I don't want a mail reader in my web browser, or a web page editor, or anything else but a web browser.
And that's exactly what you get. Read the interviews off mozillazine.org and you'll discover that the editor and mail/news are simply XUL and XPCom layers that are dynamically loaded as and when needed. If somebody wanted to they could easily ship this browser without those features at all - simply modify the XUL files to have no "mail" button and remove the dso from the download.
Having said all that - currently I find Mozilla slow. Real slow. Try it on a slower machine (133Mhz +64Mb ram machine here) and it's unbearable. I know they'll improve this - I just hope it's enough.
This guy is talking out of his ass. No help system in the world is ever going to bog down gigabit ethernet. We're talking 100 million hits per day here. Here's a hint: Microsoft take about 400 million a day (I think) and distribute that load over a farm of around 50 boxes. Do the maths and moderate this guy down.
Maybe check out ASP on apache, there are several options. Joshua Chamas' Apache::ASP (perl, but same object model) compiles all your scripts only once so executition is relatively fast.
I hate to correct something that's already been moderated to a 3, but it's between 2Mb/s and 512kb/s download and 256kb/s upstream. The rest was correct.
BT are rolling out to 400 substations by March 2000 (that's not a lot of areas - major towns/cities only). Also it appears that BT won't be an ISP for DSL initially - they're telling people to wait until other ISP's release pricing plans.
Err, that's still just plain XHTML with an extra namespace (marked x: there) for some additional information so that a round trip out to XML and back in won't lose any information. Not a good DTD design for XML output (i.e. it's really just HTML but they get to use the buzzwords without lying!), but it is what it is:)
Firstly, PerlScript-ASP will flunk any performance test you give it right now because it's practically at the fork() level of functionality (new perl interpreter per request). Trust me on this one.
For some more interesting breakdowns of different scripting model overheads see Hello World Benchmarks. The aim of those test is not about real world applications, but about the overhead of starting the interpreter. Basically, mod_perl, PHP4 and ASP/VBScript all come out around the same level performance-wise. However it's worth bearing in mind that mod_perl is a _lot_ more than just a CGI scripting API - it's access to the entire Apache server architecture - something the other engines just don't give you.
MS Office's XML output is mostly just HTML with CSS. This allows it to be displayed in a normal browser. Then layered on top of that in different XML namespaces are further structuring information that allows you to read it back into Word without losing any information - kind of like an RTF for XML. Things like structured graphics actually go into the file using MS vml tags.
So converting to HTML would just be a matter of exporting just the HTML namespace bits. Dead easy with perl's XML::Parser:
use XML::Parser; XML::Parser->new(Namespaces=>1,Style=>'Stream')- >parsefile($ARGV[0]); sub StartTag { print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here'; } sub EndTag { print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here'; } sub Text { print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here'; }
(Look out in the car park, some day, and note down everything about each car. It's make and brand, any sports gear inside, the licence plate and it's owner's name. Then, write down everything about each owner that you can find out - their husband/wife/gf/so's name, their pet(s)' name(s), their children(s) name(s), hobbies, favourite music, etc. Chances are, you now have a list of every password that person will ever likely use, unless they're security-concious.)
Goddamn it. Now I have to go and change all my passwords. And I figured I was totally secure in using that info too.;-)
Make them last 2 years maximum. That would probably make Yahoo's patent already out of date, but at least if gives people a chance in the ever moving internet world. On second thoughts, make it 1 year.:)
It's all to do with portal type sites, not templates and not just shared memory. The idea is that when a user comes into a portal site for the first time his/her preferences are loaded not into the current (CGI?) process out of the database, but into a shared memory cache. The next page they view doesn't have to fetch them from the database - just from the cache.
Seems still pretty universal - although the patent does specifically talk about user preferences in portal web sites, so anyone whining on about using shared memory in their PDP-11 application can stop now. However anyone who's developed a portal-type (and yes, this applies to slashdot) web site that caches user preferences in shared memory then this affects them. I don't believe slashdot is affected - it calls the database every time for its user preferences.
IPC::Shareable can (and is) used for this technique on mod_perl sites. I've used it myself. I haven't read the patent yet, I guess I'll go check it out.
See the modperl archives for many other people using this method for caching data (templates and other stuff). I guess it could be argued that anything using a <perl> section or startup.pl in modperl is using a similar technique.
But sadly the control and output from Ghostscript is crap. Compare it to a printout from Windows on the same printer printing the same thing and you'll see what I mean. Colour gradients are just awful in ghostscript (even using the universal driver - which is better but not perfect).
I downloaded it to access the client libraries to compile DBD::Oracle. I suspect most people download it for that reason. However having said that I am going to use the server on Linux for real development "real soon now".
Maybe, but i doubt it. Just get a good accountant. Most contractor accountants have already figured out the ways around the bill - I know mine has. Need a good accountant? I can recommend mine www.jonesandco.co.uk
On the subject of not needing air-con, yes, that's true - you don't need it. It does get hot though. We've just had terrible summers lately. Lest ye forget the summer of 1995 when temperatures in London soared to 40 degrees (and I was stuck in a bedsit in Acton with a window that didn't open).
I don't mind too much about not using my car (I get the train to work every day) - but really there's little valid alternative yet. Our trains are appalling and expensive. Our buses are better but badly maintained and not nice to travel on. Try another country to see what I mean.
And what I really take issue with is "you'll get emergency care quickly and free". Free yes. Quickly, no. Not unless you're bleeding to death. My last trip to the ER was a couple of months ago my wife woke up in agony with pain in her severe womb region. I took her to the ER. It took her 4 hours to be seen. For 2 of those hours we were the only people in the ER (this was now about 3am). There were no emergencies that night blocking us - we were simply waiting - and my wife's pain didn't pass all that time (it was an ovarian cyst, for what it's worth). She wasn't given any pain killers until 6am. Nice health service. I have many similar stories but they aren't exactly slashdot fodder.
Try Scotland's central belt too. We don't have the beer (you have to like Malt Whiskey if you want a good local drink here) but I'd be willing to bet we come close in our wonderful rain factor. My brollie's never been out so much since moving.
Here's my perspective on the UK vs the US/Canada (my wife is Canadian and I know a lot of friends out in the US).
First thing is that salary is really irrelevant - you just can't compare dollars for pounds. I earn much more than some of the Canadian people I know, but they have more. Let's break that down:
Housing
The average house in the UK simply pales into comparison with our stateside friends. The problem here being LAND. We don't have much of it. Canadian houses I've seen (and US ones too) have much larger plots, have 3 levels (we don't have basements - at least not in new houses - only in houses > 75 years old), air conditioning, larger rooms, larger garages, and better facilities. UK houses are small, have very little land, and often you're lucky to get a garage. Air con is unheard of in a house. We don't have screens on our windows so expect to enjoy bugs in the summer. And expect to feel cramped - your house will probably be sandwiched on an estate with several hundred others, or in a terrace (OK, so that's not true for everyone, but you get the picture).
Fuel
Our govt doesn't like us driving. Current fuel tax is something like 85%. Yes, you read correctly. That makes petrol extortionately expensive compared to the US. And the price also varies vastly throughout the country (e.g. London: 66.9p per litre, A1 road outside of Edinburgh: 81.9p per litre). And there are plans to increase this price to discourage people from driving (eco friendly government - only they dont provide a valid alternative to driving).
People
People in London are miserable gits who don't speak to you unless they're drunk and asking for money. People in Yorkshire or Wales will speak to you whether you like it or not.:)
Seriously though - people here are friendly, but not outwardly friendly. What I mean by that is you shouldn't expect the "customer is always right" attitude you're used to in America. Oh no. Most definitely the salesperson is always right, and by god you'd better not trifle with them. Thankfully this is changing. Slowly. There is one good thing: Salespeople (except car salespeople, but that's another story) don't approach you unless you look approachable. I like this - especially as I have been acosted in Canada by a salesperson in a lingerie store (buying for my wife, not me!) - somewhere I'd rather just be discreet and leave as soon as possible!
Computers
This is the worst - and most likely to scare you off. It's got me thinking about leaving for the US or Canada...
We have no DSL yet (some trials perhaps). We have very little cable internet yet. High speed internet access is a myth here. Unless you live in Guildford apparently. A T1 is about 20k pounds per year. Even ISDN is extortionate. We pay by the minute for internet access - my bill is about 150 pounds per month.
Health service
Our health service is free (You pay a small percentage tax from your salary for it). And it SUCKS. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - if they try to they've either never had a serious illness, or they don't know any better. I've got nothing good to say about the health service here - except that the people who work for it are angels - the quality of the service is not their fault, it's financial. Our NHS doctors work something like 80hrs/week (would you want someone that tired working on you?) and our nurses work longer. I could relay some horror stories about the NHS here but I'll not waste my time.
OK, now that I've scared you off, I'll say that England is beautiful. It's a stunning country with huge amounts of history and lovely people. For that alone it's worth living here. And the pay rate for IT contractors means you'll have a big house, a nice car, and be able to pay for private health care. You still won't get high speed internet access though:)
Sorry but you're completely off base with those figures (mostly at the low end) - perhaps if you go right to a merchant bank in London you might hit the top of that scale here, but for the most part a graduate can expect around 14 up to 24 depending on location - the further north you get expect it to be lower (the UK's wonderful north/south divide is alive and well thanks to Maggie!).
Graduate salaries aside - a good IT worker here can expect to top out about 35-40k (according to the latest offerings in computer weekly - a trade mag) without going contracting. This is because the UK still is stuck in the 1970's with regard to who should get higher pay - management (big bosses can earn silly money here). On the contracting side of things it's much rosier. Expect low end to be around 25/h (although all contractor segments have been badly hit of late with a market slump prior to Y2K) and upper end can be anything really - I've seen/known people charging 100/hour or more for the right skills.
My advice: Go it alone, either contracting or your own business. IR35 has been killed for a while (do a net search to find out what that's about) and the contract market is looking up again. Also the Chancellor keeps announcing excellent measures for small businesses.
I think this rule is about publishing the benchmarks. You could as a consultant do the benchmarks yourself, and give your clients that information, but I don't know if they will believe them (because they're not independant).
Note though that MySQL publishes some simple benchmarks for some db's that may be of use to you.
Also don't be too quick to dismiss the MS SQL vs Oracle benchmarks. MS SQL has it's origins in Sybase SQL Server (back somewhere at version 5 of Sybase I think), which has always been quicker than Oracle at a lot of things (however Sybase's locking strategy often makes it a worse choice - something that carries on into MS SQL). Apparently MS SQL 7 is quite quick as far as RDBMS's go - I'd focus on something other than speed though - MS SQL's T/SQL implementation is in the dark ages compared to Sybase's, and Oracle is just a whole lot more powerful, with it's wonderful package support and it's amazing stability.
Once upon a time there was a tool called nttune available by some entrepreneurial (sp?) people who figured out you could turn NT Workstation into NT Server at the switch of a Registry key (so long as you trapped some code that noticed the change at the same time). This code with source was made freely available.
Naturally Microsoft's lawyers didn't like this too much - so they made cease and decist calls on everyone who had this code on their web sites. They didn't stop there - they pressured every mirror on web sites and ftp servers to remove the code. It was like a witch hunt. And they found all instances of nttune. I while later it was impossible to find through either archie or web search engines. All that remained were 404's.
So I wonder if the same will happen here. It seems doubtful. Slashdot appears to be creating more mirrors than any army of lawyers could ever get their hands on. Time will tell.
Fred Fish - who single handedly (OK, so there were other contributors, but he was the fighting force) brought the GNU tools to both the Amiga and now BeOS.
Rasmus Lerdorf and the PHP Project, but only Doug McEachern and not the mod_perl Project (i.e. all those cool module authors and other significant contributors). I thought that was a little strange.
Great to see some relative unknowns (but significant talent) in there like James Clark.
This is such a different world, and it's because of one of the things MS tried to argue: The internet.
[As an aside, I think MS's arguments about the internet in relation to what's below are bogus because the internet simply wasn't positioned to affect MS's position at the time the case is looking at]
Comparison's to other companies are interesting, but mostly irrelevant because of the internet. Before the advent of the internet it was fairly similar: The barrier to entry into the market was huge - you had to setup distribution channels, box manufacturers, disk duplication services, etc. This is similar in many ways to competing with AT&T - they had the infrastructure and you didn't.
With the internet it's different. With a couple of million bucks of VC funding you can now become a killer company from nothing. Look at Netscape. That sort of growth simply wouldn't have been possible if they had to distribute their software through the normal methods. And many more companies are coming up using this same method of deployment.
In short, the "exciting times" aren't here because MS gets slapped wrists - they're here because we can choose fantastic products quickly and easily over the internet. The slapped wrists is required though simply to stop MS from buying out that small company and stomping all over them.
In all honesty I think MS are probably more afraid of people moving to Linux than anything else right now - I really don't think they know how to fight that one. Even PHB's are figuring out that Linux is fast, stable and cheap, and ignoring the FUD factory.
This is really having very little effect on MS stock. Aside from an initial fall of about $5 due to overseas (and after hours) trading it's not being dumped in any spectacular way - much to my surprise.
However if you think carefully about this, it's not too surprising. Fund managers aren't about to dump and run from one of their major holdings and major earners until something more happens. To them this is still just a minor blip.
The last thing people want is a panic on MS stock. The reason being that MS stock is often part of a larger fund, and to see that price go down sees the price of the fund go down. Analysts know this, and aren't about to create a frenzy.
I think also it's hard to see a negative outcome for Microsoft from this. We can only look at previous similar cases such as Bell (split up, but still getting bigger and stronger), IBM (punished, but still getting bigger and stronger), AT&T, etc. None of these companies have truly suffered at the hands of the monopoly police that would mean time to dump the stock. This is probably good news - stability in the stock market is good.
I think the truly beneficial outcome of all this is to wipe away the squeaky clean image of MS from the American (and a lot of the rest of the world) householder's viewpoint. And to finally give the players a chance.
Now we've just got to wait for someone to post how Red Hat are going to take their position:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want a mail reader in my web browser, or a web page editor, or anything else but a web browser.
And that's exactly what you get. Read the interviews off mozillazine.org and you'll discover that the editor and mail/news are simply XUL and XPCom layers that are dynamically loaded as and when needed. If somebody wanted to they could easily ship this browser without those features at all - simply modify the XUL files to have no "mail" button and remove the dso from the download.
Having said all that - currently I find Mozilla slow. Real slow. Try it on a slower machine (133Mhz +64Mb ram machine here) and it's unbearable. I know they'll improve this - I just hope it's enough.
Please moderators.
This guy is talking out of his ass. No help system in the world is ever going to bog down gigabit ethernet. We're talking 100 million hits per day here. Here's a hint: Microsoft take about 400 million a day (I think) and distribute that load over a farm of around 50 boxes. Do the maths and moderate this guy down.
Maybe check out ASP on apache, there are several options. Joshua Chamas' Apache::ASP (perl, but same object model) compiles all your scripts only once so executition is relatively fast.
I hate to correct something that's already been moderated to a 3, but it's between 2Mb/s and 512kb/s download and 256kb/s upstream. The rest was correct.
BT are rolling out to 400 substations by March 2000 (that's not a lot of areas - major towns/cities only). Also it appears that BT won't be an ISP for DSL initially - they're telling people to wait until other ISP's release pricing plans.
See BT's ADSL site for up to date details.
Err, that's still just plain XHTML with an extra namespace (marked x: there) for some additional information so that a round trip out to XML and back in won't lose any information. Not a good DTD design for XML output (i.e. it's really just HTML but they get to use the buzzwords without lying!), but it is what it is :)
Firstly, PerlScript-ASP will flunk any performance test you give it right now because it's practically at the fork() level of functionality (new perl interpreter per request). Trust me on this one.
For some more interesting breakdowns of different scripting model overheads see Hello World Benchmarks. The aim of those test is not about real world applications, but about the overhead of starting the interpreter. Basically, mod_perl, PHP4 and ASP/VBScript all come out around the same level performance-wise. However it's worth bearing in mind that mod_perl is a _lot_ more than just a CGI scripting API - it's access to the entire Apache server architecture - something the other engines just don't give you.
MS Office's XML output is mostly just HTML with CSS. This allows it to be displayed in a normal browser. Then layered on top of that in different XML namespaces are further structuring information that allows you to read it back into Word without losing any information - kind of like an RTF for XML. Things like structured graphics actually go into the file using MS vml tags.
- >parsefile($ARGV[0]);
So converting to HTML would just be a matter of exporting just the HTML namespace bits. Dead easy with perl's XML::Parser:
use XML::Parser;
XML::Parser->new(Namespaces=>1,Style=>'Stream')
sub StartTag {
print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here';
}
sub EndTag {
print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here';
}
sub Text {
print if $_[0]->namespace eq 'html-ns-here';
}
Have fun!
Keep all mine in scribble.
(Look out in the car park, some day, and note down everything about each car. It's make and brand, any
;-)
sports gear inside, the licence plate and it's owner's name. Then, write down everything about each owner
that you can find out - their husband/wife/gf/so's name, their pet(s)' name(s), their children(s) name(s),
hobbies, favourite music, etc. Chances are, you now have a list of every password that person will ever likely use, unless they're security-concious.)
Goddamn it. Now I have to go and change all my passwords. And I figured I was totally secure in using that info too.
Make them last 2 years maximum. That would probably make Yahoo's patent already out of date, but at least if gives people a chance in the ever moving internet world. On second thoughts, make it 1 year. :)
This is what I figure it's about.
It's all to do with portal type sites, not templates and not just shared memory. The idea is that when a user comes into a portal site for the first time his/her preferences are loaded not into the current (CGI?) process out of the database, but into a shared memory cache. The next page they view doesn't have to fetch them from the database - just from the cache.
Seems still pretty universal - although the patent does specifically talk about user preferences in portal web sites, so anyone whining on about using shared memory in their PDP-11 application can stop now. However anyone who's developed a portal-type (and yes, this applies to slashdot) web site that caches user preferences in shared memory then this affects them. I don't believe slashdot is affected - it calls the database every time for its user preferences.
IPC::Shareable can (and is) used for this technique on mod_perl sites. I've used it myself. I haven't read the patent yet, I guess I'll go check it out.
See the modperl archives for many other people using this method for caching data (templates and other stuff). I guess it could be argued that anything using a <perl> section or startup.pl in modperl is using a similar technique.
But sadly the control and output from Ghostscript is crap. Compare it to a printout from Windows on the same printer printing the same thing and you'll see what I mean. Colour gradients are just awful in ghostscript (even using the universal driver - which is better but not perfect).
I downloaded it to access the client libraries to compile DBD::Oracle. I suspect most people download it for that reason. However having said that I am going to use the server on Linux for real development "real soon now".
Maybe it is time to leave the UK? Let's see.
Maybe, but i doubt it. Just get a good accountant. Most contractor accountants have already figured out the ways around the bill - I know mine has. Need a good accountant? I can recommend mine www.jonesandco.co.uk
On the subject of not needing air-con, yes, that's true - you don't need it. It does get hot though. We've just had terrible summers lately. Lest ye forget the summer of 1995 when temperatures in London soared to 40 degrees (and I was stuck in a bedsit in Acton with a window that didn't open).
I don't mind too much about not using my car (I get the train to work every day) - but really there's little valid alternative yet. Our trains are appalling and expensive. Our buses are better but badly maintained and not nice to travel on. Try another country to see what I mean.
And what I really take issue with is "you'll get emergency care quickly and free". Free yes. Quickly, no. Not unless you're bleeding to death. My last trip to the ER was a couple of months ago my wife woke up in agony with pain in her severe womb region. I took her to the ER. It took her 4 hours to be seen. For 2 of those hours we were the only people in the ER (this was now about 3am). There were no emergencies that night blocking us - we were simply waiting - and my wife's pain didn't pass all that time (it was an ovarian cyst, for what it's worth). She wasn't given any pain killers until 6am. Nice health service. I have many similar stories but they aren't exactly slashdot fodder.
Try Scotland's central belt too. We don't have the beer (you have to like Malt Whiskey if you want a good local drink here) but I'd be willing to bet we come close in our wonderful rain factor. My brollie's never been out so much since moving.
Here's my perspective on the UK vs the US/Canada (my wife is Canadian and I know a lot of friends out in the US).
:)
:)
First thing is that salary is really irrelevant - you just can't compare dollars for pounds. I earn much more than some of the Canadian people I know, but they have more. Let's break that down:
Housing
The average house in the UK simply pales into comparison with our stateside friends. The problem here being LAND. We don't have much of it. Canadian houses I've seen (and US ones too) have much larger plots, have 3 levels (we don't have basements - at least not in new houses - only in houses > 75 years old), air conditioning, larger rooms, larger garages, and better facilities. UK houses are small, have very little land, and often you're lucky to get a garage. Air con is unheard of in a house. We don't have screens on our windows so expect to enjoy bugs in the summer. And expect to feel cramped - your house will probably be sandwiched on an estate with several hundred others, or in a terrace (OK, so that's not true for everyone, but you get the picture).
Fuel
Our govt doesn't like us driving. Current fuel tax is something like 85%. Yes, you read correctly. That makes petrol extortionately expensive compared to the US. And the price also varies vastly throughout the country (e.g. London: 66.9p per litre, A1 road outside of Edinburgh: 81.9p per litre). And there are plans to increase this price to discourage people from driving (eco friendly government - only they dont provide a valid alternative to driving).
People
People in London are miserable gits who don't speak to you unless they're drunk and asking for money. People in Yorkshire or Wales will speak to you whether you like it or not.
Seriously though - people here are friendly, but not outwardly friendly. What I mean by that is you shouldn't expect the "customer is always right" attitude you're used to in America. Oh no. Most definitely the salesperson is always right, and by god you'd better not trifle with them. Thankfully this is changing. Slowly. There is one good thing: Salespeople (except car salespeople, but that's another story) don't approach you unless you look approachable. I like this - especially as I have been acosted in Canada by a salesperson in a lingerie store (buying for my wife, not me!) - somewhere I'd rather just be discreet and leave as soon as possible!
Computers
This is the worst - and most likely to scare you off. It's got me thinking about leaving for the US or Canada...
We have no DSL yet (some trials perhaps). We have very little cable internet yet. High speed internet access is a myth here. Unless you live in Guildford apparently. A T1 is about 20k pounds per year. Even ISDN is extortionate. We pay by the minute for internet access - my bill is about 150 pounds per month.
Health service
Our health service is free (You pay a small percentage tax from your salary for it). And it SUCKS. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - if they try to they've either never had a serious illness, or they don't know any better. I've got nothing good to say about the health service here - except that the people who work for it are angels - the quality of the service is not their fault, it's financial. Our NHS doctors work something like 80hrs/week (would you want someone that tired working on you?) and our nurses work longer. I could relay some horror stories about the NHS here but I'll not waste my time.
OK, now that I've scared you off, I'll say that England is beautiful. It's a stunning country with huge amounts of history and lovely people. For that alone it's worth living here. And the pay rate for IT contractors means you'll have a big house, a nice car, and be able to pay for private health care. You still won't get high speed internet access though
Sorry but you're completely off base with those figures (mostly at the low end) - perhaps if you go right to a merchant bank in London you might hit the top of that scale here, but for the most part a graduate can expect around 14 up to 24 depending on location - the further north you get expect it to be lower (the UK's wonderful north/south divide is alive and well thanks to Maggie!).
Graduate salaries aside - a good IT worker here can expect to top out about 35-40k (according to the latest offerings in computer weekly - a trade mag) without going contracting. This is because the UK still is stuck in the 1970's with regard to who should get higher pay - management (big bosses can earn silly money here). On the contracting side of things it's much rosier. Expect low end to be around 25/h (although all contractor segments have been badly hit of late with a market slump prior to Y2K) and upper end can be anything really - I've seen/known people charging 100/hour or more for the right skills.
My advice: Go it alone, either contracting or your own business. IR35 has been killed for a while (do a net search to find out what that's about) and the contract market is looking up again. Also the Chancellor keeps announcing excellent measures for small businesses.
I think this rule is about publishing the benchmarks. You could as a consultant do the benchmarks yourself, and give your clients that information, but I don't know if they will believe them (because they're not independant).
Note though that MySQL publishes some simple benchmarks for some db's that may be of use to you.
Also don't be too quick to dismiss the MS SQL vs Oracle benchmarks. MS SQL has it's origins in Sybase SQL Server (back somewhere at version 5 of Sybase I think), which has always been quicker than Oracle at a lot of things (however Sybase's locking strategy often makes it a worse choice - something that carries on into MS SQL). Apparently MS SQL 7 is quite quick as far as RDBMS's go - I'd focus on something other than speed though - MS SQL's T/SQL implementation is in the dark ages compared to Sybase's, and Oracle is just a whole lot more powerful, with it's wonderful package support and it's amazing stability.
Once upon a time there was a tool called nttune available by some entrepreneurial (sp?) people who figured out you could turn NT Workstation into NT Server at the switch of a Registry key (so long as you trapped some code that noticed the change at the same time). This code with source was made freely available.
Naturally Microsoft's lawyers didn't like this too much - so they made cease and decist calls on everyone who had this code on their web sites. They didn't stop there - they pressured every mirror on web sites and ftp servers to remove the code. It was like a witch hunt. And they found all instances of nttune. I while later it was impossible to find through either archie or web search engines. All that remained were 404's.
So I wonder if the same will happen here. It seems doubtful. Slashdot appears to be creating more mirrors than any army of lawyers could ever get their hands on. Time will tell.
Apart from BG - which I assume was a joke :)
Fred Fish - who single handedly (OK, so there were other contributors, but he was the fighting force) brought the GNU tools to both the Amiga and now BeOS.
Rasmus Lerdorf and the PHP Project, but only Doug McEachern and not the mod_perl Project (i.e. all those cool module authors and other significant contributors). I thought that was a little strange.
Great to see some relative unknowns (but significant talent) in there like James Clark.
This is such a different world, and it's because of one of the things MS tried to argue: The internet.
[As an aside, I think MS's arguments about the internet in relation to what's below are bogus because the internet simply wasn't positioned to affect MS's position at the time the case is looking at]
Comparison's to other companies are interesting, but mostly irrelevant because of the internet. Before the advent of the internet it was fairly similar: The barrier to entry into the market was huge - you had to setup distribution channels, box manufacturers, disk duplication services, etc. This is similar in many ways to competing with AT&T - they had the infrastructure and you didn't.
With the internet it's different. With a couple of million bucks of VC funding you can now become a killer company from nothing. Look at Netscape. That sort of growth simply wouldn't have been possible if they had to distribute their software through the normal methods. And many more companies are coming up using this same method of deployment.
In short, the "exciting times" aren't here because MS gets slapped wrists - they're here because we can choose fantastic products quickly and easily over the internet. The slapped wrists is required though simply to stop MS from buying out that small company and stomping all over them.
In all honesty I think MS are probably more afraid of people moving to Linux than anything else right now - I really don't think they know how to fight that one. Even PHB's are figuring out that Linux is fast, stable and cheap, and ignoring the FUD factory.
This is really having very little effect on MS stock. Aside from an initial fall of about $5 due to overseas (and after hours) trading it's not being dumped in any spectacular way - much to my surprise.
:-)
However if you think carefully about this, it's not too surprising. Fund managers aren't about to dump and run from one of their major holdings and major earners until something more happens. To them this is still just a minor blip.
The last thing people want is a panic on MS stock. The reason being that MS stock is often part of a larger fund, and to see that price go down sees the price of the fund go down. Analysts know this, and aren't about to create a frenzy.
I think also it's hard to see a negative outcome for Microsoft from this. We can only look at previous similar cases such as Bell (split up, but still getting bigger and stronger), IBM (punished, but still getting bigger and stronger), AT&T, etc. None of these companies have truly suffered at the hands of the monopoly police that would mean time to dump the stock. This is probably good news - stability in the stock market is good.
I think the truly beneficial outcome of all this is to wipe away the squeaky clean image of MS from the American (and a lot of the rest of the world) householder's viewpoint. And to finally give the players a chance.
Now we've just got to wait for someone to post how Red Hat are going to take their position
It's a great solution. Unfortunately my dog LOVES beer, so the glass would always be empty :)
Matt.