It's all fun and games until mal-ware plugins for OpenOffice are designed and implemented. You don't think the malware writers are going to ignore you forever, do you?
The Mono people are working on Windows forms right now.. a good number of classes are implemented in native.NET code. This means that any platform that can run mono and has an appropriate wrapper will be able to run WinForms apps.
As for the SQL server bit, even as a client for a Windows server, Act would be nice on Linux.
Finally, as long as these apps that depend on MSSQL use the ADO.NET library hope springs eternal that someone will write a connector to hitch ADO.NET calls to SQLClient to a MySQL backend. Really, when "SQL Server" is required, it is really only looking for the appropriate client. As long as they didnt go with some really obscure ODBC connection a generic translation driver for ADO.NET is a real possibility.
It's the VM that right now thousands of software vendors are writing against.
Virtually of MS's ISVs are writing against.NET now. That's a lot of applications, and especially, vertical market applications.
As these next batch of applications gets out to the market and Mono continues to mature, you will see that a Linux desktop can be an excellent companion to a corporate or small business setting.
My wife works in the medical field. The software vendor they support are porting their Windows app to.NET with a commitment to maintain only "100% managed code". What does this mean?
It means that when released it will, very likely, run without any modification on Mono, and therefore Linux, and probably someday Mac OSX.
I handled inventory and tracking for a large set of equipment, including hard drives.
Of about 12,500 hard drives, here was the break down:
Maxtor - about 3000
Segate - about 3000
WD - about 6000
Other - about 500
So Maxtor represented about 25% of all hard drives. The drives had about equal usage, and about equal capacities, and were of about the same vintage (we're not talking MFM drives vs. SATA). About ~40GB, all made within about 18 months of each other, all deployed and used at around the same 12 month time frame.
Maxtor represented 75% of all drive failures. Far, far above the appropriate number. WD was second. Segate third.
Re:What exactly is a 'thin client' model then?
on
The PC Is Not Dead
·
· Score: 1
I think it would be cool to have a solution where you have diskless workstations that boot off a USB key you assign to the users. You'd assign it to them, and if the PC ever got broken, they'd just plug into a different one.
This isn't too far from the truth. Imagine if you could get a USB-style interface that was as fast as your internal bus. A "PC" could be nothing more than a docking station. A 2GB of flash RAM, 1GB of DDR RAM, and a compact low-power CPU and all of the sudden everyone could bring their whole PCs with them.
Right. Take that to a judge. e-Scrabble has no legitimate use to a person who was illegally running a game of Scrabble. This isn't an innocent bystander frenchman who loves to cook with eggs.
So true. If you are a "roll your own" type of guy, there are plenty of other options than Installshield or Wise.
WIX is a free installer toolset that works with XML config files. It generates customized to the hilt installers using the Windows Installer, and is very handy for automating builds. Add it into your nightly build process and you'll be cooking. WIX is an Open Source Microsoft project hosted on SourceForge.
If you need to step it back a bit, use NSIS from Nullsoft, or InnoSetup. Both are free (one as in GPL, one as in beer) installers that are easily setup and easily automated. Both are well-tested and stable.
Writing your own installer is absurd. The differences between systems is high. The number of things that can go wrong is high. The number of bad installers that people whipped up is extremely high.
For the love of God, first option for deploying Windows software is an MSI, the second is a free alternative like NSIS or InnoSetup.
Ohh dozens of licenses are not accepted by the OSI or FSF as sufficently "open source". Look at licenses like Sun Public License, the Microsoft Shared Source license, etc. These are licenses where the source is "open", but you cant distribute changes. That's what I asked what type of license the EU is thinking of.
I am asking if there was ever a specific mention of the GPL - ie, has the GPL been recognized by the EU in a specific way, or was it always just the more general and vague "open source" definition.
The little blurb posted makes it sound like the EU ordered MS to create a license that was compatible with the GPL.
Is that the case? I can't find anything suggesting that the EU "named names" by saying the GPL or any specific license.
Anyone have any more insight? Did the EU really order MS to be compatible in this regard with a specific license, or is this just a poorly worded writeup (or is it just me)?
Except that people can easily buy enough power to satisfy their needs for a small premimum on top of what a terminal costs. Look at around at the so called thin-clients available. Even the thinnest of them has enough power to be a "fat-client" with substantial processing power.
Add on top of that people have routinely rejected thin-clients. Bandwidth and latency are big problems. I expect acess to my files and data with low latency. That means viewing my 8MB digital photos without waiting for part of all of it to come over a wire. I expect it to be available to me all the time.
Google is great, but Google is not above the law of physics. People - just average users - have 20 or 30 or 40 or 80 gb of data on their PCs. No matter how great Google gets, providing this amount of data quickly, securely, with low latency and high-availablity will prove out of reach. Even with Google's highly skilled team of programmers, making a decently response web-mail client, or map tool is a pain in the ass. And it's still below par. Despite how great Gmail is, it's not nearly a rich as Thunderbird or Outlook 2003.
The problem is in my view Bruce, that most F/OSS developers have no access to any decent attorneys, have not the time or energy to pursue violators.
Code that I've released as GPL as made it's way into closed products, and I can be 100% sure of it. But what recourse do I have? Practically speaking, absolutely none. I've pursued cases were clients of mine have taken code from one project and created derivitive works and then sold those works in competition with me. After over a year of hassle and aggrevation I just stopped trying. By the time the case was able to be heard it was irrelevant - am I going to fight with my own resources about code that is obsoleted now?
The fact is and remains that there are hundreds, if not thousands of GPL violations going on every day and none of those who have had their rights disrespectd will see any justice!
I am the type of libertarian that beleives in free association. If a group of Americans want to join an all volunteer force and be directed by extra-nationals, that's fine with me. They just have to be not the US Military. That's why it would be best to seperate them out. The US Military would be 100% commanded by civil US authority, with no "help" for other nations or treaty groups.
I'd actually prefer to have the UN expelled from the US and our immediate withdrawl on the 5 o'clock news tonight.
Training new conscripts even to a "barely adequate" level would take at least six months
I don't think so. If you are training people do to one job, and only one job, 6-8 weeks would probably do for most tasks. Obviously for pilots, technical specialists, etc you will need much, much longer. Perhaps years, like a fighter pilot. However, this is the role of the permanent officer core.
The type conflict that I envison would be a counter invasion, a retalitory infantry stike, etc.
A large scale non-nuclear war is not very likely sure, but it could happen. In that rare case you'd go to a mass mobilization like we saw in previous world wars.
Otherwise, an officer core of 250,000 fairly elite high-tech troopers would easily repel an invasion at least long enough to get a more nationlized defense going, if not completely stop any attackers. It is unlikely that any type of mass-style invasion could take place on the sly given how technology has enabled eyes and ears all the world over.
As far as occupations, that'd not be the role of the Department of Defense, but rather, the expeditionary force I outlined.
I am a libertarian, and I do agrue that military spending on homeland defense is appropriate.
The ideal military defense, in my mind, would be:
A strong military with a large officer core, with training camps, procedures, and guidelines ready to quickly train and equip a huge scale army in case of invasion. After World War I Germany was only allowed a small officer core as an army. What they did was compose an elite core of soliders and train them to the hilt, and send to them to learn operation doctrine with all manner of other militaries - including at one point England, France, and Russia. When World War II started looming they were able to conscript a huge army and very quickly train and equip them. The civilian police authority was militarized, and you had a very powerful military machine where a very tiny one had exisited just 10 years previous. It's a good model for defending your country.
Spend most of what we spend now overall on ballistic missle defense. Not regional based defense, or protection that will benefit other areas of the globe. As close to perfect shield using whatever technology works to deflect/destroy any plane, missle, or ship that appears hostile from entering American terrority.
Lock down the borders, and have a good national debate on what levels of immigration we want, and from where immigrants should come. Recall our military from Europe and the Korean pennisula, from Japan and from Cuba. Line up our military on the borders, North and South, East and West, and keep out anyone who doesn't belong, no questions asked.
Create an all-volunteer expeditonary force that recieves private contributions as well as left-overs from the other branches of military service for foreign wars. Call it the American Foreign Legion. Let it be directed by the UN or by like minded nations. Offer very little pay and benefits for volunteers, except a guaranteed slot in the regular military afterwards, and maybe some discounts on college.
Amend Constitition to disallow the regular military from operating outside the terority of the US in any way except if first directly attacked. Direct the volunteer expeditionary force to handle nation building, relief efforts, and other such tasks non-defense tasks. Permanently fix funding for this branch of the military at $1 government dollar for each $1 private dollar.
I'd imagine you could run a military like this on about $100B-$150B a year total. And another $200-300M for the expeditionary corp. With that we'd have a virtually impentrable border, a strong airspace protection system, and every private ship entering US waters could be escorted by the Coast Guard and each container opened and checked off-shore for contraband or weapons.
If we were ever invaded like Pancho Villa and his militia once did, or like the events that took place at Pearl Harbor again, we'd be able to institute a Department of War in short time, and repeal any invaders.
But I guess I am not practical. The Department of Defense isn't about defense. It's about pork barrel politics.
I can't even imagine what I'd build with that much money. I am not into gaming, or that junk, so I'd probably keep my 8MB PCI video card that performs 2D very well and runs about anything without specials or modules. I'd probably end up with about 2TB of drive space running a hardware raid setup, the max amount of ram available, and whatever quick little dual processor setup AMD has to offer today. And at the end of the day I'd probably have $500-100 left over.
Man. $3000 for a machine. I really can't imagine what I'd buy for it today. (Although in the day I can remember people paying $3300 for a P5-133 with 32MB of RAM).
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I agree!
It is part of the OS. That's the part of the post he made.
IE is part of the OS primarily because it is an API that is relied on by other parts of the OS, and other 3rd party apps.
It is rightly described as "middle-ware". Clearly, it's not a driver, or the kernel, or whatnot.
But also clearly, it is not a single executable strapped on top.
It's integrated, but using only methods that and API that are available to anyone to use.
Anyone who ever programmed anything large ( >2M lines of code, maybe) can tell you how easy a small change can affect something else.
Sabotage requires a high-degree of proof in my mind. And the proof just has been provided.
I would love to see some actual evidence of sabotage in Windows.
It's all fun and games until mal-ware plugins for OpenOffice are designed and implemented. You don't think the malware writers are going to ignore you forever, do you?
The Mono people are working on Windows forms right now.. a good number of classes are implemented in native .NET code. This means that any platform that can run mono and has an appropriate wrapper will be able to run WinForms apps.
As for the SQL server bit, even as a client for a Windows server, Act would be nice on Linux.
Finally, as long as these apps that depend on MSSQL use the ADO.NET library hope springs eternal that someone will write a connector to hitch ADO.NET calls to SQLClient to a MySQL backend. Really, when "SQL Server" is required, it is really only looking for the appropriate client. As long as they didnt go with some really obscure ODBC connection a generic translation driver for ADO.NET is a real possibility.
It's not just "another VM".
.NET now. That's a lot of applications, and especially, vertical market applications.
.NET with a commitment to maintain only "100% managed code". What does this mean?
It's the VM that right now thousands of software vendors are writing against.
Virtually of MS's ISVs are writing against
As these next batch of applications gets out to the market and Mono continues to mature, you will see that a Linux desktop can be an excellent companion to a corporate or small business setting.
My wife works in the medical field. The software vendor they support are porting their Windows app to
It means that when released it will, very likely, run without any modification on Mono, and therefore Linux, and probably someday Mac OSX.
That's huge.
Well, "tried and failed" is a bit of miscarriage of the facts, wouldnt you say?
He had an offer, and accepted, but later found he couldn't get the proper work permits in time to take the position.
Not exactly "tried to get a job and failed".
I handled inventory and tracking for a large set of equipment, including hard drives.
Of about 12,500 hard drives, here was the break down:
Maxtor - about 3000
Segate - about 3000
WD - about 6000
Other - about 500
So Maxtor represented about 25% of all hard drives. The drives had about equal usage, and about equal capacities, and were of about the same vintage (we're not talking MFM drives vs. SATA). About ~40GB, all made within about 18 months of each other, all deployed and used at around the same 12 month time frame.
Maxtor represented 75% of all drive failures. Far, far above the appropriate number. WD was second. Segate third.
I think it would be cool to have a solution where you have diskless workstations that boot off a USB key you assign to the users. You'd assign it to them, and if the PC ever got broken, they'd just plug into a different one.
This isn't too far from the truth. Imagine if you could get a USB-style interface that was as fast as your internal bus. A "PC" could be nothing more than a docking station. A 2GB of flash RAM, 1GB of DDR RAM, and a compact low-power CPU and all of the sudden everyone could bring their whole PCs with them.
Right. Take that to a judge. e-Scrabble has no legitimate use to a person who was illegally running a game of Scrabble. This isn't an innocent bystander frenchman who loves to cook with eggs.
Situational ethics at its worse...
Would you drop me an e-mail about your sig. I am interested in finding out about your source(s). Many thanks!
So true. If you are a "roll your own" type of guy, there are plenty of other options than Installshield or Wise.
WIX is a free installer toolset that works with XML config files. It generates customized to the hilt installers using the Windows Installer, and is very handy for automating builds. Add it into your nightly build process and you'll be cooking. WIX is an Open Source Microsoft project hosted on SourceForge.
If you need to step it back a bit, use NSIS from Nullsoft, or InnoSetup. Both are free (one as in GPL, one as in beer) installers that are easily setup and easily automated. Both are well-tested and stable.
Writing your own installer is absurd. The differences between systems is high. The number of things that can go wrong is high. The number of bad installers that people whipped up is extremely high.
For the love of God, first option for deploying Windows software is an MSI, the second is a free alternative like NSIS or InnoSetup.
Ohh dozens of licenses are not accepted by the OSI or FSF as sufficently "open source". Look at licenses like Sun Public License, the Microsoft Shared Source license, etc. These are licenses where the source is "open", but you cant distribute changes. That's what I asked what type of license the EU is thinking of.
You are referring to "GPL" compatible, or "OSI" approved.
Not the same as "open source".
open sources != GPL.
I am asking if there was ever a specific mention of the GPL - ie, has the GPL been recognized by the EU in a specific way, or was it always just the more general and vague "open source" definition.
The little blurb posted makes it sound like the EU ordered MS to create a license that was compatible with the GPL.
Is that the case? I can't find anything suggesting that the EU "named names" by saying the GPL or any specific license.
Anyone have any more insight? Did the EU really order MS to be compatible in this regard with a specific license, or is this just a poorly worded writeup (or is it just me)?
Except that people can easily buy enough power to satisfy their needs for a small premimum on top of what a terminal costs. Look at around at the so called thin-clients available. Even the thinnest of them has enough power to be a "fat-client" with substantial processing power.
Add on top of that people have routinely rejected thin-clients. Bandwidth and latency are big problems. I expect acess to my files and data with low latency. That means viewing my 8MB digital photos without waiting for part of all of it to come over a wire. I expect it to be available to me all the time.
Google is great, but Google is not above the law of physics. People - just average users - have 20 or 30 or 40 or 80 gb of data on their PCs. No matter how great Google gets, providing this amount of data quickly, securely, with low latency and high-availablity will prove out of reach. Even with Google's highly skilled team of programmers, making a decently response web-mail client, or map tool is a pain in the ass. And it's still below par. Despite how great Gmail is, it's not nearly a rich as Thunderbird or Outlook 2003.
The problem is in my view Bruce, that most F/OSS developers have no access to any decent attorneys, have not the time or energy to pursue violators.
Code that I've released as GPL as made it's way into closed products, and I can be 100% sure of it. But what recourse do I have? Practically speaking, absolutely none. I've pursued cases were clients of mine have taken code from one project and created derivitive works and then sold those works in competition with me. After over a year of hassle and aggrevation I just stopped trying. By the time the case was able to be heard it was irrelevant - am I going to fight with my own resources about code that is obsoleted now?
The fact is and remains that there are hundreds, if not thousands of GPL violations going on every day and none of those who have had their rights disrespectd will see any justice!
Maybe only if you are driving coast to coast, otherwise, you'll never finish before you shut off the vehicle.
I am the type of libertarian that beleives in free association. If a group of Americans want to join an all volunteer force and be directed by extra-nationals, that's fine with me. They just have to be not the US Military. That's why it would be best to seperate them out. The US Military would be 100% commanded by civil US authority, with no "help" for other nations or treaty groups.
I'd actually prefer to have the UN expelled from the US and our immediate withdrawl on the 5 o'clock news tonight.
A Chessmaster has to be a mastermind.
I believe that, 100%. But that does not mean necessarily "intelligent".
Lemme ask you one think: The guy is intelligent : That's a fact.
The man's intelligence is not a fact. Has it been measured formally? Can you attest to such results?
The man can play chess, and is a grandmaster, and is in a group of people one of whom is the best known chess player in the world. That is all fact.
Training new conscripts even to a "barely adequate" level would take at least six months
I don't think so. If you are training people do to one job, and only one job, 6-8 weeks would probably do for most tasks. Obviously for pilots, technical specialists, etc you will need much, much longer. Perhaps years, like a fighter pilot. However, this is the role of the permanent officer core.
The type conflict that I envison would be a counter invasion, a retalitory infantry stike, etc.
A large scale non-nuclear war is not very likely sure, but it could happen. In that rare case you'd go to a mass mobilization like we saw in previous world wars.
Otherwise, an officer core of 250,000 fairly elite high-tech troopers would easily repel an invasion at least long enough to get a more nationlized defense going, if not completely stop any attackers. It is unlikely that any type of mass-style invasion could take place on the sly given how technology has enabled eyes and ears all the world over.
As far as occupations, that'd not be the role of the Department of Defense, but rather, the expeditionary force I outlined.
The ideal military defense, in my mind, would be:
A strong military with a large officer core, with training camps, procedures, and guidelines ready to quickly train and equip a huge scale army in case of invasion. After World War I Germany was only allowed a small officer core as an army. What they did was compose an elite core of soliders and train them to the hilt, and send to them to learn operation doctrine with all manner of other militaries - including at one point England, France, and Russia. When World War II started looming they were able to conscript a huge army and very quickly train and equip them. The civilian police authority was militarized, and you had a very powerful military machine where a very tiny one had exisited just 10 years previous. It's a good model for defending your country.
Spend most of what we spend now overall on ballistic missle defense. Not regional based defense, or protection that will benefit other areas of the globe. As close to perfect shield using whatever technology works to deflect/destroy any plane, missle, or ship that appears hostile from entering American terrority.
Lock down the borders, and have a good national debate on what levels of immigration we want, and from where immigrants should come. Recall our military from Europe and the Korean pennisula, from Japan and from Cuba. Line up our military on the borders, North and South, East and West, and keep out anyone who doesn't belong, no questions asked.
Create an all-volunteer expeditonary force that recieves private contributions as well as left-overs from the other branches of military service for foreign wars. Call it the American Foreign Legion. Let it be directed by the UN or by like minded nations. Offer very little pay and benefits for volunteers, except a guaranteed slot in the regular military afterwards, and maybe some discounts on college.
Amend Constitition to disallow the regular military from operating outside the terority of the US in any way except if first directly attacked. Direct the volunteer expeditionary force to handle nation building, relief efforts, and other such tasks non-defense tasks. Permanently fix funding for this branch of the military at $1 government dollar for each $1 private dollar. I'd imagine you could run a military like this on about $100B-$150B a year total. And another $200-300M for the expeditionary corp. With that we'd have a virtually impentrable border, a strong airspace protection system, and every private ship entering US waters could be escorted by the Coast Guard and each container opened and checked off-shore for contraband or weapons.
If we were ever invaded like Pancho Villa and his militia once did, or like the events that took place at Pearl Harbor again, we'd be able to institute a Department of War in short time, and repeal any invaders.
But I guess I am not practical. The Department of Defense isn't about defense. It's about pork barrel politics.
I can't even imagine what I'd build with that much money. I am not into gaming, or that junk, so I'd probably keep my 8MB PCI video card that performs 2D very well and runs about anything without specials or modules. I'd probably end up with about 2TB of drive space running a hardware raid setup, the max amount of ram available, and whatever quick little dual processor setup AMD has to offer today. And at the end of the day I'd probably have $500-100 left over.
Man. $3000 for a machine. I really can't imagine what I'd buy for it today. (Although in the day I can remember people paying $3300 for a P5-133 with 32MB of RAM).