What would constitute a "major" patent in anti-lock brakes, which have been available for a lot more than four years? Sounds like more of a minor refinement than a major thing to me. I still stand by my opinion that the patent office is issuing patents for things that are too obvious, too similar to existing patents or too vague.
Wonder GM still uses the Small Block engine? (debut 1956)
They still make original style SB Chevy V8's for the aftermarket (Goodwrench 305 and 350). The current production V8's (Corvette, Camaro and full size trucks) are still similar to the original smallblock but no longer as parts-compatible as the prior generation production was. BTW, the debut for the original smallblock (265ci displacement) was with the 1955 model year, which debuted in 1954.
Strange coincidence this came out today, as I just downloaded and registered WP8 for Linux today...
This is pretty good evidence that the 7 million plus figures for Linux users may even be conservative. I bet a lot less than 1 out of every 7 Linux users has downloaded WP8.
no extra-credit was granted due to patent infringement...
What in any current automobile is even close to patentable? There hasn't been any real innovation in the automotive field in years. If anyone is getting patents, its another sign of how screwed up our patent system is.
Err... No, it isn't. I agree with most of your post, but there are significant differences between Apache and Netscape's server software. Netscape in fact might perform better on the high-end hardware for static pages than Apache does because I believe it uses a different (threading) model than Apache (forking).
This is no different than when software used to be copy protected. People cracked it, copied it, pirated it. People didn't buy copy protected software in enough numbers that the manufacturers eventually gave up. This will not work. I can imagine that not even all the record companies will go along with the RIAA if they try to artifically kill unencrypted CDs. As long as those exist, MP3's will be out there. This is worse than a waste of time, the RIAA could end up encouraging pirating rather than discouraging it.
The first thing I would do is get a couple of better ethernet cards. The 3C509 series are good 10 Mbit cards, but the 3C905 has gotten bad reviews as a 100 Mbit card. The cheapo LinkSys card is probably an NE2000 clone, and NE2000 clones are notoriously poor performers. As cheap as 100 Mbit Ethernet cards are these days there is little reason not to get them. Assuming you have an available PCI slot in each machine I recommend getting the Bay Networks FA310TX card, they run between $25 and $40 retail (CompUSA and Best Buy both carry them) or mail order. These cards use the DEC Tulip style chipset which is very fast. Another Tulip based card that is good is the D-Link DFE-500TX. I believe LinkSys also has a Tulip type card, but be careful, all of these brands also make cheapo "NE2000" style cards, even in 100 Mbit versions. The older Tulip cards were easy to identify because the large chip had "DIGITAL" on it, but newer chips are manufactured by someone else as Compaq sold off the old DIGITAL chip manufacturing recently.
In general, NE2000 style cards are at best mediocre performers, and at worst are a major nightmare (read the Ethernet HOWTO). If you can afford it, get yourself a 100 Mbit hub. If you only have two machines and can't afford a 100 Mbit hub, get a flipover cable and don't use a hub at all. If you have more than two machines and some money, you can get a switching hub to reduce collisions.
Would you like to tell me where you got that info from?
Its actually pretty well known that Microsoft has owned part of SCO for years. They took an equity stake in SCO in exchange for the licensing rights to XENIX. I believe the amount is actually about 14% instead of 15% however. For what its worth, Novell also owns about 13% (which they took as an exchange for USL) and the Micheal's (Doug and Larry) each own between 9 and 11%.
While it is unlikely that Micrsoft can directly force SCO to do something, as the largest stockholder, it is also unlikely that they have no influence at all.
And test results like these help explain why Windows NT Server 4.0 has so much support
Since you didn't state it in quite specific enough terms for the sarcastically challenged to grasp. Here is my read between Microsoft's lines:
The fact that we (Microsoft) have to pay a company like Mindcraft to rig test results shows why NT is losing the war as a web server platform to *nix and Apache.
I also fail to see how NT is an improvement over VMS.
Of course not, it isn't. NT is a half-baked re-implementation of MicroVMS with the bloated Windows GUI sitting on top of it. It isn't an improvement over even old VAX VMS, let alone recent OpenVMS.
VMS at least was a multi-user OS,
NT could be if it wasn't strangulated by the Windows GUI code which is inherently rooted in a single user philosophy.
Personally, I never even liked VMS. It was unecessarily crufty and complex and built from the large monolithic applications philosophy which I was never comfortable with.
I think NT has all the worst aspects of VMS without any of the redeeming qualities. If NT didn't come from Microsoft, it would be dying even quicker than VMS is.
Wouldn't it be easy for Microsoft to spin off this so-called company and pretend it's independent
I can verify that Mindcraft is not a Microsoft spinoff. They have been around for over 10 years. They are, however, essentially 'mercenaries'. I cannot say, however, that Microsoft hasn't purchased all or part of Mindcraft, although MS, being under scrutiny from the FTC (as well as the DOJ) would have to divulge any such investment. Their original purpose was doing POSIX compliance validation for OS vendors, however, they have also been doing benchmarking for a long time. At one time their primary customer was IBM (they provided benchmarking numbers for the RS/6000 in its early years).
They might. However, they might not. If some other company comes out and steals their market, they might find themselves an also-ran very quickly.
internet and e-commerece is part of the future
While I believe this to be true, I don't think that this alone guarantees that Amazon is going to be one of the long term successes.
A lot of early stars in a new market fizzle for one reason or another. I'm not saying that I think Amazon in particular is going to fail, but that investments in a company like Amazon are a gamble. Some people will profit tremendously with this sort of company and some will lose everything. All speculative investing should be done with caution.
While there are some influences from UNIX in NT, it is more accurate to say it is based on MicroVMS. The same guy that was the principal designer of NT was the same guy that was Digital's main architect for VMS.
Linux is often criticized for being based on UNIX, which has been around for about 30 years. However NT is based on VMS (which was based on RSTS/11 & RSX/11) and MS-DOS (which was based on CP/M which was based on RSTS/RSX). When you go back to the common ancestor, NT's lineage is also about 30 years. The most ironic thing about the 'N' in NT was that there was really nothing new at all in it.
Just how many of you knew what Microsoft's first product was? XENIX
Actually their first product was Altair BASIC. They didn't do XENIX until much later. It was a variant (AT&T licensed) of Version 7 UNIX. They did do XENIX before MS-DOS (which was a clone of CP/M) and they did copy the concept of heirarchial subdirectories from UNIX, albiet they used backslash instead of slash for the directory seperator (because CP/M and MS-DOS 1.x used slash for the command line parameter flag instead of dash as commonly used in UNIX).
and if I'm not mistaken, don't they own the word "UNIX" now?
You are mistaken, albiet understandably so. SCO owns the rights to the legacy AT&T Bell Labs designed source code for UNIX. However before they bought that, Novell (the previous owner) gave the UNIX trademark to The Open Group (formerly X/Open).
It is technically possible for a non-AT&T/USL/SCO source licensed product to be officially UNIX -branded by TOG, albiet it rarely happens. TOG's rules make it difficult if not impossible for a free product, as they include requirements for some expensive commercial components such as Motif and CDE if memory serves. There has been talk about trying to get Linux (or at least one distribution) officially UNIX branded, but I don't know how far that has gotten.
Even if this is true for new sales they have nowhere near 50% of the installed base of file+print servers, at least in terms of served seats. Novell still has a huge installed base that isn't going away, they just aren't adding to it as fast as some of the other OSes out there. NT sales figures in terms of the number of OS licenses instead of the number of client licenses can be misleading because it often takes a much larger number of NT servers to serve a given number of seats as it does Novell or *nix.
webservers listed in Mindcraft
I think you mean Netcraft. Netcraft are the webserver survey people. Mindcraft are the people who put out flawed studies.:-)
I have a strong suspicion that had Mindcraft done their homework, their test results would never have seen the light of day in the first place.
We will probably never know how many other studies Microsoft funded and then chose to bury because the results didn't match what they were looking for. You have to expect that when a vendor pays for a study comparing their product to a competitor that they will use that tactic, especially when the company has deep enough pockets they can afford to commission multiple studies and then choose the one that best suits their purposes.
One would have to wonder whether Microsoft specifically requested that Mindcraft not do their homework on the Linux install. But even if they didn't explicitly ask for it, you couldn't blame someone from tilting their study to suit the outcome that they would expect their customer to want. Using intentional negligence rather than intentional malice is just being more subtle.
Why not also require that cars are able to run on leaded gasoline?
Tell me where I can buy leaded gasoline in the US, and then it might matter. I'm serious, I've got an old (pre-1973) car that loves leaded gas.
It is actually simple to make any car designed to run on unleaded gas work with leaded gas... You just have to remove the catalytic converter and replace it with a properly sized piece of straight pipe. Of course if you live in a state with emissions checks, your car will flunk. Luckily for me, we have no emissions checks or inspection where I live.
At any rate, your question was actually backwards. It was the federal government who required that all cars be able to run on unleaded gas when they forced all cars sold in the US to have catalytic converters on them whether they could meet the tailpipe emissions without one or not (because GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc. complained about Volkswagen and Honda being able to meet emissions without a converter and thus being able to build a cheaper car).
So even in the world of cars, the government gets their hands into "standards", and is often forced to bow to the interests of vendors.
Yes and no. You can run it on a 386, bit don't even think about running X11 on less than a P75.
Bullpucky. I run X (even Gnome and KDE) on a 486SX-33 all the time (laptop). I've got numerous desktop machines around here that are 486DX2-66 to 486DX4-100 that I use X on. I've even got a couple of 486DLC-40's I run X on. Sure, none of those really fly, but they aren't completely unusable. X on a 386 isn't all that usable, but it will work if you are patient. RAM is actually the important thing. You absolutely must have 8M or X will crawl. It will work on 4M (although some installations won't work on 4M). You will find X pokey with less than 16M, and KDE or Gnome would really like 32M.
On the other hand, the support for old hardware is pretty good, especially with some of the newer installation packages (RH and such). If you have an old system that is already running under Windows, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Linux on it.br Now that is absolutely correct. Linux supports old and funky hardware a lot better than people might think, even goofy proprietary CD-ROM drives and such.
Whether or not something sucks has nothing to do with its users, or a perceived stereotype thereof. A lot of Linux users, myself included are in the over 30, married, employed and definitely not the kind who hang out in cracker channels category. I could care less what crackers care to run. I'd care to venture more of them run Windows 95/98 than Linux, but whatever. Judge Linux on its own merits not on its supposed user community. Linux is more like than unlike any other *nix variant. It doesn't make sense to be up on *nix and down on Linux.
You want benchmarks? Then why don't you whining babies download some benchmarks toolkits (I believe you can get your hands on the code for SPECweb96, etc.) and have someone maintain a credible depository for these results.
Actually, I believe you have to pay to be a member of TPC or SPEC to get the benchmarks. In order for people to take your published results seriously you certainly have to pay a big-6 type accounting/auditing firm to validate them. And in order for them to be taken seriously you also need to have the money to buy high end hardware, or be high enough profile to get a vendor to loan you the hardware to do the testing.
And it isn't Linux enthusiasts that are complaining about lack of benchmarks, it was DH Brown if cnet.com can be believed. You say that it takes a "LOT" of money for a small company to do the benchmarks, and you call us whiners because we as individuals can't come up with that kind of money? DH Brown is in a lot better position than we are to pay for numbers.
Since we haven't seen how DH Brown's report is worded other than what we've seen reported on in other sources (because I for one can't shell out $1000 for such a report), it may be unfair to be critical of DH Brown, but you can certainly point at news.com for purposely biased coverage of said report. If DH Brown has the integrity you seem to believe they have, then they should be a little miffed if news.com is misrepresenting their findings if it wasn't their intent to ding Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
What would constitute a "major" patent in anti-lock brakes, which have been available for a lot more than four years? Sounds like more of a minor refinement than a major thing to me. I still stand by my opinion that the patent office is issuing patents for things that are too obvious, too similar to existing patents or too vague.
Wonder GM still uses the Small Block engine? (debut 1956)
They still make original style SB Chevy V8's for the aftermarket (Goodwrench 305 and 350). The current production V8's (Corvette, Camaro and full size trucks) are still similar to the original smallblock but no longer as parts-compatible as the prior generation production was. BTW, the debut for the original smallblock (265ci displacement) was with the 1955 model year, which debuted in 1954.
Strange coincidence this came out today, as I just downloaded and registered WP8 for Linux today...
This is pretty good evidence that the 7 million plus figures for Linux users may even be conservative. I bet a lot less than 1 out of every 7 Linux users has downloaded WP8.
no extra-credit was granted due to patent infringement...
What in any current automobile is even close to patentable? There hasn't been any real innovation in the automotive field in years. If anyone is getting patents, its another sign of how screwed up our patent system is.
And congressmen wonder why we suck in all those world-wide tests...
I read 'congressmen wonder' as 'congressmen feign ignorance', personally.
Netscape's server is the same code base as Apache
Err... No, it isn't. I agree with most of your post, but there are significant differences between Apache and Netscape's server software. Netscape in fact might perform better on the high-end hardware for static pages than Apache does because I believe it uses a different (threading) model than Apache (forking).
This is no different than when software used to be copy protected. People cracked it, copied it, pirated it. People didn't buy copy protected software in enough numbers that the manufacturers eventually gave up. This will not work. I can imagine that not even all the record companies will go along with the RIAA if they try to artifically kill unencrypted CDs. As long as those exist, MP3's will be out there. This is worse than a waste of time, the RIAA could end up encouraging pirating rather than discouraging it.
The first thing I would do is get a couple of better ethernet cards. The 3C509 series are good 10 Mbit cards, but the 3C905 has gotten bad reviews as a 100 Mbit card. The cheapo LinkSys card is probably an NE2000 clone, and NE2000 clones are notoriously poor performers. As cheap as 100 Mbit Ethernet cards are these days there is little reason not to get them. Assuming you have an available PCI slot in each machine I recommend getting the Bay Networks FA310TX card, they run between $25 and $40 retail (CompUSA and Best Buy both carry them) or mail order. These cards use the DEC Tulip style chipset which is very fast. Another Tulip based card that is good is the D-Link DFE-500TX. I believe LinkSys also has a Tulip type card, but be careful, all of these brands also make cheapo "NE2000" style cards, even in 100 Mbit versions. The older Tulip cards were easy to identify because the large chip had "DIGITAL" on it, but newer chips are manufactured by someone else as Compaq sold off the old DIGITAL chip manufacturing recently.
In general, NE2000 style cards are at best mediocre performers, and at worst are a major nightmare (read the Ethernet HOWTO). If you can afford it, get yourself a 100 Mbit hub. If you only have two machines and can't afford a 100 Mbit hub, get a flipover cable and don't use a hub at all. If you have more than two machines and some money, you can get a switching hub to reduce collisions.
Another link that doesn't work
Something must be wrong with your browser, because I have no trouble with that link at all.
Would you like to tell me where you got that info from?
Its actually pretty well known that Microsoft has owned part of SCO for years. They took an equity stake in SCO in exchange for the licensing rights to XENIX. I believe the amount is actually about 14% instead of 15% however. For what its worth, Novell also owns about 13% (which they took as an exchange for USL) and the Micheal's (Doug and Larry) each own between 9 and 11%.
While it is unlikely that Micrsoft can directly force SCO to do something, as the largest stockholder, it is also unlikely that they have no influence at all.
And test results like these help explain why Windows NT Server 4.0 has so much support
Since you didn't state it in quite specific enough terms for the sarcastically challenged to grasp. Here is my read between Microsoft's lines:
The fact that we (Microsoft) have to pay a company like Mindcraft to rig test results shows why NT is losing the war as a web server platform to *nix and Apache.
I also fail to see how NT is an improvement over VMS.
Of course not, it isn't. NT is a half-baked re-implementation of MicroVMS with the bloated Windows GUI sitting on top of it. It isn't an improvement over even old VAX VMS, let alone recent OpenVMS.
VMS at least was a multi-user OS,
NT could be if it wasn't strangulated by the Windows GUI code which is inherently rooted in a single user philosophy.
Personally, I never even liked VMS. It was unecessarily crufty and complex and built from the large monolithic applications philosophy which I was never comfortable with.
I think NT has all the worst aspects of VMS without any of the redeeming qualities. If NT didn't come from Microsoft, it would be dying even quicker than VMS is.
Wouldn't it be easy for Microsoft to spin off this so-called company and pretend it's independent
I can verify that Mindcraft is not a Microsoft spinoff. They have been around for over 10 years. They are, however, essentially 'mercenaries'. I cannot say, however, that Microsoft hasn't purchased all or part of Mindcraft, although MS, being under scrutiny from the FTC (as well as the DOJ) would have to divulge any such investment. Their original purpose was doing POSIX compliance validation for OS vendors, however, they have also been doing benchmarking for a long time. At one time their primary customer was IBM (they provided benchmarking numbers for the RS/6000 in its early years).
they eventually will
They might. However, they might not. If some other company comes out and steals their market, they might find themselves an also-ran very quickly.
internet and e-commerece is part of the future
While I believe this to be true, I don't think that this alone guarantees that Amazon is going to be one of the long term successes.
A lot of early stars in a new market fizzle for one reason or another. I'm not saying that I think Amazon in particular is going to fail, but that investments in a company like Amazon are a gamble. Some people will profit tremendously with this sort of company and some will lose everything. All speculative investing should be done with caution.
NT and Linux are about the same age
This is true, more or less.
and both are based on UNIX
While there are some influences from UNIX in NT, it is more accurate to say it is based on MicroVMS. The same guy that was the principal designer of NT was the same guy that was Digital's main architect for VMS.
Linux is often criticized for being based on UNIX, which has been around for about 30 years. However NT is based on VMS (which was based on RSTS/11 & RSX/11) and MS-DOS (which was based on CP/M which was based on RSTS/RSX). When you go back to the common ancestor, NT's lineage is also about 30 years. The most ironic thing about the 'N' in NT was that there was really nothing new at all in it.
Just how many of you knew what Microsoft's first product was? XENIX
Actually their first product was Altair BASIC. They didn't do XENIX until much later. It was a variant (AT&T licensed) of Version 7 UNIX. They did do XENIX before MS-DOS (which was a clone of CP/M) and they did copy the concept of heirarchial subdirectories from UNIX, albiet they used backslash instead of slash for the directory seperator (because CP/M and MS-DOS 1.x used slash for the command line parameter flag instead of dash as commonly used in UNIX).
but the Unix trademark might be worth a bit of money
Unfortunately for SCO, they don't own that. Novell gave that to The Open Group (formerly X/Open) before they sold USL to SCO.
and if I'm not mistaken, don't they own the word "UNIX" now?
You are mistaken, albiet understandably so. SCO owns the rights to the legacy AT&T Bell Labs designed source code for UNIX. However before they bought that, Novell (the previous owner) gave the UNIX trademark to The Open Group (formerly X/Open).
It is technically possible for a non-AT&T/USL/SCO source licensed product to be officially UNIX -branded by TOG, albiet it rarely happens. TOG's rules make it difficult if not impossible for a free product, as they include requirements for some expensive commercial components such as Motif and CDE if memory serves. There has been talk about trying to get Linux (or at least one distribution) officially UNIX branded, but I don't know how far that has gotten.
The only question is why the standard install configure a machine using ufs
Because I believe that the journaling filesystem and logical volume support for Solaris is an extra cost 3rd party add-on.
NT has greater than 50% of the file+print market
:-)
Even if this is true for new sales they have nowhere near 50% of the installed base of file+print servers, at least in terms of served seats. Novell still has a huge installed base that isn't going away, they just aren't adding to it as fast as some of the other OSes out there. NT sales figures in terms of the number of OS licenses instead of the number of client licenses can be misleading because it often takes a much larger number of NT servers to serve a given number of seats as it does Novell or *nix.
webservers listed in Mindcraft
I think you mean Netcraft. Netcraft are the webserver survey people. Mindcraft are the people who put out flawed studies.
I have a strong suspicion that had Mindcraft done their homework, their test results would never have seen the light of day in the first place.
We will probably never know how many other studies Microsoft funded and then chose to bury because the results didn't match what they were looking for. You have to expect that when a vendor pays for a study comparing their product to a competitor that they will use that tactic, especially when the company has deep enough pockets they can afford to commission multiple studies and then choose the one that best suits their purposes.
One would have to wonder whether Microsoft specifically requested that Mindcraft not do their homework on the Linux install. But even if they didn't explicitly ask for it, you couldn't blame someone from tilting their study to suit the outcome that they would expect their customer to want. Using intentional negligence rather than intentional malice is just being more subtle.
Why not also require that cars are able to run on leaded gasoline?
Tell me where I can buy leaded gasoline in the US, and then it might matter. I'm serious, I've got an old (pre-1973) car that loves leaded gas.
It is actually simple to make any car designed to run on unleaded gas work with leaded gas... You just have to remove the catalytic converter and replace it with a properly sized piece of straight pipe. Of course if you live in a state with emissions checks, your car will flunk. Luckily for me, we have no emissions checks or inspection where I live.
At any rate, your question was actually backwards. It was the federal government who required that all cars be able to run on unleaded gas when they forced all cars sold in the US to have catalytic converters on them whether they could meet the tailpipe emissions without one or not (because GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc. complained about Volkswagen and Honda being able to meet emissions without a converter and thus being able to build a cheaper car).
So even in the world of cars, the government gets their hands into "standards", and is often forced to bow to the interests of vendors.
Yes and no. You can run it on a 386, bit don't even think about running X11 on less than a P75.
Bullpucky. I run X (even Gnome and KDE) on a 486SX-33 all the time (laptop). I've got numerous desktop machines around here that are 486DX2-66 to 486DX4-100 that I use X on. I've even got a couple of 486DLC-40's I run X on. Sure, none of those really fly, but they aren't completely unusable. X on a 386 isn't all that usable, but it will work if you are patient.
RAM is actually the important thing. You absolutely must have 8M or X will crawl. It will work on 4M (although some installations won't work on 4M). You will find X pokey with less than 16M, and KDE or Gnome would really like 32M.
On the other hand, the support for old hardware is pretty good, especially with some of the newer installation packages (RH and such). If you have an old system that is already running under Windows, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Linux on it.br Now that is absolutely correct. Linux supports old and funky hardware a lot better than people might think, even goofy proprietary CD-ROM drives and such.
Whether or not something sucks has nothing to do with its users, or a perceived stereotype thereof. A lot of Linux users, myself included are in the over 30, married, employed and definitely not the kind who hang out in cracker channels category. I could care less what crackers care to run. I'd care to venture more of them run Windows 95/98 than Linux, but whatever. Judge Linux on its own merits not on its supposed user community. Linux is more like than unlike any other *nix variant. It doesn't make sense to be up on *nix and down on Linux.
You want benchmarks? Then why don't you whining babies download some benchmarks toolkits (I believe you can get your hands on the code for SPECweb96, etc.) and have someone maintain a credible depository for these results.
Actually, I believe you have to pay to be a member of TPC or SPEC to get the benchmarks. In order for people to take your published results seriously you certainly have to pay a big-6 type accounting/auditing firm to validate them. And in order for them to be taken seriously you also need to have the money to buy high end hardware, or be high enough profile to get a vendor to loan you the hardware to do the testing.
And it isn't Linux enthusiasts that are complaining about lack of benchmarks, it was DH Brown if cnet.com can be believed. You say that it takes a "LOT" of money for a small company to do the benchmarks, and you call us whiners because we as individuals can't come up with that kind of money? DH Brown is in a lot better position than we are to pay for numbers.
Since we haven't seen how DH Brown's report is worded other than what we've seen reported on in other sources (because I for one can't shell out $1000 for such a report), it may be unfair to be critical of DH Brown, but you can certainly point at news.com for purposely biased coverage of said report. If DH Brown has the integrity you seem to believe they have, then they should be a little miffed if news.com is misrepresenting their findings if it wasn't their intent to ding Linux.
Linux/Alpha "isn't worth it"
Obviously, Digital Domain (the company that did the rendering for Titanic) doesn't think that Linux/Alpha isn't worth it.
Obviously, someone has drastically taken Red Hat's Bob Young out of context.