I wouldn't quite start cheering yet. I'd be awfully wary of what comes out of this. MS gets a FREE security check of XBOX, and look what they can do with all this:
They can see where all the holes that hackers/modders are exploiting in the console are.
They can "slipstream" secutity updates into future games and break the above.
They get some PR karma for not going after an academic/researcher who is doing benefit for the "public good" (i.e. fixing security holes that could "JEAPORDIZE NATIONAL SECURITY"
They know what works and what doesn't for security in future products.
On the plus side, since they are chosing NOT to invoke the DMCA, they prove that the law is subject to the whim of the very corporations who claimed to be harmed and sponsored the bill in congress (proxied by our loyal Senators, of course!) This kind of ruins the legitimacy of the law, as it transforms the DMCA from "reverse-engineering decryption schemes is always harmful (and hence, illegal) and is a copyright and security threat" to "reverse-engineering decryption schemes is only harmful (and hence illegal) when I SAY it is a copyright and security threat". This is a subtle, but quite big difference. Hopefully, the EFF and ALCU (or other socially-responsible organizations) will pick up on that fact...
With this in mind, I like the fact that MS is doing this. However, I'd hate it to kill the mod-chip business. I'm fully in-favor of us being able to do ANYTHING with ANYTHING we buy (and dammit, if I pay $300 for the XBOX, I own it!) -- Imagine if you couldn't hop-up your car if you wanted to? The DMCA just sucks, in-general, and it sucks even more if companies can just CHOOSE when things are illegal and when they are not.
If you're heading South on US101: then look left BEFORE you get to the Great America Parkway/Bowers road exit (i.e. after Fair Oaks.)
If you're heading Norh on US101: look right AFTER you pass the Great America Parkway/Bowers Road exit (.i.e. before Fair Oaks.)
You were close, but I stared at this every day before going to work at a certain low-power alternative x86 processor company for 1.5 years!
Cheers,
First of all, Red Hat is listed as breaking even in earnings per share. You are confusing accounting with finance. (FWIW: I am not an expert in either, but I am married to one, so I get chastised when I make these kind of mistakes:-) The forms filed with the SEC (10-Q, is it?) describes the accounting for the quarter, and this translates, through GAAP to an earnings-per-share, which is the Wall Street benchmark of company performance.
In respect to Wall Street (or market) performance, it is ALWAYS a good thing for a company to know how well it is doing, regardless of how well that is. It is one of the de-facto Wall Street barometers of how well a company is run. A public company is beholden (no matter how much you agree with this) to its investors, and providing accurate financial guidance to its investors is one of the expected responsibilities. It inspires investor confidence, which is not only a good thing unto itself, but is also good, given the market conditions and Monday's crash due to last week's tragedy.
To use your example, it would DEFINITELY be good if Exodus, or any other company for that matter, accurately predicts that it will run out of cash and have to close its doors. It allows the board to know when it is time to cut their losses, and not just run until (a) all cash is expended (b) there are lawsuits on undelivered goods and/or services (c) creditors galore, and (d) innumerable other sources of financial drain that would cause even further shareholder loss. Being a well-run company does nothing to mitigate that going out of business is bad, in which you are correct.
Ken
P.S. -- The "(Tiny)" I attributed to Hemos' editorializing of the title of the Infoworld article. It neither the title, nor a statement in the Infoworld article linked to , above. Additionally, words such as "tiny" are relative, and do not denote a set amount. Losing millions of dollars is, in fact, "tiny" to companies like Microsoft or IBM, but would kill someone like VA Linux.
"Let those numbers sink in. That means that RedHat's revenue was less than half of their loss in the second quarter. And this bodes well for RedHat because...?"
The article quoted above says that Red Hat met analysts expectations for the quarter, which usually means they were right-on in their guidance and predictions. In the current market, this shows good financial leadership in a company, and usually makes shareholders happy. (FYI - RHAT closed up today.) This is certainly a GOOD thing for Linux, as it shows that a skillfully-managed company is being successful in the commercial arena, and IMNHO, not "SERIOUS troubles for Linux" as you are purporting.
Not to be picking nits, but I'm sorry -- I don't see anyone calling this a "tiny" loss.
I just don't see any grounding for your statements.
Ken Crandall
Re:This might stimulate nerds and developers
on
MySQL FS
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· Score: 1
The part I found to be emminently cool was to think of things the OTHER way around -- don't just think of seeing your DB as files, think of seeing your files as a DB.
Imagine if you could move a bunch of Word200 documents (they ARE XML files, mind you -- you just need an OLE stream decoder a la wv to decode them) into a DBFS directory and provide the DTD for that datatype in a way that you could make SQL calls against the files (records) using the DTD as a table definition.
You could then move files TRANSPARENTLY in and out of the DB, using the DBFS and automatically index against them.
A few years ago, I was responsible for getting a bunch of documents on a website to be searched and sorted. I had directory upon directory full of procedure and process documents. One day, I found a program called Xerox DocuShare, (written in Python, BTW) and it used some features that were very similar to this idea.
Cheers,
Ken Crandall
Re:A Couple of Points of Clarification...
on
RPM Package Manager
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· Score: 1
Ack...I was a bit vague. The this I spoke of in the first paragraph is Connectiva's work, not the Aduva stuff.
The this in the second paragraph is the Aduva stuff...
Cheers,
Ken
There seems to be some confusions as to what a "package manager" really is. This isn't an 'RPM front-end to apt-get" as Hemos put it. This is a port of apt to support RPM's as a package format. Debian packaging is done through 'deb' packages, which are almost identical to RPM's in form and functionality. Both have evolved to be very good package building, deployment, and retraction tools for software.
What this, Helix-Update, Eazel Services, apt, and up2date really do is function as package distribution channels. They resolve dependencies, check package location/availability against host-side maintained repositories and download the appropriate packages, once all the dependencies are figured out and resolved. They do not install the packages -- the package manager (RPM, dpkg) does this part. (Well, technically they can, but this would be through either re-writing, or linking to the library form of the package manager.)
While noone can argue that Debian had this capability first, and probably (currently) does it best due to having time to mature, it's natural that this capability will come to other distros and package formats precisely because it works so well.
Very insightful comments, however there are a couple of things that need to be noted.
First of all, some people live their lives according to statistics, be them relevant or not. The fact that things such as the Anarchist's Cookbook, porn, and nuclear bomb instructions exist on the internet and not in Dr. Seuess books almost implies the automatic statistic that more children with violent tendancies saw that content than read The Lorax (even though I'm sure there aren't that many studies that equate youth violence to Dr. Seuess!) This is the same case that is made against violence on TV (comapring the Teletubbies to action movies on HBO, for example).
The justification of violence using history, however, is not a good argument to make your case. We protest the "sanitized" versions of history that get tought in schools, whether due to the lack of variety in ethnicities mentioned, the omission or glossing-over of violent acts, or the choice of how to present matter (creationism vs. evolution, for example.)
The ultimate onus of how to decide on what content youth should view, whether it's on the web, TV, movies, magazines, books, or in real life should fall on the parents or guardians until that person can make the decision for him- or herself. As long as the government thinks it should be making that decision for us, they set arbitrary ages for things that should really be based on more individual factors. The government causes 18-year-olds to be able to go fight and die for their country and allows 17-year-olds to be able to go see XXX-rated movies. These same individuals have another 3-4 years to wait before they can legally imbibe alcohol. We end up with stupid 21-year-olds, who can get drunk and go driving, and we have perfectly responsible 17-year-olds, who cannot enjoy a drink.
Finally, to Jon Katz, trashing Bush for making this comment is duplicitous. What about Al Gore's claims to have been intstramental in the creation of the internet? Both candidates suck, IMO, as the role of our government is way to broad today. However unfortunate it may seem, all decisions relate back to the pocket-book; however, and we must make our decisions with our money. I'd rather have less taxes...
Are you building it from scratch with a GTK-based front-end or is XPFE now inheriting the GTK theme.
I just ask, because up until now, I've been running M17, and while it inherits the GTK color scheme nicely from the engine-based theme I have, it still uses the Windows'esque scrollbar, and generic XPFE widgets themselves...
First of all, you can get rpm v3.0.6 from rpm.org, either as a SRPM or pre-compiled, whichever is your flavour of choice.
Second, a lot of changes have been made "under-the-hood" in RPM in the past couple of years. 3.x has stood the test of time for quite a while (two major version release cycles) and even now, at version 4.0, still has a way to go (or needs a companion-application, as pointed out in the Freshmeat article from a week ago -- the link escapes me, help on this welcome!) If there are architectural changes, either visible or internal, a new version number is probably warranted...
Third, You can then build any RH7.0 RPM's against RH6.2 for compatability. As RH7.0 uses a new glibc (hence the major version #) you should stray away from using binaries RPM's compiled against 7.0 on 6.2, as this could lead to major breakage.
Finally, RH would not have chosen a new major relase number unless there are forward-looking binary compatability issues against previous releases. They're one of the only SW companies out there that can even trace their product line back to 1.x!
Microsoft: WinNT 3.1 was the first release.
Mandrake: Began at something like 5.3 (just to be bigger than RH 5.2!)
Sun: Okay, so SunOS/Solaris began at 1.x, but look how odd it got after THAT!
I'll skip over most of the last point, but I will point out that if you use RH services and support, it's a great deal to but a new OS every 6 mos. and get support for the life of that product (read: 6 mos.) for only $80 or so. That's only $13-14 a month for full OS support on your desktop. Not too shabby...
This is not such a cut-and-dry situation as it may seem. Sure, I feel 1000% strongly that every company should "eat its own dogfood" and use its own products. There are SO MANY defects and issues can't be found in the lab and must be put through the "real-world" paces that this should be the mantra of all companies out there.
I think the strategy employed by Novell is the correct one here, and I must back that up 100%. By having a pragmatic view of the world, Novell can make sure that Netware plays niche with *NIX, Linux, WinXX, and Macs.
However...
The flip-sideo of the coin has some interesting issues as well. Some companies take the view that the only way to make their products better is to rely on them 100% to do their business. One of the ways MS has become so successful (this isn't flame-bait, you can't argue with billions of dollars, monopoly or not) is due to the fact that they either create or acquire technologies to do all parts of their business. While this may be viewed as "evil" or monopolistic by some, look at the results it generates. MS is able to create technologies like COM+,.NET, and ActiveX (I know that these are all, basically, "revisions" of the same idea, and again, don't be a troll and flame me for this) that are only being created in the open-source world today (via KParts, and BONOBO).
I think that once the cornucopia of open-source solutions gets large enough, we will be able to start seeing KDE and GNOME (or heterogeneous mixes of both environs) do the same thing that MS has forces themeselves to do: provide enough of a framework that the answers to software problems can all come from one source.
As a former Red Hatter, let me offer some clarification on this.
First of all, just becuase something is GNOME-aware (or even uses GTK+ as its widget set) does not exclude Python as its programming language. There's PyGNOME and PyGTK which provide excellent bindings to GNOME and GTK, respectively, for those who wish to write GNOME- and GTK-aware programs in Python. (The Red Hat installer, Anaconda, which uses GTK is written in Python, for example.)
The Red Hat utilities, I believe, that you are referring to (netcfg, printtool, control-panel, timetool, etc.) are old and were, at the time, "quick-hacks" to enable GUI configuration of common services to newer users. Last I heard, Red Hat planned to work on/contribute to newer tool that fit into the GNOME framework to perform those same actions. I have no idea whether or not they would be coded in Python.
As far as what Red Hat believes to be the roles of various languages to be is their call, but while I was there, there was the belief that the strengths of various languages make them better suited for some tasks and lesser suieted for others.
This is a common misconception about WINE. Part of WINE is a Win32 API "interpreter" that translates Win32 API calls to their equivalent Linux/*NIX library calls, etc...
However, WINELIB, which Corel has based it's Office2000 suite on, is a Win32 API layer for Linux/*NIX. It's a library that provides the necessary API calls for natively compiled binaries to use. This is analagous to Cygwin and Interix for WinNT. They provide the completePOSIX/*NIX API layer for Windows. Although MS claims that they have a POSIX layer, it is minimally implemented for compliance only, and does not provide the complete layer.
Heh, I can't diagree with the fact that MS has done this several times in the past. However, most of the changes are at the C++ level, inside MFC, rather than at the Win32 API level. Granted, there have been a bazillion Win32 API's...
Well, let me preface this with the fact that I think this post is pure flame-bait. I cannot help but post a rebuttal, though...
With Motif you have to worry about 1.2, 2.0, and 2.1, which makes it a moot point (excepting the fact that IMHO the Motif versions are FAR less compatable with one-another than the GTK ones.
Also, GTK is becomin a portable toolkit, which makes is a much more attractive option. I'm not quite sure where the comment about bloat comes from. By saying that the default look of GTK (which streamlines the toolkit massively, if you leave out theme support) you miss the fact that the original GTK look-and-feel was modeled after Motif, with some lessons-learned thrown in.
The fact remains, however, that if you choose to adopt GTK x.y.z, you can _FREELY_ maintain and distribute the sources, so that you are not locked into a proprietary solution. This is not an option with Motif.
It currently supports several OS's -- Windows, Linux/GTK, BeOS, with ports to Mac, Linux/QT coming along. There are plans for a RAD application designer in the works, as well.
I would gladly place a "GNU Inside" sticker on my BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux, WinNT (gotta run it -- how about "Got Cygnus?" stickers for the people who HAVE to run NT/Win9x) and HPUX boxen. Heh. I'd even LOVE to have a bunch of these to be able to stick them on the OpenVMS machines that we run GCC on!
I think this would be an excellent opportunity to not only spread the word on GNU, but to fund them as well, if they were to sell the stickers themselves.
IceWM -- the most underrated WM around...
on
Red Hat 6.0
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· Score: 1
I LOVE IceWM. It's fast, not a resource hog, is GNOME-aware, fairly configurable (as long as traditional-layout windows are your thing, no side-titlebars here) and very stable.
Not to mention, just when you think Marko's given it up, there's about two releases a day for two weeks fixing tons of bugs and adding a dizzying array of new features.
First of all, greets to you, fellow Husky. (Not many UW people at SlashDot, from what I've seen.) I'm an EE Alum, graduated in '96.
It's nice to know that my Alma Mater is spending the HUGE amounts of R&D money it gets on projects that have a positive social aspect. This is exciting technology, and I don't mean from a Lawnmower Man perspective, either. As an EE, I studied quite a few technoliges that were touted solely for the sake of increasing bandwith/power/MIPS/etc... and that to me, seemed more like science than engineering. The application of technologies such as these, especially in ways that enable people to overcome disabilites, is phenomnial, and very exciting!
It's hearing about projects like this one that make me look forward to going back to grad school.
I've been contemplating setting up a PC as a DVD Player/Games machine by getting a slimline case and hooking it up to my home theater rig. That way, I could network it up to a Linux box for storage, and just run *duck* Win98 on it to play NHL 99 and Half-Life and so my wife could surf the net and use Office. Unfortunately, while getting a nice LPX case in the States is easy, LPX mobos don't have much of a market. NLX cases are a bit big, although getting them isn't difficult.
Ken
Try wxWindows for a cross-platform C++ API
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QPL 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Why don't you look at wxWindows at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smar t/wxwin. It's a cross-platform C++ library that is fairly mature, and really usable. It is currently available on GTK+, Motif, and Windows. A MacOS port is currently in progress, and a Qt port is also in the works. I am even working on porting it to the BeOS. This gives you access to all of the major OS's out there (Mac, Windows, Linux (via GTK+ or even Motif) and major UNIX variants (through Motif, or GTK+ as well.) In addition, a Python language port is a available for those who don't like C++.
Slashdot Mirror
- They can see where all the holes that hackers/modders are exploiting in the console are.
- They can "slipstream" secutity updates into future games and break the above.
- They get some PR karma for not going after an academic/researcher who is doing benefit for the "public good" (i.e. fixing security holes that could "JEAPORDIZE NATIONAL SECURITY"
- They know what works and what doesn't for security in future products.
On the plus side, since they are chosing NOT to invoke the DMCA, they prove that the law is subject to the whim of the very corporations who claimed to be harmed and sponsored the bill in congress (proxied by our loyal Senators, of course!) This kind of ruins the legitimacy of the law, as it transforms the DMCA from "reverse-engineering decryption schemes is always harmful (and hence, illegal) and is a copyright and security threat" to "reverse-engineering decryption schemes is only harmful (and hence illegal) when I SAY it is a copyright and security threat". This is a subtle, but quite big difference. Hopefully, the EFF and ALCU (or other socially-responsible organizations) will pick up on that fact...With this in mind, I like the fact that MS is doing this. However, I'd hate it to kill the mod-chip business. I'm fully in-favor of us being able to do ANYTHING with ANYTHING we buy (and dammit, if I pay $300 for the XBOX, I own it!) -- Imagine if you couldn't hop-up your car if you wanted to? The DMCA just sucks, in-general, and it sucks even more if companies can just CHOOSE when things are illegal and when they are not.
Cheers,
Ken
On another note, does anyone on the Slashdot team drive a silver BMW with the license "Slashcar" or something similar?
NIT:
If you're heading South on US101: then look left BEFORE you get to the Great America Parkway/Bowers road exit (i.e. after Fair Oaks.)
If you're heading Norh on US101: look right AFTER you pass the Great America Parkway/Bowers Road exit (.i.e. before Fair Oaks.)
You were close, but I stared at this every day before going to work at a certain low-power alternative x86 processor company for 1.5 years!
Cheers,
Ken
Not exactly true...
The BSD ports trees do exactly this, and with some work, could easily be extended to be a multi-platform solution.
Ken
First of all, Red Hat is listed as breaking even in earnings per share. You are confusing accounting with finance. (FWIW: I am not an expert in either, but I am married to one, so I get chastised when I make these kind of mistakes :-) The forms filed with the SEC (10-Q, is it?) describes the accounting for the quarter, and this translates, through GAAP to an earnings-per-share, which is the Wall Street benchmark of company performance.
In respect to Wall Street (or market) performance, it is ALWAYS a good thing for a company to know how well it is doing, regardless of how well that is. It is one of the de-facto Wall Street barometers of how well a company is run. A public company is beholden (no matter how much you agree with this) to its investors, and providing accurate financial guidance to its investors is one of the expected responsibilities. It inspires investor confidence, which is not only a good thing unto itself, but is also good, given the market conditions and Monday's crash due to last week's tragedy.
To use your example, it would DEFINITELY be good if Exodus, or any other company for that matter, accurately predicts that it will run out of cash and have to close its doors. It allows the board to know when it is time to cut their losses, and not just run until (a) all cash is expended (b) there are lawsuits on undelivered goods and/or services (c) creditors galore, and (d) innumerable other sources of financial drain that would cause even further shareholder loss. Being a well-run company does nothing to mitigate that going out of business is bad, in which you are correct.
Ken
P.S. -- The "(Tiny)" I attributed to Hemos' editorializing of the title of the Infoworld article. It neither the title, nor a statement in the Infoworld article linked to , above. Additionally, words such as "tiny" are relative, and do not denote a set amount. Losing millions of dollars is, in fact, "tiny" to companies like Microsoft or IBM, but would kill someone like VA Linux.
I'm not sure what you mean by:
"Let those numbers sink in. That means that RedHat's revenue was less than half of their loss in the second quarter. And this bodes well for RedHat because...?"
The article quoted above says that Red Hat met analysts expectations for the quarter, which usually means they were right-on in their guidance and predictions. In the current market, this shows good financial leadership in a company, and usually makes shareholders happy. (FYI - RHAT closed up today.) This is certainly a GOOD thing for Linux, as it shows that a skillfully-managed company is being successful in the commercial arena, and IMNHO, not "SERIOUS troubles for Linux" as you are purporting.
Not to be picking nits, but I'm sorry -- I don't see anyone calling this a "tiny" loss.
I just don't see any grounding for your statements.
Ken Crandall
The part I found to be emminently cool was to think of things the OTHER way around -- don't just think of seeing your DB as files, think of seeing your files as a DB.
Imagine if you could move a bunch of Word200 documents (they ARE XML files, mind you -- you just need an OLE stream decoder a la wv to decode them) into a DBFS directory and provide the DTD for that datatype in a way that you could make SQL calls against the files (records) using the DTD as a table definition.
You could then move files TRANSPARENTLY in and out of the DB, using the DBFS and automatically index against them.
A few years ago, I was responsible for getting a bunch of documents on a website to be searched and sorted. I had directory upon directory full of procedure and process documents. One day, I found a program called Xerox DocuShare, (written in Python, BTW) and it used some features that were very similar to this idea.
Cheers,
Ken Crandall
Ack...I was a bit vague. The this I spoke of in the first paragraph is Connectiva's work, not the Aduva stuff.
The this in the second paragraph is the Aduva stuff... Cheers,
Ken
There seems to be some confusions as to what a "package manager" really is. This isn't an 'RPM front-end to apt-get" as Hemos put it. This is a port of apt to support RPM's as a package format. Debian packaging is done through 'deb' packages, which are almost identical to RPM's in form and functionality. Both have evolved to be very good package building, deployment, and retraction tools for software.
What this, Helix-Update, Eazel Services, apt, and up2date really do is function as package distribution channels. They resolve dependencies, check package location/availability against host-side maintained repositories and download the appropriate packages, once all the dependencies are figured out and resolved. They do not install the packages -- the package manager (RPM, dpkg) does this part. (Well, technically they can, but this would be through either re-writing, or linking to the library form of the package manager.)
While noone can argue that Debian had this capability first, and probably (currently) does it best due to having time to mature, it's natural that this capability will come to other distros and package formats precisely because it works so well.
Cheers,
Ken Crandall
Very insightful comments, however there are a couple of things that need to be noted.
First of all, some people live their lives according to statistics, be them relevant or not. The fact that things such as the Anarchist's Cookbook, porn, and nuclear bomb instructions exist on the internet and not in Dr. Seuess books almost implies the automatic statistic that more children with violent tendancies saw that content than read The Lorax (even though I'm sure there aren't that many studies that equate youth violence to Dr. Seuess!) This is the same case that is made against violence on TV (comapring the Teletubbies to action movies on HBO, for example).
The justification of violence using history, however, is not a good argument to make your case. We protest the "sanitized" versions of history that get tought in schools, whether due to the lack of variety in ethnicities mentioned, the omission or glossing-over of violent acts, or the choice of how to present matter (creationism vs. evolution, for example.)
The ultimate onus of how to decide on what content youth should view, whether it's on the web, TV, movies, magazines, books, or in real life should fall on the parents or guardians until that person can make the decision for him- or herself. As long as the government thinks it should be making that decision for us, they set arbitrary ages for things that should really be based on more individual factors. The government causes 18-year-olds to be able to go fight and die for their country and allows 17-year-olds to be able to go see XXX-rated movies. These same individuals have another 3-4 years to wait before they can legally imbibe alcohol. We end up with stupid 21-year-olds, who can get drunk and go driving, and we have perfectly responsible 17-year-olds, who cannot enjoy a drink.
Finally, to Jon Katz, trashing Bush for making this comment is duplicitous. What about Al Gore's claims to have been intstramental in the creation of the internet? Both candidates suck, IMO, as the role of our government is way to broad today. However unfortunate it may seem, all decisions relate back to the pocket-book; however, and we must make our decisions with our money. I'd rather have less taxes...
I'm a little bit curious...
Are you building it from scratch with a GTK-based front-end or is XPFE now inheriting the GTK theme.
I just ask, because up until now, I've been running M17, and while it inherits the GTK color scheme nicely from the engine-based theme I have, it still uses the Windows'esque scrollbar, and generic XPFE widgets themselves...
"flat"-looking scrollbars
check-boxes instead of diamonds
flatter menus and panes
.Xdefaults examples I've seen including:
Look, for example, when you run Netscape under Linux, vs. Netscape on Solaris. All the
*enablethinthickness
*thickness 1
etc, don't seem to do the trick. Anyone know how to do this?
Ken
First of all, you can get rpm v3.0.6 from rpm.org, either as a SRPM or pre-compiled, whichever is your flavour of choice.
Second, a lot of changes have been made "under-the-hood" in RPM in the past couple of years. 3.x has stood the test of time for quite a while (two major version release cycles) and even now, at version 4.0, still has a way to go (or needs a companion-application, as pointed out in the Freshmeat article from a week ago -- the link escapes me, help on this welcome!) If there are architectural changes, either visible or internal, a new version number is probably warranted...
Third, You can then build any RH7.0 RPM's against RH6.2 for compatability. As RH7.0 uses a new glibc (hence the major version #) you should stray away from using binaries RPM's compiled against 7.0 on 6.2, as this could lead to major breakage.
Finally, RH would not have chosen a new major relase number unless there are forward-looking binary compatability issues against previous releases. They're one of the only SW companies out there that can even trace their product line back to 1.x!
Microsoft: WinNT 3.1 was the first release.
Mandrake: Began at something like 5.3 (just to be bigger than RH 5.2!)
Sun: Okay, so SunOS/Solaris began at 1.x, but look how odd it got after THAT!
I'll skip over most of the last point, but I will point out that if you use RH services and support, it's a great deal to but a new OS every 6 mos. and get support for the life of that product (read: 6 mos.) for only $80 or so. That's only $13-14 a month for full OS support on your desktop. Not too shabby...
Ken
This is not such a cut-and-dry situation as it may seem. Sure, I feel 1000% strongly that every company should "eat its own dogfood" and use its own products. There are SO MANY defects and issues can't be found in the lab and must be put through the "real-world" paces that this should be the mantra of all companies out there.
I think the strategy employed by Novell is the correct one here, and I must back that up 100%. By having a pragmatic view of the world, Novell can make sure that Netware plays niche with *NIX, Linux, WinXX, and Macs.
However...
The flip-sideo of the coin has some interesting issues as well. Some companies take the view that the only way to make their products better is to rely on them 100% to do their business. One of the ways MS has become so successful (this isn't flame-bait, you can't argue with billions of dollars, monopoly or not) is due to the fact that they either create or acquire technologies to do all parts of their business. While this may be viewed as "evil" or monopolistic by some, look at the results it generates. MS is able to create technologies like COM+,
I think that once the cornucopia of open-source solutions gets large enough, we will be able to start seeing KDE and GNOME (or heterogeneous mixes of both environs) do the same thing that MS has forces themeselves to do: provide enough of a framework that the answers to software problems can all come from one source.
Ken
As a former Red Hatter, let me offer some clarification on this.
First of all, just becuase something is GNOME-aware (or even uses GTK+ as its widget set) does not exclude Python as its programming language. There's PyGNOME and PyGTK which provide excellent bindings to GNOME and GTK, respectively, for those who wish to write GNOME- and GTK-aware programs in Python. (The Red Hat installer, Anaconda, which uses GTK is written in Python, for example.)
The Red Hat utilities, I believe, that you are referring to (netcfg, printtool, control-panel, timetool, etc.) are old and were, at the time, "quick-hacks" to enable GUI configuration of common services to newer users. Last I heard, Red Hat planned to work on/contribute to newer tool that fit into the GNOME framework to perform those same actions. I have no idea whether or not they would be coded in Python.
As far as what Red Hat believes to be the roles of various languages to be is their call, but while I was there, there was the belief that the strengths of various languages make them better suited for some tasks and lesser suieted for others.
Ken
I'm eagerly awaiting a source release from Henzai...
I can't wait to see how small they've gotten the GNOME-based framework.
Ken
This is a common misconception about WINE. Part of WINE is a Win32 API "interpreter" that translates Win32 API calls to their equivalent Linux/*NIX library calls, etc...
However, WINELIB, which Corel has based it's Office2000 suite on, is a Win32 API layer for Linux/*NIX. It's a library that provides the necessary API calls for natively compiled binaries to use. This is analagous to Cygwin and Interix for WinNT. They provide the completePOSIX/*NIX API layer for Windows. Although MS claims that they have a POSIX layer, it is minimally implemented for compliance only, and does not provide the complete layer.
Heh, I can't diagree with the fact that MS has done this several times in the past. However, most of the changes are at the C++ level, inside MFC, rather than at the Win32 API level. Granted, there have been a bazillion Win32 API's...
- Ken
Well, let me preface this with the fact that I think this post is pure flame-bait. I cannot help but post a rebuttal, though...
With Motif you have to worry about 1.2, 2.0, and 2.1, which makes it a moot point (excepting the fact that IMHO the Motif versions are FAR less compatable with one-another than the GTK ones.
Also, GTK is becomin a portable toolkit, which makes is a much more attractive option. I'm not quite sure where the comment about bloat comes from. By saying that the default look of GTK (which streamlines the toolkit massively, if you leave out theme support) you miss the fact that the original GTK look-and-feel was modeled after Motif, with some lessons-learned thrown in.
The fact remains, however, that if you choose to adopt GTK x.y.z, you can _FREELY_ maintain and distribute the sources, so that you are not locked into a proprietary solution. This is not an option with Motif.
- Ken
Heh,
I put XFree86 3.3.5 -- that's what I'm using...
- Ken
The trick is to find an API that works across toolkits. Check out wxWindows at:
/wxwin
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart
It currently supports several OS's -- Windows, Linux/GTK, BeOS, with ports to Mac, Linux/QT coming along. There are plans for a RAD application designer in the works, as well.
-- Ken
I would gladly place a "GNU Inside" sticker on my BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux, WinNT (gotta run it -- how about "Got Cygnus?" stickers for the people who HAVE to run NT/Win9x) and HPUX boxen. Heh. I'd even LOVE to have a bunch of these to be able to stick them on the OpenVMS machines that we run GCC on!
I think this would be an excellent opportunity to not only spread the word on GNU, but to fund them as well, if they were to sell the stickers themselves.
Ken Crandall
I LOVE IceWM. It's fast, not a resource hog, is GNOME-aware, fairly configurable (as long as traditional-layout windows are your thing, no side-titlebars here) and very stable.
Not to mention, just when you think Marko's given it up, there's about two releases a day for two weeks fixing tons of bugs and adding a dizzying array of new features.
Heh.
Ken Crandall
First of all, greets to you, fellow Husky. (Not many UW people at SlashDot, from what I've seen.) I'm an EE Alum, graduated in '96.
It's nice to know that my Alma Mater is spending the HUGE amounts of R&D money it gets on projects that have a positive social aspect. This is exciting technology, and I don't mean from a Lawnmower Man perspective, either. As an EE, I studied quite a few technoliges that were touted solely for the sake of increasing bandwith/power/MIPS/etc... and that to me, seemed more like science than engineering. The application of technologies such as these, especially in ways that enable people to overcome disabilites, is phenomnial, and very exciting!
It's hearing about projects like this one that make me look forward to going back to grad school.
Cheers,
Ken Crandall
ken.crandalL@mindspring.com
I've been contemplating setting up a PC as a DVD Player/Games machine by getting a slimline case and hooking it up to my home theater rig. That way, I could network it up to a Linux box for storage, and just run *duck* Win98 on it to play NHL 99 and Half-Life and so my wife could surf the net and use Office. Unfortunately, while getting a nice LPX case in the States is easy, LPX mobos don't have much of a market. NLX cases are a bit big, although getting them isn't difficult.
Ken
Why don't you look at wxWindows at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smar t/wxwin. It's a cross-platform C++ library that is fairly mature, and really usable. It is currently available on GTK+, Motif, and Windows. A MacOS port is currently in progress, and a Qt port is also in the works. I am even working on porting it to the BeOS. This gives you access to all of the major OS's out there (Mac, Windows, Linux (via GTK+ or even Motif) and major UNIX variants (through Motif, or GTK+ as well.) In addition, a Python language port is a available for those who don't like C++.
Ken Crandall
crandall@computer.org