A. Bob Metcalfe is not an expert, he's a known M$ bigot. Other folks at the same magazine(s) shake their heads and walk away from his opinions as fast as they can.
B. M$ is not free, and it consumes way more of my time dealing with stupid errors than Linux ever has (Open Source debugging is faster than closed every time).
C. Linux may have been based on Unix (30 year old technology), but Steve Jobs said it best "I have seen the future and the future is Unix". Not Win anything. What Linux may be i one of the best of the new 'nixes. By the way (BTW) Airplanes are based on nearly 100 year old technology too. Age != low quality.
'Xcuse me?? You must be one of those folks who also thinks that MS-DOS is dead. (Trust me, in some ways it lives on inside everything M$ does, because they can't shift the MFC code base very far away from it's origins without retooling most of their applications from the ground up).
--Attack Mode On--
"Everyone who is at least a little computer savvy has already tried Linux, and the revolution has not happened." Sure, uh-huh right... Most technical folks who have tried Linux (at least since the 2.X kernels) are irevocably committed to moving away from the Windows hegemony permanently ASAP. When you move the mindshare of most young programmers to Linux, you also create a situation where M$ will not remain competitive in terms of quality within a relatively short period of time. Especially given that Open Source is the fastest bug elimination method on the planet.
"The only people who haven't tried or even heard of Linux yet are the total newbies, and Linux has nothing to offer to them." Half a point to you. The Linux desktop is not yet for untrained users. Of course, for the most part Windows NT isn't for untrained users either. (Why did I not mention Win9X? Because it isn't in the same class as NT or Linux, and the corporate world is where the true battle (consulting $) is fought.
Once that battle is won, it is only a matter of time before the consumer apps follow. (See my first point as to why.)
"With a better product Windows could have been dethroned back in early 1999 when the anti-Microsoft mania was reaching record heights."IMHO you totally miss the point here. You usually don't dethrone a king in one battle -- he's got too many powerful allies. You dethrone him by defeating the allies (or making deals with them) one at a time. Linux is a better product in many many ways. But it hasn't won the battle of the desktops yet, because that battle has yet to be well and truly fought. (The Corel suite and Mozilla are just the opening skirmishes).
"Contrary to most pundits I don't see much growth potential in the small to medium server market." Another half point, based on the fact that Linux setup isn't easy. But I deduct a couple of points because NT admin is worse than Linux, and running a web server without adequate training is stupid because of security concerns. Most small web sites don't run their own servers. They pay for virtual web hosting services.
--Attack Mode Off--
"So you can all rest easy now. Linux World Domination is not going to happen, but nevertheless Linux is here to stay."
Maybe Linux World Domination won't happen... but M$ World domination is coming to an end.
I hope a lot of folks at IBM/Lotus read Slashdot, because I would buy SmartSuite for Linux in a heartbeat.
For all the good points of the software Corel owns that used to be Borland (Paradox, Quattro Pro), Lotus' products were better. In consumer-grade database software, for example, I still use and recommend Approach over MS Access, and most people would agree that 1-2-3 is a top-tier spreadsheet. Freelance Graphics might not have had all the connectivity bells and whistles of PowerPoint, but then, I don't usually try to integrate presentations with other Office apps anyway, because the memory footprint has usually meant that the overall presentation would have run too damn slow.
Trouble is, so far the Lotus consumer apps are still tied to the one set of OS's I absolutely will not continue with, that is, Microsoft's. If Lotus wants any more of my money, they'd better get something going on the Linux side of the fence.
fairly simple theory was demonstrated that actually not hitting a target often pulls an enemy's resources to the areas where you are attacking (away from your next likely target). Then striking that target often is easier since the defenses are weaker and have not prepared for such an attack.
Ideally you don't even have to strike the target: think of Normandy (WWII) and Schwartzkopf's Gulf war strategy. In both situations, the enemy was led to believe that the bulk (and therefore the danger) of the invasion force was massing at point "A", when point "B" was the real target. So the defenses at Point A are useless.
Of course, there's a correlary theory which we all ought to consider here, which is that the best current defenses are often one war too late to prevent the invasion. [which is why France was used as a battleground in WWII after greatly beefing up their border defenses after WWI.]
True. Of course, "safe sex" will cut down your risk of getting AIDS, gonorrhea, chlymidia, HSV-II, etc.
Of course, it takes time and energy to prevent those things, and ya'know, when I feel the need and I gotta have it now, I might just maybe drop my guard just this once because, ya'know, I trust you and you don't have any of those diseases, right?
And your PC doesn't have any of those virus thingies, so I can safely drop my guard just this once cause I feel the need to see the uber-kewl screen saver you just sent me via email...
You want safe sex, try abstinence before marriage and monogamy after. You want safe systems, you start with a clean (virginal) computer, and don't let it sleep with strangers i.e., no-one gets access to the private (root) areas, processes, etc... until their own security has been well established.
...is that there are other SysAdmins (NT side) who insist that they should be allowed free access to every box on the network, so that they can do remote configurations and diagnosis of problems on user workstations. Seems to be a good idea, and they actually got the PHB's upstairs in the IT department to sign off on it. At which time the more senior developers (myself included ) quietly installed locking software on our NT boxes which prevents them from gaining remote control access to our boxes, for one simple reason:
NT is more vulnerable than Linux to virus attacks.
What this means in practical terms is that even if I have a safe machine behind a firewall, I can get a virus or hole in my own security from another unsafe machine on the network.
I have seen entire network segments in big companies go down when a virus and/or security hole got replicated by remote configuration/distribution software (such as M$'s SMS). It didn't help that these companies tried to distribute from "clean room" distributions (tested and certified "virus free")-- all they did was pass the security hole around, leaving all of the updated "clean" workstations open to get nailed by the same exploit(s).
Where's a point when you need one, darnit... I'd give you one if I had it, two if I could;-)
More important, distributions like RedHat and ilk need to carefully consider what their default configurations look like, knowing that setting up maximum security as the base configuration is a wise thing to do.
If you hear some sound of faint clapping, it's probably me out here in unknown IP land applauding your pinpoint comment about the one thing that Linux Distributions absolutely should be doing if they want the community as a whole to escape the plethora of problems foisted on the world under the lead of WinXX.
Call me a network Nazi or simply a cautious SysAdmin, but when I install an OS on a box, I want it absolutely secure until (if and when) I am ready to communicate with the outside world, and I want absolute control over what can be communicated and how.
The simple analogy is, though we may be friends, I might not trust you enough to loan you the keys to my car, house, my cell phone, etc. Or more likely, I probably won't tell you how to access my bank account, use my credit card, etc. But if I leave my machines (or networks I SysAdmin) vulnerable, it's like doing all of the above.
Agreement and apology -- although there can be a pretty fine line between posting flamebait and posting something that another person will term as missing the point or bullheaded advocacy, wouldn't you agree?
As far as Opera goes, I haven't used it, so perhaps I spoke out of turn. And as far as IE 5.X goes, at least on my NT box at work, I get ab-ends nearly daily, vs. only occasionally on Netscape 4. whatever the last version I downloaded (4.6, I think). And if I was on a non-Intel, non-Apple box, I wouldn't have a choice of IE because Microsoft is Intel/Apple Centric.
Finally, IMHO the charge that Rob & Co. is pursuing an agenda that favors VA-Linux is blatantly false. I think I read at least five to ten times more articles on/. about other companies' "wonderful new boxes" than I read about VA-Linux including the stock stories.
>>Wow, when did/. start selling Linux? >Cluecheck: Slashdot is owned by VALinux.
Double Cluecheck: Once all of the stock changes hands, the/. domain will belong to VA Linux, the brains behind/. will be VA Linux employees -- with editorial independence as a part of the contracts. As far as I know, all Slashdot really sells are Banner ads.
How are they different from Linux advocates who push Linux as the answer to everything?
[BTW, I'm not sure if this is an honest question or a flame-bait, so just in case it's a question, I'd like to offer my opinion.]
Honest Linux advocates don't push Linux as the answer to everything. But we reliably push Linux as an alternative to Microsoft. Why? Well, the obligatory list of M$ corporate sins includes unfair business practices, shoddy code, bought benchmarks, and vapor-ware -- basically all forms of dishonesty glossed over by a slick marketing machine, a fairly good GUI [3rd place after NeXT and Apple, anyone?] and a decent browser.
Maybe they like the look of antialiased fonts in their office suite. Maybe they like an operating system that includes a web browser which actually works without disabling every option.
It becomes clearer -- this is a flamebait post. Because WinXX is not the only OS with anti-aliased fonts (Beos, Apple, etc.), Opera doesn't require you to turn off every option, and Linux itself is gaining ground in virtually every other area where M$ claims to be supreme.
(Treat this as a question from someone who at best is a tinkerer where rendering is concerned)
What about POV-Ray? I mean, it's been out there for years and IIRC last year some IBM engineers built a cluster of RH Linux boxes, then set a world record for a specific rendering benchmark.
How is Maya, KIllustrator, Sketch, etc. different than POV-Ray, etc.? Which I guess devolves into a question as to how ray tracing is/is not different than vector drawing?
[I'll start by saying hey, I'm a MWC (married with children) web database guy, so you'd think that game programming is about as far away from what I do as a person could probably get. You'd be wrong...] This is well and truly one of the best interviews regarding Linux development that I have ever seen anywhere in web or print. (Kudos to both Scott and/.) But alot of what appear to me to be the important points haven't received much commentary:
Doesn't it reveal something about the nature of programming when the president of a company says"I'd like to point out that, without the source code to all of the software listed above, we would *not* have been able to..."Insert here: COMPLETE A MAJOR PROJECT " which in Loki's case was "port Heavy Gear II." I've lost count of the number of over-budget, problem ridden, ought-a-go-down-in-flames software projects I've seen that were failing because of closed-source pieces in the project. Read my lips: Open Source is the most important technical reason to use Linux!!
children's software is a good fit for Open Source efforts. Unlike games, the principal content for education (e.g. math, reading) doesn't change all the time. Commercial titles will add nice graphics, licensed characters and the like, but the skills training will be the same.
Bingo. What's to stop someone from developing an essentially Open Source educational system, if someone released a good coding engine that could handle anything from Sesame Street math to complex real time simulations?
"We ported the Direct3D rendering to OpenGL. We ported the inline assembly. We created a standard way to play 3D positional sound, OpenAL. We added joystick, gamepad and mouse wheel support. We hacked gcc, gdb, glibc, Mesa and Glide."
Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you. Even though I don't have the time to play games lately. Because I have a cousin with Cerebral Palsy, friends crippled by Polio. Friends with vision impaired kids that need advanced audio tech -- all things that will benefit from your open source efforts.
So if you here anything from out here in web dev/dba land, it's the sound of my outa-the-seat, on-the-feet applause.
If only you hadn't put the last part in... And so it goes in the United States of Self Delusion, where we delude ourselves that we live in a free country..." you might have deserved a moderator point (if I had one, anyway). That last little bit makes it hard to tell if your comment is insightful (+1), or flamebait (-1).
If you've never lived anywhere else than the USA, you don't know how lucky you are. I've stood in places where shouting the word "Freedom!" (in the appropriate language, of course) can get you arrested -- and worse.
So Stop whining and join the movement to find and elect candidates who are serious and committed to campaign finance reform, etc. and put your time, energy, and money into taking back the influence of the companies and their money over Congress.
I like this -- alot, just like I liked OpenGL when I first ran across it, even though I'm still not much of a hack when it comes to 3D graphics. (It's there if I need it, but not my bread and butter.)
That said, what I'd really like to be able to do is to drive these uber-kewl 3D sound cards from MIDI more effectively, and if I could to all of my MIDI work from Linux, that would give me the final reason I need to banish M$ software from my home machine permanently.
Is there an Open API for MIDI under Linux, and if not, would any/. readers be interested in starting one over on CodeForge?
What many people may not realize is that M$ achieved dominance not only by tying the OS to applications, etc., but by co-ordinating the release of M$ Office with OS releases.
While folks may doubt that assertion, if you look at the release of Windows 95, the OS was done way way WAY before the MS office suite was ready. So they held up release of the OS until the suite was ready so that upon release, they would have the ONLY 32 bit applications natively compiled for the OS. (Lotus and everybody else had beta versions of the API, but not the final release Win 32 API). So early on, companies who needed 32 bit code with any kind of interoperability had no choice but to standardize on M$ Office.
Although I didn't upgrade, AFAICT they did the same thing with 98 and are planning the same strategy with the Win2K Desktop.
Only this time because of Linux, we have a stable choice for another well supported OS.
What I think this means in terms of the future of Microsoft is that if Win2K flies like a lead balloon because of Linux, the applications group(s) will have no choice except to port the suites to other OS's.
Hey, great post!! Those are some great technologies, but I would argue with your definition that all of those are required to be a "good" data-driven web site developer. Here's my point: it's like calling an Olympic athlete "good" only when they are medal contenders. The fact is, an Olympic athlete is better than 99.9% of the rest of the world in their chosen sport, and a coder who can do all of those things is better than 99.9% of the rest of the coding world.
For example Oracle 8i plus extensions is great -- and I would unhesitatingly recommend it for certain clients requiring high transaction volumes, high availability plus, etc. Similarly XML, style sheets, etc. are wonderful when needed - but overkill at times.
Or this one: "Multi value database searches based on associations of meta level relationships with database information.
[Boy, try reading that sentence out loud, three times quickly without getting your brain in a fog.;-)] Important yes. Secondary to clean, well designed tables that from the get-go to support dimensional data analysis -- i.e., the data is designed to answer non-obvious questions (queries) as easily and with as high performance as the obvious ones.
And the "Creation of dynamic interfaces based on unique process associations..." etc. is secondary to "the ability to communicate with clients of varying technical ability to enable development of the optimal interfaces and views of information in the database."
Finally, scalability and efficiency is always important, but "multi tiered database instances based upon multiple shared storage subsystems using a C++ CORBA framework" might be important for maybe.1 percent of the data driven sites out there, and I'm being generous with that percentage.
(BTW, I've done C++, Corba driven systems, etc. and even EDI-INT, but they've never been needed on the same platform -- even though I've done work for several different Fortune 500 systems requiring huge transaction volumes, etc.)
What I'm saying is that all of these techniques and technologies can be important and should be used when appropriate, but look at it in a more practical light: what if my client is a small non-profit with limited requirements and budget? A good data driven web developer will recommend the best solution for the client , beginning with a good assessment of needs and how to meet them within budgetary constraints.
Yes, I define myself as "good". Am I equally good if I recommend the Linux/PHP/MySql solution and develop it accordingly, or just if I recommend and use only the big-ticket, high powered technology like those on your list?
I never claimed to be a good designer -- I claim to be a good data base driven site developer. If you don't understand the difference, I don't think that you are qualified to call me an a$$.
Any good developer (and there are tons better than me) can do high end web sites given the criteria I mentioned.
Most of my high end web sites belong to clients that are not geek sites. So why would I post their URLs unless I was trying to brag.. (see next item)
My purpose for posting on/. is not to toot my own HTML horn, get it? I know alot about a lot of things, but I just want to share perspectives, sometimes a funny, ask questions -- you know, the type of stuff most/. posters (excluding the less talented trolls) like to do.
The reason there is no URL in my/. profile is that I prefer a little bit of anonymity, and the main site I will sign my name to isn't completed yet.
So if you have nothing better to do than slam other people's posts, go ahead. It's no skin off my teeth. I have better things to do -- like improving my design skills for that contest. See ya there, maybe?
Nah, you got things mixed up. Dr. Whoever is the mastermind behind the scenes who does what it takes to make the Guy in the Scarf look good whenever he Timelords around all over the place doing what he does best -- Saving the Universe As We Think It Might Possibly Maybe Could Somehow Exist.
Somebody's gotta maintain the Tardis, ya'know, and besides how else can you explain that there's always a camera around to film our Hero (the guy in the scarf) when he saves the day, but not when he's doing more mundane things like, say eating lunch...
The fact is, a GUI can be user-optimized and not waste your system's resources. Slashdot itself is an excellent example of this -- you can select a number of different ways of viewing the page, and the code responds accordingly. Try turning off icons with articles, for example:/. saves the bandwidth required to send those images, the processor time to locate the images, etc., and the user doesn't have to wait for the images to load.
The key is designing the system to have what is called "graceful degradation" -- which isn't necessarily that hard to do programmatically -- it just easier if it has been thought out well in advance. The key is, when things degrade (performance is bad, an item is turned off in the browser, a user isn't advanced yet, etc.), how and in what order do I gracefully remove the non-essentials without disturbing the user's ability to have a successful interaction with the system?
Keep these things in mind and it's a win-win for everybody.
'Bout time somebody did this. Be warned -- I plan on winning --not because I'll get picked as the best entry, but because it will give my design skills a challenge.
So if I don't get the $50 bucks, why do I consider this a win? Well, once a person catches on to some of the better techniques, it's relatively easy to write complex, data driven sites -- you develop a good site plan, work with folks until all of the pieces have been agreed on, test the functionality, then make it pretty.
Of course, if you work develop high end web sites like I used to, we're talking about billing $100K+ to the client for the whole process, at a bare minimum.
But it's not pushing my skills much any more -- I can do roughly the same things in Perl, PHP, Python, TCL, SSJS, etc., the same things and a few more fun by throwing in Java and Javascript. Flash is cool, but not web-wide, so it's not gonna pay my rent for a while yet.
But proving that 5K is enough to do something useful/pretty, etc. -- that's a challenge. See ya there!!
Quoting the article: "The demonstration system was used to create components at 0.08 microns, or 80 nanometers.
Please alert me if I am wrong, but IIRC the smaller the transistor, the lower the power requirement (less heat), and the faster the chip (less distance from junction to junction). So if all they did was to make the same chips we have now on the smaller die size, there would be a reduction in power requirements and a speed increase, right?
Not that I'm much of an expert in these things, but when IBM says they've got the tech Nikon has built and demonstrated a a proof of concept machine, this sounds like tech that's less futuristic than say, quantum gates, etc. I mean, Nikon isn't in this to produce a one-off demo machine -- what they're really after is the ability to put their machines into the fab plants. So the actual production of chips is probably still a couple of years off, but the technology would vault IBM ahead of just about every other chip maker on the planet -- ahead of Intel, Motorola, AMD, TI, and anybody else I may have forgot.
My biggest remaining questioss not answered by the article are:
with the smaller wires, is there a higher crosstalk problem at higher switching speeds, and
Once they've got the tech completed, will it be an IBM only tech, or will it be something they license so that the rest of the world can benefit (Personnally, I'd like a faster Transmeta chip, a faster StrongArm, etc.)
Let's hope this tech pays off and we all see the benefit soon.
Like another poster noted, why the hell do I want another M$ process running in the background on my machine.
What if other non-MS software needs the file to exist someplace, even if it is a duplicate, and Win2K symlinks it out-ta there?
What about data replication? I might actually want to store the file in two places -- even if it is bit for bit the same.
Do I really trust their OS to check dependencies in anything other than MFC code (where I don't trust them at all by the way -- too many bad experiences)?
So even if this is Microsoft's idea of innovation, IMHO it's a bad one.
Maybe instead they should have focused on things like "shared, thread safe libraries" and open standards, similar to 'Nix.
Well now, they should be in line right there behind Amazon.com to get the idea patented, I mean -- the 'Nixes (including Linux) have only had this ability for how many years now?
Gee, maybe that's what it takes to be a Microsoft millionaire. Take an old idea to the newly announced "chief architect", who can the bless it and announce it to the world as innovation. repackage it into a buggy OS, and sell it to the world...
By the way Rob, it's not just you. I almost choked on my drink this morning when I saw this story as well.
Looking at this question from a different angle.
on
What Can Be Patented?
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· Score: 1
The fact is if you look at some of the things that have been patented over the years, nearly anything can be patented, whether it works or not -- the emphasis seems to be on "novel" over anything else. What has almost never been part of the equation is "how does this government issued document (the patent) affect the public good?
The best example of this that I can think of is that IIRC (if I recall correctly) Mercedes Benz held the original patent of the type of "unibody construction" that creates built-in "crash absorption zones" -- greatly increasing passenger and driver safety. But they didn't defend the patent, arguing that some ideas were too important to keep in house.
What if the USPTO looked at each patent application from the standpoint of "how will this promote/detract from the public good?" and looked at whether or not the patent should be granted and how long a patent could be privately held on that basis?
Most of the posts I've read so far miss the point completely, and the LDS church has nothing to do with it.
It should be stated up front that I agree with the right of the state to decide under what rules public institutions --including libraries -- will be funded.
Where this law, and all attempts so far run into problems is that AFAIK, basically all filtering software use encryption to guard the list of allegedly "bad" sites. That encryption makes what should be openly available information into a proprietary, money making project.
So instead of a well moderated, human created link list like dmoz, they rely on software -- which has to try to catch things linguistically -- which is basically impossible.
Now then, personally I am very anti-porn, but I can't take away someone elses right to view what they want. But what I really wish I could do is contribute to a well moderated, dmoz style list of web sites which are pornographic in nature, because I can damn well do a better job than the filtering software.
Ya know what, I just thought of a good use for the moderation engine in the 0.9 slash code...(Just kidding Rob, really!!)
Slashdot Mirror
--Attack Mode On--
- "Everyone who is at least a little computer savvy has already tried Linux, and the revolution has not happened." Sure, uh-huh right... Most technical folks who have tried Linux (at least since the 2.X kernels) are irevocably committed to moving away from the Windows hegemony permanently ASAP. When you move the mindshare of most young programmers to Linux, you also create a situation where M$ will not remain competitive in terms of quality within a relatively short period of time. Especially given that Open Source is the fastest bug elimination method on the planet.
- "The only people who haven't tried or even heard of Linux yet are the total newbies, and Linux has nothing to offer to them." Half a point to you. The Linux desktop is not yet for untrained users. Of course, for the most part Windows NT isn't for untrained users either. (Why did I not mention Win9X? Because it isn't in the same class as NT or Linux, and the corporate world is where the true battle (consulting $) is fought.
- "With a better product Windows could have been dethroned back in early 1999 when the anti-Microsoft mania was reaching record heights."IMHO you totally miss the point here. You usually don't dethrone a king in one battle -- he's got too many powerful allies. You dethrone him by defeating the allies (or making deals with them) one at a time. Linux is a better product in many many ways. But it hasn't won the battle of the desktops yet, because that battle has yet to be well and truly fought. (The Corel suite and Mozilla are just the opening skirmishes).
- "Contrary to most pundits I don't see much growth potential in the small to medium server market." Another half point, based on the fact that Linux setup isn't easy. But I deduct a couple of points because NT admin is worse than Linux, and running a web server without adequate training is stupid because of security concerns. Most small web sites don't run their own servers. They pay for virtual web hosting services.
--Attack Mode Off--Once that battle is won, it is only a matter of time before the consumer apps follow. (See my first point as to why.)
"So you can all rest easy now. Linux World Domination is not going to happen, but nevertheless Linux is here to stay."
Maybe Linux World Domination won't happen... but M$ World domination is coming to an end.
For all the good points of the software Corel owns that used to be Borland (Paradox, Quattro Pro), Lotus' products were better. In consumer-grade database software, for example, I still use and recommend Approach over MS Access, and most people would agree that 1-2-3 is a top-tier spreadsheet. Freelance Graphics might not have had all the connectivity bells and whistles of PowerPoint, but then, I don't usually try to integrate presentations with other Office apps anyway, because the memory footprint has usually meant that the overall presentation would have run too damn slow.
Trouble is, so far the Lotus consumer apps are still tied to the one set of OS's I absolutely will not continue with, that is, Microsoft's. If Lotus wants any more of my money, they'd better get something going on the Linux side of the fence.
To quote from "The Princess Bride":
Hah hah hah hah hah hah clunk...
[Hey, send a not to Bill G, we just offed one more Linux developer...]
Just kidding. Actually, I've got better things to do with my time than look at any of Redmond's source code.
Ideally you don't even have to strike the target: think of Normandy (WWII) and Schwartzkopf's Gulf war strategy. In both situations, the enemy was led to believe that the bulk (and therefore the danger) of the invasion force was massing at point "A", when point "B" was the real target. So the defenses at Point A are useless.
Of course, there's a correlary theory which we all ought to consider here, which is that the best current defenses are often one war too late to prevent the invasion. [which is why France was used as a battleground in WWII after greatly beefing up their border defenses after WWI.]
Of course, it takes time and energy to prevent those things, and ya'know, when I feel the need and I gotta have it now, I might just maybe drop my guard just this once because, ya'know, I trust you and you don't have any of those diseases, right?
And your PC doesn't have any of those virus thingies, so I can safely drop my guard just this once cause I feel the need to see the uber-kewl screen saver you just sent me via email...
You want safe sex, try abstinence before marriage and monogamy after. You want safe systems, you start with a clean (virginal) computer, and don't let it sleep with strangers i.e., no-one gets access to the private (root) areas, processes, etc... until their own security has been well established.
- NT is more vulnerable than Linux to virus attacks.
What this means in practical terms is that even if I have a safe machine behind a firewall, I can get a virus or hole in my own security from another unsafe machine on the network.I have seen entire network segments in big companies go down when a virus and/or security hole got replicated by remote configuration/distribution software (such as M$'s SMS). It didn't help that these companies tried to distribute from "clean room" distributions (tested and certified "virus free")-- all they did was pass the security hole around, leaving all of the updated "clean" workstations open to get nailed by the same exploit(s).
More important, distributions like RedHat and ilk need to carefully consider what their default configurations look like, knowing that setting up maximum security as the base configuration is a wise thing to do.
If you hear some sound of faint clapping, it's probably me out here in unknown IP land applauding your pinpoint comment about the one thing that Linux Distributions absolutely should be doing if they want the community as a whole to escape the plethora of problems foisted on the world under the lead of WinXX.
Call me a network Nazi or simply a cautious SysAdmin, but when I install an OS on a box, I want it absolutely secure until (if and when) I am ready to communicate with the outside world, and I want absolute control over what can be communicated and how.
The simple analogy is, though we may be friends, I might not trust you enough to loan you the keys to my car, house, my cell phone, etc. Or more likely, I probably won't tell you how to access my bank account, use my credit card, etc. But if I leave my machines (or networks I SysAdmin) vulnerable, it's like doing all of the above.
As far as Opera goes, I haven't used it, so perhaps I spoke out of turn. And as far as IE 5.X goes, at least on my NT box at work, I get ab-ends nearly daily, vs. only occasionally on Netscape 4. whatever the last version I downloaded (4.6, I think). And if I was on a non-Intel, non-Apple box, I wouldn't have a choice of IE because Microsoft is Intel/Apple Centric.
Finally, IMHO the charge that Rob & Co. is pursuing an agenda that favors VA-Linux is blatantly false. I think I read at least five to ten times more articles on /. about other companies' "wonderful new boxes" than I read about VA-Linux including the stock stories.
>Cluecheck: Slashdot is owned by VALinux.
Double Cluecheck: Once all of the stock changes hands, the /. domain will belong to VA Linux, the brains behind /. will be VA Linux employees -- with editorial independence as a part of the contracts. As far as I know, all Slashdot really sells are Banner ads.
How are they different from Linux advocates who push Linux as the answer to everything?
[BTW, I'm not sure if this is an honest question or a flame-bait, so just in case it's a question, I'd like to offer my opinion.]
Honest Linux advocates don't push Linux as the answer to everything. But we reliably push Linux as an alternative to Microsoft. Why? Well, the obligatory list of M$ corporate sins includes unfair business practices, shoddy code, bought benchmarks, and vapor-ware -- basically all forms of dishonesty glossed over by a slick marketing machine, a fairly good GUI [3rd place after NeXT and Apple, anyone?] and a decent browser.
Maybe they like the look of antialiased fonts in their office suite. Maybe they like an operating system that includes a web browser which actually works without disabling every option.
It becomes clearer -- this is a flamebait post. Because WinXX is not the only OS with anti-aliased fonts (Beos, Apple, etc.), Opera doesn't require you to turn off every option, and Linux itself is gaining ground in virtually every other area where M$ claims to be supreme.
What about POV-Ray? I mean, it's been out there for years and IIRC last year some IBM engineers built a cluster of RH Linux boxes, then set a world record for a specific rendering benchmark.
How is Maya, KIllustrator, Sketch, etc. different than POV-Ray, etc.? Which I guess devolves into a question as to how ray tracing is/is not different than vector drawing?
- Doesn't it reveal something about the nature of programming when the president of a company says"I'd like to point out that, without the source code to all of the software listed above, we would *not* have been able to..."Insert here: COMPLETE A MAJOR PROJECT " which in Loki's case was "port Heavy Gear II." I've lost count of the number of over-budget, problem ridden, ought-a-go-down-in-flames software projects I've seen that were failing because of closed-source pieces in the project. Read my lips: Open Source is the most important technical reason to use Linux!!
- children's software is a good fit for Open Source efforts. Unlike games, the principal content for education (e.g. math, reading) doesn't change all the time. Commercial titles will add nice graphics, licensed characters and the like, but the skills training will be the same.
- "We ported the Direct3D rendering to OpenGL. We ported the inline assembly. We created a standard way to play 3D positional sound, OpenAL. We added joystick, gamepad and mouse wheel support. We hacked gcc, gdb, glibc, Mesa and Glide."
So if you here anything from out here in web dev/dba land, it's the sound of my outa-the-seat, on-the-feet applause.Bingo. What's to stop someone from developing an essentially Open Source educational system, if someone released a good coding engine that could handle anything from Sesame Street math to complex real time simulations?
Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you. Even though I don't have the time to play games lately. Because I have a cousin with Cerebral Palsy, friends crippled by Polio. Friends with vision impaired kids that need advanced audio tech -- all things that will benefit from your open source efforts.
If you've never lived anywhere else than the USA, you don't know how lucky you are. I've stood in places where shouting the word "Freedom!" (in the appropriate language, of course) can get you arrested -- and worse.
So Stop whining and join the movement to find and elect candidates who are serious and committed to campaign finance reform, etc. and put your time, energy, and money into taking back the influence of the companies and their money over Congress.
That said, what I'd really like to be able to do is to drive these uber-kewl 3D sound cards from MIDI more effectively, and if I could to all of my MIDI work from Linux, that would give me the final reason I need to banish M$ software from my home machine permanently.
Is there an Open API for MIDI under Linux, and if not, would any /. readers be interested in starting one over on CodeForge?
While folks may doubt that assertion, if you look at the release of Windows 95, the OS was done way way WAY before the MS office suite was ready. So they held up release of the OS until the suite was ready so that upon release, they would have the ONLY 32 bit applications natively compiled for the OS. (Lotus and everybody else had beta versions of the API, but not the final release Win 32 API). So early on, companies who needed 32 bit code with any kind of interoperability had no choice but to standardize on M$ Office.
Although I didn't upgrade, AFAICT they did the same thing with 98 and are planning the same strategy with the Win2K Desktop.
Only this time because of Linux, we have a stable choice for another well supported OS.
What I think this means in terms of the future of Microsoft is that if Win2K flies like a lead balloon because of Linux, the applications group(s) will have no choice except to port the suites to other OS's.
For example Oracle 8i plus extensions is great -- and I would unhesitatingly recommend it for certain clients requiring high transaction volumes, high availability plus, etc. Similarly XML, style sheets, etc. are wonderful when needed - but overkill at times.
Or this one: "Multi value database searches based on associations of meta level relationships with database information.
[Boy, try reading that sentence out loud, three times quickly without getting your brain in a fog. ;-)] Important yes. Secondary to clean, well designed tables that from the get-go to support dimensional data analysis -- i.e., the data is designed to answer non-obvious questions (queries) as easily and with as high performance as the obvious ones.
And the "Creation of dynamic interfaces based on unique process associations..." etc. is secondary to "the ability to communicate with clients of varying technical ability to enable development of the optimal interfaces and views of information in the database."
Finally, scalability and efficiency is always important, but "multi tiered database instances based upon multiple shared storage subsystems using a C++ CORBA framework" might be important for maybe .1 percent of the data driven sites out there, and I'm being generous with that percentage.
(BTW, I've done C++, Corba driven systems, etc. and even EDI-INT, but they've never been needed on the same platform -- even though I've done work for several different Fortune 500 systems requiring huge transaction volumes, etc.)
What I'm saying is that all of these techniques and technologies can be important and should be used when appropriate, but look at it in a more practical light: what if my client is a small non-profit with limited requirements and budget? A good data driven web developer will recommend the best solution for the client , beginning with a good assessment of needs and how to meet them within budgetary constraints.
Yes, I define myself as "good". Am I equally good if I recommend the Linux/PHP/MySql solution and develop it accordingly, or just if I recommend and use only the big-ticket, high powered technology like those on your list?
- I never claimed to be a good designer -- I claim to be a good data base driven site developer. If you don't understand the difference, I don't think that you are qualified to call me an a$$.
- Any good developer (and there are tons better than me) can do high end web sites given the criteria I mentioned.
- Most of my high end web sites belong to clients that are not geek sites. So why would I post their URLs unless I was trying to brag.. (see next item)
- My purpose for posting on
/. is not to toot my own HTML horn, get it? I know alot about a lot of things, but I just want to share perspectives, sometimes a funny, ask questions -- you know, the type of stuff most /. posters (excluding the less talented trolls) like to do. - The reason there is no URL in my
/. profile is that I prefer a little bit of anonymity, and the main site I will sign my name to isn't completed yet.
So if you have nothing better to do than slam other people's posts, go ahead. It's no skin off my teeth. I have better things to do -- like improving my design skills for that contest. See ya there, maybe?Somebody's gotta maintain the Tardis, ya'know, and besides how else can you explain that there's always a camera around to film our Hero (the guy in the scarf) when he saves the day, but not when he's doing more mundane things like, say eating lunch...
The fact is, a GUI can be user-optimized and not waste your system's resources. Slashdot itself is an excellent example of this -- you can select a number of different ways of viewing the page, and the code responds accordingly. Try turning off icons with articles, for example: /. saves the bandwidth required to send those images, the processor time to locate the images, etc., and the user doesn't have to wait for the images to load.
The key is designing the system to have what is called "graceful degradation" -- which isn't necessarily that hard to do programmatically -- it just easier if it has been thought out well in advance. The key is, when things degrade (performance is bad, an item is turned off in the browser, a user isn't advanced yet, etc.), how and in what order do I gracefully remove the non-essentials without disturbing the user's ability to have a successful interaction with the system?
Keep these things in mind and it's a win-win for everybody.
So if I don't get the $50 bucks, why do I consider this a win? Well, once a person catches on to some of the better techniques, it's relatively easy to write complex, data driven sites -- you develop a good site plan, work with folks until all of the pieces have been agreed on, test the functionality, then make it pretty.
Of course, if you work develop high end web sites like I used to, we're talking about billing $100K+ to the client for the whole process, at a bare minimum.
But it's not pushing my skills much any more -- I can do roughly the same things in Perl, PHP, Python, TCL, SSJS, etc., the same things and a few more fun by throwing in Java and Javascript. Flash is cool, but not web-wide, so it's not gonna pay my rent for a while yet.
But proving that 5K is enough to do something useful/pretty, etc. -- that's a challenge. See ya there!!
Please alert me if I am wrong, but IIRC the smaller the transistor, the lower the power requirement (less heat), and the faster the chip (less distance from junction to junction). So if all they did was to make the same chips we have now on the smaller die size, there would be a reduction in power requirements and a speed increase, right?
Not that I'm much of an expert in these things, but when IBM says they've got the tech Nikon has built and demonstrated a a proof of concept machine, this sounds like tech that's less futuristic than say, quantum gates, etc. I mean, Nikon isn't in this to produce a one-off demo machine -- what they're really after is the ability to put their machines into the fab plants. So the actual production of chips is probably still a couple of years off, but the technology would vault IBM ahead of just about every other chip maker on the planet -- ahead of Intel, Motorola, AMD, TI, and anybody else I may have forgot.
My biggest remaining questioss not answered by the article are:
- with the smaller wires, is there a higher crosstalk problem at higher switching speeds, and
- Once they've got the tech completed, will it be an IBM only tech, or will it be something they license so that the rest of the world can benefit (Personnally, I'd like a faster Transmeta chip, a faster StrongArm, etc.)
Let's hope this tech pays off and we all see the benefit soon.- Like another poster noted, why the hell do I want another M$ process running in the background on my machine.
- What if other non-MS software needs the file to exist someplace, even if it is a duplicate, and Win2K symlinks it out-ta there?
- What about data replication? I might actually want to store the file in two places -- even if it is bit for bit the same.
- Do I really trust their OS to check dependencies in anything other than MFC code (where I don't trust them at all by the way -- too many bad experiences)?
So even if this is Microsoft's idea of innovation, IMHO it's a bad one.Maybe instead they should have focused on things like "shared, thread safe libraries" and open standards, similar to 'Nix.
Gee, maybe that's what it takes to be a Microsoft millionaire. Take an old idea to the newly announced "chief architect", who can the bless it and announce it to the world as innovation. repackage it into a buggy OS, and sell it to the world...
By the way Rob, it's not just you. I almost choked on my drink this morning when I saw this story as well.
The best example of this that I can think of is that IIRC (if I recall correctly) Mercedes Benz held the original patent of the type of "unibody construction" that creates built-in "crash absorption zones" -- greatly increasing passenger and driver safety. But they didn't defend the patent, arguing that some ideas were too important to keep in house.
What if the USPTO looked at each patent application from the standpoint of "how will this promote/detract from the public good?" and looked at whether or not the patent should be granted and how long a patent could be privately held on that basis?
It should be stated up front that I agree with the right of the state to decide under what rules public institutions --including libraries -- will be funded.
Where this law, and all attempts so far run into problems is that AFAIK, basically all filtering software use encryption to guard the list of allegedly "bad" sites. That encryption makes what should be openly available information into a proprietary, money making project.
So instead of a well moderated, human created link list like dmoz, they rely on software -- which has to try to catch things linguistically -- which is basically impossible.
Now then, personally I am very anti-porn, but I can't take away someone elses right to view what they want. But what I really wish I could do is contribute to a well moderated, dmoz style list of web sites which are pornographic in nature, because I can damn well do a better job than the filtering software.
Ya know what, I just thought of a good use for the moderation engine in the 0.9 slash code...(Just kidding Rob, really!!)