The point is with Linux, you know perl is installed. You know vim is installed. Solaris, you know it's not. I like Sun. I wish they would do a cranial-sphincter extraction and bundle some of the free goodies.
Have you ever done a very short gig at a Sun site and the previous sysadmin's never installed perl? Or they have 4.036? Or your on a "test" network and can't download it from the web? Maybe you haven't. I've been around a while and I have.
I like Solaris 7 at work. I prefer Linux at home. My hardware isn't too bad. It'll hold out for another year if I want. It's enough (128 megs Pentium 150) to run Solaris 7.
Linux is what's beautiful about Unix. Solaris is a commercial product. It has it's good points, and it's annoyances. (X11R6 not 6.3 - so no LBX) The X drivers for X11R6.[34] don't work on the newer graphics cards. That sucks. CDE 2.1 was released before Solaris 2.6 came out. What version of CDE is in Solaris 7? (1.3). Fortunately, I can run KDE on Solaris 7.
Sun is IMHO the best commercial Unix vendor. However, they can learn a thing or three from Linux. (and I wish they would!) Sure, Linux isn't going to be on the E10000 anytime soon. We have to run Solaris. I'd like to enjoy the ride as much as possible.
One of these threads said Sun would like to be MS. MS is smarter than Sun at some things other than marketing. MS takes a piece of crap and incrementally improves it by any means possible. (Usually they steal). Sun should openly borrow from the open source community. (and give back too). Borrow the great free languages and utilities, samba, etc. Give back WebNFS, nis, nisplus, creator graphics drivers, etc.
I like Solaris. I really like Linux. At home I was running Solaris 2.5.1, then 2.6. I switched to Redhat 5.1, then 5.2, 5.9, 5.9.7, and now 6.0. On low end hardware, Linux smokes Solaris.
It is possible to create a great Solaris environment. Download/compile perl/gcc/apache/python/tcl/tk/gnu tools/KDE, etc. (Which I have done). Or take the direct route and load a recent Linux distribution and save yourself a pile of time.
We'll be loading an old Sparc5-70 with Linux.
Sun would be smart to embrace some of he open source. I.E. include perl/apache/gnu tools/vim in the standard O/S. (sure, you can download them from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ but that's not as convenient as KNOWING/usr/bin/perl is on every Solaris 8 box)
Bundling tools with the O/S would help Sun by: 1) saving time of all the Sun folks doing it on their own. 2) save customers time of rolling their own 3) high value add/low cost
The hope is that someone putting up a site about tuning Linux will have a clue. The criticism is that most people who do normal things as root are clueless. I.E. you su to root when you need to. You don't do everything as root. It is just a good habit. If you aren't in the habit, perhaps you haven't been hacking long enough to realize it's smart.
If you don't know how to play guitar, it's hard to tell the difference between a good one and an average one. Similarly, when you get a clue, you start to recognize the clueless.
Kurtzweil points out some things that show more intelligence in machines. Voice recognition is getting pretty good. In five years it will be great. When a computer can understand what you say, it can quickly formulate all sorts of linkages. Anything you say may have a few possible interpretations. A computer can spawn multiple threads of possible meaning. As more data is gathered, it can drop non-likely meanings and add new potential meanings.
One of the neat logical algorithms in the book on intelligence was (paraphrase), "is this the best answer? If yes, you are done, if not, take a step closer".
Computer prophesies out 100 years may be far fetched. The neat thing is he speculates a possibility.
There is some good computer generated art in the book. The computer generated poems didn't do anything for me, but I prefer visual and auditory stimuli.
Having computers generate poems and music is just a demonstration that computers can be programmed to do things that once upon a time were thought to require intelligence.
I think the "Dick Tracy" watch of communications is feasable in 10 years.
Comparing a computer to a bee's brain is difficult. Today's voice recognition shows that computers are beyond insects in some areas.
It will be tricky to go beyond humans in all areas, but it is a fascinating read.
Slashdot Mirror
I upgraded from RedHat 6.2 to 7.0 and my biggest
concern was whether Oracle 8.1.6 would still work.
It does!
The point is with Linux, you know perl is installed. You know vim is installed. Solaris, you know it's not. I like Sun. I wish they would do a cranial-sphincter extraction and bundle some of the free goodies.
Have you ever done a very short gig at a Sun site and the previous sysadmin's never installed perl? Or they have 4.036? Or your on a "test" network and can't download it from the web? Maybe you haven't. I've been around a while and I have.
I like Solaris 7 at work. I prefer Linux at home. My hardware isn't too bad. It'll hold out for another year if I want. It's enough (128 megs Pentium 150) to run Solaris 7.
Linux is what's beautiful about Unix. Solaris is a commercial product. It has it's good points, and it's annoyances. (X11R6 not 6.3 - so no LBX) The X drivers for X11R6.[34] don't work on the newer graphics cards. That sucks. CDE 2.1 was released before Solaris 2.6 came out. What version of CDE is in Solaris 7? (1.3). Fortunately, I can run KDE on Solaris 7.
Sun is IMHO the best commercial Unix vendor. However, they can learn a thing or three from Linux. (and I wish they would!) Sure, Linux isn't going to be on the E10000 anytime soon. We have to run Solaris. I'd like to enjoy the ride as much as possible.
One of these threads said Sun would like to be MS. MS is smarter than Sun at some things other than marketing. MS takes a piece of crap and incrementally improves it by any means possible. (Usually they steal). Sun should openly borrow from the open source community. (and give back too). Borrow the great free languages and utilities, samba, etc. Give back WebNFS, nis, nisplus, creator graphics drivers, etc.
I like Solaris. I really like Linux. At home I
/usr/bin/perl is on every Solaris 8 box)
was running Solaris 2.5.1, then 2.6. I switched to Redhat 5.1, then 5.2, 5.9, 5.9.7, and now 6.0.
On low end hardware, Linux smokes Solaris.
It is possible to create a great Solaris environment. Download/compile perl/gcc/apache/python/tcl/tk/gnu tools/KDE, etc. (Which I have done). Or take the direct route and load a recent Linux distribution and save yourself a pile of time.
We'll be loading an old Sparc5-70 with Linux.
Sun would be smart to embrace some of he open source. I.E. include perl/apache/gnu tools/vim in the standard O/S. (sure, you can download them from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ but that's not as convenient as KNOWING
Bundling tools with the O/S would help Sun by:
1) saving time of all the Sun folks doing it on their own.
2) save customers time of rolling their own
3) high value add/low cost
The hope is that someone putting up a site
about tuning Linux will have a clue. The criticism is that most people who do normal things as root are clueless. I.E. you su to root when you need to. You don't do everything as root. It is just a good habit. If you aren't in the habit, perhaps you haven't been hacking long enough to realize it's smart.
If you don't know how to play guitar, it's hard to tell the difference between a good one and an average one. Similarly, when you get a clue, you start to recognize the clueless.
Kurtzweil points out some things that show more intelligence in machines. Voice recognition is getting pretty good. In five years it will be great. When a computer can understand what you say, it can quickly formulate all sorts of linkages. Anything you say may have a few possible interpretations. A computer can spawn multiple threads of possible meaning. As more data is gathered, it can drop non-likely meanings and add new potential meanings.
One of the neat logical algorithms in the book on intelligence was (paraphrase), "is this the best answer? If yes, you are done, if not, take a step closer".
Computer prophesies out 100 years may be far fetched. The neat thing is he speculates a possibility.
There is some good computer generated art in the book. The computer generated poems didn't do anything for me, but I prefer visual and auditory stimuli.
Having computers generate poems and music is just a demonstration that computers can be programmed to do things that once upon a time were thought to require intelligence.
I think the "Dick Tracy" watch of communications is feasable in 10 years.
Comparing a computer to a bee's brain is difficult. Today's voice recognition shows that computers are beyond insects in some areas.
It will be tricky to go beyond humans in all areas, but it is a fascinating read.