Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think the "Open" part was also referring to the fact that VMS, which had previously been tied tightly to the VAX architecture had received a HW abstraction layer to allow it to run on Alpha.
The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It chronicles the development of Data General's 32 bit architecture circa 1980. They were chasing DEC's tail and things were pretty intense.
My favorite quote from the book was the resignation letter of an engineer who burned-out dealing with nanosecond timing issues. He said he was going to Vermont where he would not deal with any unit of time shorter than a season.
A small girl fell up from Bizzaro today striking and obliterating a large meteor. Debris from the impact is expected to reach Earth sometime next week.
"One computer, one user, one session."/* increase profit margins */ #define max_users 1
"That isn't to say that multitasking isn't useful - it is. It just isn't required by most people. " But 4 out of 5 dancing paperclips surveyed demand it.
"Mom doesn't need a machine with a root and a user " That's what McAfee is for, right?
"I think Windows is good. It's Microsoft's anti-trust violations that are bad."
Why is Windows bad?
Windows is designed to enable MS's predatory practices. In that sense, it's very bad.
From a tech pov, Windows represents a huge step backwards in computing.
Multitasking/multiuser OSes go back to the sixties (maybe even earlier). The pdp8 we had in high school in the seventies even had virtual machine capabilites. These are fundamentals of a general purpose OS, yet versions of Windows as recent as ME don't have true multitasking. Multiuser is an add-on to the NT line.
Throughout MS's history in the OS business, competirors have offered superior products. Digital research had a better DOS than MS. Several companies had better GUI-over-DOS solutions than the early versions of Windows. OS/2 was better than Windows. MS themselves had a good OS back in the mid-80s with XENIX, but they didn't own all the rights to it, so they abandoned it.
Anyone who's too young to remember what computing was like before the mushrooming of wintel won't get to see how really bad Windows is until it's forced to compete on a level playing field.
Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.
Au contraire. A human zombie has no soul, no mind. All that remains for him is for the grim reaper to take his body. It's an excellent metaphore for what happens to a Unix process after it has exited, but before it's process slot gets deleted.
I don't see why they wouldn't hardwire stationary equipment. It's not like a cat-5 is any harder than big electrical, vacuum, and other types of plumbing.
OTOH, it would be a big improvement over the IR-speaking mobile robots i encounterd when i worked in a particular fab in Japan.
"You realize private corporations do a much better job than the post office, right?"
Nope. For letters and small parcels the USPS gives much better service for the dollar.
Anyway, my point was that, like the creation of the postal service, the creation of a low cost, secure, open OS is a worthwhile infrastructure project for the US government.
I wouldn't object to Uncle Sam contracting with private companies to develop it, but the government should have rights to the source code and should be obligated to make it available to citizens.
We (the people) pay companies to build roads, but we don't pay them a royalty everytime a new car drives on it.
r-o-y-a-l-t-y - the reason we fought for our independence from England
the government's only real job is to defend the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
Uh, what about the postal service? The people realized that such an important part of society could not be trusted to corporations (our founding fathers were communists to a degree). Of course if MS had been in the delivery business back then...
Unfortunately, citizens don't count anymore. The only thing the politicians care about is favors from rich people.
The GPL unlike other licenses does NOT require one to give source changes back to the original developer.
That's an interesting interpretation. From the FAQ at gnu.org:
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
The client libraries for MySQL are covered under the LGPL which means that they can be linked and distributed with value added products without those products inheriting the open source requirement.
The database server is GPL which means that it cannot be linked with value added products without a commercial license.
BS. When it comes down to it, the only law anyone in the U.S. should give a rat's ass about is the constitution. Fight the rest with Uzis and hydrogen bombs if necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
"movies are an artform"
Art schmart.
I'm afraid I can't let you try to explain that, Dave.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think the "Open" part was also referring to the fact that VMS, which had previously been tied tightly to the VAX architecture had received a HW abstraction layer to allow it to run on Alpha.
The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It chronicles the development of Data General's 32 bit architecture circa 1980. They were chasing DEC's tail and things were pretty intense.
My favorite quote from the book was the resignation letter of an engineer who burned-out dealing with nanosecond timing issues. He said he was going to Vermont where he would not deal with any unit of time shorter than a season.
"The problem of course is that it's a very fuzzy criteria..."
Is that anything like a golden retriever?
Can i get it now?
August 24, 2002
A small girl fell up from Bizzaro today striking and obliterating a large meteor. Debris from the impact is expected to reach Earth sometime next week.
and nobody will ever need more than 640k, right?
/* increase profit margins */
"One computer, one user, one session."
#define max_users 1
"That isn't to say that multitasking isn't useful - it is. It just isn't required by most people. "
But 4 out of 5 dancing paperclips surveyed demand it.
"Mom doesn't need a machine with a root and a user "
That's what McAfee is for, right?
"First show them pictures of RMS and then some of his classic quotes."
Then show them dancing Monkeyboy.
"I think Windows is good. It's Microsoft's anti-trust violations that are bad."
Why is Windows bad?
Windows is designed to enable MS's predatory practices. In that sense, it's very bad.
From a tech pov, Windows represents a huge step backwards in computing.
Multitasking/multiuser OSes go back to the sixties (maybe even earlier). The pdp8 we had in high school in the seventies even had virtual machine capabilites. These are fundamentals of a general purpose OS, yet versions of Windows as recent as ME don't have true multitasking. Multiuser is an add-on to the NT line.
Throughout MS's history in the OS business, competirors have offered superior products. Digital research had a better DOS than MS. Several companies had better GUI-over-DOS solutions than the early versions of Windows. OS/2 was better than Windows. MS themselves had a good OS back in the mid-80s with XENIX, but they didn't own all the rights to it, so they abandoned it.
Anyone who's too young to remember what computing was like before the mushrooming of wintel won't get to see how really bad Windows is until it's forced to compete on a level playing field.
that would make MS the Redhat of Windows. But that can't be right, cuz then there would be a windrake distro and anonymous ftp access to the source.
answer: no
What if they look into each other's eyes? Will they undergo a personality exchange like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd?
"The Linux Apothecary"
Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.
Au contraire. A human zombie has no soul, no mind. All that remains for him is for the grim reaper to take his body. It's an excellent metaphore for what happens to a Unix process after it has exited, but before it's process slot gets deleted.
suppositories
an old Steven Wright joke that went something like...
I went to the 24 hour store and the clerk was closing up.
"I thought you were open 24 hours."
"Not in a row."
"need to download and install a new distro everytime a new version of KDE comes up"
I've upgraded KDE on Mandrake a few times over the last few years and each time it's been as easy as a single download/install.
After the KDE2->KDE3 upgrade, both versions remained on the system and are both fully functional.
I'm currently running v3.02 but i see that 3.03 is out. Just to prove my point, here goes...
url=ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/packages/desk tops/kde/stable/3.0.3/Mandrake/8.2/
wget -c $url\*rpm
(fetching, fetching, fetching)
rpm -Fvh *rpm
(installing,installing,installing)
It's done in about 15 minutes over a cable modem.
Rectangular (block mode) text selection is a terrific feature.
hint: CTRL-V to enable block-mode secection.
I don't see why they wouldn't hardwire stationary equipment. It's not like a cat-5 is any harder than big electrical, vacuum, and other types of plumbing.
OTOH, it would be a big improvement over the IR-speaking mobile robots i encounterd when i worked in a particular fab in Japan.
Nah... it's not really ugly until somebody digs out some safety pins, and goes hunting for the coax lines of the other side....
:)
.3 on the RF strength meter if you want, but to me, this post comes thru 5x5. Thanks for refreshing some old memory cells.
I speak from experience.
Mod us both down to
o+o
This reminds me a lot of the way people used to step on each other during the CB radio boom of the mid seventies.
;-}
I wonder how long it will be before someone starts selling 100W 802.11 amplifiers
"You realize private corporations do a much better job than the post office, right?"
Nope. For letters and small parcels the USPS gives much better service for the dollar.
Anyway, my point was that, like the creation of the postal service, the creation of a low cost, secure, open OS is a worthwhile infrastructure project for the US government.
I wouldn't object to Uncle Sam contracting with private companies to develop it, but the government should have rights to the source code and should be obligated to make it available to citizens.
We (the people) pay companies to build roads, but we don't pay them a royalty everytime a new car drives on it.
r-o-y-a-l-t-y - the reason we fought for our independence from England
the government's only real job is to defend the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
Uh, what about the postal service? The people realized that such an important part of society could not be trusted to corporations (our founding fathers were communists to a degree). Of course if MS had been in the delivery business back then...
Unfortunately, citizens don't count anymore. The only thing the politicians care about is favors from rich people.
The GPL unlike other licenses does NOT require one to give source changes back to the original developer.
That's an interesting interpretation. From the FAQ at gnu.org:
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
The client libraries for MySQL are covered under the LGPL which means that they can be linked and distributed with value added products without those products inheriting the open source requirement. The database server is GPL which means that it cannot be linked with value added products without a commercial license.
http://www.mysql.com/support/arrangements.html
BS. When it comes down to it, the only law anyone in the U.S. should give a rat's ass about is the constitution. Fight the rest with Uzis and hydrogen bombs if necessary.