DocBook SGML (or the XML version) is what you need. It was specifically designed to document code, and you can use it to generate either very nice looking print (ps or pdf), or HTML.
Not to mention the fact that Emacs/PSGML mode eats it for breakfast.
HTML is not such a bad option either if you don't need printed documents. Microsoft will undoubtedly do their darnedest to extend HTML severely, but there is no reason to take advantage of those extensions for simple documentation. After all, with documentation you probably aren't too worried about page layout. You simply need links, headers, bold and italics, and perhaps some basic tables and figures. Most of the documentation I write would probably look acceptable in lynx (you would need an image viewer for the pictures).
It's quite simple. AOL currently uses IE. In other words the 40% of all Internet customers that they control use IE. Oh, and they are also probably the fastest growing Internet Service Provider out there. With AOL version 6.0 they are supposedly switching to Mozilla. That would put Mozilla right back in the running.
Throw in all the upcoming Internet Devices that will almost certainly be running Mozilla (IE only runs on Windows), and it's a horse race again.
Your warm fuzzies aren't going to keep SCO in the OS business. If so many of the kings of the NASDAQ still want to run SCO, then why is SCO flirting so much with Linux?
Your example of the Korn shell is actually quite apt, because you will be able to use a variant of the Korn shell as long as you want, as it has been open sourced. You could maintain it yourself indefinitely.
On the other hand, if SCO decides to stop selling Unixware SCO's Unixware customers are flat out of luck. They can continue to run the installations they already have, but their investments are literally investments in an evolutionary dead end.
You may scoff at the mom & pop companies that use Linux (although I would bet that more Fortune 500 companies have Linux installations than SCO installations), but it doesn't change the fact that Linux use is on the rise, and Unixware is in a downward spiral. SCO is going to have to jump off the Unixware boat if they are to have any chance of survival.
In fact, the mom & pop market is an order of magnitude larger than the Fortune 500 market. If Linux is doing well there, that is good news indeed.
Ah, SCO really IS doomed. They have come a long way from the days when they used to send propaganda to Linuxers in the mail trying to "upsell" them to SCO kit.
Sure/. is biased, as is ZDNET, and MSN, and the Chicago Tribune and Jason Earl, for that matter. We all have our biases our likes and dislikes. I read/. because my biases are more closely aligned with CmdrTaco's than Jesse Berst's.
On the other hand, SCO Unixware is still doomed. Your biases may cause you to believe otherwise, but that isn't going to save Unixware.
Isn't the free market a wonderful thing to behold.The reason that AOL bought Netscape is that they realized that they were never going to be able to compete against Microsoft in the ISP business if they allowed Microsoft to set all of the rules. Can you imagine the shennanigans that Microsoft could play with AOL if IE became the defacto browser? Not only would AOL's version of IE be perpetually behind MSN's, but Microsoft would undoubtedly leverage their browser position to advertise for MSN. Since one of AOL's biggest selling points has always been their "special" client software AOL has no other option but to create their own web browser.
It will be interesting to see who wins this particular "Clash of the Titans," but I definitely wouldn't count out AOL or Mozilla. AOL controls an ungodly number of browsers, and they are in direct competition with Microsoft in the Internet Service Provider business. And Mozilla is poised to become the browser of choice for embedded applications. It's light, it's fast, and it's free.
What troubles me are the folks at Macromedia. I can't hardly believe that they would be interested in discounting nearly 20% of web users. Not to mention ticking off the largest ISP in the world. Perhaps their new endgame is for Macromedia to end up as part of Visual Studio. If that's the case, well then, mores the pity.
One thing for certain is that this particular customer isn't interested in using Macromedia's products anymore.
Wrong. See your own first statement ("Windows NT has a distint advantage in application availability.") for the reason why DOS + Windows "reigned supreme" over the Macintosh. Does the phrase "application barrier to entry" ring a bell?
I am talking about the Macintosh long before there was a such thing as DOS + Windows. Perhaps you don't remember the time when Microsoft's most famous application was probably Microsoft Word, which was available only for the Macintosh.
I would also say that your statement about it becoming harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application, especially in the server market should read: pretty much ONLY in the server market.
Compare the disparity of desktop applications between Windows and Linux in 1995 and today. You would be amazed at the progress made in the Linux camp. In this same amount of time Microsoft has purchased a browser and bolted it to their desktop. Linux has several very usuable Office suites, it has several very usable browers, and it has not one but two competing projects to create an entire suite of desktop applications.
In the server market Linux has really been giving Microsoft a kicking, but the pain is starting to spread to the desktop as well. The amount of Linux desktops is small, but it is growing at a furious pace.
To extend your Macintosh analogy, Steve Jobs knew early on that in order for the Macintosh to be competitive on the desktop he had to have the dominant application providers: Microsoft and Lotus writing applications for his platform. Because the desktop is where the big money is. I don't see anybody cutting those same equivalent deals on the Linux platform, so I can't see how Linux could ever be a credible desktop alternative. Perhaps the alternative device market will change all this, and that is probably why you see so many blocking moves coming out of Redmond in those markets.
Fah, I told you why Macintosh failed despite the fact that it had all of the applications. The PC was less capable but it was also less expensive, and it was "good enough." DOS had already destroyed the Macintosh long before Windows ever was a reality. The technical advances of DOS + Windows only sealed the fate of the Mac.
Linux is already showing signs of being able to one-up Microsoft in this area. Not only is the operating system free, but the software that runs on top of Linux is largely free as well. For server installations (which are quite a bit more expensive) this price differential has already had a profound impact. But eventually Linux is going to be at a point where Dell and Compaq are going to become very tempted by the billions they could save by preloading Linux instead of Windows. And with the DOJ watching Microsoft it is possible for the OEM to hedge their bet with Linux without facing retaliation from Microsoft. As for the "alternative device market" Windows has already lost. They can't afford to compete with Linux on price, and they certainly aren't willing to give the OEM the freedom that Linux gives them. Linux allows the PDA OEM to create a whole array of value added extensions without giving up the compatibility that Linux allows. Ever notice how WinCE devices all look the same, and act the same? Well Linux would allow much greater flexibility without giving up compatibility with other Linux based devices. Not to mention the fact that Linux is free.
More importantly, however, is that there is no such thing as a legacy PDA application. The application availibility of Windows does not give Windows CE an advantage. In other words the two platforms are starting out equal, and the only thing that differentiates them are things like price and stability.
Sure, Microsoft will throw their money and weight around. But for every vendor that Microsoft pays to use Windows CE, there will be several other vendors that have no choice but to push Linux. After all, if they too choose to adopt WinCE, then they will be at a disadvantage. They will be selling what essentially is an identical device, except they will have paid more for WinCE than their competitors.
Thanks for replying, especially considering that I got the usual "Flamebait" moderation for pointing out the sometimes sad history of UNIX advocacy.
Are you kidding? Your post was intelligent and quite pointed. However, I have been using Linux professionally for nearly five years. Back then you had to be crazy (I prefer visionary) to think that Linux had a chance. As far as I am concerned Linux has already made it. Say what you will it is an important part of the architecture of the Internet, it is a cost effective solution for a wide array of problems, and it is gaining applications and abilities at an unprecedented pace. It is not the right tool for every job (my wife doesn't use it on her desktop, yet), but it gets closer to being "good enough" every day.
You may be right, but I suspect you are underestimating the effect of marketing forces. There were two powerful forces behind the PC; the fact that it was relatively inexpensive, and the fact that the corporate power of IBM was backing it. These forces are opposed in the case of Linux (with the corporate power now being Microsoft's, of course), instead of aligned, and it will at the minimum cause the rise of Linux acceptance to be noticably slowed (although IBM still has considerable clout in that area. Were IBM to start pushing a pre-loaded corporate Linux desktop, that prediction could well take on the air of "Dewey Defeats Truman":)
The corporate power of IBM was backing their mainframes. PCs were a toy that were snuck into the enterprise by people trying to get their work done. The one redeeming factor that PCs had was that they were inexpensive enough to sneak in under the radar.
Does that sound familiar? Linux is penetrating the enterprise in almost exactly the same way. It generally starts out with a developer or two on a skunk works project and blossoms from there.
Even more important, however, is the fact that Linux also has quite a bit of industry support. IBM has Linux running on the S/390 (and just about everything else they sell). They have also donated quite a bit of software to the Free Software community. Dell has published SpecWeb99 scores running on Linux that destroy their Windows 2000 scores. SGI and SCO have practically abandoned their commercial *nixes for Linux. And the list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the only company that wouldn't benefit from an open platform for development is Microsoft. And while Microsoft is certainly chuck full of bright people, they don't have a monopoly on talent.
Not that Linux needs industry support. Most of the gains that Linux has made were accomplished without so much as a "How do you do?" from the computer indsustry. The question at this point isn't what Linux needs to do, it's numbers show that it is growing at a much better than merely healthy rate. The question is "what can Microsoft do that might somehow slow Linux down?" I personally don't see Microsoft doing anything that appears to have an impact on the growing Linux community.
Gnome and KDE get better every day, and I am already using Mozilla as my primary browser. All it will take from Microsoft is one slip and they will be a legacy system. Not only do they have to maintain their marketshare, but they have to upsell all of their customers on a regular basis to the newest and greatest software. If they don't maintain revenues they are as good as done, and in this particular battlefield older versions of Windows are much bigger competition than Linux. Linux, on the other hand, doesn't need to turn a profit, it doesn't need industry support, and there isn't very much that Microsoft can do that would convince the legion of Linux developers to develop instead for Windows.
I will grant you that Windows NT still has a distinct advantage in application availability, and I will even grant you that there are a certain number of shops that are going to side with Microsoft no matter what they do.
This does not take away from the fact that Linux has become a force to be reckoned with in the server realm, and that it is even gaining acceptance in Microsoft's own backyard, the desktop operating system.
The reason for this is quite simple. Linux is less expensive, and it comes complete with an impressive array of programs (especially programming tools).
For years the Macintosh was a much more sophisticated machine than the IBM PC, and yet DOS reigned supreme because of one simple fact. Macintoshes were more expensive than commodity PCs running DOS, and DOS was essentially "good enough." In the end DOS + Windows not only surpassed the Macintosh in revenues, but they surpassed it in technology as well.
The same thing is happening again. Only this time the commodity platform is not Windows, it is Linux. For an ever increasing number of people Linux is "good enough," and the price is certainly right. Windows advocates have been explaining to me how Linux was doomed since 1995, and yet it continues to grow at an exponential pace. Even worse, for Windows anyhow, Linux is getting to the point where it is much harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application. This is especially true when you are considering using Linux as a server.
Not to mention the fact that Microsoft's biggest customers (the hardware OEMs) would absolutely love to see Linux become the standard for the new Millenium. After all, why should Dell or Compaq have to pay Microsoft a tax to sell their own hardware. Especially when Linux is free.
There are currently more Linux seats than there have ever been "UNIX" seats. While companies like SCO, who made their money selling a commercial UNIX for i386, are certainly getting hit hard, there is no underestimating the damage that Linux is doing to Windows NT.
The only reason that Windows NT is even considered, in most cases, is price, and Linux gives you UNIX features at an even lower price. Besides, Linux doesn't have to make a profit to survive. In other words, while the Linux firestorm may be especially hard on Microsoft's competitors this does not necessarily mean that this benefits Windows. After all, Linux is replacing Windows too, and Linux is going to be very resistant to Microsoft's usual tactics. Microsoft isn't going to be able to put economic pressure on Linux, GPL software is very resistant to embracing and extending, and they certainly aren't going to be able to undersell Linux. Nor is Microsoft going to be able to count on Intel to close the performance gap between Windows and Linux. After all, Linux runs on the same platform as Windows (and a whole lot more).
Microsoft was competing quite successfully against commercial Unix, but they have yet to come up with a tactic that is even somewhat useful against the Free Unixes. I would bet that Microsoft would give anything to be able to compete with the likes of SCO instead of Linux.
They had what amounted to a good start on a GUI toolkit with GTK. It was no where near complete, however. It certainly wasn't on par with what TrollTech was offering with QT. I probably did overstate the problem, but the fact remains that early versions of Gnome were severely hindered by the fact that GTK was under serious development. Somehow, however, they have managed to close the gap.
Exactly, the Gnome project was formed because many in the Free Software community were worried that KDE and the proprietary QT widget set would become a de-facto standard on GNU/Linux systems.
In fact, it is almost absolutely amazing that Gnome is now at a state where it is comparable to KDE. After all, KDE had a head start, and the Gnome folks had to build a GUI toolkit first and a Corba subsystem first.
I am nearly debt free, I have a lifestyle that is not extravagant and could easily be supported by a job with a lower salary. I spend a ton of time with my beautiful wife and my little girl. I have a life outside of work. I volunteer as a Scout Master (meaning I get to go fishing on a regular basis). I have a garden, I am active in my church, and I am on good terms with my neighbors. Hell, I live in Idaho, and contrary to what Mr. Katz thinks it's not such a bad life here.
Just because you are caught up in the rat race doesn't mean that everyone else is. It's my opinion that the biggest cause of stress in Americans is the fact that they are caught up in a world of consumer debt. They can't afford to stop working even for a moment because if they do the bill collectors will take away their house.
If I don't owe "the man" he can't control me, and so I have structured my life in such a way that I live well within my means. This means making sacrifices like not having the newest computer hardware (at home anyway:), and not driving the fanciest car. I don't eat out much, preferring instead to sit down to dinner with my family. It means that I have to save up my money for larger purchases so that I can pay cash instead of using credit, but that guarantees that I stay within my budget.
If you don't like how your life is going, feel free to whine. Just don't expect everyone else to feel sorry for you. I would personally suggest taking some responsibility for your own personal happiness. Instead of complaining about how everyone is under so much stress, why not take an inventory of the things that are causing you stress. Then work out a way to eliminate these stresses from your life. If working long hours is giving you stress, find a job that requires fewer hours. If working fewer hours means making less money, find a way to get by with less.
I use my own personal example because it illustrates the things that I have done to escape from the rat race. Chances are good that your priorities will be different, and so your escape route will also be different, but telling me that I love my cage simply because I refuse to join the chorus of whiners is simply blinding you to the fact that there are people who are successfully dealing with the problem of stress.
In the end, who's the person in the cage? Is it the person who owns little but owes nothing, or the person who has everything but spends every waking minute working to pay his creditors?
I would agree if we were whining for things that other people need. But the people complaining about "stress" are about as self-centered as you can get.
"Look at me," they say, "I have got it bad. I am a massive ball of stress."
And when you tell them that what they need to do is work less, spend more time with their family, stay out of debt, and take the time to help those around them, they look at you like you were some kind of bug. The fact of the matter is that the more time you spend worrying about how you feel, and what you want the more stress you are going to feel.
Perhaps you can already see where I am going with this. It isn't the whiners that are improving the lot of people around the world, it's the doers. If the people that are out helping also do a little "evangelizing" for their cause this does not make them "whiners."
I can't imagine the BSD folks wanting to put their kernel in/sys/gnu, it would undoubtedly break a heck of a lot of BSD software:).
In other words, while the BSD folks are willing to include GPLed utilities in their distribution, mainly because they wouldn't even have a compiler without gcc, but I would bet money that they aren't willing to include GPL code in their kernel. IANAL, but the FSF and the Debian Project feel that the KDE project is distributing software illegally simply because they link the QT libs from GPLed software. They say that QT then becomes part of the "derivative work." The monolithic BSD kernels almost certainly would constitute a "derivative work" as is regarded by the GPL and so the entire kernel source would have to fall under the GPL.
I couldn't agree more. I think that the only thing that has gone up since 30 years ago is the number of people that are habitual complainers.
My grandfather's generation lived through the depression, went to war in World War II, and basically didn't have a third of the comforts that I take for granted, and yet they somehow managed to be pretty darn optimistic about their lives, their future, and their country. His grandparents hiked clear across the U.S. cooking their meals with Buffalo poop. Compared to my forebears I wouldn't know stress if it smacked me in the face with a tomahawk.
Nowadays Americans don't really have to worry about things like invading tribes of Mongols, or the Black Plague, and so instead we worry about our stress levels. We habitually whine about how hard our life is without even realizing that pretty much the entire world would happily switch places with us.
I went to high school in Lima, Peru and if there is one thing that I learned from my time there it is that I have no room to complain. My life is not that hard, nor do my pitiful little worries amount to a hill of beans. The average American will almost certainly live longer and be more successful than 99% of the people that have ever lived on this planet, and yet all we do is complain.
Granted, I will tone it down. When I re-read my post I was actually embarrassed. I hope you will accept my apology, there was no reason for me to lash out at you in that manner.
The ironic part is that you probably know more about the subject than I do. I am no kernel space hacker, by any stretch of the imagination, and I am simply reguritating what I read in the various articles.
Actually there is a specific feature that would probably make TUX incompatible with the BSDs. TUX is licensed under the GPL and the BSD maintainers would probably be very reluctant to port it to their OSes. Especially since it is possible that this would require them to release the derivative work under the GPL.
Which leads to the obvious question for Ingo. You mention a specific disclaimer that would allow the Apache to be linked with TUX, do the BSDs get the same privilege?
Not that I particularly care, as I am not a BSD user, but the putting such a nifty program as TUX under the GPL is bound to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth in the BSD camp. Which brings up another question. How much pressure do you get from your BSD compatriots to release software like this under a more liberal BSD-friendly license?
object cache, where objects can be combined with dynamic content freely. You can witness this in the SPECweb99 submission, the SPECweb99 TUX dynamic module (every vendor has to write a SPECweb99 module to serve dynamic content) 'embedds' TUX objects in dynamic replies. The TUX object cache is not a dumb in-memory HTTP-reply cache, it's a complex object cache providing async disk IO capabilities to user-space as well. User-space application code can request objects from the cache and can use them in dynamic (or static) replies.
full fledged webserver providing HTTP 1.1 keepalive, CGI, logging, transparent redirection, and many other features. So in our opinion TUX is a new and unique class of webserver, there is no prior art implementing such kind of 'HTTP stack' and 'abstract object cache' approach. It's i believe a completely new approach to webserving.
As you can see, Ingo Molnar seems to think that TUX is beneficial both for static and dynamic content. If you would have read the articles in question (or if you knew anything about SpecWeb99 which is a test of both static and dynamic content) then you would realize that your statement is completely unfounded.
There is a kernel-space static content webserver called khttpd, but TUX is something completely other.
An interesting side note is that TUX would appear to be quite innovative, in many ways it is a whole new concept in web serving. It will be interesting to see commercial vendors chasing the tail-lights of the Free Software world in this particular regard.
Don't blame your lack of support on PostgreSQL. When I decided to experiment with PHP and PostgreSQL I dutifully subscribed to the corresponding PostgreSQL mailing lists, and I have found them to be very helpful. Perhaps the most important benefit I have gained from the PostgreSQL mailing lists is an idea as to what the PostgreSQL backend is capable of.
When I switched from MySQL I mostly was interested in using PostgreSQL exactly like it was MySQL. Hanging out on the lists I learned to use Postgres's more advanced features, and I found that this was a huge boon to my projects.
Of course, I also found myself shifting away from PHP..., but that's probably just a coincidence.
Actually it is now possible to raise the 8K limit to 32K when you are compiling PostgreSQL. This is sometimes handy, but it isn't nearly as cool as what they are currently working on for 7.1.
In 7.1 they will allow you define columns as being "toastable" which means that PostgreSQL will automagically break the large objects into pieces and store them in several consecutive tuples. This will all be transparent to the user.
Of course it is already possible to use the Large Object interface to store information in columns that might break 8K. It just is more unwieldy.
Exactly, I want to see a benchmark of PostgreSQL's transactions and MySQL's supposed transactions. Oh, and I want to see it on a machine that uses extensive use of triggers and stored procedures to cut down on connections to the database.
MySQL is a great product, but comparing it to PostgreSQL is like comparing an ultralight to an oil tanker. MySQL is hardly more than an SQL-based interface to the filesystem, while PostgreSQL is an RDBMS with ACID properties and a raft of cool extra features. If all you need is a format to put your data in for immediate retrieval without ACID capabilities then MySQL is perfect. However, if you need more than this then MySQL simply won't do.
The most interesting part of the article, in my opinion, was that MySQL was not really that much faster than PostgreSQL even in MySQL's one clear specialty selects. For the slight penalty that you pay in selects with PostgreSQL you gain a whole raft of features, that make database development a lot easier. The writer of the article mentions that you can get around MySQL's problems "with a little elbow grease," but why should you when the PostgreSQL team has already solved these problems for you.
Just because MySQL doesn't solve your database problems does not mean that you should discount all Open Source database solutions. I think that you will find that PostgreSQL has the features that you need (unless you absolutely need remote synchronization, in which case try again soon they're working on it).
You wouldn't have to control every cell in the body. Once your new (I mean GNU) Linux body was installed it would run unattended almost indefinitely. On the other hand if you did want to make changes you would have the complete source code and could make modifications to your heart's (and other body parts) content. You would have nifty scripting tools like Cellular Perl or NanoPython to help keep things running smoothly. And tripwire could be used to control things like cancerous growth, viral infections, and probably even dangerous mood swings.
Best of all, however, would be that I would finally get that third arm I have always wanted. Not only would it improve my ski-boxing, but it would make it possible to use the mouse without taking my hand off of home row on the keyboard! Woohoo, that would be sweet!
Yes, but screening is the easiest part of the whole equation to replace. The classic example of this is this website./. is little more than a News screening service for nerds. They don't make the news, they generally don't even write the articles, they simply act as a filter (and a place to discuss).
What is needed is a website (or series of websites, one for each specific genre of music) where a group of dedicated music lovers sort through all of the newly available MP3's and sort the wheat from the chaff. They could support their site via advertising and could probably even sideline in selling the CDs that they promote. What makes/. work is precisely the same magic that would make these types of music review sites work./. readers (for the most part anyway) trust CmdrTaco and crew to pick out interesting geek topics on a regular basis. So we show up and discuss. They make a living using the judgement as to what is truly "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
There is nothing stopping someone else from taking the Slashdot engine and making "Music for Goths, Indies that don't Suck," or perhaps "Tunes for Cowpokes, Not Your Same-Old Big City Country." Sure, some of these sites won't know good music from a hole in their head, but some of them probably will know what they are talking about. There will probably even be one that almost exactly matches your own particular music tastes.
It's actually quite simple. The primary reason that Microsoft has to support old APIs in their programs is that they have too many customers that aren't willing to upgrade to newer versions of their OS, but they are willing to purchase newer versions of their applications. The two primary reasons that people don't upgrade are:
1) Upgrading Windows is costly.
2) Upgrading Windows is difficult.
Linux has both of these problems fairly well licked. Upgrading a Debian GNU/Linux system is as easy as "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade", and the price is quite reasonable:).
Linux also has a sane library versioning scheme that allows you to safely and easily install older versions of shared libraries. Your older applications will use then use the same libraries that they have always used, and your newer applications will use the newest fancy-dan versions.
Linux's library versioning strengths even extend to the development tools. Tools like GNU/autoconfigure were designed to port GNU programs between completely different architectures, keeping track of the difference between Linux versions is a comparative snap. Of course, this only helps you with software that comes with source code, but that covers just about all of the Linux software I use.
My guess is that application vendors will largely target distributions. In other words they will state that application Foo works with RedHat Linux versions 5.2+. Curious hackers will then find out what libraries the application actually depends on and they will install those libraries and run it on the distribution that they like best.
Actually this depends completely on the amount of experience required. If you want to get an NT admin with the same amount of experience as your "experienced" NT admin, then you will generally find that the NT admin is more expensive. Likewise if you want a Linux admin with the same level of expertise as your recent MCSE graduate then you will probably pay less than you would for an NT admin.
This doesn't even get into the fact that with Linux upgrades are free, and hardware stretches a lot further. Nor does it recognize the fact that most Linux admins are capable of adminning far more hosts.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has been pitting the skills of entry level MCSEs against hardcore Unix veterans in their TCO evaluations for some time now. They have completely glossed over the fact that hardcore NT veterans are often more expensive than their Unix counterparts. The popularity of Linux, and it's down to earth prices, have made it relatively easy to get a hold of Junior level Linux admins at rational prices. Heck, colleges these days are pumping out kids that know Linux like they were going out of style.
Slashdot Mirror
DocBook SGML (or the XML version) is what you need. It was specifically designed to document code, and you can use it to generate either very nice looking print (ps or pdf), or HTML.
Not to mention the fact that Emacs/PSGML mode eats it for breakfast.
HTML is not such a bad option either if you don't need printed documents. Microsoft will undoubtedly do their darnedest to extend HTML severely, but there is no reason to take advantage of those extensions for simple documentation. After all, with documentation you probably aren't too worried about page layout. You simply need links, headers, bold and italics, and perhaps some basic tables and figures. Most of the documentation I write would probably look acceptable in lynx (you would need an image viewer for the pictures).
It's quite simple. AOL currently uses IE. In other words the 40% of all Internet customers that they control use IE. Oh, and they are also probably the fastest growing Internet Service Provider out there. With AOL version 6.0 they are supposedly switching to Mozilla. That would put Mozilla right back in the running.
Throw in all the upcoming Internet Devices that will almost certainly be running Mozilla (IE only runs on Windows), and it's a horse race again.
Your warm fuzzies aren't going to keep SCO in the OS business. If so many of the kings of the NASDAQ still want to run SCO, then why is SCO flirting so much with Linux?
Your example of the Korn shell is actually quite apt, because you will be able to use a variant of the Korn shell as long as you want, as it has been open sourced. You could maintain it yourself indefinitely.
On the other hand, if SCO decides to stop selling Unixware SCO's Unixware customers are flat out of luck. They can continue to run the installations they already have, but their investments are literally investments in an evolutionary dead end.
You may scoff at the mom & pop companies that use Linux (although I would bet that more Fortune 500 companies have Linux installations than SCO installations), but it doesn't change the fact that Linux use is on the rise, and Unixware is in a downward spiral. SCO is going to have to jump off the Unixware boat if they are to have any chance of survival.
In fact, the mom & pop market is an order of magnitude larger than the Fortune 500 market. If Linux is doing well there, that is good news indeed.
Ah, SCO really IS doomed. They have come a long way from the days when they used to send propaganda to Linuxers in the mail trying to "upsell" them to SCO kit.
Sure /. is biased, as is ZDNET, and MSN, and the Chicago Tribune and Jason Earl, for that matter. We all have our biases our likes and dislikes. I read /. because my biases are more closely aligned with CmdrTaco's than Jesse Berst's.
On the other hand, SCO Unixware is still doomed. Your biases may cause you to believe otherwise, but that isn't going to save Unixware.
Isn't the free market a wonderful thing to behold.The reason that AOL bought Netscape is that they realized that they were never going to be able to compete against Microsoft in the ISP business if they allowed Microsoft to set all of the rules. Can you imagine the shennanigans that Microsoft could play with AOL if IE became the defacto browser? Not only would AOL's version of IE be perpetually behind MSN's, but Microsoft would undoubtedly leverage their browser position to advertise for MSN. Since one of AOL's biggest selling points has always been their "special" client software AOL has no other option but to create their own web browser.
It will be interesting to see who wins this particular "Clash of the Titans," but I definitely wouldn't count out AOL or Mozilla. AOL controls an ungodly number of browsers, and they are in direct competition with Microsoft in the Internet Service Provider business. And Mozilla is poised to become the browser of choice for embedded applications. It's light, it's fast, and it's free.
What troubles me are the folks at Macromedia. I can't hardly believe that they would be interested in discounting nearly 20% of web users. Not to mention ticking off the largest ISP in the world. Perhaps their new endgame is for Macromedia to end up as part of Visual Studio. If that's the case, well then, mores the pity.
One thing for certain is that this particular customer isn't interested in using Macromedia's products anymore.
Wrong. See your own first statement ("Windows NT has a distint advantage in application availability.") for the reason why DOS + Windows "reigned supreme" over the Macintosh. Does the phrase "application barrier to entry" ring a bell?
I am talking about the Macintosh long before there was a such thing as DOS + Windows. Perhaps you don't remember the time when Microsoft's most famous application was probably Microsoft Word, which was available only for the Macintosh.
I would also say that your statement about it becoming harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application, especially in the server market should read: pretty much ONLY in the server market.
Compare the disparity of desktop applications between Windows and Linux in 1995 and today. You would be amazed at the progress made in the Linux camp. In this same amount of time Microsoft has purchased a browser and bolted it to their desktop. Linux has several very usuable Office suites, it has several very usable browers, and it has not one but two competing projects to create an entire suite of desktop applications.
In the server market Linux has really been giving Microsoft a kicking, but the pain is starting to spread to the desktop as well. The amount of Linux desktops is small, but it is growing at a furious pace.
To extend your Macintosh analogy, Steve Jobs knew early on that in order for the Macintosh to be competitive on the desktop he had to have the dominant application providers: Microsoft and Lotus writing applications for his platform. Because the desktop is where the big money is. I don't see anybody cutting those same equivalent deals on the Linux platform, so I can't see how Linux could ever be a credible desktop alternative. Perhaps the alternative device market will change all this, and that is probably why you see so many blocking moves coming out of Redmond in those markets.
Fah, I told you why Macintosh failed despite the fact that it had all of the applications. The PC was less capable but it was also less expensive, and it was "good enough." DOS had already destroyed the Macintosh long before Windows ever was a reality. The technical advances of DOS + Windows only sealed the fate of the Mac.
Linux is already showing signs of being able to one-up Microsoft in this area. Not only is the operating system free, but the software that runs on top of Linux is largely free as well. For server installations (which are quite a bit more expensive) this price differential has already had a profound impact. But eventually Linux is going to be at a point where Dell and Compaq are going to become very tempted by the billions they could save by preloading Linux instead of Windows. And with the DOJ watching Microsoft it is possible for the OEM to hedge their bet with Linux without facing retaliation from Microsoft. As for the "alternative device market" Windows has already lost. They can't afford to compete with Linux on price, and they certainly aren't willing to give the OEM the freedom that Linux gives them. Linux allows the PDA OEM to create a whole array of value added extensions without giving up the compatibility that Linux allows. Ever notice how WinCE devices all look the same, and act the same? Well Linux would allow much greater flexibility without giving up compatibility with other Linux based devices. Not to mention the fact that Linux is free.
More importantly, however, is that there is no such thing as a legacy PDA application. The application availibility of Windows does not give Windows CE an advantage. In other words the two platforms are starting out equal, and the only thing that differentiates them are things like price and stability.
Sure, Microsoft will throw their money and weight around. But for every vendor that Microsoft pays to use Windows CE, there will be several other vendors that have no choice but to push Linux. After all, if they too choose to adopt WinCE, then they will be at a disadvantage. They will be selling what essentially is an identical device, except they will have paid more for WinCE than their competitors.
Thanks for replying, especially considering that I got the usual "Flamebait" moderation for pointing out the sometimes sad history of UNIX advocacy.
Are you kidding? Your post was intelligent and quite pointed. However, I have been using Linux professionally for nearly five years. Back then you had to be crazy (I prefer visionary) to think that Linux had a chance. As far as I am concerned Linux has already made it. Say what you will it is an important part of the architecture of the Internet, it is a cost effective solution for a wide array of problems, and it is gaining applications and abilities at an unprecedented pace. It is not the right tool for every job (my wife doesn't use it on her desktop, yet), but it gets closer to being "good enough" every day.
You may be right, but I suspect you are underestimating the effect of marketing forces. There were two powerful forces behind the PC; the fact that it was relatively inexpensive, and the fact that the corporate power of IBM was backing it. These forces are opposed in the case of Linux (with the corporate power now being Microsoft's, of course), instead of aligned, and it will at the minimum cause the rise of Linux acceptance to be noticably slowed (although IBM still has considerable clout in that area. Were IBM to start pushing a pre-loaded corporate Linux desktop, that prediction could well take on the air of "Dewey Defeats Truman" :)
The corporate power of IBM was backing their mainframes. PCs were a toy that were snuck into the enterprise by people trying to get their work done. The one redeeming factor that PCs had was that they were inexpensive enough to sneak in under the radar.
Does that sound familiar? Linux is penetrating the enterprise in almost exactly the same way. It generally starts out with a developer or two on a skunk works project and blossoms from there.
Even more important, however, is the fact that Linux also has quite a bit of industry support. IBM has Linux running on the S/390 (and just about everything else they sell). They have also donated quite a bit of software to the Free Software community. Dell has published SpecWeb99 scores running on Linux that destroy their Windows 2000 scores. SGI and SCO have practically abandoned their commercial *nixes for Linux. And the list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the only company that wouldn't benefit from an open platform for development is Microsoft. And while Microsoft is certainly chuck full of bright people, they don't have a monopoly on talent.
Not that Linux needs industry support. Most of the gains that Linux has made were accomplished without so much as a "How do you do?" from the computer indsustry. The question at this point isn't what Linux needs to do, it's numbers show that it is growing at a much better than merely healthy rate. The question is "what can Microsoft do that might somehow slow Linux down?" I personally don't see Microsoft doing anything that appears to have an impact on the growing Linux community.
Gnome and KDE get better every day, and I am already using Mozilla as my primary browser. All it will take from Microsoft is one slip and they will be a legacy system. Not only do they have to maintain their marketshare, but they have to upsell all of their customers on a regular basis to the newest and greatest software. If they don't maintain revenues they are as good as done, and in this particular battlefield older versions of Windows are much bigger competition than Linux. Linux, on the other hand, doesn't need to turn a profit, it doesn't need industry support, and there isn't very much that Microsoft can do that would convince the legion of Linux developers to develop instead for Windows.
I will grant you that Windows NT still has a distinct advantage in application availability, and I will even grant you that there are a certain number of shops that are going to side with Microsoft no matter what they do.
This does not take away from the fact that Linux has become a force to be reckoned with in the server realm, and that it is even gaining acceptance in Microsoft's own backyard, the desktop operating system.
The reason for this is quite simple. Linux is less expensive, and it comes complete with an impressive array of programs (especially programming tools).
For years the Macintosh was a much more sophisticated machine than the IBM PC, and yet DOS reigned supreme because of one simple fact. Macintoshes were more expensive than commodity PCs running DOS, and DOS was essentially "good enough." In the end DOS + Windows not only surpassed the Macintosh in revenues, but they surpassed it in technology as well.
The same thing is happening again. Only this time the commodity platform is not Windows, it is Linux. For an ever increasing number of people Linux is "good enough," and the price is certainly right. Windows advocates have been explaining to me how Linux was doomed since 1995, and yet it continues to grow at an exponential pace. Even worse, for Windows anyhow, Linux is getting to the point where it is much harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application. This is especially true when you are considering using Linux as a server.
Not to mention the fact that Microsoft's biggest customers (the hardware OEMs) would absolutely love to see Linux become the standard for the new Millenium. After all, why should Dell or Compaq have to pay Microsoft a tax to sell their own hardware. Especially when Linux is free.
There are currently more Linux seats than there have ever been "UNIX" seats. While companies like SCO, who made their money selling a commercial UNIX for i386, are certainly getting hit hard, there is no underestimating the damage that Linux is doing to Windows NT.
The only reason that Windows NT is even considered, in most cases, is price, and Linux gives you UNIX features at an even lower price. Besides, Linux doesn't have to make a profit to survive. In other words, while the Linux firestorm may be especially hard on Microsoft's competitors this does not necessarily mean that this benefits Windows. After all, Linux is replacing Windows too, and Linux is going to be very resistant to Microsoft's usual tactics. Microsoft isn't going to be able to put economic pressure on Linux, GPL software is very resistant to embracing and extending, and they certainly aren't going to be able to undersell Linux. Nor is Microsoft going to be able to count on Intel to close the performance gap between Windows and Linux. After all, Linux runs on the same platform as Windows (and a whole lot more).
Microsoft was competing quite successfully against commercial Unix, but they have yet to come up with a tactic that is even somewhat useful against the Free Unixes. I would bet that Microsoft would give anything to be able to compete with the likes of SCO instead of Linux.
They had what amounted to a good start on a GUI toolkit with GTK. It was no where near complete, however. It certainly wasn't on par with what TrollTech was offering with QT. I probably did overstate the problem, but the fact remains that early versions of Gnome were severely hindered by the fact that GTK was under serious development. Somehow, however, they have managed to close the gap.
Exactly, the Gnome project was formed because many in the Free Software community were worried that KDE and the proprietary QT widget set would become a de-facto standard on GNU/Linux systems.
In fact, it is almost absolutely amazing that Gnome is now at a state where it is comparable to KDE. After all, KDE had a head start, and the Gnome folks had to build a GUI toolkit first and a Corba subsystem first.
But there you have it.
What cage?
I am nearly debt free, I have a lifestyle that is not extravagant and could easily be supported by a job with a lower salary. I spend a ton of time with my beautiful wife and my little girl. I have a life outside of work. I volunteer as a Scout Master (meaning I get to go fishing on a regular basis). I have a garden, I am active in my church, and I am on good terms with my neighbors. Hell, I live in Idaho, and contrary to what Mr. Katz thinks it's not such a bad life here.
Just because you are caught up in the rat race doesn't mean that everyone else is. It's my opinion that the biggest cause of stress in Americans is the fact that they are caught up in a world of consumer debt. They can't afford to stop working even for a moment because if they do the bill collectors will take away their house.
If I don't owe "the man" he can't control me, and so I have structured my life in such a way that I live well within my means. This means making sacrifices like not having the newest computer hardware (at home anyway :), and not driving the fanciest car. I don't eat out much, preferring instead to sit down to dinner with my family. It means that I have to save up my money for larger purchases so that I can pay cash instead of using credit, but that guarantees that I stay within my budget.
If you don't like how your life is going, feel free to whine. Just don't expect everyone else to feel sorry for you. I would personally suggest taking some responsibility for your own personal happiness. Instead of complaining about how everyone is under so much stress, why not take an inventory of the things that are causing you stress. Then work out a way to eliminate these stresses from your life. If working long hours is giving you stress, find a job that requires fewer hours. If working fewer hours means making less money, find a way to get by with less.
I use my own personal example because it illustrates the things that I have done to escape from the rat race. Chances are good that your priorities will be different, and so your escape route will also be different, but telling me that I love my cage simply because I refuse to join the chorus of whiners is simply blinding you to the fact that there are people who are successfully dealing with the problem of stress.
In the end, who's the person in the cage? Is it the person who owns little but owes nothing, or the person who has everything but spends every waking minute working to pay his creditors?
I would agree if we were whining for things that other people need. But the people complaining about "stress" are about as self-centered as you can get.
"Look at me," they say, "I have got it bad. I am a massive ball of stress."
And when you tell them that what they need to do is work less, spend more time with their family, stay out of debt, and take the time to help those around them, they look at you like you were some kind of bug. The fact of the matter is that the more time you spend worrying about how you feel, and what you want the more stress you are going to feel.
Perhaps you can already see where I am going with this. It isn't the whiners that are improving the lot of people around the world, it's the doers. If the people that are out helping also do a little "evangelizing" for their cause this does not make them "whiners."
I can't imagine the BSD folks wanting to put their kernel in /sys/gnu, it would undoubtedly break a heck of a lot of BSD software :).
In other words, while the BSD folks are willing to include GPLed utilities in their distribution, mainly because they wouldn't even have a compiler without gcc, but I would bet money that they aren't willing to include GPL code in their kernel. IANAL, but the FSF and the Debian Project feel that the KDE project is distributing software illegally simply because they link the QT libs from GPLed software. They say that QT then becomes part of the "derivative work." The monolithic BSD kernels almost certainly would constitute a "derivative work" as is regarded by the GPL and so the entire kernel source would have to fall under the GPL.
Needless to say, this is very unlikely to happen.
I couldn't agree more. I think that the only thing that has gone up since 30 years ago is the number of people that are habitual complainers.
My grandfather's generation lived through the depression, went to war in World War II, and basically didn't have a third of the comforts that I take for granted, and yet they somehow managed to be pretty darn optimistic about their lives, their future, and their country. His grandparents hiked clear across the U.S. cooking their meals with Buffalo poop. Compared to my forebears I wouldn't know stress if it smacked me in the face with a tomahawk.
Nowadays Americans don't really have to worry about things like invading tribes of Mongols, or the Black Plague, and so instead we worry about our stress levels. We habitually whine about how hard our life is without even realizing that pretty much the entire world would happily switch places with us.
I went to high school in Lima, Peru and if there is one thing that I learned from my time there it is that I have no room to complain. My life is not that hard, nor do my pitiful little worries amount to a hill of beans. The average American will almost certainly live longer and be more successful than 99% of the people that have ever lived on this planet, and yet all we do is complain.
Granted, I will tone it down. When I re-read my post I was actually embarrassed. I hope you will accept my apology, there was no reason for me to lash out at you in that manner.
The ironic part is that you probably know more about the subject than I do. I am no kernel space hacker, by any stretch of the imagination, and I am simply reguritating what I read in the various articles.
Actually there is a specific feature that would probably make TUX incompatible with the BSDs. TUX is licensed under the GPL and the BSD maintainers would probably be very reluctant to port it to their OSes. Especially since it is possible that this would require them to release the derivative work under the GPL.
Which leads to the obvious question for Ingo. You mention a specific disclaimer that would allow the Apache to be linked with TUX, do the BSDs get the same privilege?
Not that I particularly care, as I am not a BSD user, but the putting such a nifty program as TUX under the GPL is bound to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth in the BSD camp. Which brings up another question. How much pressure do you get from your BSD compatriots to release software like this under a more liberal BSD-friendly license?
You might want to re-read the second LinuxToday article before you reply. Here's what Ingo Molnar has to say on the subject:
As you can see, Ingo Molnar seems to think that TUX is beneficial both for static and dynamic content. If you would have read the articles in question (or if you knew anything about SpecWeb99 which is a test of both static and dynamic content) then you would realize that your statement is completely unfounded.
There is a kernel-space static content webserver called khttpd, but TUX is something completely other.
An interesting side note is that TUX would appear to be quite innovative, in many ways it is a whole new concept in web serving. It will be interesting to see commercial vendors chasing the tail-lights of the Free Software world in this particular regard.
Don't blame your lack of support on PostgreSQL. When I decided to experiment with PHP and PostgreSQL I dutifully subscribed to the corresponding PostgreSQL mailing lists, and I have found them to be very helpful. Perhaps the most important benefit I have gained from the PostgreSQL mailing lists is an idea as to what the PostgreSQL backend is capable of.
When I switched from MySQL I mostly was interested in using PostgreSQL exactly like it was MySQL. Hanging out on the lists I learned to use Postgres's more advanced features, and I found that this was a huge boon to my projects.
Of course, I also found myself shifting away from PHP..., but that's probably just a coincidence.
Actually it is now possible to raise the 8K limit to 32K when you are compiling PostgreSQL. This is sometimes handy, but it isn't nearly as cool as what they are currently working on for 7.1.
In 7.1 they will allow you define columns as being "toastable" which means that PostgreSQL will automagically break the large objects into pieces and store them in several consecutive tuples. This will all be transparent to the user.
Of course it is already possible to use the Large Object interface to store information in columns that might break 8K. It just is more unwieldy.
Exactly, I want to see a benchmark of PostgreSQL's transactions and MySQL's supposed transactions. Oh, and I want to see it on a machine that uses extensive use of triggers and stored procedures to cut down on connections to the database.
MySQL is a great product, but comparing it to PostgreSQL is like comparing an ultralight to an oil tanker. MySQL is hardly more than an SQL-based interface to the filesystem, while PostgreSQL is an RDBMS with ACID properties and a raft of cool extra features. If all you need is a format to put your data in for immediate retrieval without ACID capabilities then MySQL is perfect. However, if you need more than this then MySQL simply won't do.
The most interesting part of the article, in my opinion, was that MySQL was not really that much faster than PostgreSQL even in MySQL's one clear specialty selects. For the slight penalty that you pay in selects with PostgreSQL you gain a whole raft of features, that make database development a lot easier. The writer of the article mentions that you can get around MySQL's problems "with a little elbow grease," but why should you when the PostgreSQL team has already solved these problems for you.
Just because MySQL doesn't solve your database problems does not mean that you should discount all Open Source database solutions. I think that you will find that PostgreSQL has the features that you need (unless you absolutely need remote synchronization, in which case try again soon they're working on it).
You wouldn't have to control every cell in the body. Once your new (I mean GNU) Linux body was installed it would run unattended almost indefinitely. On the other hand if you did want to make changes you would have the complete source code and could make modifications to your heart's (and other body parts) content. You would have nifty scripting tools like Cellular Perl or NanoPython to help keep things running smoothly. And tripwire could be used to control things like cancerous growth, viral infections, and probably even dangerous mood swings.
Best of all, however, would be that I would finally get that third arm I have always wanted. Not only would it improve my ski-boxing, but it would make it possible to use the mouse without taking my hand off of home row on the keyboard! Woohoo, that would be sweet!
Yes, but screening is the easiest part of the whole equation to replace. The classic example of this is this website. /. is little more than a News screening service for nerds. They don't make the news, they generally don't even write the articles, they simply act as a filter (and a place to discuss).
What is needed is a website (or series of websites, one for each specific genre of music) where a group of dedicated music lovers sort through all of the newly available MP3's and sort the wheat from the chaff. They could support their site via advertising and could probably even sideline in selling the CDs that they promote. What makes /. work is precisely the same magic that would make these types of music review sites work. /. readers (for the most part anyway) trust CmdrTaco and crew to pick out interesting geek topics on a regular basis. So we show up and discuss. They make a living using the judgement as to what is truly "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
There is nothing stopping someone else from taking the Slashdot engine and making "Music for Goths, Indies that don't Suck," or perhaps "Tunes for Cowpokes, Not Your Same-Old Big City Country." Sure, some of these sites won't know good music from a hole in their head, but some of them probably will know what they are talking about. There will probably even be one that almost exactly matches your own particular music tastes.
It's something to think about anyway.
It's actually quite simple. The primary reason that Microsoft has to support old APIs in their programs is that they have too many customers that aren't willing to upgrade to newer versions of their OS, but they are willing to purchase newer versions of their applications. The two primary reasons that people don't upgrade are:
1) Upgrading Windows is costly.
2) Upgrading Windows is difficult.
Linux has both of these problems fairly well licked. Upgrading a Debian GNU/Linux system is as easy as "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade", and the price is quite reasonable :).
Linux also has a sane library versioning scheme that allows you to safely and easily install older versions of shared libraries. Your older applications will use then use the same libraries that they have always used, and your newer applications will use the newest fancy-dan versions.
Linux's library versioning strengths even extend to the development tools. Tools like GNU/autoconfigure were designed to port GNU programs between completely different architectures, keeping track of the difference between Linux versions is a comparative snap. Of course, this only helps you with software that comes with source code, but that covers just about all of the Linux software I use.
My guess is that application vendors will largely target distributions. In other words they will state that application Foo works with RedHat Linux versions 5.2+. Curious hackers will then find out what libraries the application actually depends on and they will install those libraries and run it on the distribution that they like best.
Actually this depends completely on the amount of experience required. If you want to get an NT admin with the same amount of experience as your "experienced" NT admin, then you will generally find that the NT admin is more expensive. Likewise if you want a Linux admin with the same level of expertise as your recent MCSE graduate then you will probably pay less than you would for an NT admin.
This doesn't even get into the fact that with Linux upgrades are free, and hardware stretches a lot further. Nor does it recognize the fact that most Linux admins are capable of adminning far more hosts.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has been pitting the skills of entry level MCSEs against hardcore Unix veterans in their TCO evaluations for some time now. They have completely glossed over the fact that hardcore NT veterans are often more expensive than their Unix counterparts. The popularity of Linux, and it's down to earth prices, have made it relatively easy to get a hold of Junior level Linux admins at rational prices. Heck, colleges these days are pumping out kids that know Linux like they were going out of style.