For me one of the biggest pains in the ass is the license mechanics. I'm cool with buying things, and my job allows me to even expense big expensive things, but most thigns have painful license installs. Some require a license server. Most are nice and can integrate with FLex, but some write their own (badly) driving up support time. One vendor was hitting their license server so bad it made it shut down, stopping all licenses. One server needs to be on a lower port, meaning we have to run some crap as root. One client needs to be installed on every machine, and a a key generated by running some software on the localhost, that talks to the vendor's machines and generates a machine specific key. If you're on a machine behind a restrictive firewall, you need to generate the hsot token, send a request on their webserver, and wait for an email with an attachment (and hope your MTA doesn't scrub the attachment or call the message spam). Luckily hardware dongles are a thing of the past, or at least are not in my world anymore.
I've always thought that having a commercial where someone is installing Word on a few machines, having to contact MS license servers, and have them go through all their frustration, compared to jsut installing OpenOffice, no license hassles. Maybe is a good Linspire ad.
There was a commercial supported attempt at this, the Uniform Driver Interface project. It was an environment loaded into kernel space which provided APIs for memory management, interrupts, memory mapped I/O, and all of the normal stuff you'd expect for a driver. There were no synchronization primitives, your code segment was to be run until you yielded and would not be interrupted. as such you had responsibility to compartmentalize your code into smaller chunks, with the benefit of having someone else deal with all the synchronization stuff. It was somewhat message passing, a comparison to DragonFly BSD probably wouldn't be inappropriate.
Cool parts: device drivers are source code compatible on all platforms, no code changes at all. Binary compatible for platforms that share an ABI (Can compile adriver on Linux x86 and have it work for UnixWare x86).
But it never really went anywhere outside of Caldera. That website looks pretty much what it looked like in year 2000. Most of the issues we dealt with were non-technical. One big one being the implosion of Caldera (which became NewSCO). Caldera wanted this environment to make it easier for people to move device drivers from OpenServer (which had a lot of device drivers but was essentially a dead codebase) to UnixWare (which was newer, SVR4.2, then became SVR5).
There was/is a Linux environment, but RMS hates the fact that it's easy to have binary only drivers, making it less likely to release source. Obviously Microsoft wouldn't use it since everyone makes drivers for windows, and that's their competitive advantage. I forgot why the BSDs never used it. I don't think it was licensing, we used a BSD style license.
Microsoft consistently underestimates sales, to make them seem stellar when they break targets consistently. This is much bigger than the 1.8% would indicate.
Also, MS has been known to shuffle funds around to have consistent earnings growth, to appear to be a very non-volatile investment. This would appear to be a huge reversal from that.
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free. I hate to double post a reply to the same parent, but I forgot to mention in my other response...
XP is marked as 5.1, NT2000 is 5.0, so XP is a point release, and MS certainly charged for it.
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free.
I think the flaw is right there. 1) This isn't a point release, it is a major release. Consider the "10" as fixed, like the "2" in Solaris. Would you expect Sun to give Solaris 2.10 for free, since it's just a point release from 2.9 (or by extension, 2.0)?
2) What goes into a release is arbitrary, what consitutes enoughto make a point release is arbitrary, the cost is arbitrary. The GUI subsystem is optimized and faster, which is rare for a Windows release to feel faster. How much is that worth? The real test is whether Mac owners agree with the cost of the upgrade, Windows upgrade costs are to a great point, comparing Apples and oranges and somewhat irrelevant.
Or even worse, you have a hidden partition that holds your restore. My sister's HP had that, meanign if your disk goes totally to shit, you're up a creek. Me wonders if the hidden partition is quoted in the disk in the sales brochure, making it sound like you have more space available then you have to work with
Poor metaphor. *) The EULA specifically allows for this refund. If the above happened AND part of the contract allowed you to get a refund on those speakers, and you chose to get your refund, then you should get it. *) Microsoft was found to be illegally tied to hardware. This bundling was found to be illegal, you must at least allow the option of unbundling, as seen above.
Microsoft has some big ones. One lawyer says to DoJ "No we're not a monopoly, look, people can install Linux" while another lawyer argues "you can't buy a bare system, that would just be encouraging piracy, because we all know windows is the only OS people will install". Reminds me of the "Windows is a strong trademark, not generic at all, and Lindows is too close to the name" while they argued before "Internet Explorer is a generic term, not trademarkable at all" when the guy who trademarked "Internet Explorer" sued.
I learn Z for Zywiec, damn good beer. Mmmmm, thermometer beer (it has one of those color sensors that change color based on temp).
Yes, I am (part) Polish. I had Zywiec in Zakopane.
Re:What we need is configure & make optimizati
on
GCC 4.0 Preview
·
· Score: 1
As an acually worse example, I'd like to point out the software that uses shell scripts to run configure. If you need a script to run a script, you have UI issues.
Considering what it's doing (making software compile and run on different hardware, OS, and lib variations), using configure isn't that bad. most cases you can do
configure && make && make install
. Creating these monstrosities, that's the not so fun part.
If you're comparing to MS tools, remember you're targetting a single system. That has it's own plusses and minusses. And if you think MS stuff always rules, I remeber doing driver work on Win32 and Win98 and I needed 3 seperate compilers (1.52 for the 16 bit thunk DLL, 4.0 for the VxD, and 5.0 for application code). Tools suck usually, they're generally best when they get out of the way as easily as possible.
VMWare is a hardware virtualization layer. It exports what appears to be (or damn close to it) a full machine to the OS. Xen can be thought of as a micro-micro (nano?) kernel. it exports a minimalist subset, just enough to virtualize the hardware, absolutely nothing more. as such it's not that hard to "port" your OS to run on this kernel, but there is work to be done,
This was the Win32 API, backported as Win32s. Wasn't as stable, had only a subset of APIs, so wasn't a complete target, really was only useful for a "we'll support you (at some level) thing
Re:Time to start a panic
on
SHA-1 Broken
·
· Score: 1
and this malicious RPM will cause more damage to your system than normal emacs how? =)
330 for just the beastie logo, the total flag took a bit more: "so all in all it took her 720 hours of work to complete"
basically 1 persom month to sew, this was definitely a labor of love, or insanity... materials cost was inconsequential compared to labor, 31 euros, or about $38 at current exchange rates...
I have enough knowledge to be dangerous - would a message passing architecture microkernel be able to take advantage of this sort of architecture more than a macro-kernel would? I was thinking specifically of DragonFly BSD, and the modules that make up OS X.
I kind of think of Revolverlution as an open source album. Public Enemy released a few of their tracks on a website, and had a contest for the best remix. The best one got on the CD once it was pressed.
PE has been in the forefront of digital music releases for some time now. Def Jam wouldn't release "Bring the Noise 2000", so PE released it online. Def Jam sued, said they owned all rights to PE music, even though this was all remixes, and didn't want to sell it anyway. In the resultant dust-up, Chuck and Flav split from Def Jam, released the single "Swindler's Lust" for free to show their anger at being owned, and helped in the start of Atomic Pop, what was one of the first Internet focused labels. Atomic Pop released "There's a Poison Going On" (with Swindler's Lust) for $8 download only, $10 pressed, with an autograph from Chuck. They eventually folded, and it was weird seeing "Poison" at Virgin for $18 when I got it for $10. Chuck still has some links from http://www.rapstation.com/ and http://www.bringthenoise.com/ used to be a PE oriented site, now looks like Fark for Hip-Hop news.
Slashdot Mirror
For me one of the biggest pains in the ass is the license mechanics. I'm cool with buying things, and my job allows me to even expense big expensive things, but most thigns have painful license installs. Some require a license server. Most are nice and can integrate with FLex, but some write their own (badly) driving up support time. One vendor was hitting their license server so bad it made it shut down, stopping all licenses. One server needs to be on a lower port, meaning we have to run some crap as root. One client needs to be installed on every machine, and a a key generated by running some software on the localhost, that talks to the vendor's machines and generates a machine specific key. If you're on a machine behind a restrictive firewall, you need to generate the hsot token, send a request on their webserver, and wait for an email with an attachment (and hope your MTA doesn't scrub the attachment or call the message spam). Luckily hardware dongles are a thing of the past, or at least are not in my world anymore.
I've always thought that having a commercial where someone is installing Word on a few machines, having to contact MS license servers, and have them go through all their frustration, compared to jsut installing OpenOffice, no license hassles. Maybe is a good Linspire ad.
There was a commercial supported attempt at this, the Uniform Driver Interface project. It was an environment loaded into kernel space which provided APIs for memory management, interrupts, memory mapped I/O, and all of the normal stuff you'd expect for a driver. There were no synchronization primitives, your code segment was to be run until you yielded and would not be interrupted. as such you had responsibility to compartmentalize your code into smaller chunks, with the benefit of having someone else deal with all the synchronization stuff. It was somewhat message passing, a comparison to DragonFly BSD probably wouldn't be inappropriate.
Cool parts: device drivers are source code compatible on all platforms, no code changes at all. Binary compatible for platforms that share an ABI (Can compile adriver on Linux x86 and have it work for UnixWare x86).
But it never really went anywhere outside of Caldera. That website looks pretty much what it looked like in year 2000. Most of the issues we dealt with were non-technical. One big one being the implosion of Caldera (which became NewSCO). Caldera wanted this environment to make it easier for people to move device drivers from OpenServer (which had a lot of device drivers but was essentially a dead codebase) to UnixWare (which was newer, SVR4.2, then became SVR5).
There was/is a Linux environment, but RMS hates the fact that it's easy to have binary only drivers, making it less likely to release source. Obviously Microsoft wouldn't use it since everyone makes drivers for windows, and that's their competitive advantage. I forgot why the BSDs never used it. I don't think it was licensing, we used a BSD style license.
It's a joke son, ahh I say it's a joke son.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
If anything, I saw it as a subtle jibe at the GCC folks for including something non-standard such as that for such little benefit.
Microsoft consistently underestimates sales, to make them seem stellar when they break targets consistently. This is much bigger than the 1.8% would indicate.
Also, MS has been known to shuffle funds around to have consistent earnings growth, to appear to be a very non-volatile investment. This would appear to be a huge reversal from that.
... where would we be today?
Running FreeBSD?
RMS did not invent free software. It existed before him and exists outside of him.
I'll be nice and not make any GNU HURD in 2084 jokes...
Sorry, random Twilight Zone reference that I just needed to get out of my system.
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free.
I hate to double post a reply to the same parent, but I forgot to mention in my other response...
XP is marked as 5.1, NT2000 is 5.0, so XP is a point release, and MS certainly charged for it.
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free.
I think the flaw is right there.
1) This isn't a point release, it is a major release. Consider the "10" as fixed, like the "2" in Solaris. Would you expect Sun to give Solaris 2.10 for free, since it's just a point release from 2.9 (or by extension, 2.0)?
2) What goes into a release is arbitrary, what consitutes enoughto make a point release is arbitrary, the cost is arbitrary. The GUI subsystem is optimized and faster, which is rare for a Windows release to feel faster. How much is that worth? The real test is whether Mac owners agree with the cost of the upgrade, Windows upgrade costs are to a great point, comparing Apples and oranges and somewhat irrelevant.
Plastics.
OK, it sucks, but it's 7:30AM on a saturday and I'm stuck working.
Sounds cool, but for most brackets this works out to be about a third of what you're entitled to.
Or even worse, you have a hidden partition that holds your restore. My sister's HP had that, meanign if your disk goes totally to shit, you're up a creek. Me wonders if the hidden partition is quoted in the disk in the sales brochure, making it sound like you have more space available then you have to work with
Poor metaphor.
*) The EULA specifically allows for this refund. If the above happened AND part of the contract allowed you to get a refund on those speakers, and you chose to get your refund, then you should get it.
*) Microsoft was found to be illegally tied to hardware. This bundling was found to be illegal, you must at least allow the option of unbundling, as seen above.
Microsoft has some big ones. One lawyer says to DoJ "No we're not a monopoly, look, people can install Linux" while another lawyer argues "you can't buy a bare system, that would just be encouraging piracy, because we all know windows is the only OS people will install". Reminds me of the "Windows is a strong trademark, not generic at all, and Lindows is too close to the name" while they argued before "Internet Explorer is a generic term, not trademarkable at all" when the guy who trademarked "Internet Explorer" sued.
Netcrraft Confirms, quality April Fools Stories are dying...
Bourne shell (not Bash) is a POSIX standard. Not sure if Ksh ever made it that way.
I learn Z for Zywiec, damn good beer.
Mmmmm, thermometer beer (it has one of those color sensors that change color based on temp).
Yes, I am (part) Polish. I had Zywiec in Zakopane.
Considering what it's doing (making software compile and run on different hardware, OS, and lib variations), using configure isn't that bad. most cases you can do. Creating these monstrosities, that's the not so fun part.
If you're comparing to MS tools, remember you're targetting a single system. That has it's own plusses and minusses. And if you think MS stuff always rules, I remeber doing driver work on Win32 and Win98 and I needed 3 seperate compilers (1.52 for the 16 bit thunk DLL, 4.0 for the VxD, and 5.0 for application code). Tools suck usually, they're generally best when they get out of the way as easily as possible.
VMWare is a hardware virtualization layer. It exports what appears to be (or damn close to it) a full machine to the OS.
Xen can be thought of as a micro-micro (nano?) kernel. it exports a minimalist subset, just enough to virtualize the hardware, absolutely nothing more. as such it's not that hard to "port" your OS to run on this kernel, but there is work to be done,
This was the Win32 API, backported as Win32s. Wasn't as stable, had only a subset of APIs, so wasn't a complete target, really was only useful for a "we'll support you (at some level) thing
and this malicious RPM will cause more damage to your system than normal emacs how? =)
anyone else remember when the IE icon was named "The Internet"?
330 for just the beastie logo, the total flag took a bit more:
"so all in all it took her 720 hours of work to complete"
basically 1 persom month to sew, this was definitely a labor of love, or insanity... materials cost was inconsequential compared to labor, 31 euros, or about $38 at current exchange rates...
Is Microsoft following OpenSource now? Linux has had a Doom sysadmin interface for some time now...
European keyboards are AZERTY, messes me up when I travel
I have enough knowledge to be dangerous - would a message passing architecture microkernel be able to take advantage of this sort of architecture more than a macro-kernel would? I was thinking specifically of DragonFly BSD, and the modules that make up OS X.
I kind of think of Revolverlution as an open source album. Public Enemy released a few of their tracks on a website, and had a contest for the best remix. The best one got on the CD once it was pressed.
PE has been in the forefront of digital music releases for some time now. Def Jam wouldn't release "Bring the Noise 2000", so PE released it online. Def Jam sued, said they owned all rights to PE music, even though this was all remixes, and didn't want to sell it anyway. In the resultant dust-up, Chuck and Flav split from Def Jam, released the single "Swindler's Lust" for free to show their anger at being owned, and helped in the start of Atomic Pop, what was one of the first Internet focused labels. Atomic Pop released "There's a Poison Going On" (with Swindler's Lust) for $8 download only, $10 pressed, with an autograph from Chuck. They eventually folded, and it was weird seeing "Poison" at Virgin for $18 when I got it for $10. Chuck still has some links from http://www.rapstation.com/ and http://www.bringthenoise.com/ used to be a PE oriented site, now looks like Fark for Hip-Hop news.