The only reason apple killed off the clones was because the clones quite simply were not doing anything to expand the market. After years of hearing "If only they'ed allow clones, the cloners could go after the market segments that apple can't reach", so they opened up, licensed a few cloners, and then sat back for a year and a half and watched them gobble up their core markets. Since they didn't have to pay any R&D, they could undercut Apple and decided that was the easiest way to make money.
Your right, the clones were faster, cheaper, and Apple couldn't compete with them. In an open field, Apple can't compete. Instead they used their monopoly powers over that platform to stifle competitors to the point of bankruptcy. For Microsoft this would be considered illegal, but for Apple this is innovating!
Before then, during then, and since then, Apple continutes to be one of the most trully innovative companies around. In general, if you sit back and watch, where Apple goes, the rest of the industry follows within a year or so... Now if apple wasn't there, who'd take the lead? Microsoft? no. There aren't any other contenders.
Okay, so what was the last major innovation to come out of Apple? The over-bloated Quicktime format? See thru cases? What exactly have they innovated in the last 5 years? They did do up a spec for Firewire, then demanded licensing fees that pretty much assured little in the way of industry support.
What lead does Apple have in the computer industry? Seriously now, can you name one? They've got a GUI that's integrating Win95 features into it and call it innovating. They've got this beautiful G4 processor that Motorola provided them, and the darn things still run slower than an equivalent PIII with NT on them. The one time lead in graphics processing is LONG gone due to some really great cards on the PC side. The network stack sucks, and won't talk to anything other than other Macs on a LAN without glitchy 3rd party support. Until OS X hits the streets you sure wouldn't want to use one as a server, and even OS X has to rely upon FreeBSD's inovations. They're far more expensive than an equivalent Pentium platform, and certainly don't have the performance to justify the cost. Exactly how far back would the rest of the industry have to go to catch up to Apple?
And as for the not-invented here syndrom... witness PCI, SDRAM, IDE drives, AGP, USB, etc. About the only real difference between mac hardware and PC hardware is the CPU and the chipset.
Yes, I have noticed this. I've also noticed that these true inovations have come from a far more open platform than Apple.
My original question still stands. Why is it that the open source community continues to think so fondly of a truly closed source mind set? Can you get any more closed than Apple?
The idea behind linuxconfig is still pretty cool. As I'm sure you'd agree, where it really breaks down is in how it handles it's dialog boxes. Pick a size and stick with it for crying out loud!:)
To paraphrase a statement on linuxconfig's web site, the one thing that a GUI admin tool provides is the ability to show a user the variety of options available to them. Ya just can't get a drop down box to work in a text file. While providing these options, it can also provide context sensitive help at precisely the areas where it's needed. I know the pitchforks are going to come out on this one, but NT does this help business pretty darn well.
The other obvious advantage is centralizing where to find all the tweaks. It's not enough to know what the tweaks do. You also have to know where to find the little buggers. For example, I know full well what a "host" file is, what it does, and what format it should be in. Took me an hour to figure out where Linux stores it! Certainly NT is no better at how they hide this, but I don't believe Linux's usability should be limited by NT's flaws. Take the good stuff, fix up the bad stuff.
NT has a lot of great examples on how to do up a GUI for tweaking settings. Certainly there is also a lot of really bad examples as well in there. Thing is, it seems that a lot of the Linux community is so heavily focused on the bad, aka. Registry, that they can't see the good stuff. Linux has this wonderfully unique opportunity at this juncture of computer history to bring it all together and do it right. Mix the text configs with the GUI that's both powerful and reasonably easy to use.
Well then, maybe you can explain to me why it is that the open source community gives Apple such an easy ride, all the while giving Microsoft every bit of grief they can? Apple has been the very model of greed, arrogance, and why closed up systems are bad business. What keeps getting referred to as "inovations" in the last few years by these folks looks far more like emulating Windows 95 features. Oh yeah, "Sticky Menus" and "Network Neighborhood". Now, in all fairness, they did manage to put out an overpriced translucent TRS-80 case in a variety of flavors.
When Apple had the opportunity to open the doors even a little bit to 3rd party hardware vendors, Steve and crew shut them down with licensing and legalities. First these idiots encourage 3rd party vendors, then leave them hanging out to dry in bankruptcy court. Not the first time Apple has left folks hanging out to dry, and certainly not the last.
So as to keep this in topic, do you really think that nVidia's support would even be newsworthy if there were still 3rd party manufacturers of Macs? Of course it wouldn't, because it would have been far more commonplace for 3rd party vendors to be supporting an open platform.
Apple has proved themselves to be every bit as bad, if not more so, as Microsoft in stifling competition. The only difference is, they executed their plans with incompetance, thus relegating themselves to a permanent niche market.
Again, I have to ask here, why is it that the open source community doesn't call these folks out as to what they are? Closed hardware, closed source software, and practically the inventors of the "not invented here, it must be crap" mentality. The only thing "open" about Apple is when they need to take from the open source community to get their next OS working with a network layer that doesn't suck eggs.
WebMin (www.webmin.com) is a full remote configuration tool for Linux (and full UNIXes as well) via a web browser. It's cross platform, open source and much more mature IMHO. Since I started using Webmin, I never even touch Linuxconf any more. I just have no need to - WebMin does EVERYTHING.
Thank You for posting info about this app. I just got webmin downloaded and running. Wow are you ever right, this is some really sweet stuff.
Sometimes it is good to hear suggestions from non-regular Linux users because they can tell you what they don't understand, or what might be better. A different perspective is always a good thing, even if it doesn't help, becuase it makes you look at a solution from that different perspective.
As you may have already guessed, come from a heavy NT background. One of the things that I expect from NT is a central place to locate the bulk of the tweaks, which it does reasonably well. Of course, NT's weakness is that it doesn't allow for the full ability to tweak on stuff without diving into that monster registry.
On Linux it just feels like everything is scattered about when it comes to configuring. After months of mucking around with it, I still just don't feel comfortable with the scheme for where to find files and services. Certainly the strength of Linux is that when you do find these things you get all the options available.
My hope is that Linux can bridge some of the gap between centrally locating configuration data (at least the interface to them) and full control of that data. As an NT admin myself, it would make a stronger case for me to consider using Linux in those places where I would look to NT now. My main reason for not using Linux in a lot of cases is that I still feel a long ways off from feeling comfortable with administering it as a server.
Unlike about 99% of the folks here, I don't have anything against NT as a LAN server, I have found it to be quite stable, and would use it again for a number of tasks. No way in hell would I make it a web server though!:) In the mean time, I'm still plugging away with this RH 6.1 box as a private web server for my site designs, and it's proved to be quite a nice set up. Nothing against NT, but I sure do look forward to seeing all the new stuff coming on with the new kernel, KDE 2.0 and all that.
For you folks stuck on emacs only admin, mark my words here. As Linux usability goes up, NT deployments will go down. Hopefully this turns out to be a good thing for the Internet at large. Time will tell.
Well, actually, this is nearly exactly what we are doing: providing a simple API to configure various services with.
There is a database on the server side of the system that tracks its environment (including where config files and the like go) and the modules coded with the API can take advantage of it to remain fairly independant of architecture
Aaron J. Seigo - aseigo@mountlinux.com - Olympus team leader
As cool as this sounds, aren't you still going to be running into the problem of having to code your own definitions of daemons? Especially true seeing as how the definitions are stored in a database rather than in a seperate file for each. I'm no great fan of having to parse XML (just got through writing some routines for just that), but might it not be wiser to use it instead of a database format? A seperate XML document for each daemon stored in a single directory might encourage more outside support, and maybe some standardization of this type of thing.
If Linux hopes to pull some serious numbers away from the NT crowd, something like the utility you guys are working on is desperately needed. As this moves forward I would hope you would keep in mind a means of doing this that allows for standardization, and a life beyond your direct support of it.
Oh, only if time and my complete inability to deal with C weren't issues for me. Sounds like this is going to be a fun project.
It seems to me that one of the things that will forever dog linuxconf is it's inability to keep up with server changes. The manner in which they build modules has them constantly changing a rapidly moving target. It seems that this concept these folks are working on may fall into the same category.
This is something I proposed in a Slashdot article a while ago, but it was way late in the conversation. Since this appears to be on topic again, gonna try once again to see what you guys think of it.
The concept revolves around a similar notion to linuxconf in that the idea is to provide a GUI tool for configuring network properties. Instead of trying to develop a unique graphical module for each possible daemon, build an API that looks to definition files. Each of these def files (most likely XML) would contain what text file is used to config a service, what are the possible attributes of that service, and what are the valid values of those attributes. I imagine one could also include the same kind of help text you would normally find in most.conf files.
Rather than trying to reinvent the GUI for all this, instead provide this API as a means for config GUI's to be written. So whether you're writing a config file for KDE, Gnome, or just X they all call to the same API. The API would handle reading the definition files, and writing to the config files as defined.
From what I'm thinking, the.conf files would still be editable from a text editor or be got at with this somewhat more automated process. Instead of having the author of this API be responsible for keeping up to date with every possible daemon out there, it would be up to the daemon writers to provide a definition file to this API.
Let's say we take and build up a pretty solid PC from known good stuff. From personal experience and assorted reviews I would recommend the following.
Asus motherboard Intel Xeon processor Adaptec Raid Card 5 IBM SCSI Hard Drives in the Array 512M DDR Ram 10/100 3Com Ethernet Card
The basic parts can vary somewhat as I'm sure other folks have other preferred hardware. The important thing here is that the platform be relatively stable and quick for any of the tested OS's.
Build 2 of these PC's to sit side by side. One to act as the web server, the other to act as a database server. There's no point in putting both on the same box, since that's usually not a common configuration whether you're talking NT or *nix.
Develop a simple dynamic page for pulling in 10 records from 10 database calls on each page load. Maybe toss in a couple of inserts and writes for good measure. Each page that's presented should also be required to load up 5 30k graphics to further increase the load.
Step 1, load up NT 4.0 with all the latest service packs and patches on both boxes. PC #1 gets IIS installed, where PC #2 gets SQL Server installed. It's probably fair to say that most folks who prefer NT to web host generally tend to stick with NT on the db side as well. The scripting language here should be ASP, as this would be a more common setup for most NT based sites.
Step 2, slam that set up with a heavy simulated load from a number of external PC's. How many page loads can ya get per second, when does it start to break down, and all that jazz. In addition, the testing should also push a heavy load on the server for a 24-hour period with random bursts and sags.
Step 3, wipe the two test systems clean and start over. Using the identical hardware install the next OS/Web/Script/DB combo and perform the exact same tests. The clients performing the calls should remain whatever they started with, so these cannot impact the test.
Combos that I'd like to see in various combinations are...
OS: Win NT 4.0 / Win2k Web: IIS 4.0 / IIS 5.0 Script: ASP / Cold Fusion / Perl Db: SQL Server / Oracle / DB2
Real world dynamic page loading, database handling, TCP/IP stack management benchmarks that would actually be of some value. Lose all those gray areas involving different hardware specs, different network architecture, and questionable motives.
Probably too expensive, and I also have to wonder just how many folks would want to see the honest results from a test such as this.
For those of us old enough to recall the days before CD's, and when MTV actually played music, I have zero pity for the RIAA. Do you remember how much LP's were back when CD's were introduced? right around 6 bucks. CD's initially came out at around $12 with the supposed promise that this price would come down.
Over 10 years later that price has done nothing but go up, despite significant decreases in manufacturing costs. These people have been gouging us all for far too long.
If these means the end of recording publishers being the only channel of music to the masses so be it. As Courtney Love pointed out so nicely, if copyright is used for music it should be the artists that own it, not the marketing department.
You had a couple of questions in your answer that I believe I can help out with here.
In-layer Text Editing: At this point, PS 5.5 doesn't have this either. ImageReady 2.0 does, and PS 6.0 is supposed to. Personally, I prefer the seperate dialog box of PS 5.5 rather than the in-line method of editing, but I don't feel that strongly about either. Where PS kicks butt in the font realm for web use is the ability to select different modes of anti-aliasing. Now that is sweet.
Magnetic Selection Tools: PS's pen and lasso tools both have the ability to go into a magnetic mode in which the lines being drawn do so based on color differences of the object beneath. In "theory" this is supposed to make things faster to path and select. I've personally never had much luck with these tools in PS actually working as advertised.
Layer Effects: Yeah, things like drop shadows and such. Perhaps the most useful of these is the bevel and embossing capabilities. Although I'm sure Gimp has filters that perform similar features, the way PS implements this allows you to go back and tweak on the effect. Additionally, it maintains a global angle for the light source so that all the items utilizing "effects" will remain in sync.
Optimizing Tools: I belive what antic was talking about here is "Save for Web", which is one monstrously cool feature that first popped up in ImageReady 1.0, then into PS 5.5 later. This allows you to actually see what different levels of compression for the various web formats does to an image in a visual way. For example, if you have an image you want to store as a.jpg you can bring up both the original and the compressed image on screen at the same time. As you slide the compression down you can see where you reach the point beyond acceptable compression. The same is also true of Gifs and PNG file types. Mind you, that's only some of what this is capable of. From what I've seen, this completely blows Gimp out of the water when it comes to web work.
This may be taken as an overly pro-Adobe kind of post, and I honestly hope it isn't. True, I do love PS and what it's capable of, but I also believe that there is value in discussing the merits of what is good stuff for the benefit of projects such as the Gimp. There's gobs of potential in that app, and I hope to see it come to compete head on with the likes of Adobe. Better for everyone, regardless of what the future holds.
I've heard it mentioned several times now that Gimp is good for web use. I'm using a pre-release 1.2 version of it now, and I'm just not seeing this from it. I honestly wish I did, because I really like the notion that Gimp is built upon.
In comparison to PS 5.5, I'm sorry but Adobe really has their act together when it comes to web work with this thing. I haven't seen anyone mention Photoshop's "Save for Web" function in comparison to how the Gimp saves files for web use. Couple that with the integration with ImageReady, and you get all kinds of wonderful stuff like image splicing for web use, automated rollovers, image maps created from layers, and a really sweet animation utility.
In playing around with Gimp I haven't seen any kinds of utilities that even approach this level of web graphics functionality. This may be due to my ignorance in using Gimp, so I may very well be judging too harshly here.
On a somewhat happier note, I am quite impressed with what all is there now considering what the price is. It was really cool to see pathing support added, and it's really not half bad at all. Like others who have posted here, I too have some UI problems with key mappings and such, but here again I'd be willing to concede that this may be more due to ignorance than anything else.
Last point: When I'm doing some serious editing inside of PS I find myself playing the keyboard like a piano. After a number of years working with it, my mouse and keyboard hands work independently switching between tools and using them. I have a feeling that a lot of serious PS users work in a very similar manner. I don't believe that Gimp should strive to just be a PS clone, but it would be helpful to a lot of PS users such as myself to perhaps provide a loadable keyboard mapping that equates back to PS.
I really hate the whole "plug-in" rendered content but so far shockwave has made some really entertaining sites.. If only it can become a "satandard" so that all brosers and OS{es,i,whatever} can implement it, then it would be perfect.
I wouldn't hold your breath for a W3C standard coming out to support Shockwave any time soon. On a more encouraging note, there is quite a bit of effort being thrown into SVG, which provides a lot of what makes Shockwave tick, vectored graphics. Granted, your not going to get the kind or wiz bang effects that make re-creating old video games possible, but you will see the means to create some truly dynamic graphics for web sites.
I'm sorry but I live in Europe, and all those crazy Americans so in love with their guns are gun-nuts to me. A gun sole purpose is to kill - plain and simple. You can't use it to repair your car or to cook. Professing the widespread availability of killing-devices is completely insane.
Ya know, I wasn't go to post in this thread. That was until I saw this comment. Is this the same Europe that to this day has countries with governments that make a hobby of killing people? Is this the sanity by which America should live up to?
Let's just go about repeating that same old process of letting European countries with an un-armed citizenry let their governments once again go completely out of control. Eventually us nutty Americans with all our pro-gun folks will end up once again spilling blood because the folks across the Atlantic hate guns, but just love to get into armed conflicts.
I know I sure sound prejudiced. I am too. Nothing gets me going more than historically proven bad ideas being touted as the latest thinking. It's too bad the Jews weren't armed in Germany. They might have stood a fighting chance of at least getting out of there. As it is, history teaches us what truly motivates the kinds of gun control that Hitler and his bunch put in place.
I can appreciate your wish to jump into this as an exercise in logic. As someone who comes from the world of metrology, the science of measurement, there was a phrase I ran across that I believe fits into this discussion.
"One measurement out weighs a thousand expert opinions."
Once you get through all the logical loops you've outlined you're still left with having to measure the results of what you are saying. Even a C++ programmer has to actually run a program to see if it works, to follow along with what you were saying.
Another important factor to performing a measurement, perhaps the single most important, is repeatability. If you take any action, say running a program, and it consistantly has the same bug despite a flawless argument you've presented to a CRT that's not listening, you still have a bug in that program. You can even pull out the manual and show it to your CPU, and it won't change the results. If logic alone ruled the day, then there would be no need for a scientific method.
I fully understand the argument that was presented, and I stand by my original post on the matter. Every single time communism has been measured outside the realm of theory and dictionary definitions it has resulted in a powerful central authority with no regard for human rights, privacy, independant thought, or anything but preserving it's power.
I'm sorry for taking up space here on Slashdot with a political discussion. I do feel that it is important to recognize what that star symbolizes, and how it is being used to represent what is perhaps the most talked about open source project in the press 2nd only to Linux.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Communism.
If you're waiting around to have the "right" dictator in charge to validate your statement, you truly are misguided. There absolutely is something intrinsically wrong with a concept that has consistantly been used to enslave the bodies and minds of those unfortunates trapped within it. What you are unwilling to accept is the FACT that everywhere this political model has been applied it has failed miserably, and has insured nothing more than a powerful central government supportted through a perpetual peasant class.
Is this really how the open source community wishes to see itself symbolized?
On point #1 I will have to agree. The only thing is, wouldn't you have to be a monopoly first? The root of my question gets to how they can be considered a monopoly while the consumer has a choice.
As to point #2 there, doesn't every business attempt to thwart competition? As for the patches, the only story that I'm personally aware of in this regard had to do with a supposed breaking of a beta version of Real Player. When the dust finally settled, it turned out to be a bug with Real Player, though that one keeps getting brought back up. Heck, the bulk of the time the service backs for NT tend to break the MS Back Office stuff more than anything else!
You brought up the question of pricing, which to the best of my knowledge MS hasn't had a major change in for a LONG time now. You could certainly argue that it was too high to begin with I suppose.
Try buying a GW or Dell machine through a corporate or home user account w/o MS software and OS installed, and get back to me.
An outstanding point. One of the many reasons why I would never purchase a PC from Dell, GW, or any other proprietary vendor. Aside from having to pay for the licensing agreements that they signed up with, I'm far more comfortable with purchasing equipment made with off the shelf parts.
For what it's worth, perhaps very little here, I am responsible for purchasing all the computer equipment at my company. I've signed up an agreement with a local vendor who puts machines together for me from off the shelf parts, and puts a 3 year warranty on it to boot. If I request they leave the OS off, they do so, and I'm not charged for it. If I ask them to put it on, then they'll do that to.
There are thousands of vendors across the US that provide very similar service, as well as a number of on-line vendors. If Dell (or any other OEM) is giving you a hard time with licensing, don't use them! That's what the free market is about.
This is a point I never can seem to quite grasp, maybe someone here can help me out with this. If you can take the very same box and put either Redhat or Microsoft on it, exactly how can there be a monopoly? Wouldn't that be by it's very definition an open market?
I guess it bothers me a little when I know for a fact that my cable, phone, gas, and electric companies are bonafide monopolies, being that I honestly don't have a choice on which I purchase.
Here at home I run an NT Workstation and a Redhat 6.1 box sitting side by side with essentially the same hardware platform. If MS is a massive monopoly, how is this possible? Exactly what is the difference between being popular and being a monopoly anyway?
I know this seems like flame bait here and all, but I honestly don't get it.
Perhaps it's long overdue for Slashdot to remove the anonymous posting. If a person has something of value to add, they should attach their name to it anyway.
Now let me get this straight here. The same webmonkey that was bought by Wired, then by Lycos is now preaching journalistic independance? Apparently Mr. Greenspan there wrote this article out of the good of his heart, rather than accepting a paycheck for his efforts.
one suggestion I saw for nanotech was for a wireless network. The idea was to dust the area you wish to cover with a shedload of particle sized transcievers. They then figure out the topology themselves, and you got yourself a network.
Oh sure, until the janitor comes in and vacuums up your LAN.
Wired has a one page article this month in their print mag about those organic displays. Apparently them folks at IBM are busily working on that now. Unfortunately, them folks at IBM are always working on a lot of cool stuff, but only some of it ever actually makes it to market. As with all other things techy, we can all just wait and see.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason apple killed off the clones was because the clones quite simply were not doing anything to expand the market. After years of hearing "If only they'ed allow clones, the cloners could go after the market segments that apple can't reach", so they opened up, licensed a few cloners, and then sat back for a year and a half and watched them gobble up their core markets. Since they didn't have to pay any R&D, they could undercut Apple and decided that was the easiest way to make money.
Your right, the clones were faster, cheaper, and Apple couldn't compete with them. In an open field, Apple can't compete. Instead they used their monopoly powers over that platform to stifle competitors to the point of bankruptcy. For Microsoft this would be considered illegal, but for Apple this is innovating!
Before then, during then, and since then, Apple continutes to be one of the most trully innovative companies around. In general, if you sit back and watch, where Apple goes, the rest of the industry follows within a year or so... Now if apple wasn't there, who'd take the lead? Microsoft? no. There aren't any other contenders.
Okay, so what was the last major innovation to come out of Apple? The over-bloated Quicktime format? See thru cases? What exactly have they innovated in the last 5 years? They did do up a spec for Firewire, then demanded licensing fees that pretty much assured little in the way of industry support.
What lead does Apple have in the computer industry? Seriously now, can you name one? They've got a GUI that's integrating Win95 features into it and call it innovating. They've got this beautiful G4 processor that Motorola provided them, and the darn things still run slower than an equivalent PIII with NT on them. The one time lead in graphics processing is LONG gone due to some really great cards on the PC side. The network stack sucks, and won't talk to anything other than other Macs on a LAN without glitchy 3rd party support. Until OS X hits the streets you sure wouldn't want to use one as a server, and even OS X has to rely upon FreeBSD's inovations. They're far more expensive than an equivalent Pentium platform, and certainly don't have the performance to justify the cost. Exactly how far back would the rest of the industry have to go to catch up to Apple?
And as for the not-invented here syndrom... witness PCI, SDRAM, IDE drives, AGP, USB, etc. About the only real difference between mac hardware and PC hardware is the CPU and the chipset.
Yes, I have noticed this. I've also noticed that these true inovations have come from a far more open platform than Apple.
My original question still stands. Why is it that the open source community continues to think so fondly of a truly closed source mind set? Can you get any more closed than Apple?
The idea behind linuxconfig is still pretty cool. As I'm sure you'd agree, where it really breaks down is in how it handles it's dialog boxes. Pick a size and stick with it for crying out loud! :)
To paraphrase a statement on linuxconfig's web site, the one thing that a GUI admin tool provides is the ability to show a user the variety of options available to them. Ya just can't get a drop down box to work in a text file. While providing these options, it can also provide context sensitive help at precisely the areas where it's needed. I know the pitchforks are going to come out on this one, but NT does this help business pretty darn well.
The other obvious advantage is centralizing where to find all the tweaks. It's not enough to know what the tweaks do. You also have to know where to find the little buggers. For example, I know full well what a "host" file is, what it does, and what format it should be in. Took me an hour to figure out where Linux stores it! Certainly NT is no better at how they hide this, but I don't believe Linux's usability should be limited by NT's flaws. Take the good stuff, fix up the bad stuff.
NT has a lot of great examples on how to do up a GUI for tweaking settings. Certainly there is also a lot of really bad examples as well in there. Thing is, it seems that a lot of the Linux community is so heavily focused on the bad, aka. Registry, that they can't see the good stuff. Linux has this wonderfully unique opportunity at this juncture of computer history to bring it all together and do it right. Mix the text configs with the GUI that's both powerful and reasonably easy to use.
Well then, maybe you can explain to me why it is that the open source community gives Apple such an easy ride, all the while giving Microsoft every bit of grief they can? Apple has been the very model of greed, arrogance, and why closed up systems are bad business. What keeps getting referred to as "inovations" in the last few years by these folks looks far more like emulating Windows 95 features. Oh yeah, "Sticky Menus" and "Network Neighborhood". Now, in all fairness, they did manage to put out an overpriced translucent TRS-80 case in a variety of flavors.
When Apple had the opportunity to open the doors even a little bit to 3rd party hardware vendors, Steve and crew shut them down with licensing and legalities. First these idiots encourage 3rd party vendors, then leave them hanging out to dry in bankruptcy court. Not the first time Apple has left folks hanging out to dry, and certainly not the last.
So as to keep this in topic, do you really think that nVidia's support would even be newsworthy if there were still 3rd party manufacturers of Macs? Of course it wouldn't, because it would have been far more commonplace for 3rd party vendors to be supporting an open platform.
Apple has proved themselves to be every bit as bad, if not more so, as Microsoft in stifling competition. The only difference is, they executed their plans with incompetance, thus relegating themselves to a permanent niche market.
Again, I have to ask here, why is it that the open source community doesn't call these folks out as to what they are? Closed hardware, closed source software, and practically the inventors of the "not invented here, it must be crap" mentality. The only thing "open" about Apple is when they need to take from the open source community to get their next OS working with a network layer that doesn't suck eggs.
WebMin (www.webmin.com) is a full remote configuration tool for Linux (and full UNIXes as well) via a web browser. It's cross platform, open source and much more mature IMHO. Since I started using Webmin, I never even touch Linuxconf any more. I just have no need to - WebMin does EVERYTHING.
Thank You for posting info about this app. I just got webmin downloaded and running. Wow are you ever right, this is some really sweet stuff.
Sometimes it is good to hear suggestions from non-regular Linux users because they can tell you what they don't understand, or what might be better. A different perspective is always a good thing, even if it doesn't help, becuase it makes you look at a solution from that different perspective.
As you may have already guessed, come from a heavy NT background. One of the things that I expect from NT is a central place to locate the bulk of the tweaks, which it does reasonably well. Of course, NT's weakness is that it doesn't allow for the full ability to tweak on stuff without diving into that monster registry.
On Linux it just feels like everything is scattered about when it comes to configuring. After months of mucking around with it, I still just don't feel comfortable with the scheme for where to find files and services. Certainly the strength of Linux is that when you do find these things you get all the options available.
My hope is that Linux can bridge some of the gap between centrally locating configuration data (at least the interface to them) and full control of that data. As an NT admin myself, it would make a stronger case for me to consider using Linux in those places where I would look to NT now. My main reason for not using Linux in a lot of cases is that I still feel a long ways off from feeling comfortable with administering it as a server.
Unlike about 99% of the folks here, I don't have anything against NT as a LAN server, I have found it to be quite stable, and would use it again for a number of tasks. No way in hell would I make it a web server though! :) In the mean time, I'm still plugging away with this RH 6.1 box as a private web server for my site designs, and it's proved to be quite a nice set up. Nothing against NT, but I sure do look forward to seeing all the new stuff coming on with the new kernel, KDE 2.0 and all that.
For you folks stuck on emacs only admin, mark my words here. As Linux usability goes up, NT deployments will go down. Hopefully this turns out to be a good thing for the Internet at large. Time will tell.
Well, actually, this is nearly exactly what we are doing: providing a simple API to configure various services with.
There is a database on the server side of the system that tracks its environment (including where config files and the like go) and the modules coded with the API can take advantage of it to remain fairly independant of architecture
Aaron J. Seigo - aseigo@mountlinux.com - Olympus team leader
As cool as this sounds, aren't you still going to be running into the problem of having to code your own definitions of daemons? Especially true seeing as how the definitions are stored in a database rather than in a seperate file for each. I'm no great fan of having to parse XML (just got through writing some routines for just that), but might it not be wiser to use it instead of a database format? A seperate XML document for each daemon stored in a single directory might encourage more outside support, and maybe some standardization of this type of thing.
If Linux hopes to pull some serious numbers away from the NT crowd, something like the utility you guys are working on is desperately needed. As this moves forward I would hope you would keep in mind a means of doing this that allows for standardization, and a life beyond your direct support of it.
Oh, only if time and my complete inability to deal with C weren't issues for me. Sounds like this is going to be a fun project.
It seems to me that one of the things that will forever dog linuxconf is it's inability to keep up with server changes. The manner in which they build modules has them constantly changing a rapidly moving target. It seems that this concept these folks are working on may fall into the same category.
.conf files.
.conf files would still be editable from a text editor or be got at with this somewhat more automated process. Instead of having the author of this API be responsible for keeping up to date with every possible daemon out there, it would be up to the daemon writers to provide a definition file to this API.
This is something I proposed in a Slashdot article a while ago, but it was way late in the conversation. Since this appears to be on topic again, gonna try once again to see what you guys think of it.
The concept revolves around a similar notion to linuxconf in that the idea is to provide a GUI tool for configuring network properties. Instead of trying to develop a unique graphical module for each possible daemon, build an API that looks to definition files. Each of these def files (most likely XML) would contain what text file is used to config a service, what are the possible attributes of that service, and what are the valid values of those attributes. I imagine one could also include the same kind of help text you would normally find in most
Rather than trying to reinvent the GUI for all this, instead provide this API as a means for config GUI's to be written. So whether you're writing a config file for KDE, Gnome, or just X they all call to the same API. The API would handle reading the definition files, and writing to the config files as defined.
From what I'm thinking, the
Good idea, or am I full of it?
Let's say we take and build up a pretty solid PC from known good stuff. From personal experience and assorted reviews I would recommend the following.
Asus motherboard
Intel Xeon processor
Adaptec Raid Card
5 IBM SCSI Hard Drives in the Array
512M DDR Ram
10/100 3Com Ethernet Card
The basic parts can vary somewhat as I'm sure other folks have other preferred hardware. The important thing here is that the platform be relatively stable and quick for any of the tested OS's.
Build 2 of these PC's to sit side by side. One to act as the web server, the other to act as a database server. There's no point in putting both on the same box, since that's usually not a common configuration whether you're talking NT or *nix.
Develop a simple dynamic page for pulling in 10 records from 10 database calls on each page load. Maybe toss in a couple of inserts and writes for good measure. Each page that's presented should also be required to load up 5 30k graphics to further increase the load.
Step 1, load up NT 4.0 with all the latest service packs and patches on both boxes. PC #1 gets IIS installed, where PC #2 gets SQL Server installed. It's probably fair to say that most folks who prefer NT to web host generally tend to stick with NT on the db side as well. The scripting language here should be ASP, as this would be a more common setup for most NT based sites.
Step 2, slam that set up with a heavy simulated load from a number of external PC's. How many page loads can ya get per second, when does it start to break down, and all that jazz. In addition, the testing should also push a heavy load on the server for a 24-hour period with random bursts and sags.
Step 3, wipe the two test systems clean and start over. Using the identical hardware install the next OS/Web/Script/DB combo and perform the exact same tests. The clients performing the calls should remain whatever they started with, so these cannot impact the test.
Combos that I'd like to see in various combinations are...
OS: Win NT 4.0 / Win2k
Web: IIS 4.0 / IIS 5.0
Script: ASP / Cold Fusion / Perl
Db: SQL Server / Oracle / DB2
OS: RedHat / Mandrake / FreeBSD
Web: Apache
Script: PHP / Perl / JSP
Db: Oracle / DB2 / PostgresSQL / MySQL
Real world dynamic page loading, database handling, TCP/IP stack management benchmarks that would actually be of some value. Lose all those gray areas involving different hardware specs, different network architecture, and questionable motives.
Probably too expensive, and I also have to wonder just how many folks would want to see the honest results from a test such as this.
For those of us old enough to recall the days before CD's, and when MTV actually played music, I have zero pity for the RIAA. Do you remember how much LP's were back when CD's were introduced? right around 6 bucks. CD's initially came out at around $12 with the supposed promise that this price would come down.
Over 10 years later that price has done nothing but go up, despite significant decreases in manufacturing costs. These people have been gouging us all for far too long.
If these means the end of recording publishers being the only channel of music to the masses so be it. As Courtney Love pointed out so nicely, if copyright is used for music it should be the artists that own it, not the marketing department.
Kevin,
.jpg you can bring up both the original and the compressed image on screen at the same time. As you slide the compression down you can see where you reach the point beyond acceptable compression. The same is also true of Gifs and PNG file types. Mind you, that's only some of what this is capable of. From what I've seen, this completely blows Gimp out of the water when it comes to web work.
You had a couple of questions in your answer that I believe I can help out with here.
In-layer Text Editing: At this point, PS 5.5 doesn't have this either. ImageReady 2.0 does, and PS 6.0 is supposed to. Personally, I prefer the seperate dialog box of PS 5.5 rather than the in-line method of editing, but I don't feel that strongly about either. Where PS kicks butt in the font realm for web use is the ability to select different modes of anti-aliasing. Now that is sweet.
Magnetic Selection Tools: PS's pen and lasso tools both have the ability to go into a magnetic mode in which the lines being drawn do so based on color differences of the object beneath. In "theory" this is supposed to make things faster to path and select. I've personally never had much luck with these tools in PS actually working as advertised.
Layer Effects: Yeah, things like drop shadows and such. Perhaps the most useful of these is the bevel and embossing capabilities. Although I'm sure Gimp has filters that perform similar features, the way PS implements this allows you to go back and tweak on the effect. Additionally, it maintains a global angle for the light source so that all the items utilizing "effects" will remain in sync.
Optimizing Tools: I belive what antic was talking about here is "Save for Web", which is one monstrously cool feature that first popped up in ImageReady 1.0, then into PS 5.5 later. This allows you to actually see what different levels of compression for the various web formats does to an image in a visual way. For example, if you have an image you want to store as a
This may be taken as an overly pro-Adobe kind of post, and I honestly hope it isn't. True, I do love PS and what it's capable of, but I also believe that there is value in discussing the merits of what is good stuff for the benefit of projects such as the Gimp. There's gobs of potential in that app, and I hope to see it come to compete head on with the likes of Adobe. Better for everyone, regardless of what the future holds.
I've heard it mentioned several times now that Gimp is good for web use. I'm using a pre-release 1.2 version of it now, and I'm just not seeing this from it. I honestly wish I did, because I really like the notion that Gimp is built upon.
In comparison to PS 5.5, I'm sorry but Adobe really has their act together when it comes to web work with this thing. I haven't seen anyone mention Photoshop's "Save for Web" function in comparison to how the Gimp saves files for web use. Couple that with the integration with ImageReady, and you get all kinds of wonderful stuff like image splicing for web use, automated rollovers, image maps created from layers, and a really sweet animation utility.
In playing around with Gimp I haven't seen any kinds of utilities that even approach this level of web graphics functionality. This may be due to my ignorance in using Gimp, so I may very well be judging too harshly here.
On a somewhat happier note, I am quite impressed with what all is there now considering what the price is. It was really cool to see pathing support added, and it's really not half bad at all. Like others who have posted here, I too have some UI problems with key mappings and such, but here again I'd be willing to concede that this may be more due to ignorance than anything else.
Last point: When I'm doing some serious editing inside of PS I find myself playing the keyboard like a piano. After a number of years working with it, my mouse and keyboard hands work independently switching between tools and using them. I have a feeling that a lot of serious PS users work in a very similar manner. I don't believe that Gimp should strive to just be a PS clone, but it would be helpful to a lot of PS users such as myself to perhaps provide a loadable keyboard mapping that equates back to PS.
Have you considered joining? Hmmm, on second thought let's not rush through that application.
I really hate the whole "plug-in" rendered content but so far shockwave has made some really entertaining sites.. If only it can become a "satandard" so that all brosers and OS{es,i,whatever} can implement it, then it would be perfect.
I wouldn't hold your breath for a W3C standard coming out to support Shockwave any time soon. On a more encouraging note, there is quite a bit of effort being thrown into SVG, which provides a lot of what makes Shockwave tick, vectored graphics. Granted, your not going to get the kind or wiz bang effects that make re-creating old video games possible, but you will see the means to create some truly dynamic graphics for web sites.
Ya know, I wasn't go to post in this thread. That was until I saw this comment. Is this the same Europe that to this day has countries with governments that make a hobby of killing people? Is this the sanity by which America should live up to?
Let's just go about repeating that same old process of letting European countries with an un-armed citizenry let their governments once again go completely out of control. Eventually us nutty Americans with all our pro-gun folks will end up once again spilling blood because the folks across the Atlantic hate guns, but just love to get into armed conflicts.
I know I sure sound prejudiced. I am too. Nothing gets me going more than historically proven bad ideas being touted as the latest thinking. It's too bad the Jews weren't armed in Germany. They might have stood a fighting chance of at least getting out of there. As it is, history teaches us what truly motivates the kinds of gun control that Hitler and his bunch put in place.
Random,
I can appreciate your wish to jump into this as an exercise in logic. As someone who comes from the world of metrology, the science of measurement, there was a phrase I ran across that I believe fits into this discussion.
"One measurement out weighs a thousand expert opinions."
Once you get through all the logical loops you've outlined you're still left with having to measure the results of what you are saying. Even a C++ programmer has to actually run a program to see if it works, to follow along with what you were saying.
Another important factor to performing a measurement, perhaps the single most important, is repeatability. If you take any action, say running a program, and it consistantly has the same bug despite a flawless argument you've presented to a CRT that's not listening, you still have a bug in that program. You can even pull out the manual and show it to your CPU, and it won't change the results. If logic alone ruled the day, then there would be no need for a scientific method.
I fully understand the argument that was presented, and I stand by my original post on the matter. Every single time communism has been measured outside the realm of theory and dictionary definitions it has resulted in a powerful central authority with no regard for human rights, privacy, independant thought, or anything but preserving it's power.
I'm sorry for taking up space here on Slashdot with a political discussion. I do feel that it is important to recognize what that star symbolizes, and how it is being used to represent what is perhaps the most talked about open source project in the press 2nd only to Linux.
If you're waiting around to have the "right" dictator in charge to validate your statement, you truly are misguided. There absolutely is something intrinsically wrong with a concept that has consistantly been used to enslave the bodies and minds of those unfortunates trapped within it. What you are unwilling to accept is the FACT that everywhere this political model has been applied it has failed miserably, and has insured nothing more than a powerful central government supportted through a perpetual peasant class.
Is this really how the open source community wishes to see itself symbolized?
Lose the fucking star.
On point #1 I will have to agree. The only thing is, wouldn't you have to be a monopoly first? The root of my question gets to how they can be considered a monopoly while the consumer has a choice.
As to point #2 there, doesn't every business attempt to thwart competition? As for the patches, the only story that I'm personally aware of in this regard had to do with a supposed breaking of a beta version of Real Player. When the dust finally settled, it turned out to be a bug with Real Player, though that one keeps getting brought back up. Heck, the bulk of the time the service backs for NT tend to break the MS Back Office stuff more than anything else!
You brought up the question of pricing, which to the best of my knowledge MS hasn't had a major change in for a LONG time now. You could certainly argue that it was too high to begin with I suppose.
Try buying a GW or Dell machine through a corporate or home user account w/o MS software and OS installed, and get back to me.
An outstanding point. One of the many reasons why I would never purchase a PC from Dell, GW, or any other proprietary vendor. Aside from having to pay for the licensing agreements that they signed up with, I'm far more comfortable with purchasing equipment made with off the shelf parts.
For what it's worth, perhaps very little here, I am responsible for purchasing all the computer equipment at my company. I've signed up an agreement with a local vendor who puts machines together for me from off the shelf parts, and puts a 3 year warranty on it to boot. If I request they leave the OS off, they do so, and I'm not charged for it. If I ask them to put it on, then they'll do that to.
There are thousands of vendors across the US that provide very similar service, as well as a number of on-line vendors. If Dell (or any other OEM) is giving you a hard time with licensing, don't use them! That's what the free market is about.
This is a point I never can seem to quite grasp, maybe someone here can help me out with this. If you can take the very same box and put either Redhat or Microsoft on it, exactly how can there be a monopoly? Wouldn't that be by it's very definition an open market?
I guess it bothers me a little when I know for a fact that my cable, phone, gas, and electric companies are bonafide monopolies, being that I honestly don't have a choice on which I purchase.
Here at home I run an NT Workstation and a Redhat 6.1 box sitting side by side with essentially the same hardware platform. If MS is a massive monopoly, how is this possible? Exactly what is the difference between being popular and being a monopoly anyway?
I know this seems like flame bait here and all, but I honestly don't get it.
Perhaps it's long overdue for Slashdot to remove the anonymous posting. If a person has something of value to add, they should attach their name to it anyway.
Now let me get this straight here. The same webmonkey that was bought by Wired, then by Lycos is now preaching journalistic independance? Apparently Mr. Greenspan there wrote this article out of the good of his heart, rather than accepting a paycheck for his efforts.
one suggestion I saw for nanotech was for a wireless network. The idea was to dust the area you wish to cover with a shedload of particle sized transcievers. They then figure out the topology themselves, and you got yourself a network.
Oh sure, until the janitor comes in and vacuums up your LAN.
Wired has a one page article this month in their print mag about those organic displays. Apparently them folks at IBM are busily working on that now. Unfortunately, them folks at IBM are always working on a lot of cool stuff, but only some of it ever actually makes it to market. As with all other things techy, we can all just wait and see.