become pervasive, and embedded everywhere.
If computers have remained in mainframe rooms with an army of programmers and operators, this would never have been an issue. It became an issue after the PC was invented and made it to every office and every home...
Obviously, this serves a niche, but it does not include me.
My teens each has a PC of their own, with all the chat software they want on it. And since I bought them used, they are not much more than 99$ specially when you factor in that they do their homework on it as well.
I live in an area of Southern Ontario that was settled initally by Mennonites from Pennsylvania.
There is a wide spectrum of Mennonites here. From old order who use horse driven buggies, women wearing all black, and girls in flowery dresses, all the way to "regular" folks who are indistinguishable from the rest of city folk.
In between there are those who drive cars AND wear a symbolic head bonnet, and dress.
Thanks for the info, most of it is new to me. I enjoyed it.
The main point is civilization is older than 2000 BC.
Before Egypt built the Pyramids, they had to develop other ground work that civilizations need. For example, agriculture, cities, writing, a system of government, revenue and taxation, religion,...etc.
Egypt's civilization is well know because they left writings that survived till now. Other civilizations either did not have writing develop, or whatever they left did not survive.
Cave paintings are far more ancient, but the tribes that did it hardly qualify as a 'civilization'.
The earliest recorded history of Egypt is from shortly before 3000 BC. Did they have a civilization before that? You bet! Same for Newgrange.
Actually, more like 5,000 years old. You see, Egypt had kings and starting a writing system in the Predynastic era, which is a century or so before around 3,000 BC, making it 5,000 years old at least.
The Pyramids were build around 2450 BC, during the Old Kingdom.
Manetho traces the list of kings, and that has been corroborated by the Palermo stone. Read more on this great site, which is still incomplete. Here is the early Dynastic period, and Dynasty 1 from that site.
Since the two rivals (Linux and Mac) seem to have fanatical followers who really have passion for the product, Microsoft is trying to do the same.
If anyone recalls teh late 80s and early 90s, before Microsoft became so dominant, there were indeed fanatical followers for it as well. These are the people who saw the PC as a liberator from the IBM monopoly in mainframes, the people who ran BBSs on DOS systems, edit boot sectors,...etc.
Now MS is seen only as a corporate product of a greedy monopoly that is expensive for the consumer, insecure, buggy, bloated,...etc.
So, they are trying to counter that image by having some fans come forward...
Slashdot Mirror
What worries me is that new acquisition of InnoBase by Oracle a few days ago.
InnoBase is the maker of InnoDB, which is the full featured dual licensed storage engine with transactions, referential integrity, hot backups and more.
The GPL version of MySQL will not be affected should Oracle decide to misbehave.
What may get affected is the commerical version of MySQL. Oracle can demand a hefty price for relicensing InnoDB, when the contract is up for renewal hence choking MySQL AB financially, by depriving it from the revenue stream of commerical licensing MySQL with InnoDB.
This may in turn cause long term trouble for the community by depriving it from contributions by MySQL.
I hope Oracle does not do that, but still, they are a corporation with no open source culture, and may have the mentality of choking the competition, using the very rules of open source dual licensing.
Or, they may be softening MySQL to buy them cheap in the near future ....?
I am not a defender of Microsoft by any means. I loath them for all the good reasons that you listed, and more...
...etc.). The "no one got fired for buying IBM" adage, and more.
...
...
However, it is not only about Microsoft. It is a general comment on how people here react to companies.
If you look at the general populace of Slashdot, as large and varied as it is, you will find that companies fall from grace easily. Think about SCO, which was positive to neutral only 2 or 3 years ago. Think of Red Hat and how they fell of favor after they stopped selling to individuals, earning the wrath of Slashdotters.
This is very well said in some Funny posts saying: "Umm. I am confused now. So are we supposed to hate company X" and "Who are the good guys now"?
I don't know if you are an older guy like me or from the younger crowd, but IBM, as innovative as it is, was REALLY REALLY loathed in the 70s and 80s. The term FUD was invented as a direct result of IBM tactics. There is a whole slew of jokes about IBM (the salesman wife making fun of him promising how it will be awesome, and nothing happens. The IBM engineers in a car getting a flat tire,
It was its business practices that earned it its reputation, and not whether the products were good or bad.
Many rejoiced when it started sliding before Lou Gerstner was hired to put it back in shape.
So, I agree with you to some extent, but innovative or not, the key behind hating a company is its practices, not its technology
How will Microsoft be perceived when they start to fall (a decade or two in the future?) I don't know, but I am sure that universities will be studying them, at least in economics and business courses
Whilst it's popular and fashionable here on Slashdot to dismiss large corporations
You must be new here!
IBM are the good guys around here these days, since they embrace open source, promote Linux, ...etc. Also Apple are among the good guys this week ...
The bad guys are often Red Hat, and always Microsoft ...
Seriously, IBM use to be the big 800 lb gorilla of the IT industry (before it was called IT). They bullied everyone else, used Fear Uncertainity and Doubt (FUD), and in the 70s and 80s were everything that Microsoft is today: monoplistic, greedy, arrogant ...
After the minis and client server era of the 90s, they came out humbled and seem to have changed for the better ...
In the corporate world, it is like international diplomacy, there are no permanet good guys or permanent bad guys ... everyone changes over time ..., including SCO, and maybe Google in the future ...
This is indeed possible. If I think back 20 years, and how much information was digitized vs. today, it is just plain staggering.
Think about Britannica, Project Gutenberg, CCEL, Perseus, Alwarraq, and many thousands of other sites that offer reference works in digital form. Think about the commerical CD-ROMs that have that.
All that in just 20 years.
So, 100 more years, we can have all the heiroglyphs off of Egyptian temples, all the Sumerian tables, all the manuscripts in hundreds of languages in libraries around the world.
Yes, and all those silly blogs too ...
It was not Microsoft who dethroned IBM. It was the minis then distributed computing that did so.
IBM was the king of the mainframe: highly reliable and expensive centralized computing that is accessed from terminals.
The trouble for IBM started with the minis with proprietary operating systems, such as DEC VMS and the like. Then it was the UNIX minis made by several vendors like Sun, Pyramid, HP.
Much later it was client server computing that finally toppled IBM from the position of dominance they had. There was Novell Netware and Banyan VINES there as well, way before Windows networking was something to go by.
They changed from the arrogant top player to a much humbled, yet respected company. This was in the early to mid 1990s as I recall.
Microsoft's role in all this is not that great, apart from providing the operating system for PCs in the client server world.
Tell me why someone would buy this for "$3.5 million US" yet is concerned about fuel economy of "up to 28 miles per gallon".
...
Seems contradictory
You are right of course.
But the article was talking about javascript, jpeg, which is not regular office jargon.
This is a topic that I thought about a while back, and even wrote an article on.
There are also some success stories with old media.
I hope our data does not meet the fate of Hieroglyphs: undecipherable for two millenia.
For business (and other fields) do not have the need or mandate that they educate everyone in their jargon. They can keep it to themeselves as long as their gear works as part of the bigger machine.
...etc.
...etc.), but the world has changed now. We need wordprocessors, spreadsheets, games, ...etc. to be in the hands of everyone for business to function the way it is today...
But in our case (IT) it is inescapable. The genie is out of the bottle for good, no matter what we think. Computers are used by secretaries, clerks, kids at home,
Our field has become pervasive, and it is not going back to the 1970s and before.
Some things were better then (no spyware, no upgrades to dumb terminals,
Actually, this is normal.
...
Every field has its jargon that is virtually undecipherable for outsiders.
Think about medicine for example, and the names of medical conditions.
Or think about botany, or construction engineering.
Where the problem lies is that unlike the above fields, computers have become pervasive, and embedded everywhere.
If computers have remained in mainframe rooms with an army of programmers and operators, this would never have been an issue. It became an issue after the PC was invented and made it to every office and every home...
Live with it
Recently, a project I contribute to moved to OSL as well (Drupal.org).
While free bandwidth is always good, I find that more and more projects being concentrated in a single site is not good.
I think they have Debian there too.
Suppose this place got hit by a volcano or an earthquake, then what?
Anyone knows what disaster recovery plan they have?
Obviously, this serves a niche, but it does not include me.
My teens each has a PC of their own, with all the chat software they want on it. And since I bought them used, they are not much more than 99$ specially when you factor in that they do their homework on it as well.
I feel the same, so I wrote: I am not a blogger, this is not a blog.
To all who object to this article, as an old timer, I say to you "You must be new here"!
Anyone who has been here for a while knows that many Slashdotters have a fetish about Natalie Portman, Hot grits, naked and petrified.
Donorge is another open source service for funding projects.
It uses Drupal for its web site and infrastructure (Drupal's web site is down at the moment, so try later).
Not true.
I live in an area of Southern Ontario that was settled initally by Mennonites from Pennsylvania.
There is a wide spectrum of Mennonites here. From old order who use horse driven buggies, women wearing all black, and girls in flowery dresses, all the way to "regular" folks who are indistinguishable from the rest of city folk.
In between there are those who drive cars AND wear a symbolic head bonnet, and dress.
Would 26 April 1995 do?
This is a topic that I wrote a few articles on a while back.
Read Intro to Digital Archeology for an overview.
More here.
Thanks for the info, most of it is new to me. I enjoyed it.
The main point is civilization is older than 2000 BC.
Before Egypt built the Pyramids, they had to develop other ground work that civilizations need. For example, agriculture, cities, writing, a system of government, revenue and taxation, religion, ...etc.
Egypt's civilization is well know because they left writings that survived till now. Other civilizations either did not have writing develop, or whatever they left did not survive.
Cave paintings are far more ancient, but the tribes that did it hardly qualify as a 'civilization'.
The earliest recorded history of Egypt is from shortly before 3000 BC. Did they have a civilization before that? You bet! Same for Newgrange.
Human civilization is approx. 4000 years old.
Actually, more like 5,000 years old. You see, Egypt had kings and starting a writing system in the Predynastic era, which is a century or so before around 3,000 BC, making it 5,000 years old at least.
The Pyramids were build around 2450 BC, during the Old Kingdom.
Manetho traces the list of kings, and that has been corroborated by the Palermo stone. Read more on this great site, which is still incomplete. Here is the early Dynastic period, and Dynasty 1 from that site.
Arabic plays more than passing role in Dune.
Read about how Dune was influenced by Islamic and Arabic themes.
Since the two rivals (Linux and Mac) seem to have fanatical followers who really have passion for the product, Microsoft is trying to do the same.
If anyone recalls teh late 80s and early 90s, before Microsoft became so dominant, there were indeed fanatical followers for it as well. These are the people who saw the PC as a liberator from the IBM monopoly in mainframes, the people who ran BBSs on DOS systems, edit boot sectors, ...etc.
Now MS is seen only as a corporate product of a greedy monopoly that is expensive for the consumer, insecure, buggy, bloated, ...etc.
So, they are trying to counter that image by having some fans come forward ...
This is a strange world we are living in today.
While one branch of the US government is concerned with Ads in space, and prohibiting it, another branch wants to militarize space.
What the ...
Perhaps because gmail has a .com domain and hence its cookies are not shared by the .ca domain.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Also see this comment about Weather not working in Canada (requires a zip code). I faced the same thing, and had to remove weather from my home page.
Another thing is the Google logo takes up too much space at the top. Perhaps it can go to one side.
All in all a great job, and I am sure it will improve over time.