Solaris for Intel? None of the sparc binaries run on it, it's not any faster than linux. Linux 1, Solaris 0.
Solaris for web applications... absoultely not. Tried and true OS for sure. Though web sphere, atg, web logic and most other large scale app servers have linux ports. java's relability will never exceed the uptime of an OS i.e. the JVM or app server will crash before the OS does. That then precludes having a bullet proof OS. Web applications need redunancy, both from a geographic perspective and application. Doing so requires a duplicate hardware investment. Not such a good deal with sun. Linux 2, Solaris 0.
Maintainance... will be cheaper with linux rather than solaris. The reason being that Linux and it's friendly varients are all freely avaialable. To learn and use linux is not a big deal, solaris on the other hand need solaris hardware to run. As a result of easier access to hardware and software (linux) labor costs go down because the skill sets require to administer and maintain linux and linux apps are more freely available. The same is not true of solaris. Linux 3, Solaris 0.
Solaris, and it's hardware IS good for massive multi-proc applications. Data Warehouse with Multi-tera bytes of data? Linux and Intel are not suited to such tasks. Large transactional databases that require nearly 100% uptime and reliability, i.e. the database is nearly as reliable as the Operating system. Solaris is the OS for that application. Linux 3 Solaris 1
Sun is no longer suited to playing in the high(er) growth markets of dedicated servers, web applications, IT support devices (dns, dhcp, network management) and such. Their role is increasingly being boxed into ultra highend applications where a large number of processors, ultra high reliability and what sun has stood for still means something. Where the applications are almost as reliable as the OS, and that the OS and hardware is required to be up nearly 100% of the time and never unexpectedly. The difficulty they face is that that the role just described is not in particularly high demand. As IT budgets continue to shrink - decision makers are going to continue to look to linux to solve their problems.
Linux is cheap - costs less to maintiain - and the hardware can be repurposed. Sun just can't argue with that. Sun needs a change of direction.
As I see it, this is the beginning of something truly great. Wi-Fi in the home, around the block, in the coffee shop has been a truly nice thing. A convience that we all find ourselves saying "I wish more places had this (and I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg)".
It won't be much longer before that is the case. All we need now in boston, is one or two major providers to come in and set up MAN AP's on the tallest buildings in town, alternatively several large towers within a few miles of the city. We'll find that any jo-shmo will be able to uplink to those tall buildings or towers and instantly be connected to an "Aether-Pipe". The provider of the MAN uplink would obviously charge his or her customers for access but that wouldn't be a problem because the hotspot operators would then charge the end user, much like the myriad of DSL providers out there now.
Much of the cost difficulties with setting up an AP will be solved by this "AEther-Pipe" a ubiquitous backhaul that, provided you've paid your MAN provider you'll have access to. I'm sure we'll see AP wars in the future. My guess is that we'll need a new incarnation of 802.11x that will be able to put you on the MAN network and hand off from one spot to another as you cruise around the city. Just think an 11Mb/sec enable wrist phone... I can watch DVD's now!
That.NET is a platform to make you, the developer more productive.
I've not done a lot of desktop application development - so I can't really speak for the desktop crowd. I'd venture to say that it's not quite where it should be.
The web however, is something different. ASP.NET is fast - easy - and extremely flexible and provided your server doesn't crash:-) extremely stable. Many of the most important aspects of basic application development are already done for you such as authentication and authorization, a decent crypto api and others. It comes with a standard set of "controls" for web forms that are flexible and reliable. Visual Studio supports the.NET Framework quite nicely and makes developing under ASP.NET quite pleasant (except for the html reformatting, quite annoying). All in all it's a good package. MS has done a great job documenting and exposing how.NET works, not from a code level BECAUSE WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT but from an API/Method level. Generally speaking there is documentation on most of the common "problems" when learning.NET.
The most compelling aspect of.NET is the fact that we can RELY on MS to maintain control of the.NET framework and classes. Unlike our friend Sun and Java which has become a mess of separate packages and little documented dependencies that are unreliable, prone to null pointer exceptions, and hidden caveats in packages that are necessary to do basic development work (XSL Parsers come to mind).NET is a welcome relief to the uncontrolled mess that Sun now proudly hails as Java..NET has unquestionably borrowed from every language design pattern that has appeared on the face of the earth since the chinese invented the abacus. But I don't care, becuase I can get my work done, and when I wake up in the morning I'm not real worried that my applications have chewed their tails off while I slept peacefully.
PCI Plus proposed by Intel is promising 2GB/sec dedicated channel per device on the PCI Plus bus.... this doesn't fully meet the needs of the drives but is certainly a step in the right direction.
This is not a "convention", don't you get it? The people this person was in contact with "rule" the world. They are the global aristocracy. What they say matters a great deal.
Also, one doesn't get invited to an event just because they are a journalist.
The head of the bank of China indeed. The soon to be most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. is a the end of it's "product life cycle" to apply a marketing term. Our system is not flexible to protect itself from internal destruction. However China has adopted what is quickly becoming a "Corporate State" a government that is modeled after a business.
I think - that Vignette has an identical system. Vignette is arguably the best content management system out there. It demonstrates all of the features mentioned by interwoven. I'm not sure about Vignette but I think that it is "older" than interwoven.
I think this is all beside the point - since CVS used to manage a web site and deploy it is basically the same thing.
the government wants us to think there is a whole lot going on there. Chances are that they've move the site. Once a "secure" location is known, it's not quite so secure anymore now is it? Also, did the reporter actually get into the site? No. Could he have? You're guess is as good as mine. Something tells me this is really not a big deal.
I got in an argument over this very article last fall.
Basically, the article gives a glimpse of a bill gates of 8 years ago. It reflects very well the bill gates CEO, decision maker and sole "stakeholder" of Windows as a software package and Microsoft as way of life. It was his belief in the infalibility of his product, the "superiority" of it (from his perspective) that drove the sort of dialog found in the interview. Oddly enough Linus and Gates have a lot in common in that respect. Linus is highly opinionated when it comes to his "product" - though not to put words in the mans mouth i'm sure that he believes his branch of linux/*nix/bsd family is the best (as he should).
The single most telling aspect of windows/gates' perspective with regard to the end users from 95 - Millenium was the message that came up after the computer crashed: "The computer was not properly shut down..." of course it wasn't, it crashed. The tone of the message was that the user was at fault when it was really the product. Generally speaking such condescend dialogs with users are generally hard to be found in windows products these days.
bill gates has turned from the man presented in the interview - to something different. A man that now realizes his software ISN'T perfect..NET and MS's security initiatives of late show gates' commitment (they are both basically his idea) to the innovation and improvement of a faulty product and platform. Once Gates got out of the corporate hotseat and turned to a more philanthropic role, changes began to emerege. Most notably, much larger thinking such as.NET, the security initiative, and most recently the tablet pc version of XP. It looks to be a very sophisticated distributed application that integrates almost every major product under the microsoft name. most say this is a bad thing - but that wasn't the point of the argument.
the facts simply point to a gates that has changed, significantly both in his role at MS and his disposition personally. the MS of the mid 90's isn't totally gone, and neither is the old gates. he's just moved on to bigger and better things. Defending his product from attack and preserving the investors stock value are no longer his primary concern (maybe personally, but not as an officer of the company). Instead, he's been able to focus on how to build something that's as good as it can be - give it a few more years, these things take time.
and yet not so much. imagine how much they could "save" by not having to broker all the crap the spammers are sending to their systems. less hardware costs, less bandwidth, less headaches. less spam for hotmail users is really only a by product of their business goal to save money. if they could make money from spam - then hotmail users would get a lot more of it!
HTTP is without question easier to use than FTP. Especially in a firewall environment, HTTP will be MORE reliable than FTP for downloads. If you are concerned about security, use SSL for transferring files.
It's surprising that a company that has such skills with distributing a mission critical, highly available OS (Solaris) doesn't enforce the same practices across the development of something as complex as the JVM.
"waiting on the full service pack" is not an acceptable stance.
as an admin of one or more machines, the ownus is on the admin to identify and correct the security holes that pose a threat to their machines. not every fix needs to be installed, only the ones that clearly represent a danger to the systems being cared for.
there are places, such as the bugtraq list where major security bullitins are published. simply subscribing to this list can provide the information necessary to identify the vulnerabilities that do pose a danger.
also, the *nix community has as many or more fixes released for their software packages. they also do not have "service packs" and "cumulative patches" that are so conviently bundled together.
all that is required is some critial thinking to asses which patches should be put into production and which should not. and that is the solution.
On january 17th, Service Pack 3 was released for SQl Server. This release included the July release of the patch to address the exploit that the current worm is using. Shame on SQL Server admins for not patching their servers up to the current release. What good are patches and updates if people don't install them?
Not really, a large portion of PC sales come from corporate accounts. Genereally speaking CTO's and CIO's are fairly in tune with a) their workers opinions of upcoming technology b) do research on topics such as this themselves. Their dollars go to technology they decide is worth while.
On an aside support your points "TCPA/DRM/PALLADIUM/EVIL mess" is not a factual statement. Each of those three acronyms means something different. to call them a "mess" isn't accurate and not helpful.
It is our choice to adopt something like this. Wether it be palladium or TCPA, we as the end consumers of the technology can make it possible, or impossible for this type of technology to proceed. The adoption of this technology relies very heavily on consumer adoption. If we don't like it we won't have to buy it.
Before jumping to conclusions about "bad" and "good", why don't we take a good, hard, objective look and evaluate the implications from all sides, and say "Yes, this is something that is worth while." or "No, this isn't helping me or the private development community at large." Only then after having an informed, justtifed position can we attack the moral (and it is) framework of such a project.
Me thinks that Microsoft is just as interested in having TCPA as a tool for improving security in their software. One of the founding principals of the TCPA is the "protection" in hardware of the processes running on a system. Digital rights management doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the trusted compututing movement. Therefore MS TCPA != DRM. Not to say that they won't try and do as much with it as they can, but it's just not the primary goal.
Dude. You DON'T GET IT DO YOU? There is MORE to the computer than it WORKING! It's not that it works, it's that it LOOKS GOOD AND WORKS. This applies to all things. Would you buy an ugly car, when you can have one that looks nice and works too? Yugo would still be in business if your philosphy held true. The whole notion of consumer markets is based on the fact that there is want for cooler, better, prettier goodz, OS X is just that Cooler, better, prettier. The fact of the matter is that the linux community lacks the fundamental creative skills to develop a desktop that is "compelling" enough to be used by the end user. Compelling encompasses Usability, Design, and Interface. Linux is NOT a desktop OS *period*
The value of XML is not the structure of the data. The tags, nodes, elements and attributes are just another format for parsing data. The power comes with the ability to VALIDATE the format. No other data exchange format has such an integrated approach to assuring the validity AND structure of data. Also, the hirearchical nature of XML makes it idealy suited to most information sets. It also, takes the organization of relationalal data to another level because node groupings inherently define a relationship between the information that is contained in the document. XML as just XML isn't that special but the ability to nest information and validate the structure make XML a more *reliable* data format. In the world of CSV files, ini files, and excel spread sheets and the like, it is a welcome change. As the tools evolve to take the comlexity out of creating things such as schemas. XML's potential as an interchange format will be fully realized. As for its verbosity, it is needed. The less structure the more the format is left open to interpretation.
Different? Of course it is. It makes no allusions to be even remotely close to the Windows MDI world of crap. It is it's own dog.
Have you really used it? Have you USED it for more than 10 minutes at your local apple store?
The "eye candy" is both functional and pleasing. MS could learn a lot as could the builders of X. The iconic approach to indicating the status of everything makes the interface very intuitive to use. There is not a whole lot of guesswork. A second button for the mouse isn't required. By the way, your friend is a n00b for using a microsoft mouse with OS X. I also wouldn't be addmitting that your friends use MS Accessories with their non MS computers. I mean, logitech makes a great optical mouse for $30. I guess he just liked the "cool" styling of that sleek piece of MS hardware, eh?
Linux has a place, that is it is a great server OS. It's reliable like none other and you can get it for free. That's awsome!
It is not, a desktop OS. The X server is really quite terrible, the screen shots look ok, but the "usability" sucks, it's glitchy and unreliable. After using it for a while it doesn't leave you with a warm happy feeling everytime a button is clicked, a window closed, or appliction opened that it will listen to the request made. More to the point it is INCONSISTANT. Applications never follow the same design pattern. Meaning that Icons and controls, often for basic tasks are put anywhere and everywhere.
Apple has done a remarkable job building controls that address 99% of the needs for building a solid GUI. They have even gone so far as to publish a guide on how to build a consistant interface. Apple, knows people, Apple knows design, Apple knows technology to the extent that it supports user goals. Linux knows technology. But that is not enough to build a desktop OS good enough to compete with Windows.
Linux is an OS that is built by Techies for Techies. It will continue to be that way. It shows too, as many companies are using Linux either solely as their server infrastructure or partially to support the most mission critical applications that Linux is so good at handling, DNS, Routing, Firewalling. It also makes for a great platform for deploying applications requiring a great mount of scalability and reliability. Linux has it's place but it's not the desktop, it takes a special talent to build a great Desktop OS. Building such an OS requires the collective efforts of creatives and programmers it is something that.
As an aside, there is a HUGE different between MacOS (I wouldn't touch it) and OS X (which is why I bought my iMac, well that and Escape Velocity).
OS X R00LZ d00d
In this case I am not refering to OS X as a server my friend. To say that "No one buys Linux for ease of use." supports my view that it is unfair to ask someone like a sales person to be doing demos of their product on Linux, they are sales people, they are "end users". So to scoff at the silly man in a suit and chastise him for not using your platfom. Linux is unbelieveably portable and makes for a great server, but it's not suited for desktop use. To expect desktop users to use it for that task, just isn't reasonable.
This excerpt from the article is rather interesting I though.
"An awful lot of hardware vendors that push Linux on servers seem to feel it's just fine to have lots of Windows screens on the computers."
Sure, in an ideal world your sales people would also be very comfortable with the product and target platform. But the platform is Linux.
The answer this [booth sales person] gave: "Well, our software runs on all platforms -- Linux, Windows, AIX, Solaris... I'm a sales guy, not an engineer, so I don't know how to run Linux and I stick to Windows 'cause that's what I know."
Indeed it is. But I bet if you gave him OS X, he'd be fine with it. Linux as an OS, well that's a different story now isn't it?
If all browsers were compliant then we wouldn't need more than one browser. I didn't say that I was supporting IE. DID I??? The bottom line is that browsers SHOULD be compliant but they AREN'T. There is more to a browser than parsing HTML! Give it a few more years and things will be OK. But right now they aren't, so each browser is a "Platform". With certain features and functionality that is unique to that browser. Code should be common, but it is possible to select a browser based on it's abilities that are not in common with others (applies to Web App Dev).
Slashdot Mirror
Sun really needs to rethink their strategies.
Solaris for Intel? None of the sparc binaries run on it, it's not any faster than linux. Linux 1, Solaris 0.
Solaris for web applications... absoultely not. Tried and true OS for sure. Though web sphere, atg, web logic and most other large scale app servers have linux ports. java's relability will never exceed the uptime of an OS i.e. the JVM or app server will crash before the OS does. That then precludes having a bullet proof OS. Web applications need redunancy, both from a geographic perspective and application. Doing so requires a duplicate hardware investment. Not such a good deal with sun. Linux 2, Solaris 0.
Maintainance... will be cheaper with linux rather than solaris. The reason being that Linux and it's friendly varients are all freely avaialable. To learn and use linux is not a big deal, solaris on the other hand need solaris hardware to run. As a result of easier access to hardware and software (linux) labor costs go down because the skill sets require to administer and maintain linux and linux apps are more freely available. The same is not true of solaris. Linux 3, Solaris 0.
Solaris, and it's hardware IS good for massive multi-proc applications. Data Warehouse with Multi-tera bytes of data? Linux and Intel are not suited to such tasks. Large transactional databases that require nearly 100% uptime and reliability, i.e. the database is nearly as reliable as the Operating system. Solaris is the OS for that application. Linux 3 Solaris 1
Sun is no longer suited to playing in the high(er) growth markets of dedicated servers, web applications, IT support devices (dns, dhcp, network management) and such. Their role is increasingly being boxed into ultra highend applications where a large number of processors, ultra high reliability and what sun has stood for still means something. Where the applications are almost as reliable as the OS, and that the OS and hardware is required to be up nearly 100% of the time and never unexpectedly. The difficulty they face is that that the role just described is not in particularly high demand. As IT budgets continue to shrink - decision makers are going to continue to look to linux to solve their problems.
Linux is cheap - costs less to maintiain - and the hardware can be repurposed. Sun just can't argue with that. Sun needs a change of direction.
First Post!
As I see it, this is the beginning of something truly great. Wi-Fi in the home, around the block, in the coffee shop has been a truly nice thing. A convience that we all find ourselves saying "I wish more places had this (and I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg)".
It won't be much longer before that is the case. All we need now in boston, is one or two major providers to come in and set up MAN AP's on the tallest buildings in town, alternatively several large towers within a few miles of the city. We'll find that any jo-shmo will be able to uplink to those tall buildings or towers and instantly be connected to an "Aether-Pipe". The provider of the MAN uplink would obviously charge his or her customers for access but that wouldn't be a problem because the hotspot operators would then charge the end user, much like the myriad of DSL providers out there now.
Much of the cost difficulties with setting up an AP will be solved by this "AEther-Pipe" a ubiquitous backhaul that, provided you've paid your MAN provider you'll have access to. I'm sure we'll see AP wars in the future. My guess is that we'll need a new incarnation of 802.11x that will be able to put you on the MAN network and hand off from one spot to another as you cruise around the city. Just think an 11Mb/sec enable wrist phone... I can watch DVD's now!
-Hal
That .NET is a platform to make you, the developer more productive.
:-) extremely stable. Many of the most important aspects of basic application development are already done for you such as authentication and authorization, a decent crypto api and others. It comes with a standard set of "controls" for web forms that are flexible and reliable. Visual Studio supports the .NET Framework quite nicely and makes developing under ASP.NET quite pleasant (except for the html reformatting, quite annoying). All in all it's a good package. MS has done a great job documenting and exposing how .NET works, not from a code level BECAUSE WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT but from an API/Method level. Generally speaking there is documentation on most of the common "problems" when learning .NET. .NET is the fact that we can RELY on MS to maintain control of the .NET framework and classes. Unlike our friend Sun and Java which has become a mess of separate packages and little documented dependencies that are unreliable, prone to null pointer exceptions, and hidden caveats in packages that are necessary to do basic development work (XSL Parsers come to mind) .NET is a welcome relief to the uncontrolled mess that Sun now proudly hails as Java. .NET has unquestionably borrowed from every language design pattern that has appeared on the face of the earth since the chinese invented the abacus. But I don't care, becuase I can get my work done, and when I wake up in the morning I'm not real worried that my applications have chewed their tails off while I slept peacefully.
I've not done a lot of desktop application development - so I can't really speak for the desktop crowd. I'd venture to say that it's not quite where it should be.
The web however, is something different. ASP.NET is fast - easy - and extremely flexible and provided your server doesn't crash
The most compelling aspect of
PCI Plus proposed by Intel is promising 2GB/sec dedicated channel per device on the PCI Plus bus.... this doesn't fully meet the needs of the drives but is certainly a step in the right direction.
Friend,
This is not a "convention", don't you get it? The people this person was in contact with "rule" the world. They are the global aristocracy. What they say matters a great deal.
Also, one doesn't get invited to an event just because they are a journalist.
The head of the bank of China indeed. The soon to be most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. is a the end of it's "product life cycle" to apply a marketing term. Our system is not flexible to protect itself from internal destruction. However China has adopted what is quickly becoming a "Corporate State" a government that is modeled after a business.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I think - that Vignette has an identical system. Vignette is arguably the best content management system out there. It demonstrates all of the features mentioned by interwoven. I'm not sure about Vignette but I think that it is "older" than interwoven.
I think this is all beside the point - since CVS used to manage a web site and deploy it is basically the same thing.
the government wants us to think there is a whole lot going on there. Chances are that they've move the site. Once a "secure" location is known, it's not quite so secure anymore now is it? Also, did the reporter actually get into the site? No. Could he have? You're guess is as good as mine. Something tells me this is really not a big deal.
I got in an argument over this very article last fall.
.NET and MS's security initiatives of late show gates' commitment (they are both basically his idea) to the innovation and improvement of a faulty product and platform. Once Gates got out of the corporate hotseat and turned to a more philanthropic role, changes began to emerege. Most notably, much larger thinking such as .NET, the security initiative, and most recently the tablet pc version of XP. It looks to be a very sophisticated distributed application that integrates almost every major product under the microsoft name. most say this is a bad thing - but that wasn't the point of the argument.
Basically, the article gives a glimpse of a bill gates of 8 years ago. It reflects very well the bill gates CEO, decision maker and sole "stakeholder" of Windows as a software package and Microsoft as way of life. It was his belief in the infalibility of his product, the "superiority" of it (from his perspective) that drove the sort of dialog found in the interview. Oddly enough Linus and Gates have a lot in common in that respect. Linus is highly opinionated when it comes to his "product" - though not to put words in the mans mouth i'm sure that he believes his branch of linux/*nix/bsd family is the best (as he should).
The single most telling aspect of windows/gates' perspective with regard to the end users from 95 - Millenium was the message that came up after the computer crashed: "The computer was not properly shut down..." of course it wasn't, it crashed. The tone of the message was that the user was at fault when it was really the product. Generally speaking such condescend dialogs with users are generally hard to be found in windows products these days.
bill gates has turned from the man presented in the interview - to something different. A man that now realizes his software ISN'T perfect.
the facts simply point to a gates that has changed, significantly both in his role at MS and his disposition personally. the MS of the mid 90's isn't totally gone, and neither is the old gates. he's just moved on to bigger and better things. Defending his product from attack and preserving the investors stock value are no longer his primary concern (maybe personally, but not as an officer of the company). Instead, he's been able to focus on how to build something that's as good as it can be - give it a few more years, these things take time.
"...monopoly putting powers to good use."
and yet not so much. imagine how much they could "save" by not having to broker all the crap the spammers are sending to their systems. less hardware costs, less bandwidth, less headaches. less spam for hotmail users is really only a by product of their business goal to save money. if they could make money from spam - then hotmail users would get a lot more of it!
business is the worst of people.
HTTP is without question easier to use than FTP. Especially in a firewall environment, HTTP will be MORE reliable than FTP for downloads. If you are concerned about security, use SSL for transferring files.
My 2 Cents
It's surprising that a company that has such skills with distributing a mission critical, highly available OS (Solaris) doesn't enforce the same practices across the development of something as complex as the JVM.
"waiting on the full service pack" is not an acceptable stance.
as an admin of one or more machines, the ownus is on the admin to identify and correct the security holes that pose a threat to their machines. not every fix needs to be installed, only the ones that clearly represent a danger to the systems being cared for.
there are places, such as the bugtraq list where major security bullitins are published. simply subscribing to this list can provide the information necessary to identify the vulnerabilities that do pose a danger.
also, the *nix community has as many or more fixes released for their software packages. they also do not have "service packs" and "cumulative patches" that are so conviently bundled together.
all that is required is some critial thinking to asses which patches should be put into production and which should not. and that is the solution.
And yet, the fix for the worm exploit has been available for 6 months. That should be enough time for things to be tested.
On january 17th, Service Pack 3 was released for SQl Server. This release included the July release of the patch to address the exploit that the current worm is using. Shame on SQL Server admins for not patching their servers up to the current release. What good are patches and updates if people don't install them?
Not really, a large portion of PC sales come from corporate accounts. Genereally speaking CTO's and CIO's are fairly in tune with a) their workers opinions of upcoming technology b) do research on topics such as this themselves. Their dollars go to technology they decide is worth while.
On an aside support your points "TCPA/DRM/PALLADIUM/EVIL mess" is not a factual statement. Each of those three acronyms means something different. to call them a "mess" isn't accurate and not helpful.
It is our choice to adopt something like this. Wether it be palladium or TCPA, we as the end consumers of the technology can make it possible, or impossible for this type of technology to proceed. The adoption of this technology relies very heavily on consumer adoption. If we don't like it we won't have to buy it.
Before jumping to conclusions about "bad" and "good", why don't we take a good, hard, objective look and evaluate the implications from all sides, and say "Yes, this is something that is worth while." or "No, this isn't helping me or the private development community at large." Only then after having an informed, justtifed position can we attack the moral (and it is) framework of such a project.
If they build it, you don't have to come.
Me thinks that Microsoft is just as interested in having TCPA as a tool for improving security in their software. One of the founding principals of the TCPA is the "protection" in hardware of the processes running on a system. Digital rights management doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the trusted compututing movement. Therefore MS TCPA != DRM. Not to say that they won't try and do as much with it as they can, but it's just not the primary goal.
Dude. You DON'T GET IT DO YOU? There is MORE to the computer than it WORKING! It's not that it works, it's that it LOOKS GOOD AND WORKS. This applies to all things. Would you buy an ugly car, when you can have one that looks nice and works too? Yugo would still be in business if your philosphy held true. The whole notion of consumer markets is based on the fact that there is want for cooler, better, prettier goodz, OS X is just that Cooler, better, prettier. The fact of the matter is that the linux community lacks the fundamental creative skills to develop a desktop that is "compelling" enough to be used by the end user. Compelling encompasses Usability, Design, and Interface. Linux is NOT a desktop OS *period*
The value of XML is not the structure of the data. The tags, nodes, elements and attributes are just another format for parsing data. The power comes with the ability to VALIDATE the format. No other data exchange format has such an integrated approach to assuring the validity AND structure of data. Also, the hirearchical nature of XML makes it idealy suited to most information sets. It also, takes the organization of relationalal data to another level because node groupings inherently define a relationship between the information that is contained in the document. XML as just XML isn't that special but the ability to nest information and validate the structure make XML a more *reliable* data format. In the world of CSV files, ini files, and excel spread sheets and the like, it is a welcome change. As the tools evolve to take the comlexity out of creating things such as schemas. XML's potential as an interchange format will be fully realized. As for its verbosity, it is needed. The less structure the more the format is left open to interpretation.
Different? Of course it is. It makes no allusions to be even remotely close to the Windows MDI world of crap. It is it's own dog.
Have you really used it? Have you USED it for more than 10 minutes at your local apple store?
The "eye candy" is both functional and pleasing. MS could learn a lot as could the builders of X. The iconic approach to indicating the status of everything makes the interface very intuitive to use. There is not a whole lot of guesswork. A second button for the mouse isn't required. By the way, your friend is a n00b for using a microsoft mouse with OS X. I also wouldn't be addmitting that your friends use MS Accessories with their non MS computers. I mean, logitech makes a great optical mouse for $30. I guess he just liked the "cool" styling of that sleek piece of MS hardware, eh?
Linux has a place, that is it is a great server OS. It's reliable like none other and you can get it for free. That's awsome!
It is not, a desktop OS. The X server is really quite terrible, the screen shots look ok, but the "usability" sucks, it's glitchy and unreliable. After using it for a while it doesn't leave you with a warm happy feeling everytime a button is clicked, a window closed, or appliction opened that it will listen to the request made. More to the point it is INCONSISTANT. Applications never follow the same design pattern. Meaning that Icons and controls, often for basic tasks are put anywhere and everywhere.
Apple has done a remarkable job building controls that address 99% of the needs for building a solid GUI. They have even gone so far as to publish a guide on how to build a consistant interface. Apple, knows people, Apple knows design, Apple knows technology to the extent that it supports user goals. Linux knows technology. But that is not enough to build a desktop OS good enough to compete with Windows.
Linux is an OS that is built by Techies for Techies. It will continue to be that way. It shows too, as many companies are using Linux either solely as their server infrastructure or partially to support the most mission critical applications that Linux is so good at handling, DNS, Routing, Firewalling. It also makes for a great platform for deploying applications requiring a great mount of scalability and reliability. Linux has it's place but it's not the desktop, it takes a special talent to build a great Desktop OS. Building such an OS requires the collective efforts of creatives and programmers it is something that.
As an aside, there is a HUGE different between MacOS (I wouldn't touch it) and OS X (which is why I bought my iMac, well that and Escape Velocity). OS X R00LZ d00d
In this case I am not refering to OS X as a server my friend. To say that "No one buys Linux for ease of use." supports my view that it is unfair to ask someone like a sales person to be doing demos of their product on Linux, they are sales people, they are "end users". So to scoff at the silly man in a suit and chastise him for not using your platfom.
Linux is unbelieveably portable and makes for a great server, but it's not suited for desktop use. To expect desktop users to use it for that task, just isn't reasonable.
This excerpt from the article is rather interesting I though.
"An awful lot of hardware vendors that push Linux on servers seem to feel it's just fine to have lots of Windows screens on the computers."
Sure, in an ideal world your sales people would also be very comfortable with the product and target platform. But the platform is Linux.
The answer this [booth sales person] gave: "Well, our software runs on all platforms -- Linux, Windows, AIX, Solaris... I'm a sales guy, not an engineer, so I don't know how to run Linux and I stick to Windows 'cause that's what I know."
Indeed it is. But I bet if you gave him OS X, he'd be fine with it. Linux as an OS, well that's a different story now isn't it?
OS X R00lZ D00D.
If all browsers were compliant then we wouldn't need more than one browser. I didn't say that I was supporting IE. DID I??? The bottom line is that browsers SHOULD be compliant but they AREN'T. There is more to a browser than parsing HTML! Give it a few more years and things will be OK. But right now they aren't, so each browser is a "Platform". With certain features and functionality that is unique to that browser. Code should be common, but it is possible to select a browser based on it's abilities that are not in common with others (applies to Web App Dev).
I will be sure to enter you two in the Darwin awards.