A few years ago, it seems like all I heard from corporations and trade press was the reason why Open Office wouldn't likely be used was because of the "learning curve" to switch away from MS Office. Like Open Office was so radically different from Office!
There were studies and cost estimates and people complaining that it was easier to continue paying the MS tax than to retrain their people in the difference between Office and Open Office. So now Office comes out totally different, and the big retraining effort is just a "cost of doing business". No big deal.
So if MS imposes the cost on corporations, it's no big deal, but if there is a better alternative, even at a slight retraining cost, it's a show stopper.
First of all, the product was originally Sybase SQL Server. Sybase named it SQL Server, not Microsoft. Microsoft and Sybase were working together on it, then Microsoft gave Sybase the boot as they usually do.
Sybase's current product is very solid, very reliable, and easy to use. It is a dream to work on compared to Oracle and I've worked on all three products.
Microsoft has added some features to SQL Server, but all in all, it is probably still very much a Sybase product at its core.
The passengers on the Pennsylvania flight used cell phones while in flight to find out what was going on.
Now - a few weeks ago, in flagrant disregard of regulations and announcements, etc. (so sue me) - I turned on my cell phone in midflight from NYC-Tampa and was never able to get a signal.
So how did they do it on that flight on 9/11? Do I just have a crummy phone and/or service (ATT Wireless) or what? I even held the phone up to the window to try to get it to work. All I ever got was "No Service". What if some Arabs had been on the flight and had started misbehaving as Arabs tend to do?
Most, if not all, of the online music stores sell music in some sort of proprietary, DRM-able format. MP3 is neither. So people who are buying MP3 players are probably not buying them to play music they've bought off an online music store. The major players - including Microsoft, Apple and RIAA - would like nothing better than to see MP3 disappear.
It is great that MP3 player sales are up, but I don't think that there is necessarily any sort of relationship to online music sales.
Now maybe there *is* a relationship to increased use of P2P services by the public...
First off, I've been using Linux since V1.2.8 - Slackware - and I've installed SuSE 6.4, 7.0, 8.0, 8.2 and maybe a couple of others. I am a Solaris sysadmin (15 yrs+) during the day, so I know my way around Unix a bit.
Last Saturday I started upgrading my 8.0 machine to 8.2 and went through inserting all the CDs. Finally the SuSE procedures took over to finish things up. Well.... it got to SuSEconfig.tetex at 91% complete and it hung. I power cycled the machine and it did the same thing all over again.
Luckily I had a Mondo backup of all my files, so I bit the bullet and decided to do a clean install. That went OK, but it took me a long time to get all the software I want to run back up and running again. In fact I'm still working on it!
One major problem I'm having still is with ALSA and sound. It doesn't "just work". I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. I got no sound at all after the first boot up following the install. (And I know to unmute the device, etc.) I downloaded the latest ALSA stuff just to be safe and built it all. At this point, I can use xmms to play mp3s etc, but system sounds in KDE 3.1 still don't work. Not that I need that, but I do like things to work like they should even so. I have another box running SuSE 8.0 with the same sound card and sound works on that, but I can't see why that one works and this 8.2 box doesn't. Very frustrating. And this 8.2 box used to do sound fine when it was 8.0. It looks like I'm going to have to become a KDE expert to get dopey system sounds to work - but why do I have to? Why can't something simple like that "just work"?
I had problems with the Cyrus IMAPD server, and in the course of trying to fix it, I tried to rebuild it from source. No luck. Apparently there has been some change in header files (varargs.h vs. stdarg.h) in gcc 3.0 and so Cyrus IMAPD does not even compile. SuSE does supply a compiled version of the server, so I focused on getting that to work. It took some time, but I finally got it to go... but it was no cakewalk. And I have a lot of experience with this software.
Also, I use a lot of Dan Bernstein's software like qmail and djbdns. Be aware that his software does not compile with the new gcc compiler either. There is a problem with "extern int errno" in his header files. You have to replace that with #include errno.h. I found that somewhere on Usenet after having it drive me crazy for a few hours.
And also, it is useful to speak German if you want to use SuSE. The Yast2 tool is cool, but the package descriptions and a lot of the messages are mostly in German with some occasional English, even though I set LANG=en_US in the environment. I haven't really looked into this too much because it isn't that important, but it is a nuisance. Why do I even have to have it on my list at all?
And forget about support from SuSE. Check out their Web site and you'll see that if you buy the Prof. version you get 60 days support, but dig a little deeper and you will see that they support next to nothing of any substance. Just stuff like how do you change a password I guess.
So.. SuSE 8.2 is OK, but be prepared to be patient and to have to work to get it working right. I wish someday someone would put out a Linux distro that does "just work" out of the box. I don't mind doing configurations and installs and stuff, but having to deal with compile errors and SEGVs and the like, is not too much fun. I know its not SuSE's fault that apparently gcc 3 breaks a lot of compiles, but it still is something else that I have to deal with. It's been a week now starting with a clean install and it still isn't really right yet....
Why is that everytime we read about Linux - people mention how Linux is going to get users to convert from Solaris, HP-UX etc. and here the thing is that this distro is designed to get users from RedHat.
Shouldn't it be that the goal is to get users to switch from Windows? Who cares if they migrate to RedHat or Solaris or SuSE or United Linux? As long as its away from Windows. This is great that there's yet another distro (I guess), but I think they ought to target Windows users rather than existing Linux/Unix users.
Although 99% of the people at the company where I work are hardly power users - most have their hands full just doing basic work in Word and Excel - I think the mindset here would preclude us from installing OO.
Recently we had a major meeting where the head honchos asked us to come up with ideas on ways to save money. I informally suggested to my manager that we consider migrating to OO and he just chuckled in response. We probably have 1000+ copies of Office installed so we are talking saving some real money here.
Incidentally, my boss recently decided that one way he could save money was to drop support on two production Unix machines - at a total of $20K/yr ! But switching to OO from MS Office was considered a joke. even though none of our users need anything exotic in an Office suite.
I work for a Fortune 50 company and their policy is to migrate from reliable working Unix systems and applications to corresponding Microsoft solutions, wherever possible.
As part of this "strategy", they are doing away with Sybase and Oracle in favor of MS SQL Server and are *not* hiring DBAs to admin the server. Just some dude from the help desk to install it. Even on servers that are for areas like trading and accounting.
As a long time Oracle/Sybase DBA (apparently my days are numbered!), I have seen several MS SQL installs with no "sa" passwords - (just poking around on my own) - and also few of the servers have had any sort of recommended patches installed.
They also don't tune the servers or the queries and the apps that run against MS SQL are very slow. Their solution is to buy faster boxes, more memory, etc. when tuning is really the proper solution.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'd definitely pay for a version of Opera that actually works on Solaris. Version 5b1 totally stinks on the Sun what with all the bus errors and core dumps.
It sure would be nice if they'd remember that old OS - Solaris.
I am using (loosely speaking) Opera 5b1 on Solaris, yet it either core dumps or bus errors at least 15 times a day on me.
I am used to Opera from Windows and Linux and would like to use it on Solaris at work, but it is pretty bad. Does anyone know if a usable Opera will ever be released for Solaris?
If you read the memo, it is clear that it only applies to people making over $60K/yr, and it applies to all employees - managers too.
Also, it amounts to 3.8%/yr, but they want to do do the entire cut in two paychecks. So by cutting those two checks by 50%, it amounts to a 3.8% cut on an annual basis. But then you're back to your normal pay. Well, at least until next quarter... see what happens then.
I like how they scheduled the conference call to all employees at 5PM. I guess this isn't something that is worthy of discussing on the company's time. So if you're concerned about the forced pay cut, you can find out more about it on your own time. Nice touch.
And it's also nice how he says that this action will improve their financial picture which should help gain the confidence of their customers. Isn't this kind of like what Enron did, only on a much fancier scale? If they are trying to "gain the confidence" of their customers, that makes them "con artists"!
well the price is right, but then again, have you ever *heard* Indian music? Maybe that's why they're offering it for so little. I doubt that I'd pay a nickel for all that wailing and stuff...
We've been running Apache with Perl scripts against a Sybase database quite successfully now for the past three years or so. The Perl scripts are robust and (for Perl) - easy to understand and maintain. They were well written and designed in the first place.
But now, management has decided that it is worth the effort to convert from Apache -> IIS and from Perl -> ASP/VB and from Sybase -> MS SQL Server.
The reason seems to be that this company has decided that a 100% pure Microsoft setup is better than a free, well written, more secure system. They're already having problems accomplishing some of what we already do with the existing code, and are bringing in MS consultants to help reinvent the wheel!
Best of luck Apache - it was great working with ya!
Why is it that even though ogg is totally free, there is not one single portable or car music player produced by a major manufacturer that supports it? What is the big deal? I mean, how much space in firmware could adding in support for the ogg codec take up?
My little brain just can't understand why ogg is so univerally ignored. Almost every other kind of software suffers from feature bloat with features that *no one* wants, yet its like pulling teeth to get *any* manufacturer to add ogg support that a large number of people would use and want.
Does anyone know if this works on any of the *BSD unices?
I bought it anyway, even though I don't run MS Office that much, just to support these guys. This is really good work. But it's probably a good idea to buy it before MS shuts them down.
My manager is in a different state and I only see him 3-4 times a month. He gives me NO work or feedback... I have to dig it up myself from the users. In fact, he is a hardware guy on the PC side and I do Unix systems admin, so our talk is pretty much just "small talk". I've told him that I'm in the wrong group, but it goes nowhere. I wish I had a manager that I could talk with and who understood my work.
Not true. I am using very standard hardware by name brand manufacturers. And I did check the HCL prior to installation and my hardware is supported. There are no blue screens. Sometimes while using Messenger, I get a little 2" square box with what looks to be an X window in it with all kinds of activity in it. But I can't use the mouse then or do anything except power cycle the box. And this only happens every once in a while. I'm sure that Yahoo Messenger is not the best app, but it is just a user app and shouldn't lock up the whole box. And like I said, on the same box, under 2K, I have none of these problems!
First of all, where I work, we are still discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would guess.
I have installed it clean on a machine I have at home and I am not all that impressed with it. I use Yahoo Messenger a lot, and I have frequent hard system lock ups, where I have to power cycle the box. I also have a disk on the same box with 2K on it and I don't have the same problem, even though I use Yahoo Messenger about the same under both OSs. So my experience has been that XP is *less* stable than 2K.
Where I work, we are not allowed to post *anything* on our cubicle walls - no calendars, notes or anything. The PCs we have do not have sound cards in them. And of course we have those harsh overhead fluorescent lights. This is a very standardized environment and it is sooo hard to efficiently work. Sometimes I just get up and go for a walk outside just to think..
Seems like every time one of these mergers happen, the head tacos come on TV babbling about what a greate synergy this merger is, etc. And how it will give them the oppportunity to improve efficiency, eliminate redundancies (this means mass layoffs), etc. etc.
Hell, if they're going for efficiency, then probably the best solution is to get it all over with and just have one monopoly corporation doing all computer related stuff.
Why doesn't the government instead of trying to break up Microsoft just insist that it merge with AOLTW, Apple, Sun, GE, GM et. al. and be done with it. And as layoffs help a company improve efficiency, they should encourage MSAOLTW[A-Z]* to layoff everyone. Now that would be efficient!
(Wearing my corporate dude hat, where is the "synergy" (whatever that is?) here in this current merger?)
So Microsoft is releasing Office 2001 for OSX next week and someone just now decided that Open Office needs a Project Lead in order to prevent Microsoft dominance? And today's Friday? And oh by the way - do it all for no pay. Look's like someone is going to have a busy weekend. Talk about pressure to get a major release out...
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A few years ago, it seems like all I heard from corporations and trade press was the reason why Open Office wouldn't likely be used was because of the "learning curve" to switch away from MS Office. Like Open Office was so radically different from Office!
There were studies and cost estimates and people complaining that it was easier to continue paying the MS tax than to retrain their people in the difference between Office and Open Office. So now Office comes out totally different, and the big retraining effort is just a "cost of doing business". No big deal.
So if MS imposes the cost on corporations, it's no big deal, but if there is a better alternative, even at a slight retraining cost, it's a show stopper.
I don't get it.
First of all, the product was originally Sybase SQL Server. Sybase named it SQL Server, not Microsoft. Microsoft and Sybase were working together on it, then Microsoft gave Sybase the boot as they usually do.
Sybase's current product is very solid, very reliable, and easy to use. It is a dream to work on compared to Oracle and I've worked on all three products.
Microsoft has added some features to SQL Server, but all in all, it is probably still very much a Sybase product at its core.
The passengers on the Pennsylvania flight used cell phones while in flight to find out what was going on.
Now - a few weeks ago, in flagrant disregard of regulations and announcements, etc. (so sue me) - I turned on my cell phone in midflight from NYC-Tampa and was never able to get a signal.
So how did they do it on that flight on 9/11? Do I just have a crummy phone and/or service (ATT Wireless) or what? I even held the phone up to the window to try to get it to work. All I ever got was "No Service". What if some Arabs had been on the flight and had started misbehaving as Arabs tend to do?
It is great that MP3 player sales are up, but I don't think that there is necessarily any sort of relationship to online music sales.
Now maybe there *is* a relationship to increased use of P2P services by the public...
Correct me if I'm wrong....
Last Saturday I started upgrading my 8.0 machine to 8.2 and went through inserting all the CDs. Finally the SuSE procedures took over to finish things up. Well.... it got to SuSEconfig.tetex at 91% complete and it hung. I power cycled the machine and it did the same thing all over again.
Luckily I had a Mondo backup of all my files, so I bit the bullet and decided to do a clean install. That went OK, but it took me a long time to get all the software I want to run back up and running again. In fact I'm still working on it!
One major problem I'm having still is with ALSA and sound. It doesn't "just work". I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. I got no sound at all after the first boot up following the install. (And I know to unmute the device, etc.) I downloaded the latest ALSA stuff just to be safe and built it all. At this point, I can use xmms to play mp3s etc, but system sounds in KDE 3.1 still don't work. Not that I need that, but I do like things to work like they should even so. I have another box running SuSE 8.0 with the same sound card and sound works on that, but I can't see why that one works and this 8.2 box doesn't. Very frustrating. And this 8.2 box used to do sound fine when it was 8.0. It looks like I'm going to have to become a KDE expert to get dopey system sounds to work - but why do I have to? Why can't something simple like that "just work"?
I had problems with the Cyrus IMAPD server, and in the course of trying to fix it, I tried to rebuild it from source. No luck. Apparently there has been some change in header files (varargs.h vs. stdarg.h) in gcc 3.0 and so Cyrus IMAPD does not even compile. SuSE does supply a compiled version of the server, so I focused on getting that to work. It took some time, but I finally got it to go... but it was no cakewalk. And I have a lot of experience with this software.
Also, I use a lot of Dan Bernstein's software like qmail and djbdns. Be aware that his software does not compile with the new gcc compiler either. There is a problem with "extern int errno" in his header files. You have to replace that with #include errno.h. I found that somewhere on Usenet after having it drive me crazy for a few hours.
And also, it is useful to speak German if you want to use SuSE. The Yast2 tool is cool, but the package descriptions and a lot of the messages are mostly in German with some occasional English, even though I set LANG=en_US in the environment. I haven't really looked into this too much because it isn't that important, but it is a nuisance. Why do I even have to have it on my list at all?
And forget about support from SuSE. Check out their Web site and you'll see that if you buy the Prof. version you get 60 days support, but dig a little deeper and you will see that they support next to nothing of any substance. Just stuff like how do you change a password I guess.
So.. SuSE 8.2 is OK, but be prepared to be patient and to have to work to get it working right. I wish someday someone would put out a Linux distro that does "just work" out of the box. I don't mind doing configurations and installs and stuff, but having to deal with compile errors and SEGVs and the like, is not too much fun. I know its not SuSE's fault that apparently gcc 3 breaks a lot of compiles, but it still is something else that I have to deal with. It's been a week now starting with a clean install and it still isn't really right yet....
Why is that everytime we read about Linux - people mention how Linux is going to get users to convert from Solaris, HP-UX etc. and here the thing is that this distro is designed to get users from RedHat.
Shouldn't it be that the goal is to get users to switch from Windows? Who cares if they migrate to RedHat or Solaris or SuSE or United Linux? As long as its away from Windows. This is great that there's yet another distro (I guess), but I think they ought to target Windows users rather than existing Linux/Unix users.
A house divided...
Although 99% of the people at the company where I work are hardly power users - most have their hands full just doing basic work in Word and Excel - I think the mindset here would preclude us from installing OO.
Recently we had a major meeting where the head honchos asked us to come up with ideas on ways to save money. I informally suggested to my manager that we consider migrating to OO and he just chuckled in response. We probably have 1000+ copies of Office installed so we are talking saving some real money here.
Incidentally, my boss recently decided that one way he could save money was to drop support on two production Unix machines - at a total of $20K/yr ! But switching to OO from MS Office was considered a joke. even though none of our users need anything exotic in an Office suite.
I work for a Fortune 50 company and their policy is to migrate from reliable working Unix systems and applications to corresponding Microsoft solutions, wherever possible.
As part of this "strategy", they are doing away with Sybase and Oracle in favor of MS SQL Server and are *not* hiring DBAs to admin the server. Just some dude from the help desk to install it. Even on servers that are for areas like trading and accounting.
As a long time Oracle/Sybase DBA (apparently my days are numbered!), I have seen several MS SQL installs with no "sa" passwords - (just poking around on my own) - and also few of the servers have had any sort of recommended patches installed.
They also don't tune the servers or the queries and the apps that run against MS SQL are very slow. Their solution is to buy faster boxes, more memory, etc. when tuning is really the proper solution.
What a great way to save money.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'd definitely pay for a version of Opera that actually works on Solaris.
Version 5b1 totally stinks on the Sun what with all the bus errors and core dumps.
It sure would be nice if they'd remember that old OS - Solaris.
I am using (loosely speaking) Opera 5b1 on Solaris, yet it either core dumps or bus errors at least 15 times a day on me.
I am used to Opera from Windows and Linux and would like to use it on Solaris at work, but it is pretty bad. Does anyone know if a usable Opera will ever be released for Solaris?
If you read the memo, it is clear that it only applies to people making over $60K/yr, and it applies to all employees - managers too.
Also, it amounts to 3.8%/yr, but they want to do do the entire cut in two paychecks. So by cutting those two checks by 50%, it amounts to a 3.8% cut on an annual basis. But then you're back to your normal pay. Well, at least until next quarter... see what happens then.
I like how they scheduled the conference call to all employees at 5PM. I guess this isn't something that is worthy of discussing on the company's time. So if you're concerned about the forced pay cut, you can find out more about it on your own time. Nice touch.
And it's also nice how he says that this action will improve their financial picture which should help gain the confidence of their customers. Isn't this kind of like what Enron did, only on a much fancier scale? If they are trying to "gain the confidence" of their customers, that makes them "con artists"!
well the price is right, but then again, have you ever *heard* Indian music? Maybe that's why they're offering it for so little. I doubt that I'd pay a nickel for all that wailing and stuff...
We've been running Apache with Perl scripts against a Sybase database quite successfully now for the past three years or so. The Perl scripts are robust and (for Perl) - easy to understand and maintain. They were well written and designed in the first place.
But now, management has decided that it is worth the effort to convert from Apache -> IIS and from Perl -> ASP/VB and from Sybase -> MS SQL Server.
The reason seems to be that this company has decided that a 100% pure Microsoft setup is better than a free, well written, more secure system. They're already having problems accomplishing some of what we already do with the existing code, and are bringing in MS consultants to help reinvent the wheel!
Best of luck Apache - it was great working with ya!
Why is it that even though ogg is totally free, there is not one single portable or car music player produced by a major manufacturer that supports it? What is the big deal? I mean, how much space in firmware could adding in support for the ogg codec take up?
My little brain just can't understand why ogg is so univerally ignored. Almost every other kind of software suffers from feature bloat with features that *no one* wants, yet its like pulling teeth to get *any* manufacturer to add ogg support that a large number of people would use and want.
Does anyone know if this works on any of the *BSD unices?
I bought it anyway, even though I don't run MS Office that much, just to support these guys. This is really good work. But it's probably a good idea to buy it before MS shuts them down.
Its out there - at least on ftp.openssh.com. I built and installed 3.1p1 a couple of hours ago on Linux.
My manager is in a different state and I only see him 3-4 times a month. He gives me NO work or feedback... I have to dig it up myself from the users. In fact, he is a hardware guy on the PC side and I do Unix systems admin, so our talk is pretty much just "small talk". I've told him that I'm in the wrong group, but it goes nowhere. I wish I had a manager that I could talk with and who understood my work.
I can't find any link to buy it or even how much the damn thing costs. Does anyone know?
Not true. I am using very standard hardware by name brand manufacturers. And I did check the HCL prior to installation and my hardware is supported. There are no blue screens. Sometimes while using Messenger, I get a little 2" square box with what looks to be an X window in it with all kinds of activity in it. But I can't use the mouse then or do anything except power cycle the box. And this only happens every once in a while. I'm sure that Yahoo Messenger is not the best app, but it is just a user app and shouldn't lock up the whole box. And like I said, on the same box, under 2K, I have none of these problems!
First of all, where I work, we are still discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would guess.
I have installed it clean on a machine I have at home and I am not all that impressed with it. I use Yahoo Messenger a lot, and I have frequent hard system lock ups, where I have to power cycle the box. I also have a disk on the same box with 2K on it and I don't have the same problem, even though I use Yahoo Messenger about the same under both OSs. So my experience has been that XP is *less* stable than 2K.
Where I work, we are not allowed to post *anything* on our cubicle walls - no calendars, notes or anything. The PCs we have do not have sound cards in them. And of course we have those harsh overhead fluorescent lights. This is a very standardized environment and it is sooo hard to efficiently work. Sometimes I just get up and go for a walk outside just to think..
Seems like every time one of these mergers happen, the head tacos come on TV babbling about what a greate synergy this merger is, etc. And how it will give them the oppportunity to improve efficiency, eliminate redundancies (this means mass layoffs), etc. etc.
Hell, if they're going for efficiency, then probably the best solution is to get it all over with and just have one monopoly corporation doing all computer related stuff.
Why doesn't the government instead of trying to break up Microsoft just insist that it merge with AOLTW, Apple, Sun, GE, GM et. al. and be done with it. And as layoffs help a company improve efficiency, they should encourage MSAOLTW[A-Z]* to layoff everyone. Now that would be efficient!
(Wearing my corporate dude hat, where is the "synergy" (whatever that is?) here in this current merger?)
On page 2 there, there is a link to "Download".
That page has a Description and a tab labeled "Download" but no link to download.
The page for the author's home page is out of business.
Looks like the RIAA beat us to it.
Try to go to Google groups and you'll see. It's gone
So Microsoft is releasing Office 2001 for OSX next week and someone just now decided that Open Office needs a Project Lead in order to prevent Microsoft dominance? And today's Friday? And oh by the way - do it all for no pay. Look's like someone is going to have a busy weekend. Talk about pressure to get a major release out...