All Linus did was copy a 30yr old OS using well known algorithms and code.
I'm sorry to say that... you're absolutely correct. Not only Microserfs are trying to wake people up about GNU/Linux, but we UNIX zealots are too. Linus didn't invent anything; he just followed the POSIX spec. Possibly some of the implementations have been revolutionary, but I doubt it.
The reason that GNU/Linux beats NT in many regards is that, IMNSHO, the UNIX system is superior. In fact, it is so much superior, that even a hack of it such as Linux looks great.
But GNU/Linux doesn't look quite so awesome compared to my obsession, Solaris. And I don't want to hear all of that "Slow-aris" crap. Dismissing Solaris because of the perceived speed of its UI makes about as much sense as deciding that a 1GHz Pentium III is "better" than a 400MHz UltraSPARC because of the extra clock cycles. As I've said before, GNU/Linux has a better chance of taking the desktop away from Windows, than the server room away from SunOS, AIX, HP-UX, and Irix. I suppose that GNU/Linux is impressive for coming this far with relatively little commercial support, but it's been ten years, for God's sake, and you're still not close to state-of-the-art.
I won't rehash everything I've said here over the last few months, but I don't think that Uncle Sam is being very smart about Microsoft, and I don't think that NT is Satan. It's not a bad product. No-where near the level of commervial SVR4, but still not a bad product. UNIX and Windows can coexist. And there's even a place for GNU/Linux, if its spokespeople could get it through their heads that they're not revolutionary heros fighting "the man". The only really interesting part of the whole mess is the GPL. <flamebait>Maybe the next GPLed OS will have more mature, reasonable users.</flamebait> (But that system will be developed by old Linuxers, and we'll run into the Second System Effect, and end up with the Windows 95 of the Unix-clone world. Right, TummyX?;-)
I'll shut up now. For more ranting, see my previous posts.:-)
Whether you be troll or not, I hope that you stick around, TummyX, for I find your POV refreshing. You've managed to make it this long without being completely engulfed in Slashdotter flames, so I trust that I needn't worry.
intellisense in Visual Studio (including autoprompting of C++, Java, HTML, JavaScript, ASP etc).
Ummmm... heh heh heh... as a member of the Java Lobby, I feel an urge to take issue with a couple of those products mentioned. But you've been flamed enough for today, so I will restrain myself.
I normally don't make complaints like this, but... your post was utterly without content or intelligence, and is about as perfect an example of a "Karma Whore" as can be. Did you really think that you were contributing anything to this discussion? Hmmm, OSS cheerleading, and a reference to one of the few books that 99% of this site's readers have heard of. Hey, while you're at it, why don't you tell everyone about that great new "Linux" software you found?
If your post is modded up I will vomit all over my keyboard. It will mean that the Average Slashdot Moderator (ASM) has crossed the threshold into the "dumber than a motherfucking animal" category. I thought that the ASD wouldn't sink much lower after firmly wedging himself in the "clueless retard, randomly moderating down because of some bizarre sexual pleasure he receives by hurting others" category, but as public forums such as this prove time and time again, never underestimate how stupid people really are.
I'm going back to my hole now. "Moderators, do your duty."
Slashdot.org: Got a product? Have a press release? Can you type "open" and "source" in the same paragraph? Then get your free publicity at http://slashdot.org. Remember, Slashdot: because no one wants to have to pay for marketing!
Joe Random Executive: Hi, is this Slashdot? I want some of this free publicity!
Hemos: Well, you know our policy. Do you have a press release?
Joe Random Executive: Yep!
Hemos: Does it contain the words "open" and "source?"
Joe Random Executive: Yep!
Hemos: Fine. Just e-mail me the name of your company and your website URL. I'll have it up tomorrow morning, under a random topic.
Joe Random Executive: Fine, just don't put it in the BSD section! No one reads that!
Hemos: Yeah, alright. BSD sure sucks, huh?
Joe Random Executive: It sure does!
Hemos: What a bunch of losers...
Joe Random Executive: Yeah, yeah... gotta run, m'kay? Thanks for the advertis -- I mean, Open Source announcements. Ciao!
Hemos: Whatever. Later.
[hangs up phone]
[time passes...]
[the next morning...]
Slashdot, top story, under the "Linux" icon:
Open-Source Annoucement! Posted by Hemos on Friday, June 16 @6:30AM from the blah-blah-blah dept
Hey, ESR just told me about this great new product, from Microsoft! Here's a quote from their website: "Microsoft is your source for products which open up new doors for your business." Wow, sounds cool! Check out their website.
CmdrTaco (voice of Ricky Ricardo): Heemooooooooos!!!
Hemos: Oh, shit... I forget the Golden Rule: never mix a poor editorial decision-making process with grain alcohol!
Dear Mr. Woz, I am an elite Linux hacker. Does the Apple I support Linux? If not, you should consider helping port Linux to it, or no one will take your product seriously.
Thanks, Randy Rathbun
And here is Woz's reply:
Subject: MAILER-DAEMON: failure notice
Microsoft Exchange Server: ERROR 029138D76 Could not deliver message to "wox@woz.org": user does not exist. Please contact the site administrator for assistance.
>>Dear Mr. Woz, >>I am an elite Linux hacker. Does >>the Apple I support Linux? If not, you should >>consider helping port Linux to it, or no one >>will take your product seriously.
You're right about what's happening in the industry. GNU/Linux is a buzzword right now, because of that is getting more attention and support than I really think it deserves. People are starting to forget that GNU Isn't UNIX. I heard someone two weeks say that nowadays there is practically no difference between Linux and Solaris. I didn't know whether to be shocked, depressed, infuriated, or all three.
If my tone before was combative, that is why. Sorry for venting at you.
IBM and Sun seem to be doing things right. Supporting Linux as a viable solution for low-end stuff, but still pushing UNIX for the high-end. As long as they don't forget that Linux can't really compete with their own UNIces, they'll be fine.
If the enterprise has the cash, there are some things that are truly worth paying for. UNIX is one of those things, IMO. But I'm a zealot so management doesn't listen to me. Ah well. Nothing really changes. In twenty years we'll be in the same position, but Linux will be in Windows' place. The industry will demand Linux standards, one manufacturer will come out on top, and yet another half-assed OS will hold us by our balls. Yes, half-assed. Linux is great for us geeks, but does professioniality counts for something. Yes.
*Ahem.* Your comments regarding Irix could be tolerated. Your comments regarding HP-UX could not.
GNU/Linux has at least five years to go before it can seriously compete with commercial UNIX, folks. I'm sorry, but the thought of replacing Solaris with Linux on highly-loaded production platforms is quite laughable. I don't think a lot of Linux zealots realize what they're saying when they talk about Linux "killing off" something like HP-UX. You mock Windows users for their ignorance of Linux, but you're in the same position yourself, when it comes to UNIX.
GNU's Not Unix. And it's not ready to take on the Big Ones. Given enough time, and enough industry support, it's possible that it could become a viable option for enterprise computing. But honestly, (and I do use and enjoy using it), GNU/Linux has a better chance of taking the desktop from Microsoft that the server room from HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris.
GNU/Linux is nice for the desktop at home, thanks to the many choices in window managers. GNU/Linux is fine for general development, thanks to the fine assortment of GNU tools. GNU/Linux is okay for small x86 file servers, thanks to software like SAMBA and its support for many partition types. GNU/Linux can be made to work well for busy web servers, almost as well as FreeBSD, thanks to its Internet-centric development and a wonderful history with Perl. This is all well and good. GNU/Linux isn't taking any market share away from commercial UNIX. When it starts to, IBM, HP, and Sun are going to draw a line in the sand and dare you to cross it. This line separates the Men from the Boys. GNU/Linux isn't yet ready to cross that line.
IBM, HP, and Sun are not dumb, no matter how much corporate culture encourages this. They wouldn't openly support software in a way which could obviously come back to bite them in the ass. They see no future for GNU/Linux in the enterprise, past the few odd development boxen and toy servers. So why shouldn't they support it? They get good, free press. And if by some miracle GNU/Linux really does take off in the business world, they already have experience with it. They know its strengths, and more important, its weaknesses. The corporate demon is strong, and while not extremely intelligent, it is a survivor, and always looking own for its own interests. I would not even blink if I were told that IBM, HP, and Sun had done internal studies of GNU/Linux in the exact same fashion as the infamous Microsoft "Halloween documents".
GNU/Linux beats Windows NT/2000, almost across the board. ROI, price, stability, et cetera. This is not because GNU/Linux is godlike. This is because NT sticks its nose into a business where the Unix model had long been proven to be a high performer. They took a chance that their model would be better. They failed. And so a Frankenstein POSIX implementation kicks their ass. But commercial SVR4 UNIX is on a higher plain. Today's commercial UNIX vendors have been making money at this for a long, long time. Some of them are the warriors who fought tooth-and-nail during the Dark Eighties against the teeming hoardes of proprietary OS's sold by hardware vendors. They are the innovators who made UNIX the rock-solid platform it is. They are the root of the current POSIX.
GNU/Linux isn't a big deal to them. Why should it be? They helped define the standard. Why should they get riled when some crazy Finn takes that standard and makes his own cheap copy? Don't kid yourselves. GNU/Linux is great, but to a UNIX giant, it sets back the clock ten years.
"Those who do not understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
Indeed.
But I've managed to get far, far offtopic. A SCO distro of GNU/Linux? I think that's rather silly. I think the company is in the last stages of putrid corporate decay. They were never the players they should have been. "Whose turn is it to get rights to the UNIX specs this week?" I think they were victims of poor leadership and bad luck. Hopefully they'll contribute some nice things to the codebase and not violate any licenses. That would be a nice thing to do before they slip into the night. (Which I predict happening before 2005, unless they beat the odds and make money with this latest stunt.)
It's not there. But try the same thing with BSD make, and the phrasing of the error message is interesting:
% make love STDERR: don't know how to make love. Stop.
I've always liked that.
---------///----------
News from the Slashdot Frontlines...
on
Macs In Space!
·
· Score: 5
I thought it was time to write a sequel to "News from the Linux Frontlines".
-------------///----------------
Ask Slashdot: What's this Linux thing? Posted by emmett on Monday June 12, @12:20AM from the i-just-like-the-penguin dept
NewbieLuser asks, "I'm pretty good using Micro$oft Windoze, but I've heard about this Lunix thing, and now I want to escape the EVIL EMPIRE and be a l337 h4X0r like you guys here at SlashDot. So I ordered a copy of "Red Hat 62", but my question is, what is it? What does it do? Can I install it from WIndows, or do I have to open up a DOS-box? (Ew! DOS is hard!)"
New Cracking Tool: SlashDoS Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 12, @12:05AM from the i-0wn-j00 dept
Slashdot has long been envied by 5cr1p7 k1dd13z for its ability to kill any webserver within five minutes of a link being posted to the front page. Now these l337 k1dd13z can harness the power of Slash, without having to learn all that hard Perl stuff! I am proud to announce the 1.0 release of SlashDoS! Update: CT: I know, I know, it's not Freshmeat!
Microsoft Spokesmen Diss Jackson's Momma Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday June 11, @10:59PM from the damn-thats-cold dept
Today Microsoft Corporation responded to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's rulings by calling his mother a "fat bitch" and a "stank-ass hoe". One spokesman is quoted as saying, "Yeah, yeah, dat bitch got such a fat ass, dat when she sits around the house, she really be sittin' around the house!!" Fellow Microsoft spokesmen agreed with this analysis of Ms. Jackson's buttocks, giving each other "high-fives" and passing around a bottle of malt liquor.
Former Microsoft CEO William Gates refused to comment on these statements, other than noting that "Ms. Jackson, while perhaps not a huge muthafuckin bitch, ain't all that skinny, ya know what I'm sayin'."
Jackson is reportedly preparing a counter-statement in which Gates' mother is said to freely engage in promiscuous oral sex.
Transmeta Receives Round of Handjobs from Rob Malda Posted by Hemos on Sunday June 11, @10:507PM from the he-also-blows-quite-well dept
Transmeta Inc, employer of Linux frontman Linus Torvalds, received a round of handjobs from our own CmdrTaco earlier this week. Malda, who was always eager to post any Slashdot article mentioning the CPU designer, last week stated his intent to go "all the way". "It's obvious that I am sexually aroused by just the mention of the amazing company. I vow not to rest until I have brought each staff member to orgasm with my own two hands." The handjobs were eagerly accepted by Transmeta, whose engineers aren't too picky about their sexual partners.
Famed Hacker "Neo" Constructs Eight-dimensional Beowulf Cluster Posted by Roblimo on Sunday June 11, @10:45PM from the so-how-do-we-eat-soup? dept
"Neo", an underground hacker guru well known for his escape of the artificial world in which we all are trapped while our life is sucked away to feed a never-ending horde of robot-monsters, today unleashed a new weapon in his battle against the Agents: an eight-dimensional Beowulf cluster, codenamed "BW8". Slashdot has obtained an exclusive interview with "Neo". Here is an excerpt:
Slashdot: Of course, you realize that no-one has ever done this before.
Neo: That's why it's going to work. [pauses] And of course it works. It runs Linux(tm).
SD: VA Linux has announced their intention to sponsor this project, by donating lots of hardware. Comments?
N: Whoa...
SD: What do you plan to do with the machines after we've won our freedom from our mechanical oppressors?
N: Well, I was thinking that it would make a really rad Quake III server.
SD: Why do you fight, Neo?
N: Well, obviously, to allow people to live normal lives again. Being trapped in a fantasy world while your bioenergy is drained, like, sucks. Hey, do you know where I can get a Yopy? Those things kick ass.
(Read More)
FreeBSD Merchandise on sale NOW!! Posted by gay-nik on Sunday June 11, @10:44PM from the this-is-slashdot-journalism? dept
I just thought I'd remind you to BUY FREEBSD MERCHANDISE! CD-ROMs, t-shirts, plush toys, and all sorts of other WONDERFUL merchandise is availble from Walnut Creek CD-ROM! Man, you guys should go buy some of this merchandise now, because it is HOT! Update: gay-nik: Hey, and don't forget to buy some of those OpenBSD posters! BSD RuleZzz!!
Jon Katz Finishes Pillaging of Slashdot Community Posted by JonKatz on Sunday June 11, @10:41PM from the man-i-really-screwed-you! dept
Well folks, it's time to say goodbye. I've completed my goal of infiltrating your community, playing on your sympathies by defending geeks, and gaining your trust, and now that I've gotten rich by stealing your comments and publishing them as a book (accompanied by my own lame analysis), I'm done with you losers. I'll probably spend the next few years pushing down children at Disney World and stealing their money. (Click below, if you feel worthy of reading more of my godlike opinions, you scum.)
Your Rights Online: Internet Banned Posted by jamie on Sunday June 11, @10:39PM from the xfiles-is-a-documentary dept
Okay, okay, the Internet wasn't really banned, but we can't trust those Government types, so who knows when it will happen?! So what will we do when the Internet gets banned? Also, perhaps we should discuss the eventual hostile takeover of Earth by the Greys. (Read More)
News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters Posted by timothy on Sunday June 11, @10:37PM from the slashdot.org dept
Linux? XFree86 apache perl free-speech. Computer cases, Microsoft DMCA penguin hard disk. LiViD! Robots, corel debian stallman. ESR java athlon? PNG mozilla mars, battlefield earth OpenBSD beowulf cluster, python NSA hacker Quake III. Transmeta, gnome. UK virus windows; Playstation celeron Star Wars. First post.
About 10 yrs ago, some company tried to sell a mobile Sparc system. AFAIK, this was not a financial success.
I've been drooling over those UltraSPARC notebooks for a long time. Lately I've been thinking of getting a quote on a refurbished one here. I'm a little afraid at what they'll tell me. My guess is $7k, minimum, for one of these babies new. The guy who recommended these people to me said that you can save %40 off list from them, but since RISC notebooks are a niche of a niche market, I think I'd be lucky to get %20 off list.
You are correct, OS/2 could have competed. And it was the only non-Apple OS that could have. I think that when Microsoft made IBM its bitch by pulling out of the OS/2 project, then locking them out of the OEM market win Windows 3.1, that signalled the official start of their modern era of unfair business practices. But did Microsoft already have a monopoly at this time? I'm not sure quite when they got one. I mean, Windows 3.1 was pretty common and accepted, but so were Apple machines in 1991. I think that Windows 95 is where the trouble really began. Microsoft went into that project with enough resources to do whatever they wanted, and enough corporate might to force others to play nice when them.
But today, I do not think they have any direct competitors, except perhaps, Apple, if they would give it MacOS X for x86. With enough momentum with the initial release, OS X could be the "sleeper hit" of the next decade. Momentum is important. It will take a lot of it to seperate people from Windows, but if the OEMs cooperate, and if this Microsoft breakup goes through, and if MS Office for MacOS is still around, it could happen.
This is what that story on the front page earlier says. But it won't happen. Will MacOS be released for x86? Absolutely not. Even if Apple had Microsoft's power over OEMs, there it no way they could control the hardware as stringently as they do now. They have no experience mass-producing software for x86, do they? They'd probably amass a bug list rivaling Microsoft's. That article says things like, "Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts, eternal consultant visits . ..can now install Mac OS X on their existing computer . .." but would Apple software really solve those problems? I'm not sure if MacOS would be able to handle the jungle that is the consumer PC world the way it can Apple's handpicked hardware configs. There's a reason that PC plug-n-play has always lagged so far behind Apple's.
(I honestly couldn't give a rat's ass about Apple. But the BSD in MacOS could change that.)
I'd love to see more competition in that market, even at the cost of software compatability. It would force consumers to make a choice again. And who wouldn't love to see the mass-market engaging in the software religions/zealotry that UNIX geeks do?
First UNIX geek: "Well, and then I opened up Emacs, and typed . .."
Second UNIX geek: "Emacs? Wuss! Now you die! Why, if anyone tried to install Emacs on my BSD box, I'd..."
Third UNIX geek: "BSD? Wuss! Only SVR4 is real Unix! BSD died ten years ago! Why, even if you want to run on Alpha..."
Fourth UNIX geek: "Alpha? Wuss! Now you die! Only UltraSPARCs provide real processing power! What, do you run DEC or something? I mean..."
First, Second, and Third: "DEC?!? ROTFLMAO!"
I think that's one of the "funnest" things about this community.
What else could compete with Windows? Maybe... BeOS?;-D
Last time I checked, IE can't do any of the PNG transparency features, whether normal "GIF"-style or PNG's cool multi-level transparency. Therefore, it doesn't really display PNG. (i.e., an ASCII editor can read a.doc file, but not correctly.) Netscape does the same thing.
I'm not saying that you're a crappy web designer, but 99% of the "Netscape non-compliance" complaints I get come from crappy web designers that love IE because they couldn't write valid HTML to save their worthless lives.
This will come off as flamebait, but I'm tired of crappy web designers complaining about Netscape. You love IE because it will display crap HTML that Netscape doesn't. With Netscape, you are almost forced to write legal, standards compliant HTML. I am extremely anal about this, and I never publish a page that doesn't conform and validate perfectly with whichever language I am trying to write in. (I'm the 1% of 1%.) At the moment, it's XHTML1.0. And you know what? If you write legal HTML, (which will validate on the w3c site), Netscape works fine! And most of the time, so does IE! Never design for IE. Design for Netscape. If it works in Netscape, not only are you at least hinting at legal code, but it almost always looks fine in IE. Are you using an IDE? Drop it. Learn the code. (My God, have you seen the crap that most of those things put out? It's amazingly ineffient.) If you can't put up with it, change careers. Go try an easier medium. Try print media. You can use stuff like Photoshop and be far away from all that scary HTML stuff!
I am absolutely amazed at the horribly broken code that IE will render. This is not a benfit. All it does is encourage even crappier HTML writers to stay in this field. The same way the Microsoft has lowered the bar (dropped it to the ground, actually) for computer "proficiency" with its OS, it is degrading the overall quality of the web's code by supporting, if not encouraging, sloppy work.
HTML was designed for something completely different than what it's used for. Old-school, anal retentive web content providers such as I have managed to find a happy medium between the wonder of information theory that the WWW used to be, and the shiny PDF-wannabe shite we see now. (V. Bush would laugh, and then cry.)
Does Netscape have some proprietary tags? Yes. But you don't have to use them. Just write standards compliant HTML, and you'll be fine. Don't use anything not in the standard. You can make beautiful pages, using HTML and CSS, with added JavaScript, that look great AND are legal! Take the time to learn what you're doing. Mozilla's standard compliance won't mean a fucking thing if HTML writers continue designing for IE.
One more complaint about this new breed of web designers: HTML isn't programming. It's a markup language. You aren't a programmer. You're, at best, a graphic designer out of his element. Get over yourselves!
I apologise to any web designers who know what they're doing. You know you are. No, not you!
They've had a half decent OS for years, but insist on charging a premium for it for it to corporate customers, and meanwhile they push the total POS 98 on consumers.
+1 Insightful, AC. NT makes a fine desktop OS. It provides the common interface that newbies know, and it's hella stable, compared to NT. Would I use it on a server? No. Do I use it on my desktop? No. But NT should be where 95/98 are.
We all know that sometimes, a having a Windows OS around comes in handy, even if just for testing cross-platform stuff. And so I've considered installing NT4, or more recently, Win2k on a box. But then I see the price tag... Win2k is ~$250 for a single license. You can get OEM versions CHEEP for $150 without docs, sometimes. But I'm sorry, I'm not going to pay that much. Not when you look at what you get. After all,
Solaris 8: Commercial UNIX, proven server, development, and workstation OS. Runs x86. Unlimited licenses for machines with up to 8 CPUs. Comes with free GNU software, and Star Office.
$80
FreeBSD 4.0: Free UNIX, great server OS, used by big names like Yahoo!. Unlimited, unrestricted user licensing and free source code released under BSD license. Comes with loads of free GNU apps. $40.
And so even though it'd be nice to play around with Win2k, I just can't justify paying that obscene amount of money. If IT managers would stop looking at Windows as "just what people are supposed to do" and see it as a competitor in the whole server OS market... oh, if only...
I'm just stunned that in this day and age NT is still being installed on servers. But our IT departments are being run by clueless Redmond drones that think being able to run NT means you're proficient with computers. Sad, sad, sad.
I was complaining about the cost of NT to my dad recently. Most of his computer experience comes from working in an office for the past fifteen years. He says, "Sure, it costs $250, but when you look at what you get for the money..." And I cut him off and started explaining what you don't get for the money, and how UNIX solutions give you better performance, reliability, stability, et cetera, and provide low TCO and high ROI. (And MCSEs demand the same salaries as trained Unix admins, so staffing for MS really isn't cheaper.) He had never heard of Solaris, and I received a blank stare for most of the conversation. (Don't worry, I'm used to it.) Wow, what a sad state the IT world is in, eh? When NT is thought to be state-of-the-art?
Never underestimate the power of a smart businessman. Windows has perservered and thrived despite being technically inferior to UNIX and harder to use than MacOS, two systems that are mature and talk to each other just fine, all because Gates and his staff are brilliant (if not ethical) business people. We should be thankful that they didn't set their sights on doing something really bad.
"Netscape Co-Founder Wants IE To Stay With Windows"
Yes, I also think that Elian should stay with his father.
Oh well. It will be years before we find out if Microsoft really will be broken up. All of this speculation will do nothing but put the already suffering tech-stocks in even more of a tizzy.
Who thinks that any Microsoft spinoff has a chance of practicing any shady business activities after all of this? The DoJ doesn't assume that after action is taken, everything is peachy. You still have the same people running the companies. They'll have their eye on Microsoft for at least another decade.
I'm part of a tiny group with these intersecting characteristics: Unix fanatic, doesn't like Microsoft products, but doesn't think they should be broken up. I think they should be punished for using their monopoly status to bully others, but I don't think their monopoly status should be taken from them forcefully. I don't think that large US corporations should have the worry of getting so large that the government breaks them up. You gain a monopoly through hard work. Microsoft was only able to bully others once they gained a monopoly. Before then, they didn't have the clout to do be a bully. Afterwards, they used their status to make sure they stayed where they were. I think that they should be punished (fines/business restrictions/et cetera) and watched very carefully. I also think that afterwards, there should be a giant wave of civil suits with generous punitive damages claimed.
I don't think the OS should be seperated from the apps. Microsoft has valid points. The integration of the two has helped them to really improve how things work. You know why IIS runs fast as hell? Because the engineers had the OS source and could make whatever optimizations you want. When you write software for one OS, which you have complete knowledge of, and will only be executing on one arcitecture, a lot of problems Magically disappear. Why should we begrudge them for doing this?
I'm also tired of those that diss Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and others for [up until recently] only selling Windows PCs. Is Microsoft behind this? They have a minor role. More important is the demand of the comsumers. Windows has no competitors there. Why? The only other company that produces a viable newbie OS is Apple, and they are intent on keeping the OS with the hardware. What other OS could compete, even if Microsoft weren't a dinosaur?
Microsoft could have had competitors in this market. Sun, HP, or (snicker) SGI could have sold stripped-down versions of their respective OSes (SunOS, HP-UX, and IRIX) with CDE as a GUI and done quite well. (CDE, for you Linuxers, is the Motif-friendly windowing system that has been common on commercial Unix and DEC systems for years.) All of these companies are large enough to provide appropriate driver support. Or imagine if Sun, HP, and SGI could have allied themselves to create a UNIX-based consumer-level OS. They'd have excellent driver support for networking, printing, and graphics, and enough market share to get whatever else they needed. Plus, if implemented correctly (i.e. not stripped down too much), the power and stability of UNIX.
CDE does have the ability to be a consumer GUI! How many of you knew that Sun boxen are used internally by Sun as PCs? Yep, a friend of mine who did Sun marketing reminded me of this. He, being a marketer, was not very techinical. (A sweeping yet sadly true statement.) I say, "What did you think of the Solaris GUI? Easy to use?" He says, "No problem." To elaborate on his cluelessness, he didn't know it was CDE in combination with dtwm**. That the user didn't even know what it was called, and yet was able to use it as a desktop OS for four years, with no UNIX training, proves that the Windows-esque isolation of the user from the CLUE can be done in UNIX. But it never caught on in the "real world", and couldn't have, because up until last year commercial level UNIX was very expensive, and didn't run on x86 hardware. But this is the subject of another rant.
That's another thing: architecture. You complain that Compaq won't sell you a PC with Linux. I'll complain, why can't I get a PC with a RISC chip?***;-)
Ah well, I'm just daydreaming and babbling again. And I could do this for hours, ranting about why I love UNIX, and how I don't think NT is a bad product, but should be marketed as a desktop OS, and blah blah blah, mouth running like I'm Signal 11. Wow, this Microsoft stuff will do that to you. We'll be seeing books and movies and studies and After-School Specials ("Don't let your kids become Microsoft Programmers!") and Made-For-TV Movies ("Bill Gates, Give Me Back my Baby!") for twenty years afterwards.
Reminds me: did anyone watch that cable movie (on TNT?) that was about the lives of Jobs and Gates? I heard about that, but not being much of a TV viewer, I never watched it. Is it available on video? It sounded vaguely interesting.
** Since SunOS 5.7, that is. OW is still in option, but honestly, why? CDE is beautiful for the power-user as well as the newbie. If you want a cleaner desktop, use AfterStep. OW offers ZERO benefits, other than being preinstalled.:-)
*** The closest you'll get is a Sun Ultra 5, which will cost you about US$3200, including 17" monitor. The box has an UltraSPARC IIi, and is pretty cool considering how much you'd have to pay to get a similar system from HP or SGI. The cheapest HP workstations will include full SCSI and a bunch of other stuff I honestly don't need, and start around $7k. Note that while HP now sells Linux workstations, they're x86. Sort of a waste.
I was one of many who were miffed when Sun decided to withdraw Java from the standards process. An international Java standard would not only make it easier to create Java development software, but would make it even easier to call Microsoft on their nonstandard "features" in J++. But Sun, being the Microsoft wannabes they are, probably that by making Java a standard, they would lose some of their now almost complete control over the language. Sun's published Java specs should easily provide the beginnings for a Java standard; why else would they have changed their mind?
Getting offtopic, I would like to congratulate BSDi on their plans to bring Java 2 to FreeBSD. After a year of pestering Sun about this, and a few months of bothering IBM, FreeBSD will finally get the Java support it deserves. After the BSDi purchase of Walnut Creek, I often said that perhaps BSDi would put more "corporate" pressure on Sun to release JDK1.2 for FreeBSD, but this is a most unlooked-for and welcome development.
(Now if only they would lower the BSDCon prices... )
And re: "Perl Language Subcommittee" -- I thought that Larry, Randall, and Tom were the committee.;-)
I wonder, (and forgive me if this comes up all the time, but I usually ignore Slashdot's Napster obsession) if any of this anti-MP3 crap would ave happened if Napster and its clones never were, and MP3s were still traded the way they were "back in the day" (mid-nineties), where you hunted through lousy FTP servers, looking for your favorite songs. Who remembers the quota MP3 servers? Where you had to upload as much as you downloaded? That was like Napster in a way, but more fair, as it forced you to give as much as you took. (But it was mighty cruel for those of us at the mercy of 14.4 upstream!) I'm not a big MP3 person. I don't use Napster. I get maybe three MP3s a year, the old fashioned way. I'm really torn about Napster. On one hand, trading music is cool. But I'm a musician, so I see Lars' point. For every Metallica there are a million tiny bands, just trying to survive, working shitty day-jobs so they can spend their nights living their true passion. If it became okay to steal superstars' music, people wouldn't think twice about ripping off the little guys. And when you're a working musician, (that is, living off your craft), losing album sales is a big deal. The price of a CD (sold independantly) can feed you for a day. It's not about music. It's about money. People have to eat. Metallica is light-years away from that part of their career, but since they were blessed with the ability to live richly from their art, they have an obligation to stand up for the rest of us.
I don't agree with the RIAA or the rest of the gub'mint no-good-niks. But how else can you enforce such things?
Metallica was once a tiny metal band, just trying to get by. Lugging their shitty gear around the country in a van. Surviving one night in New York only by grace of a space heater lent to them by Anthrax, which they set up in a roach-filled basement and tried to get enough sleep to kick heavy metal ass at the next night's show. Yeah, they've been Headbangers of the Rich and Famous for fiteen years. But you never forget.
Blatant ignorance of copyright law is bad. You're not Robin Hoods. You're breaking the law, and stealing from every artist whose music you download for free. To the musician, proliferation of MP3s is like stealing the Linux kernel and releasing it under the BSD license.;-)
Would the RIAA and the music industry have such a bug up their ass if Napster never were? No. Lars is right, people. It's about scale. It's about degrees.Sure, we all made dub-tapes. I still do. It's not the same. I buy a tape ($3) and make a copy of a song for a friend. Illegal? Sure. But much better than being able to download dozens of songs in a high-quality format for pennies of ISP connectivity. There are shades of grey here, people.
I've heard the sad little comebacks. "Well, I heard this song by the Prancing Ninja Panckaes, and went out and bought the CD the next day!!" Whoo fucking hoo. How many CDs have you bought, directly because of Napster downloads? "Um, maybe two or three." And how many songs have you downloaded via Napster? "Um, two or three... hundred."
The Offspring are a bunch of dumbfucks. In the twilight of their (rather sad) career, trying to make another buck selling Napster merchandise before they fade away to the realm of VH1's "Where are they now?" If they support Napster, let's see them put up every song off theur new album, full length, in high quality, up on their web server. They talk the talk but they don't walk the walk. I guess this is what '95 MTV thinks of punk rebellion? There's nothing more pathetic than watching 40-year-old punks devise a corporate (yet hardcore punk!) upstart against "the man".
Yes, this is flamebait.
The_Messenger, proud to contribute to the pointless Napster flamewars.
Free bandwidth is one thing. What percentage of the country owns computers?
I'll bet that even in the US, which has one of the highest percentages of computer ownership in the world, that the figure isn't above 50%. The "computer in every home" ideal isn't a reality yet, even in countries that are considered highly web-aware. I've never heard much about tech in Costa Rica. Can we expect even 0.5 million of those people to be able to use that free WWW access?
Before posting, I did a little research. Paraphrasing some CIA info: democratic republic, legal system based on Spanish civil law. Economy depends largely on tourism, agriculture, and electronics exports, "very good domestic telephone service". The US State Department considers Costa Rica to be "middle-income" and "developing". Nearest neighbors are Nicaragua and Panama. Sounds like the WWW access could help to stimulate growth in the tech sector.
That doesn't make the situation sound very bleak, but in a poorer country, offering free WWW access to those who are able to use it (ie computer owners) is akin to offering a free automobile to any person who has walked on the moon, unless there is an abundance of libraries and schools with public terminals. I'd like to hear from a citizen.
Yeah, I thought it has been "Apatosaurus" for the past twenty years or so. But I think that getting the names correct are the least of that guy's problems.
Oh wait, was there a punchline?
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"Plot:" Famed paleontolgist and millionware playboy Richard Rod Johnson tracks the famed Godzilla creature to a small Pacific island, where he finds instead a race of topless maidens ready to fuck and suck. Running time: 120 minutes.
Should be even better than "Jurassic Prick!"
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Slashdot Mirror
Oh wow, I gotta do a repost soon.
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The reason that GNU/Linux beats NT in many regards is that, IMNSHO, the UNIX system is superior. In fact, it is so much superior, that even a hack of it such as Linux looks great.
But GNU/Linux doesn't look quite so awesome compared to my obsession, Solaris. And I don't want to hear all of that "Slow-aris" crap. Dismissing Solaris because of the perceived speed of its UI makes about as much sense as deciding that a 1GHz Pentium III is "better" than a 400MHz UltraSPARC because of the extra clock cycles. As I've said before, GNU/Linux has a better chance of taking the desktop away from Windows, than the server room away from SunOS, AIX, HP-UX, and Irix. I suppose that GNU/Linux is impressive for coming this far with relatively little commercial support, but it's been ten years, for God's sake, and you're still not close to state-of-the-art.
I won't rehash everything I've said here over the last few months, but I don't think that Uncle Sam is being very smart about Microsoft, and I don't think that NT is Satan. It's not a bad product. No-where near the level of commervial SVR4, but still not a bad product. UNIX and Windows can coexist. And there's even a place for GNU/Linux, if its spokespeople could get it through their heads that they're not revolutionary heros fighting "the man". The only really interesting part of the whole mess is the GPL. <flamebait>Maybe the next GPLed OS will have more mature, reasonable users.</flamebait> (But that system will be developed by old Linuxers, and we'll run into the Second System Effect, and end up with the Windows 95 of the Unix-clone world. Right, TummyX? ;-)
I'll shut up now. For more ranting, see my previous posts. :-)
Whether you be troll or not, I hope that you stick around, TummyX, for I find your POV refreshing. You've managed to make it this long without being completely engulfed in Slashdotter flames, so I trust that I needn't worry.
Ummmm... heh heh heh... as a member of the Java Lobby, I feel an urge to take issue with a couple of those products mentioned. But you've been flamed enough for today, so I will restrain myself.
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If your post is modded up I will vomit all over my keyboard. It will mean that the Average Slashdot Moderator (ASM) has crossed the threshold into the "dumber than a motherfucking animal" category. I thought that the ASD wouldn't sink much lower after firmly wedging himself in the "clueless retard, randomly moderating down because of some bizarre sexual pleasure he receives by hurting others" category, but as public forums such as this prove time and time again, never underestimate how stupid people really are.
I'm going back to my hole now. "Moderators, do your duty."
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[phone rings, Hemos answers]
Hemos: Hello?
Joe Random Executive: Hi, is this Slashdot? I want some of this free publicity!
Hemos: Well, you know our policy. Do you have a press release?
Joe Random Executive: Yep!
Hemos: Does it contain the words "open" and "source?"
Joe Random Executive: Yep!
Hemos: Fine. Just e-mail me the name of your company and your website URL. I'll have it up tomorrow morning, under a random topic.
Joe Random Executive: Fine, just don't put it in the BSD section! No one reads that!
Hemos: Yeah, alright. BSD sure sucks, huh?
Joe Random Executive: It sure does!
Hemos: What a bunch of losers...
Joe Random Executive: Yeah, yeah... gotta run, m'kay? Thanks for the advertis -- I mean, Open Source announcements. Ciao!
Hemos: Whatever. Later.
[hangs up phone]
[time passes...]
[the next morning...]
Slashdot, top story, under the "Linux" icon:
CmdrTaco (voice of Ricky Ricardo): Heemooooooooos!!!
Hemos: Oh, shit... I forget the Golden Rule: never mix a poor editorial decision-making process with grain alcohol!
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You're right about what's happening in the industry. GNU/Linux is a buzzword right now, because of that is getting more attention and support than I really think it deserves. People are starting to forget that GNU Isn't UNIX. I heard someone two weeks say that nowadays there is practically no difference between Linux and Solaris. I didn't know whether to be shocked, depressed, infuriated, or all three.
If my tone before was combative, that is why. Sorry for venting at you.
IBM and Sun seem to be doing things right. Supporting Linux as a viable solution for low-end stuff, but still pushing UNIX for the high-end. As long as they don't forget that Linux can't really compete with their own UNIces, they'll be fine.
If the enterprise has the cash, there are some things that are truly worth paying for. UNIX is one of those things, IMO. But I'm a zealot so management doesn't listen to me. Ah well. Nothing really changes. In twenty years we'll be in the same position, but Linux will be in Windows' place. The industry will demand Linux standards, one manufacturer will come out on top, and yet another half-assed OS will hold us by our balls. Yes, half-assed. Linux is great for us geeks, but does professioniality counts for something. Yes.
Gee, am I ranting again? =)
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GNU/Linux has at least five years to go before it can seriously compete with commercial UNIX, folks. I'm sorry, but the thought of replacing Solaris with Linux on highly-loaded production platforms is quite laughable. I don't think a lot of Linux zealots realize what they're saying when they talk about Linux "killing off" something like HP-UX. You mock Windows users for their ignorance of Linux, but you're in the same position yourself, when it comes to UNIX.
GNU's Not Unix. And it's not ready to take on the Big Ones. Given enough time, and enough industry support, it's possible that it could become a viable option for enterprise computing. But honestly, (and I do use and enjoy using it), GNU/Linux has a better chance of taking the desktop from Microsoft that the server room from HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris.
GNU/Linux is nice for the desktop at home, thanks to the many choices in window managers. GNU/Linux is fine for general development, thanks to the fine assortment of GNU tools. GNU/Linux is okay for small x86 file servers, thanks to software like SAMBA and its support for many partition types. GNU/Linux can be made to work well for busy web servers, almost as well as FreeBSD, thanks to its Internet-centric development and a wonderful history with Perl. This is all well and good. GNU/Linux isn't taking any market share away from commercial UNIX. When it starts to, IBM, HP, and Sun are going to draw a line in the sand and dare you to cross it. This line separates the Men from the Boys. GNU/Linux isn't yet ready to cross that line.
IBM, HP, and Sun are not dumb, no matter how much corporate culture encourages this. They wouldn't openly support software in a way which could obviously come back to bite them in the ass. They see no future for GNU/Linux in the enterprise, past the few odd development boxen and toy servers. So why shouldn't they support it? They get good, free press. And if by some miracle GNU/Linux really does take off in the business world, they already have experience with it. They know its strengths, and more important, its weaknesses. The corporate demon is strong, and while not extremely intelligent, it is a survivor, and always looking own for its own interests. I would not even blink if I were told that IBM, HP, and Sun had done internal studies of GNU/Linux in the exact same fashion as the infamous Microsoft "Halloween documents".
GNU/Linux beats Windows NT/2000, almost across the board. ROI, price, stability, et cetera. This is not because GNU/Linux is godlike. This is because NT sticks its nose into a business where the Unix model had long been proven to be a high performer. They took a chance that their model would be better. They failed. And so a Frankenstein POSIX implementation kicks their ass. But commercial SVR4 UNIX is on a higher plain. Today's commercial UNIX vendors have been making money at this for a long, long time. Some of them are the warriors who fought tooth-and-nail during the Dark Eighties against the teeming hoardes of proprietary OS's sold by hardware vendors. They are the innovators who made UNIX the rock-solid platform it is. They are the root of the current POSIX.
GNU/Linux isn't a big deal to them. Why should it be? They helped define the standard. Why should they get riled when some crazy Finn takes that standard and makes his own cheap copy? Don't kid yourselves. GNU/Linux is great, but to a UNIX giant, it sets back the clock ten years.
"Those who do not understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
Indeed.
But I've managed to get far, far offtopic. A SCO distro of GNU/Linux? I think that's rather silly. I think the company is in the last stages of putrid corporate decay. They were never the players they should have been. "Whose turn is it to get rights to the UNIX specs this week?" I think they were victims of poor leadership and bad luck. Hopefully they'll contribute some nice things to the codebase and not violate any licenses. That would be a nice thing to do before they slip into the night. (Which I predict happening before 2005, unless they beat the odds and make money with this latest stunt.)
Ah, well.
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I've always liked that.
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Ask Slashdot: What's this Linux thing?
Posted by emmett on Monday June 12, @12:20AM
from the i-just-like-the-penguin dept
NewbieLuser asks, "I'm pretty good using Micro$oft Windoze, but I've heard about this Lunix thing, and now I want to escape the EVIL EMPIRE and be a l337 h4X0r like you guys here at SlashDot. So I ordered a copy of "Red Hat 62", but my question is, what is it? What does it do? Can I install it from WIndows, or do I have to open up a DOS-box? (Ew! DOS is hard!)"
New Cracking Tool: SlashDoS
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 12, @12:05AM
from the i-0wn-j00 dept
Slashdot has long been envied by 5cr1p7 k1dd13z for its ability to kill any webserver within five minutes of a link being posted to the front page. Now these l337 k1dd13z can harness the power of Slash, without having to learn all that hard Perl stuff! I am proud to announce the 1.0 release of SlashDoS! Update: CT: I know, I know, it's not Freshmeat!
Microsoft Spokesmen Diss Jackson's Momma
Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday June 11, @10:59PM
from the damn-thats-cold dept
Today Microsoft Corporation responded to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's rulings by calling his mother a "fat bitch" and a "stank-ass hoe". One spokesman is quoted as saying, "Yeah, yeah, dat bitch got such a fat ass, dat when she sits around the house, she really be sittin' around the house!!" Fellow Microsoft spokesmen agreed with this analysis of Ms. Jackson's buttocks, giving each other "high-fives" and passing around a bottle of malt liquor.
Former Microsoft CEO William Gates refused to comment on these statements, other than noting that "Ms. Jackson, while perhaps not a huge muthafuckin bitch, ain't all that skinny, ya know what I'm sayin'."
Jackson is reportedly preparing a counter-statement in which Gates' mother is said to freely engage in promiscuous oral sex.
Transmeta Receives Round of Handjobs from Rob Malda
Posted by Hemos on Sunday June 11, @10:507PM
from the he-also-blows-quite-well dept
Transmeta Inc, employer of Linux frontman Linus Torvalds, received a round of handjobs from our own CmdrTaco earlier this week. Malda, who was always eager to post any Slashdot article mentioning the CPU designer, last week stated his intent to go "all the way". "It's obvious that I am sexually aroused by just the mention of the amazing company. I vow not to rest until I have brought each staff member to orgasm with my own two hands." The handjobs were eagerly accepted by Transmeta, whose engineers aren't too picky about their sexual partners.
Famed Hacker "Neo" Constructs Eight-dimensional Beowulf Cluster
Posted by Roblimo on Sunday June 11, @10:45PM
from the so-how-do-we-eat-soup? dept
"Neo", an underground hacker guru well known for his escape of the artificial world in which we all are trapped while our life is sucked away to feed a never-ending horde of robot-monsters, today unleashed a new weapon in his battle against the Agents: an eight-dimensional Beowulf cluster, codenamed "BW8". Slashdot has obtained an exclusive interview with "Neo". Here is an excerpt:
(Read More)
FreeBSD Merchandise on sale NOW!!
Posted by gay-nik on Sunday June 11, @10:44PM
from the this-is-slashdot-journalism? dept
I just thought I'd remind you to BUY FREEBSD MERCHANDISE! CD-ROMs, t-shirts, plush toys, and all sorts of other WONDERFUL merchandise is availble from Walnut Creek CD-ROM! Man, you guys should go buy some of this merchandise now, because it is HOT! Update: gay-nik: Hey, and don't forget to buy some of those OpenBSD posters! BSD RuleZzz!!
Jon Katz Finishes Pillaging of Slashdot Community
Posted by JonKatz on Sunday June 11, @10:41PM
from the man-i-really-screwed-you! dept
Well folks, it's time to say goodbye. I've completed my goal of infiltrating your community, playing on your sympathies by defending geeks, and gaining your trust, and now that I've gotten rich by stealing your comments and publishing them as a book (accompanied by my own lame analysis), I'm done with you losers. I'll probably spend the next few years pushing down children at Disney World and stealing their money. (Click below, if you feel worthy of reading more of my godlike opinions, you scum.)
Your Rights Online: Internet Banned
Posted by jamie on Sunday June 11, @10:39PM
from the xfiles-is-a-documentary dept
Okay, okay, the Internet wasn't really banned, but we can't trust those Government types, so who knows when it will happen?! So what will we do when the Internet gets banned? Also, perhaps we should discuss the eventual hostile takeover of Earth by the Greys. (Read More)
News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters
Posted by timothy on Sunday June 11, @10:37PM
from the slashdot.org dept
Linux? XFree86 apache perl free-speech. Computer cases, Microsoft DMCA penguin hard disk. LiViD! Robots, corel debian stallman. ESR java athlon? PNG mozilla mars, battlefield earth OpenBSD beowulf cluster, python NSA hacker Quake III. Transmeta, gnome. UK virus windows; Playstation celeron Star Wars. First post.
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I've been drooling over those UltraSPARC notebooks for a long time. Lately I've been thinking of getting a quote on a refurbished one here. I'm a little afraid at what they'll tell me. My guess is $7k, minimum, for one of these babies new. The guy who recommended these people to me said that you can save %40 off list from them, but since RISC notebooks are a niche of a niche market, I think I'd be lucky to get %20 off list.
Apparently the manufacturer also sells refurbs.
This is the stuff that dreams are made of. Or this, if you're an HP-UX guy.
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I mean, wtf? I was hoping to get some daemon lovin' before 5.0! Oh well, at least Solaris will always be my slut. >:)
This looks promising, though... though not the level of Stile's Linux stuff.
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But today, I do not think they have any direct competitors, except perhaps, Apple, if they would give it MacOS X for x86. With enough momentum with the initial release, OS X could be the "sleeper hit" of the next decade. Momentum is important. It will take a lot of it to seperate people from Windows, but if the OEMs cooperate, and if this Microsoft breakup goes through, and if MS Office for MacOS is still around, it could happen.
This is what that story on the front page earlier says. But it won't happen. Will MacOS be released for x86? Absolutely not. Even if Apple had Microsoft's power over OEMs, there it no way they could control the hardware as stringently as they do now. They have no experience mass-producing software for x86, do they? They'd probably amass a bug list rivaling Microsoft's. That article says things like, "Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts, eternal consultant visits . . .can now install Mac OS X on their existing computer . . ." but would Apple software really solve those problems? I'm not sure if MacOS would be able to handle the jungle that is the consumer PC world the way it can Apple's handpicked hardware configs. There's a reason that PC plug-n-play has always lagged so far behind Apple's.
(I honestly couldn't give a rat's ass about Apple. But the BSD in MacOS could change that.)
I'd love to see more competition in that market, even at the cost of software compatability. It would force consumers to make a choice again. And who wouldn't love to see the mass-market engaging in the software religions/zealotry that UNIX geeks do?
I think that's one of the "funnest" things about this community.
What else could compete with Windows? Maybe... BeOS? ;-D
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I'm not saying that you're a crappy web designer, but 99% of the "Netscape non-compliance" complaints I get come from crappy web designers that love IE because they couldn't write valid HTML to save their worthless lives.
This will come off as flamebait, but I'm tired of crappy web designers complaining about Netscape. You love IE because it will display crap HTML that Netscape doesn't. With Netscape, you are almost forced to write legal, standards compliant HTML. I am extremely anal about this, and I never publish a page that doesn't conform and validate perfectly with whichever language I am trying to write in. (I'm the 1% of 1%.) At the moment, it's XHTML1.0. And you know what? If you write legal HTML, (which will validate on the w3c site), Netscape works fine! And most of the time, so does IE! Never design for IE. Design for Netscape. If it works in Netscape, not only are you at least hinting at legal code, but it almost always looks fine in IE. Are you using an IDE? Drop it. Learn the code. (My God, have you seen the crap that most of those things put out? It's amazingly ineffient.) If you can't put up with it, change careers. Go try an easier medium. Try print media. You can use stuff like Photoshop and be far away from all that scary HTML stuff!
I am absolutely amazed at the horribly broken code that IE will render. This is not a benfit. All it does is encourage even crappier HTML writers to stay in this field. The same way the Microsoft has lowered the bar (dropped it to the ground, actually) for computer "proficiency" with its OS, it is degrading the overall quality of the web's code by supporting, if not encouraging, sloppy work.
HTML was designed for something completely different than what it's used for. Old-school, anal retentive web content providers such as I have managed to find a happy medium between the wonder of information theory that the WWW used to be, and the shiny PDF-wannabe shite we see now. (V. Bush would laugh, and then cry.)
Does Netscape have some proprietary tags? Yes. But you don't have to use them. Just write standards compliant HTML, and you'll be fine. Don't use anything not in the standard. You can make beautiful pages, using HTML and CSS, with added JavaScript, that look great AND are legal! Take the time to learn what you're doing. Mozilla's standard compliance won't mean a fucking thing if HTML writers continue designing for IE.
One more complaint about this new breed of web designers: HTML isn't programming. It's a markup language. You aren't a programmer. You're, at best, a graphic designer out of his element. Get over yourselves!
I apologise to any web designers who know what they're doing. You know you are. No, not you!
Yeah, yeah, -1 Flamebait. FOAD.
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We all know that sometimes, a having a Windows OS around comes in handy, even if just for testing cross-platform stuff. And so I've considered installing NT4, or more recently, Win2k on a box. But then I see the price tag... Win2k is ~$250 for a single license. You can get OEM versions CHEEP for $150 without docs, sometimes. But I'm sorry, I'm not going to pay that much. Not when you look at what you get. After all,
And so even though it'd be nice to play around with Win2k, I just can't justify paying that obscene amount of money. If IT managers would stop looking at Windows as "just what people are supposed to do" and see it as a competitor in the whole server OS market... oh, if only...
I'm just stunned that in this day and age NT is still being installed on servers. But our IT departments are being run by clueless Redmond drones that think being able to run NT means you're proficient with computers. Sad, sad, sad.
I was complaining about the cost of NT to my dad recently. Most of his computer experience comes from working in an office for the past fifteen years. He says, "Sure, it costs $250, but when you look at what you get for the money..." And I cut him off and started explaining what you don't get for the money, and how UNIX solutions give you better performance, reliability, stability, et cetera, and provide low TCO and high ROI. (And MCSEs demand the same salaries as trained Unix admins, so staffing for MS really isn't cheaper.) He had never heard of Solaris, and I received a blank stare for most of the conversation. (Don't worry, I'm used to it.) Wow, what a sad state the IT world is in, eh? When NT is thought to be state-of-the-art?
Never underestimate the power of a smart businessman. Windows has perservered and thrived despite being technically inferior to UNIX and harder to use than MacOS, two systems that are mature and talk to each other just fine, all because Gates and his staff are brilliant (if not ethical) business people. We should be thankful that they didn't set their sights on doing something really bad.
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Yes, I also think that Elian should stay with his father.
Oh well. It will be years before we find out if Microsoft really will be broken up. All of this speculation will do nothing but put the already suffering tech-stocks in even more of a tizzy.
Who thinks that any Microsoft spinoff has a chance of practicing any shady business activities after all of this? The DoJ doesn't assume that after action is taken, everything is peachy. You still have the same people running the companies. They'll have their eye on Microsoft for at least another decade.
I'm part of a tiny group with these intersecting characteristics: Unix fanatic, doesn't like Microsoft products, but doesn't think they should be broken up. I think they should be punished for using their monopoly status to bully others, but I don't think their monopoly status should be taken from them forcefully. I don't think that large US corporations should have the worry of getting so large that the government breaks them up. You gain a monopoly through hard work. Microsoft was only able to bully others once they gained a monopoly. Before then, they didn't have the clout to do be a bully. Afterwards, they used their status to make sure they stayed where they were. I think that they should be punished (fines/business restrictions/et cetera) and watched very carefully. I also think that afterwards, there should be a giant wave of civil suits with generous punitive damages claimed.
I don't think the OS should be seperated from the apps. Microsoft has valid points. The integration of the two has helped them to really improve how things work. You know why IIS runs fast as hell? Because the engineers had the OS source and could make whatever optimizations you want. When you write software for one OS, which you have complete knowledge of, and will only be executing on one arcitecture, a lot of problems Magically disappear. Why should we begrudge them for doing this?
I'm also tired of those that diss Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and others for [up until recently] only selling Windows PCs. Is Microsoft behind this? They have a minor role. More important is the demand of the comsumers. Windows has no competitors there. Why? The only other company that produces a viable newbie OS is Apple, and they are intent on keeping the OS with the hardware. What other OS could compete, even if Microsoft weren't a dinosaur?
Microsoft could have had competitors in this market. Sun, HP, or (snicker) SGI could have sold stripped-down versions of their respective OSes (SunOS, HP-UX, and IRIX) with CDE as a GUI and done quite well. (CDE, for you Linuxers, is the Motif-friendly windowing system that has been common on commercial Unix and DEC systems for years.) All of these companies are large enough to provide appropriate driver support. Or imagine if Sun, HP, and SGI could have allied themselves to create a UNIX-based consumer-level OS. They'd have excellent driver support for networking, printing, and graphics, and enough market share to get whatever else they needed. Plus, if implemented correctly (i.e. not stripped down too much), the power and stability of UNIX.
CDE does have the ability to be a consumer GUI! How many of you knew that Sun boxen are used internally by Sun as PCs? Yep, a friend of mine who did Sun marketing reminded me of this. He, being a marketer, was not very techinical. (A sweeping yet sadly true statement.) I say, "What did you think of the Solaris GUI? Easy to use?" He says, "No problem." To elaborate on his cluelessness, he didn't know it was CDE in combination with dtwm**. That the user didn't even know what it was called, and yet was able to use it as a desktop OS for four years, with no UNIX training, proves that the Windows-esque isolation of the user from the CLUE can be done in UNIX. But it never caught on in the "real world", and couldn't have, because up until last year commercial level UNIX was very expensive, and didn't run on x86 hardware. But this is the subject of another rant.
That's another thing: architecture. You complain that Compaq won't sell you a PC with Linux. I'll complain, why can't I get a PC with a RISC chip?*** ;-)
Ah well, I'm just daydreaming and babbling again. And I could do this for hours, ranting about why I love UNIX, and how I don't think NT is a bad product, but should be marketed as a desktop OS, and blah blah blah, mouth running like I'm Signal 11. Wow, this Microsoft stuff will do that to you. We'll be seeing books and movies and studies and After-School Specials ("Don't let your kids become Microsoft Programmers!") and Made-For-TV Movies ("Bill Gates, Give Me Back my Baby!") for twenty years afterwards.
Reminds me: did anyone watch that cable movie (on TNT?) that was about the lives of Jobs and Gates? I heard about that, but not being much of a TV viewer, I never watched it. Is it available on video? It sounded vaguely interesting.
** Since SunOS 5.7, that is. OW is still in option, but honestly, why? CDE is beautiful for the power-user as well as the newbie. If you want a cleaner desktop, use AfterStep. OW offers ZERO benefits, other than being preinstalled. :-)
*** The closest you'll get is a Sun Ultra 5, which will cost you about US$3200, including 17" monitor. The box has an UltraSPARC IIi, and is pretty cool considering how much you'd have to pay to get a similar system from HP or SGI. The cheapest HP workstations will include full SCSI and a bunch of other stuff I honestly don't need, and start around $7k. Note that while HP now sells Linux workstations, they're x86. Sort of a waste.
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Getting offtopic, I would like to congratulate BSDi on their plans to bring Java 2 to FreeBSD. After a year of pestering Sun about this, and a few months of bothering IBM, FreeBSD will finally get the Java support it deserves. After the BSDi purchase of Walnut Creek, I often said that perhaps BSDi would put more "corporate" pressure on Sun to release JDK1.2 for FreeBSD, but this is a most unlooked-for and welcome development.
(Now if only they would lower the BSDCon prices... )
And re: "Perl Language Subcommittee" -- I thought that Larry, Randall, and Tom were the committee. ;-)
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I don't agree with the RIAA or the rest of the gub'mint no-good-niks. But how else can you enforce such things?
Metallica was once a tiny metal band, just trying to get by. Lugging their shitty gear around the country in a van. Surviving one night in New York only by grace of a space heater lent to them by Anthrax, which they set up in a roach-filled basement and tried to get enough sleep to kick heavy metal ass at the next night's show. Yeah, they've been Headbangers of the Rich and Famous for fiteen years. But you never forget.
Blatant ignorance of copyright law is bad. You're not Robin Hoods. You're breaking the law, and stealing from every artist whose music you download for free. To the musician, proliferation of MP3s is like stealing the Linux kernel and releasing it under the BSD license. ;-)
Would the RIAA and the music industry have such a bug up their ass if Napster never were? No. Lars is right, people. It's about scale. It's about degrees.Sure, we all made dub-tapes. I still do. It's not the same. I buy a tape ($3) and make a copy of a song for a friend. Illegal? Sure. But much better than being able to download dozens of songs in a high-quality format for pennies of ISP connectivity. There are shades of grey here, people.
I've heard the sad little comebacks. "Well, I heard this song by the Prancing Ninja Panckaes, and went out and bought the CD the next day!!" Whoo fucking hoo. How many CDs have you bought, directly because of Napster downloads? "Um, maybe two or three." And how many songs have you downloaded via Napster? "Um, two or three... hundred."
The Offspring are a bunch of dumbfucks. In the twilight of their (rather sad) career, trying to make another buck selling Napster merchandise before they fade away to the realm of VH1's "Where are they now?" If they support Napster, let's see them put up every song off theur new album, full length, in high quality, up on their web server. They talk the talk but they don't walk the walk. I guess this is what '95 MTV thinks of punk rebellion? There's nothing more pathetic than watching 40-year-old punks devise a corporate (yet hardcore punk!) upstart against "the man".
Yes, this is flamebait.
The_Messenger, proud to contribute to the pointless Napster flamewars.
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I'll bet that even in the US, which has one of the highest percentages of computer ownership in the world, that the figure isn't above 50%. The "computer in every home" ideal isn't a reality yet, even in countries that are considered highly web-aware. I've never heard much about tech in Costa Rica. Can we expect even 0.5 million of those people to be able to use that free WWW access?
Before posting, I did a little research. Paraphrasing some CIA info: democratic republic, legal system based on Spanish civil law. Economy depends largely on tourism, agriculture, and electronics exports, "very good domestic telephone service". The US State Department considers Costa Rica to be "middle-income" and "developing". Nearest neighbors are Nicaragua and Panama. Sounds like the WWW access could help to stimulate growth in the tech sector.
That doesn't make the situation sound very bleak, but in a poorer country, offering free WWW access to those who are able to use it (ie computer owners) is akin to offering a free automobile to any person who has walked on the moon, unless there is an abundance of libraries and schools with public terminals. I'd like to hear from a citizen.
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Oh wait, was there a punchline?
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This post is not redundant, please don't moderate it as such. I repeat, this post is not redundant.
Naw, man, that's the thing: they didn't exist! Bees... don't either! And neither do you nor I! Wow, this whole reality thing is quite a mindfuck, eh?
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This post is not redundant, please don't moderate it as such. I repeat, this post is not redundant.
COCKZILLA: Size Matters.
"Plot:" Famed paleontolgist and millionware playboy Richard Rod Johnson tracks the famed Godzilla creature to a small Pacific island, where he finds instead a race of topless maidens ready to fuck and suck. Running time: 120 minutes.
Should be even better than "Jurassic Prick!"
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This post is not redundant, please don't moderate it as such. I repeat, this post is not redundant.