If your going to be continuing along with the Microsoft stuff, take the leap and go to XP. I dont know exact prices, but 2k will eventual be have support droped; might as well skip a step and go with the most recent OS avialable and save yourself one upgrade cycle.
If your dos apps cant run in modern Windows OS - or you want to ditch MS once and for all - look at VMWare. Or linux and dosemu. DOS based filesharing must have once been either netware or windows shares, right? Linux has both a netware emulator (mars-nwe), and of course Smaba.
DOSEMU can be run inside a (remote) X session - and implicitly from vnc - so if all (or at least the hardest to upgrade from) your running is those DOS apps, you can run them from a central server, and then run your 'modern' apps localy on the Windows desktops (or replace windows with Linux).
Two years running an unsupported OS is a very long time. If your network is connected to the internet it is a death sentence. It is almost guarenteed that in two years someone will find an exploit, and exploit you specificly.
As a matter of cost, having computer upgrades tied to building upgrades for an orgnization which Im sure has finite amounts of money is a Bad Thing. Either get your new hardware and licenses now, or after the new building: spread the costs around. Not for 30 years has physcially moving computers been a major cost concern. Computers are resonably portable. New computers and new buildings are sepearate issues.
In theroy, yes. On a purely technological decision making, its not all that hard to develope cross platform apps, even apps that use bleeding edge features like games.
But there is more then just a technological cost to bring games to market. There is the marketing, QA, tech support, packaging, distribution, etc, etc, etc, of bringing games to additional markets. And even if it was just money, (most?) game companies are fairly small outfits; the 'distraction' of other markets might be too much for overworked staff, everyone from the CEO down to coders.
While I dont think the 'Loki experiement' was fair: its clearly easier to port to other OS if you do it from day 1, not from the release date. Basicly only ID Software developes games that have a design goal of being cross platform. But the ID Software people all have more money then they can spend, there decisions are not purely business ones, and others who should/could be using ID as a prescidence know that. It would take time, money, and (perhaps most importantly) effort, to develop games for what is still unproven markets.
Since it hasent been pointed out yet, its not a OpenGL v DirectX question. DirectX is not just a 3d graphics library; it does many, many other things. While there are many OSS projects to bring the same type of libs to linux (and other !MS OSs), some sponsored by now dead Loki, DirectX is the most compleate set of libs... And while I havent coded it either OpenGL (and friends) or DirectX, Im suspect, since DirectX comes from a single source, as a whole it is more cohesive and unified then OpenGL + friends... Which isnt to say that any given DirectX component is better then alternatives, but as a package DirectX is almost definitly better then the (not existant) OSS package.
When is the end of life of Windows XP? I havent a fucking clue. And even if MS has anounced a date, that date is based on when they will release Longhorn.. Its not like that date is going to slip or anything.
RHEL is all up front. You pay for 1 year of support, you get 1 year of support. You want support next year you pay for support for next year.
Per Year Support from RedHat is less then (Inital License Cost + Support Calls / Lifespan) for MS stuff.
Its infinitly easier to move from RH to Debian, Solaris, HPUX, or anything other Unix(ish) system if RedHat suddently boosts there prices (or goes away)... Where else can you run those apps that require a MS OS? Right......
The Officers Oath of office includes the phrase... defend the constituion agianst all enemies, forgin and domestic... (or words to that effect)
So while, yes, US Citizens have a right to free spech (and implicitly, to bitch agianst the government), there is a entire class of US Governement officials who are sworn to protect the US agianst those people..
One could argue a very standard (if accademic) argument that an anti-UN page is very much in support of the UNs purposes and principles specificly Article 19.
If the government dosent accept criticisim of the itself, but allows all other speech, then they dont have free speech. Not to get into arguments about yelling 'fire' in a theater, or dissemenating tatical secrets to the enemy, but free speech is an all or nothing thing. You cant have it part way. The only way for a government to demonstrate that they have free speech is to not only allow, but to encourage (discussion of) descent.
MS's long term plan of unifing the OS strems was common knowladge since the mid 90s. Furthering that goal, 98 Second Edition (or just 98?) introduced the Windows Driver Model: WDM. MS also anounced that 98SE would be the last OS of the consumer line.
In theroy, MS had pleanty of time to 'finish' 2000, and hardware manufacturers had pleanty of time to pump out WDM drivers. Neither happened, at least in part because, Im sure, each (MS and HW companies) thought the other was dragging their feet.
The standards for the new drivers were defined long before 2000/ME came out.
Your absolutly right. DEC did manage to produce some amazing hardware and software. (Well, amazing hardware design anyway, individule machines were not all so solid).
But Olson had very little to do with the engineering of the good stuff that DEC pumped out. Look at Microsoft.. No one resonably blames Bill Gates for paticular defeciencies in Windows, or any other MS product, MS has been a sucuess primarly because of its (illegal) business practice, not because its products have been paticularly good, though they have been 'good enough'. (over) Simply: MS is on top because Gates is a good businessman. DEC is dead because Olsen is a bad businessman.
The internals, the design, of VMS is today the internals and the design of modern Windows, from NT. On the kernel level at least... YKWIM. DEC paid for the R&D, and a couple of major revisions, but it is MS who realy reaped the benifits of the VMS design team; the huge cost of the design of a compleatly new OS... Realy, VMS/NT is the only new OS 'family' to appear in the last 20 years. Broken family for sure:)
DEC compleatly missed the two major shifts in the computer world in the '80s: deskop PCs and UNIX. DEC traditionaly sold 'smaler' computers (compared to mainframes): PCs over mini's shold have been obvious. For years, the hardware of choice for UNIX was VAXen: DEC should have noticed that no one cared about VMS. Maby its because Unix was released with source; much more hackable. Maby its because Unix's userland stuff was superior. I dont know, and it dosent matter. Unix clearly won the Unix/VMS war, DEC being the major casualty.
I think in comparing these two quotes, its important to see where their respective companies are now.
IBM continues to be one of the leading (if not the leader) computer companies, and as a business has been around for more then a century, and has always been profitable. They clearly have recovered from a momentary laps in judgement, which, in historical context can be forgiven.
DEC, on the other hand.. Well, Olsen was a dumbass, plain and simple. He also is quoted as saying "Unix is snakeoil". What is amazing is not that DEC got swallowed up by Compaq, a companies whose core business is putting computers in peoples homes, but that they managed to survive as long as they did with morons like Olsen at the heml.
The convention is wrong. Once opon a time way back in the early days of electricity someone guesed at the direction of flow. And they got it wrong. For the vast majority of applications it dosent matter. Except for when it does, in which case the convention is wrong. The fundamental convention of EE is wrong.
Moores law only applies to the last of those paratigms.
Moores law was origionaly "the number of transistors on a given amount of integrates circut space will double every 12 months". It has been basterdized twice, first changing density to speed, and secondly changing the timeframe from 12 to 18 months.
First, not all free software is [L]GPL.. People dont have to 'respect' BSD style licenses - they can do whatever they want with that code.
Given a choice beteween a a company using stolen commercial software, or using GPL stuff, modifing it, and then selling it without releasing the code, Ill take the later any day of the week and twice on Sunday.... 'We' the OSS/Free Software community have lost nothing in 'evil' entities stealing from us insted os stealing from commercial shops... unless they start to ask stupid question on mailing lists that is:) We have gained what is the hardest thing to aquire. Mind share.
Software companies dont talk about it, and they all vigorusly prosicute blatent offenders, but piracy is a good thing.
Mind share.
Adobe Photoshop is perhaps the most pirated software ever. And its not just the best of the graphic program market, it IS the graphic program market. Why? Well, it is a dam good peice of software, but at least as importantly: people know how to use it, they like it, and for a company who actualy needs it, the $1000 cost is nothing.
For a lot of product lines, the OpenSource product is 'good enough' these days. So why isnt OSS software being installed everywhere? Lack of mind share.
Back in the day when the US Gov was anal about crypro software it was illegal to export, amongst other things, PGP. As software. Discussions about crypto stuff, including books, were ok to export.
Enter MIT Press, and their book "PGP: Source Code and Internals". It includes, in ORC friendly type, the entire PGP source code. Compleatly legal to export.
At least once, source code has been distributed on dead trees, in a format desigined for machines to read. I would call that machine-readable. In the PGP case it was for good intentions. To 'get around' the GPL it would be nasty. But acceptable.
Even if there was a MS monopoly, they sell compilers, so you could personaly write your own OS, line by line, from scratch. For free. And get your hardware from anyone
On the other hand, if Sun was a monopoly you would only be able to purchase Sun Authorized 36.6 Gb SCSI drives for a mear $1495/USD. Each. Oh, that dosent inculde the $495 drive tray.
A couple of notes:
- Content of a message is not relevent.
- Significantly, spam is spam if the recipient is irrelevent. RIAA/MPAA's messages would be sent to specific people.
RIAA/MPAA might be evil bastards, but their not evil bastards because of this....
The distinction beteween evidence gained via, say, a wiretap, and that gained through an interview is greate. In the former you say whatever you say freeley. You are not _obligated_ to provide evidence. Any interview with the police involves some amount of coersion. Evidence gatherd in interviews that dont involve a lawyer, unless that right is specificly waived, is tainted.
The name of that style of hat is "Fedora". I cant see how a software company (or even a hat company) could resonably force people not to use a generic name to refer to a style of clothing.
There is a push for a docbook lite (or whatever) version.
But as for it being a comprimise beteween different output formats... Well, ya. Thats kinda the whole point.
And its not Docbook that sucks, its all the old documentation for it that points users to stupid, hard to configure, to down right broken and non-functional tool chain. The near volumes of (shitty) instructions on DSSLCrap this, XSLTblargh that, SGMLSuperKalaFragalisticBroken other thing can all be summerized with:
xmlto.. If you dont have xmlto, get it. If your cant, give up.
Slashdot Mirror
If your dos apps cant run in modern Windows OS - or you want to ditch MS once and for all - look at VMWare. Or linux and dosemu. DOS based filesharing must have once been either netware or windows shares, right? Linux has both a netware emulator (mars-nwe), and of course Smaba.
DOSEMU can be run inside a (remote) X session - and implicitly from vnc - so if all (or at least the hardest to upgrade from) your running is those DOS apps, you can run them from a central server, and then run your 'modern' apps localy on the Windows desktops (or replace windows with Linux).
As a matter of cost, having computer upgrades tied to building upgrades for an orgnization which Im sure has finite amounts of money is a Bad Thing. Either get your new hardware and licenses now, or after the new building: spread the costs around. Not for 30 years has physcially moving computers been a major cost concern. Computers are resonably portable. New computers and new buildings are sepearate issues.
But there is more then just a technological cost to bring games to market. There is the marketing, QA, tech support, packaging, distribution, etc, etc, etc, of bringing games to additional markets. And even if it was just money, (most?) game companies are fairly small outfits; the 'distraction' of other markets might be too much for overworked staff, everyone from the CEO down to coders.
While I dont think the 'Loki experiement' was fair: its clearly easier to port to other OS if you do it from day 1, not from the release date. Basicly only ID Software developes games that have a design goal of being cross platform. But the ID Software people all have more money then they can spend, there decisions are not purely business ones, and others who should/could be using ID as a prescidence know that. It would take time, money, and (perhaps most importantly) effort, to develop games for what is still unproven markets.
Since it hasent been pointed out yet, its not a OpenGL v DirectX question. DirectX is not just a 3d graphics library; it does many, many other things. While there are many OSS projects to bring the same type of libs to linux (and other !MS OSs), some sponsored by now dead Loki, DirectX is the most compleate set of libs... And while I havent coded it either OpenGL (and friends) or DirectX, Im suspect, since DirectX comes from a single source, as a whole it is more cohesive and unified then OpenGL + friends... Which isnt to say that any given DirectX component is better then alternatives, but as a package DirectX is almost definitly better then the (not existant) OSS package.
RHEL is all up front. You pay for 1 year of support, you get 1 year of support. You want support next year you pay for support for next year.
Per Year Support from RedHat is less then (Inital License Cost + Support Calls / Lifespan) for MS stuff.
Its infinitly easier to move from RH to Debian, Solaris, HPUX, or anything other Unix(ish) system if RedHat suddently boosts there prices (or goes away)... Where else can you run those apps that require a MS OS? Right......
So while, yes, US Citizens have a right to free spech (and implicitly, to bitch agianst the government), there is a entire class of US Governement officials who are sworn to protect the US agianst those people..
If the government dosent accept criticisim of the itself, but allows all other speech, then they dont have free speech. Not to get into arguments about yelling 'fire' in a theater, or dissemenating tatical secrets to the enemy, but free speech is an all or nothing thing. You cant have it part way. The only way for a government to demonstrate that they have free speech is to not only allow, but to encourage (discussion of) descent.
Roosevelt was long dead by the time that WWII ended, let alone the UN starting up.
Nope, it takes up one 5 1/4" drive bay. CD-ROMS and such are 'half height' devices.
Businesses are willing to pay more, thus 'Pro' is more expensive.
Yes, Im sure that 'pro' has more features, but the price schedule is based on Rule #1 Of Setting Prices: charge what the market will bear.
In theroy, MS had pleanty of time to 'finish' 2000, and hardware manufacturers had pleanty of time to pump out WDM drivers. Neither happened, at least in part because, Im sure, each (MS and HW companies) thought the other was dragging their feet.
The standards for the new drivers were defined long before 2000/ME came out.
But Olson had very little to do with the engineering of the good stuff that DEC pumped out. Look at Microsoft.. No one resonably blames Bill Gates for paticular defeciencies in Windows, or any other MS product, MS has been a sucuess primarly because of its (illegal) business practice, not because its products have been paticularly good, though they have been 'good enough'. (over) Simply: MS is on top because Gates is a good businessman. DEC is dead because Olsen is a bad businessman.
The internals, the design, of VMS is today the internals and the design of modern Windows, from NT. On the kernel level at least... YKWIM. DEC paid for the R&D, and a couple of major revisions, but it is MS who realy reaped the benifits of the VMS design team; the huge cost of the design of a compleatly new OS... Realy, VMS/NT is the only new OS 'family' to appear in the last 20 years. Broken family for sure :)
DEC compleatly missed the two major shifts in the computer world in the '80s: deskop PCs and UNIX. DEC traditionaly sold 'smaler' computers (compared to mainframes): PCs over mini's shold have been obvious. For years, the hardware of choice for UNIX was VAXen: DEC should have noticed that no one cared about VMS. Maby its because Unix was released with source; much more hackable. Maby its because Unix's userland stuff was superior. I dont know, and it dosent matter. Unix clearly won the Unix/VMS war, DEC being the major casualty.
IBM continues to be one of the leading (if not the leader) computer companies, and as a business has been around for more then a century, and has always been profitable. They clearly have recovered from a momentary laps in judgement, which, in historical context can be forgiven.
DEC, on the other hand.. Well, Olsen was a dumbass, plain and simple. He also is quoted as saying "Unix is snakeoil". What is amazing is not that DEC got swallowed up by Compaq, a companies whose core business is putting computers in peoples homes, but that they managed to survive as long as they did with morons like Olsen at the heml.
The convention is wrong. Once opon a time way back in the early days of electricity someone guesed at the direction of flow. And they got it wrong. For the vast majority of applications it dosent matter. Except for when it does, in which case the convention is wrong. The fundamental convention of EE is wrong.
Moores law was origionaly "the number of transistors on a given amount of integrates circut space will double every 12 months". It has been basterdized twice, first changing density to speed, and secondly changing the timeframe from 12 to 18 months.
Given a choice beteween a a company using stolen commercial software, or using GPL stuff, modifing it, and then selling it without releasing the code, Ill take the later any day of the week and twice on Sunday.... 'We' the OSS/Free Software community have lost nothing in 'evil' entities stealing from us insted os stealing from commercial shops... unless they start to ask stupid question on mailing lists that is :) We have gained what is the hardest thing to aquire. Mind share.
Software companies dont talk about it, and they all vigorusly prosicute blatent offenders, but piracy is a good thing.
Mind share.
Adobe Photoshop is perhaps the most pirated software ever. And its not just the best of the graphic program market, it IS the graphic program market. Why? Well, it is a dam good peice of software, but at least as importantly: people know how to use it, they like it, and for a company who actualy needs it, the $1000 cost is nothing.
For a lot of product lines, the OpenSource product is 'good enough' these days. So why isnt OSS software being installed everywhere? Lack of mind share.
Enter MIT Press, and their book "PGP: Source Code and Internals". It includes, in ORC friendly type, the entire PGP source code. Compleatly legal to export.
At least once, source code has been distributed on dead trees, in a format desigined for machines to read. I would call that machine-readable. In the PGP case it was for good intentions. To 'get around' the GPL it would be nasty. But acceptable.
If you distribute the binaries on CD, I would consiter web accessable sources at least as easy to get to.
On the other hand, if Sun was a monopoly you would only be able to purchase Sun Authorized 36.6 Gb SCSI drives for a mear $1495/USD. Each. Oh, that dosent inculde the $495 drive tray.
Oh, you lied to them, you forgot your lie, and now your screwed. And its their fault?
Well beat me with a stupid stick.
http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
A couple of notes:
- Content of a message is not relevent.
- Significantly, spam is spam if the recipient is irrelevent. RIAA/MPAA's messages would be sent to specific people.
RIAA/MPAA might be evil bastards, but their not evil bastards because of this....
The distinction beteween evidence gained via, say, a wiretap, and that gained through an interview is greate. In the former you say whatever you say freeley. You are not _obligated_ to provide evidence. Any interview with the police involves some amount of coersion. Evidence gatherd in interviews that dont involve a lawyer, unless that right is specificly waived, is tainted.
The name of the (F)orgin (E)xchange (S)tudent on "That Secenties Show" is FES. Or rather, thats his nickname; his real name has never been disclosed.
The name of that style of hat is "Fedora". I cant see how a software company (or even a hat company) could resonably force people not to use a generic name to refer to a style of clothing.
But as for it being a comprimise beteween different output formats... Well, ya. Thats kinda the whole point.
And its not Docbook that sucks, its all the old documentation for it that points users to stupid, hard to configure, to down right broken and non-functional tool chain. The near volumes of (shitty) instructions on DSSLCrap this, XSLTblargh that, SGMLSuperKalaFragalisticBroken other thing can all be summerized with:
xmlto.. If you dont have xmlto, get it. If your cant, give up.