'Nother question: how easy would it be for them to do? Would it be a total no-brainer? Slightly difficult? _Very_ difficult?...
There are WPS-style window-manager extentions available, but none of them seem to be that good at it. For one, the WPS relied heavily on attributes stored in the HPFS file system.
The typical Unix file system doesn't have space for those extra attributes, so it wouldn't work well there without modification. The hack they did to get it to work on FAT file systems made it useless there too; some programs worked well, others didn't.
As a fervent *former* OS/2 advocate, I'm not surprised that Sun isn't supporting upgrades to StarOffice under OS/2. IBM can't even be blamed to abandoning it...it was an unfortunate but necessary move by both companies. There's no conspiracy.
As a long-time OS/2 user...from v.2.x to the last major release, I know your frustration. The first time I used it was with the pre-meditated idea that OS/2 = IBM product = crap^. Boy, was I surprised!
OS/2, specificially 3.x and above, was so clearly superior to the whole Windows ?? and DOS crowd that I was shocked. After some careful consideration, and looking at the facts, I wiped out Windows and used OS/2 for a few years.
That was then...and like any Amiga owner knows those were the olden days. Just like it was ignorance that led me to mock OS/2 before I took a look at it, it would be equal ignorance to continue with it after even IBM has abandoned it for all but existing large-scale customers.
Because of that, I gave away all my OS/2 software a few months ago -- hundreads of dollars worth --and haven't regreted it. Unix (Solaris, Linux, BSD,...) plus VMware for Windows (Quickbooks) does things that OS/2 can't do, and in a much more reliable way.
Sun would be foolish to support OS/2 with any future releases of StarOffice, when the more viable MacOS isn't supported (yet). Supporting OS/2 at this point is about as sane as supporting Amiga DOS 3.x.
NOTE ^: Back in the days when OS/2 was first released, many IBM products were over hyped, and IBM itself was very difficult to deal with unless you had direct contacts in the proper technical departments. This is not the case anymore.
(ObRegret: I'd love to have the WPS open sourced and ported to X. That would be sweet!)
The newsgroups -- staroffice.com.* -- have fairly good SNR. They are available from Sun's staroffice news server if you don't get it as a part of your local Usenet feed; starnews.sun.com.
...and take a look at the "sea" subdirectory. It looks like the file in there has the full program, not just the "installer" people have complained about. (I'm guessing that means "Self Extracting Archive".)
One way that the judgement could go that would help lead us into a post-Microsoft world is for the judge to order Microsoft to endow $1B to an independent organization that would partially fund the development of competing products. The rational behind the decision is laid out in the parent article and the intention would be to smooth the startup phase for competitors in order to offset Microsoft's current illegal domination.
*RANT ON*
Not again...how often do I see this here? MS isn't going to give out any money! It's just not realistic, yet folks keep on mentioning it as if they or others will somehow win the MS lottery.
*RANT OFF*
OK, I'm better now...
While your idea is atractive on some levels, it isn't appropriate for an anti-trust case, and could even be dangerous.
It reminds me of the tobacco companies being forced to pay for anti-smoking campaigns targeted at teens.
In that case, the tobacco companies did what they promised, but in such a way as to make smoking seem "forbidden" or "adult" -- two things that are attractive to teens wanting to leap into adulthood. Sure, it's an odd psychological twist that most adults see right through, but they aren't the audience -- insecure teens are.
Now, imagine MS funding a bunch of open source projects that just happen to have a heavy MS slant...or donating tools that don't work well with other operating systems? Target those tools at people who think Windows=Computer and who don't know how to deal with slight variations, and you have a similar situation.
It's not too hard to immagine that they would want some -- or all -- the decision making power over who manages that $1 billion.
Like the tobacco companies, they can point to all the good they are doing when questioned on the details. Few non-technical people would be the wiser...after tall, when Bill Gates gave away all that money to charity, it made him good. Giving it away -- under force or willingly -- will also improve Microsoft's image.
At US$300 plus, they could OEM Win9x in there and hardly notice. I was all set to buy a copy when I thought it was $99 but it ain't worth three times that per seat.
Non-commercial use of VMware is still $99. If you use it in a commercial setting, then it's $299.
Both prices are fair and very reasonable for what VMware does; it's a good way to try out FreeBSD v.4!
While in general I agree -- Microsoft seldom seems to reach thier software/OS goals -- the hardware they've speced for the machine is minimal and is available already. They also tend to put out good hardware, even if it is mostly mice, joysticks, and keyboards. The WinCE and PC?? specs tend also to be fairly well thought out, even if MS didn't actually create the hardware.
Getting the hardware together for a game console should be easy, allowing them to meet the 2001 deadline without too much stress.
As for the software, I doubt that will be as stable, timely, or practical...but when has that prevented them from shipping product?
(Side note: WinCE; good hardware with an inappropriate OS...who wants to deal with a desktop metaphor -- including all the baggage -- on a handheld?)
Use Cheapbytes or LSL or one of the other discount places if you want to save a couple $$. They should have it available soon. If you need a manual I'll cost extra, though I don't see the need.
Cheapbytes, btw, sells RedHat 6.1 for $1.99 + $5 shipping (U.S.). Most other CDs, or multi-packs, cost $5-$14 + $5-$23 shipping.
The license only allows you to distribute and use the software for educational purposes. This violates clause 6 of the guidelines, so it is not open source. (Clause 6 is the non-discrimination of field of endeavor).
In that case, I'd consider it another "extend and envelop" tactic; get people hooked in one area (education), and then use that as a way to corner another market (business).
Grrrr.... One scheme after another...it never ends with them!
This is nothing new. Remember it was many YEARS after the release of the 386 MS came out with a version of Windows that used any 32bit features. For those who don't remember it was Windows 3.1 and the features were performance tweaks for virtual memory. It would still run on a 286 if you knew how to detune the setup.
It did take MS a few years to take advantage of special 386 modes. Quarterdeck's Desqview/Qemm and Qualitas' 386MAX beat them to the punch by a large margin, and made it clear to even the average DOS user that MS was shipping things that barely deserved the title "Operating System". I consider NT to be the real first attempt, since previous versions didn't do much with the capabilities of the 386 -- even Win98 doesn't do much to isolate potentially errant processes.
Nit: Windows 386 (v.2.11??) required a 386 and did have some basic DOS VM support. It didn't have DPMI support, though, so running other 386-aware programs was verboten.
Windows 386 was, of course, horrid compaired to Desqview though it did pre-date Win 3.1x.
How would you overclock a "production (by production I mean RS/6000 AS/400 type proprietary machines)" type server? This isn't some BX motherboard with clock speed jumpers.
The old fashoned way would probably be the easiest; change the frequency that the chip uses for timing. Either swapping out the crystal or modify the traces that are used to set the timing frequency would do it. That's what the BX boards do.
Remember: bits are bits!
You could "Kryotech" it, but I think there would be vast amounts of cooling already being it 2 chips on one die running at 2 gigahertz even with a.18 micron fabrication.
Cooling is a necessity after you actually increase the frequency...and we're back to the crystal again.
Now if they can just get the crypto support working, I might upgrade. The last working kerneli patch was for 2.2.13.
Agreed. Encryption support should be in the base kernel, and it's a pain that it can't be because of politics/paranoia. I've upgraded anyway to fiddle around with USB and the improved firewall support.
Does anyone want to comment on doing the modifications to a new kernel themselves? In general, does it require detailed knowledge of the kernel or is it mostly a cut-and-paste operation?
(Yes, I realize that it depends on the kernel...I'm interested in knowing the general case.
We are currently trying to resolve their 'Major Complaint' that the size of the digital xclock display is too small, and their windows based X server, which is using the wrong fonts, is chopping off the last digit of the year. This is apparently more confusing and important than any of the showstoppers we are trying to resolve.
Swap in a small hard drive, and it's a cheap computer for my neices. The whole cost, under $200 including parts...sweet!
No CD or ethernet -- that could be a problem -- but not much of one. My sister likes her Linux box, and it is only moderately better and cost a lot more.
On a commercial angle, can you immagine buying a few dozen of these and using them as firewalls? Use the hard drive to reprogram the flash disk, yank it back out, and it's ideal!
I mean look at VMWare, they managed to write VMWare for NT without any access to NT source code. It's extending the OS without source that windows is good at.
A nit: VMware is an Intel instruction set specific program that runs largely at the application level (ring 3). It requires very little at the OS level (ring 0). For Linux, it uses a module to handle some ring 0 calls, and under NT can do the same thing with either a device driver or even in the app itself.
The source for the Linux module ships with VMware, so you can see for yourself.
I wish it were. Filter the comments to this story limiting the score to 2 or higher and you'll see a few reasons why this is really bad for open source.
or do I need to stay away from the oven cleaner?
Hey, I'm a libertarian. As long as I don't have to either deal with or pay for your personal habits, go for it!
From the article: "You see, UCITA says that by default a software developer or distributor is completely liable for flaws in a program; but it also allows a shrink-wrap license to override the default. Sophisticated software companies that make proprietary software will use shrink-wrap licenses to avoid liability entirely. But amateurs, and self-employed contractors who develop software for others, will be often be shafted because they didn't know about this problem. And we free software developers won't have any reliable way to avoid the problem"
Here's a summary of the point: Free software can't avoid the increased, default, liability because a shrink-wrapped licence can't be applied to something that isn't shrink-wrapped!
That means that if you write something, and include a licence in a text file that says "no warranty", the "no warranty" licence doesn't apply -- you're still liable even if you never make a cent!
There are numerous other reasons why this -- to grab a quote from Ghostbusters -- is "A bad thing" for free software.
Come to think of it, the UCITA probably applies to Shareware, "free" programs from various web sites, and other non-shrink-wrapped commercial software, too. There's another angle...
Slashdot Mirror
'Nother question: how easy would it be for them to do? Would it be a total no-brainer? Slightly difficult? _Very_ difficult?...
There are WPS-style window-manager extentions available, but none of them seem to be that good at it. For one, the WPS relied heavily on attributes stored in the HPFS file system.
The typical Unix file system doesn't have space for those extra attributes, so it wouldn't work well there without modification. The hack they did to get it to work on FAT file systems made it useless there too; some programs worked well, others didn't.
As a fervent *former* OS/2 advocate, I'm not surprised that Sun isn't supporting upgrades to StarOffice under OS/2. IBM can't even be blamed to abandoning it...it was an unfortunate but necessary move by both companies. There's no conspiracy.
As a long-time OS/2 user...from v.2.x to the last major release, I know your frustration. The first time I used it was with the pre-meditated idea that OS/2 = IBM product = crap^ . Boy, was I surprised!
OS/2, specificially 3.x and above, was so clearly superior to the whole Windows ?? and DOS crowd that I was shocked. After some careful consideration, and looking at the facts, I wiped out Windows and used OS/2 for a few years.
That was then...and like any Amiga owner knows those were the olden days. Just like it was ignorance that led me to mock OS/2 before I took a look at it, it would be equal ignorance to continue with it after even IBM has abandoned it for all but existing large-scale customers.
Because of that, I gave away all my OS/2 software a few months ago -- hundreads of dollars worth --and haven't regreted it. Unix (Solaris, Linux, BSD, ...) plus VMware for Windows (Quickbooks) does things that OS/2 can't do, and in a much more reliable way.
Sun would be foolish to support OS/2 with any future releases of StarOffice, when the more viable MacOS isn't supported (yet). Supporting OS/2 at this point is about as sane as supporting Amiga DOS 3.x.
NOTE ^: Back in the days when OS/2 was first released, many IBM products were over hyped, and IBM itself was very difficult to deal with unless you had direct contacts in the proper technical departments. This is not the case anymore.
( ObRegret: I'd love to have the WPS open sourced and ported to X. That would be sweet!)
Does the 5.2 beta sync to a palm pilot -- without duplicating entries?
While 5.1 could pull data from a Palm Pilot, restoring it really caused problems. This is one very annoying bug....
Note...the link is correct but might be down. I can't reach it at this time, though didn't have any problem about 2 days ago. /. effect?
www.wernerroth.de/en/staroffice/f aq
The newsgroups -- staroffice.com.* -- have fairly good SNR. They are available from Sun's staroffice news server if you don't get it as a part of your local Usenet feed; starnews.sun.com.
...oops! I forgot the other mirrors!
ftp7.netscape.com
ftp8.netscape.com
NOTE: ftp9 or higher is not publically available.
I just started a download from an official mirror, and it is fast! As someone else pointed out, try...
ftp1.netscape.com
ftp2.netscape.com
ftp3.netscape.com
ftp4.netscape.com
ftp5.netscape.com
ftp6.netscape.com
...and take a look at the "sea" subdirectory. It looks like the file in there has the full program, not just the "installer" people have complained about. (I'm guessing that means "Self Extracting Archive".)
One way that the judgement could go that would help lead us into a post-Microsoft world is for the judge to order Microsoft to endow $1B to an independent organization that would partially fund the development of competing products. The rational behind the decision is laid out in the parent article and the intention would be to smooth the startup phase for competitors in order to offset Microsoft's current illegal domination.
*RANT ON*
Not again...how often do I see this here? MS isn't going to give out any money! It's just not realistic, yet folks keep on mentioning it as if they or others will somehow win the MS lottery.
*RANT OFF*
OK, I'm better now...
While your idea is atractive on some levels, it isn't appropriate for an anti-trust case, and could even be dangerous.
It reminds me of the tobacco companies being forced to pay for anti-smoking campaigns targeted at teens.
In that case, the tobacco companies did what they promised, but in such a way as to make smoking seem "forbidden" or "adult" -- two things that are attractive to teens wanting to leap into adulthood. Sure, it's an odd psychological twist that most adults see right through, but they aren't the audience -- insecure teens are.
Now, imagine MS funding a bunch of open source projects that just happen to have a heavy MS slant...or donating tools that don't work well with other operating systems? Target those tools at people who think Windows=Computer and who don't know how to deal with slight variations, and you have a similar situation.
It's not too hard to immagine that they would want some -- or all -- the decision making power over who manages that $1 billion.
Like the tobacco companies, they can point to all the good they are doing when questioned on the details. Few non-technical people would be the wiser...after tall, when Bill Gates gave away all that money to charity, it made him good. Giving it away -- under force or willingly -- will also improve Microsoft's image.
Erp...did you read the article plus the one a few weeks back on the same subject?
Didn't IBM create a PCI version of this at one point? Plug in the card, and you've got a -- moderately powered -- mainframe.
I could never find a price or specs on that beast, and I know it's been a couple years.
At US$300 plus, they could OEM Win9x in there and hardly notice. I was all set to buy a copy when I thought it was $99 but it ain't worth three times that per seat.
Non-commercial use of VMware is still $99. If you use it in a commercial setting, then it's $299.
Both prices are fair and very reasonable for what VMware does; it's a good way to try out FreeBSD v.4!
While in general I agree -- Microsoft seldom seems to reach thier software/OS goals -- the hardware they've speced for the machine is minimal and is available already. They also tend to put out good hardware, even if it is mostly mice, joysticks, and keyboards. The WinCE and PC?? specs tend also to be fairly well thought out, even if MS didn't actually create the hardware.
Getting the hardware together for a game console should be easy, allowing them to meet the 2001 deadline without too much stress.
As for the software, I doubt that will be as stable, timely, or practical...but when has that prevented them from shipping product?
(Side note: WinCE; good hardware with an inappropriate OS...who wants to deal with a desktop metaphor -- including all the baggage -- on a handheld?)
No kidding...who thinks this thing has any staying power?
I'm giving it less than a year from the actual-in-the-store release date before it's abandoned or replaced with 'X-Box II'.
Use Cheapbytes or LSL or one of the other discount places if you want to save a couple $$. They should have it available soon. If you need a manual I'll cost extra, though I don't see the need.
Cheapbytes, btw, sells RedHat 6.1 for $1.99 + $5 shipping (U.S.). Most other CDs, or multi-packs, cost $5-$14 + $5-$23 shipping.
Moderators, please bump that comment up a notch.
The license only allows you to distribute and use the software for educational purposes. This violates clause 6 of the guidelines, so it is not open source. (Clause 6 is the non-discrimination of field of endeavor).
In that case, I'd consider it another "extend and envelop" tactic; get people hooked in one area (education), and then use that as a way to corner another market (business).
Grrrr.... One scheme after another...it never ends with them!
This is nothing new. Remember it was many YEARS after the release of the 386 MS came out with a version of Windows that used any 32bit features. For those who don't remember it was Windows 3.1 and the features were performance tweaks for virtual memory. It would still run on a 286 if you knew how to detune the setup.
It did take MS a few years to take advantage of special 386 modes. Quarterdeck's Desqview/Qemm and Qualitas' 386MAX beat them to the punch by a large margin, and made it clear to even the average DOS user that MS was shipping things that barely deserved the title "Operating System". I consider NT to be the real first attempt, since previous versions didn't do much with the capabilities of the 386 -- even Win98 doesn't do much to isolate potentially errant processes.
Nit: Windows 386 (v.2.11??) required a 386 and did have some basic DOS VM support. It didn't have DPMI support, though, so running other 386-aware programs was verboten.
Windows 386 was, of course, horrid compaired to Desqview though it did pre-date Win 3.1x.
How would you overclock a "production (by production I mean RS/6000 AS/400 type proprietary machines)" type server? This isn't some BX motherboard with clock speed jumpers.
The old fashoned way would probably be the easiest; change the frequency that the chip uses for timing. Either swapping out the crystal or modify the traces that are used to set the timing frequency would do it. That's what the BX boards do.
Remember: bits are bits!
You could "Kryotech" it, but I think there would be vast amounts of cooling already being it 2 chips on one die running at 2 gigahertz even with a .18 micron fabrication.
Cooling is a necessity after you actually increase the frequency...and we're back to the crystal again.
Now if they can just get the crypto support working, I might upgrade. The last working kerneli patch was for 2.2.13.
Agreed. Encryption support should be in the base kernel, and it's a pain that it can't be because of politics/paranoia. I've upgraded anyway to fiddle around with USB and the improved firewall support.
Does anyone want to comment on doing the modifications to a new kernel themselves? In general, does it require detailed knowledge of the kernel or is it mostly a cut-and-paste operation?
(Yes, I realize that it depends on the kernel...I'm interested in knowing the general case.
We are currently trying to resolve their 'Major Complaint' that the size of the digital xclock display is too small, and their windows based X server, which is using the wrong fonts, is chopping off the last digit of the year. This is apparently more confusing and important than any of the showstoppers we are trying to resolve.
Sounds like a normal customer to me.
Why bother? It'll take a few months to change the design, and by then nobody will bother hacking them.
Swap in a small hard drive, and it's a cheap computer for my neices. The whole cost, under $200 including parts...sweet!
No CD or ethernet -- that could be a problem -- but not much of one. My sister likes her Linux box, and it is only moderately better and cost a lot more.
On a commercial angle, can you immagine buying a few dozen of these and using them as firewalls? Use the hard drive to reprogram the flash disk, yank it back out, and it's ideal!
I mean look at VMWare, they managed to write VMWare for NT without any access to NT source code. It's extending the OS without source that windows is good at.
A nit: VMware is an Intel instruction set specific program that runs largely at the application level (ring 3). It requires very little at the OS level (ring 0). For Linux, it uses a module to handle some ring 0 calls, and under NT can do the same thing with either a device driver or even in the app itself.
The source for the Linux module ships with VMware, so you can see for yourself.
Is this a valid point
I wish it were. Filter the comments to this story limiting the score to 2 or higher and you'll see a few reasons why this is really bad for open source.
or do I need to stay away from the oven cleaner?
Hey, I'm a libertarian. As long as I don't have to either deal with or pay for your personal habits, go for it!
I know that many folks here already know the issue. For everyone else....
www.gnu.org/philosophy/ucita.html
From the article: "You see, UCITA says that by default a software developer or distributor is completely liable for flaws in a program; but it also allows a shrink-wrap license to override the default. Sophisticated software companies that make proprietary software will use shrink-wrap licenses to avoid liability entirely. But amateurs, and self-employed contractors who develop software for others, will be often be shafted because they didn't know about this problem. And we free software developers won't have any reliable way to avoid the problem"
Here's a summary of the point: Free software can't avoid the increased, default, liability because a shrink-wrapped licence can't be applied to something that isn't shrink-wrapped!
That means that if you write something, and include a licence in a text file that says "no warranty", the "no warranty" licence doesn't apply -- you're still liable even if you never make a cent!
There are numerous other reasons why this -- to grab a quote from Ghostbusters -- is "A bad thing" for free software.
Come to think of it, the UCITA probably applies to Shareware, "free" programs from various web sites, and other non-shrink-wrapped commercial software, too. There's another angle...
As I understand it, the UTICA licence would be retroactive; UTICA would superceed the previous licence. (Corrections/affirmations appreciated.)