It seems to me, the Internet created the Open Source movement: it made exchanging ideas and information easy, and provided the flat playing field for interested programmers. Plus, the Internet provided a deep, dark, hole that needed to be filled with new software.
And, since Al Gore invented the Internet, he should get the credit!!
Seriously, Red Hat may have invented the Open Source Business Model, which woo-ed enough venture capital to make God blush. But they only took advantage of the opportunity OSS gave them. I guess to the PR people, cashing in on something is the same thing as inventing it.
Before everyone starts crowing about Sun possibly replacing Linux with Solaris on the Cobalt boxen, please try to remember that Sun's motivation behind this is not anti-Open Source, anti-Linux, or out of fear of a Linux-dominated enterprise computing world.
Sun knows Solaris. They know how it works, what it's strengths are, and what its weaknesses are. They know how to support it, how to upgrade it, and where it is most likely to fail. In short, it is a smart business decision sheerly in how they will support their own products
Will Sun ever jump onto the Linux bandwagon? Not in the forseeable future. The simple fact is, Sun currently makes its $$ on the big boxes, and Linux has a lot of ground to make up in that arena.
As Microsoft, Oracle and many other very, very rich companies have proved, being first does not exactly guarantee success. In fact, it's usually the second or third entries into a market that end up with the motherlode of the market share. Should be fun to watch though....
I think the question of 'whether society is ready for this technology' is almost always a pointless question. No offense to the person who asked it, but the correct answer to the question rarely has any effect on that technology. Are people ready for that much bandwidth? Who cares, it's coming anyway.
Now that I've generalized the heck out of things, is all that bandwidth going to destroy the Internet? No. I remember only a few short years ago about how the Internet was going to 'grind to a halt' because of the explosive growth in the number of users. Did that happen? No... instead AOL, Sun, and Cisco made boatloads of cash by providing the equipment to support all those new users.
The Internet is a dynamic environment... it will adjust, even if the changes are as drastic as 100Mb to the home.
Keeping track of two different ways of dealing with integers is silly. I should be able to do something like the following in Java but I can't:
Integer a;
for (int i = 0; i < loopBound; i++) { a = a + i;
}
OK -- that's just plain silly. Why'd you declare a as an Integer object? Just use the primitive int. There aren't two ways of keeping track of an integer value: int is a primitive, Integer is an object. Why have an Integer object, you ask? You'd be amazed the things you can do by having one of your classes inherit from something as simple as Integer.... OOP really is useful.
What happens when I need access some system pointer?
Well, assuming you're worth your grain of salt as a C programmer, you write a Java Native Interface method. I wonder how many people in this thread have actually written a Java program longer than a few hundred lines. I doubt the originator has... at least not a good one;)
No reason to flame, I'm just pointing stuff out....
You're right -- they could have afforded to keep people on board, but that isn't a good business decision. And, open source company or not, they are here to make money. So, if they can let people go & still make their earnings & growth goals, why spend the extra cash?
Also, < speculation > they could be preparing for another round of venture capital gathering.</speculation > To do this, they need to keep their financial numbers as positive as possible. Keep expenses low, make the bottom line as attractive as possible, etc etc. They may be privately held for now, but my guess is they were testing the IPO waters when they had their last round of financing. Then the bottom fell out of the.com market, so they decided to wait a little longer.
Hmm... maybe I should've used that < speculation > tag a bit more...
As far as I can tell, this is yet another intellectual property issue. The ease of digitizing and transmitting of such property has been an obvious concern for anyone who thinks their creations are their's alone.
Our dubious opinionated scribe has taken the point of saying (excuse the paraphrase, Jon) "Shame on you, Metallica, we thought you were cool." I almost spit my morning coffee out my nose. Guess what? It is against the law to duplicate Metallica's music, then send it to someone else. The ease of doing it over the Internet does not negate the law.
Sorry for the possibly antagonistic tone, but this is almost too silly to comment on.
The commodity platform for the desktop, sure. But it's kind of short-sighted to think that desktop computers are the hot commodity for the future, isn't it?
It's amazing that x86 has lasted this long (read: the WinTel alliance was a stroke of genius), but the design is _old_ and stretched terribly thin. I say good riddance.
It's important to note the type of stock options. For instance, if the company you are considering working for is a startup that hasn't gone public yet (the most likely situation), then stock options are an incredibly risky way to get paid. Of course, the upside is the payoff can be absurdly huge.
The company I work for gave me stock options as a bonus, with a vesting period of 5 years, basically to keep me from jumping ship any time soon. The company is already public & has a huge upside, so over 5 years those options will probably be worth big $$$. But, I have to work for the same company for all that time (gasp!!).
The important thing to remember is that stock options (and even stock, for that matter) aren't worth a cent until you cash them in. If you're young & just starting out, it's an exciting opportunity. But if you're at the retirement-planning stage of life, I think it's too risky to take as compensation.
I'm usually one of the first to jump on the technology bandwagon, but stuff like this still scares me. Anyone who thinks we have a good understanding of how the human body works is putting a lot of faith into medical experts. These are the same people who still can't tell me why my knees hurt
I'm not saying it won't work -- just that it'll take me a long time before I trust some doctor to go mucking up my DNA.
Remember, they call it "practicing medicine" for a reason:)
The only thing that suprises me about this is that they don't try to sell you a Microsoft tool to use in place of fdisk.
Hmm... is that really suprising? They probably had a working version of it, but had trouble making room for the 970MB installation program on the test machine, then the ftp server they were storing it on crashed, then someone opened a MS Word attachment that flooded the server with email responses, then...
OK, maybe this is a non-anti-Microsoft post. Should be interesting.
Most people seem to be taking issue with the fact that the NYPD was called in to track down the prototype. This seemed like a Bad Thing/Big Brother/Corporation-Gov't conspiracy at first, I must admit.
But now that I've been thinking about it, maybe we're all succuming to a knee-jerk reaction here. Suppose Ford "accidentally" shipped their 2001 concept car prototype to Joe Bob in Topeka.
After the initial panic attack at Ford Corporate settled down, they'd look for the absolute fastest way to get that thing out of the open. Call the police, explain the situation. Then call the police commissioner, explain the situation. Then call the mayor, explain the situation.
In short, I think the inherent value of the box (well, its value to Microsoft) may justify the use of the police. As someone else posted, it isn't fair the the NY taxpayers picked up the tab, but those are the breaks. Capitalism sucks, but it's better than anything else.
I think the title gets the gist of this post, but I'll elaborate a bit. Do you want a desktop system that you can use to play games on, type up a term paper, and email your parents for more money? Great, get an Intel machine and congratulate yourself.
A workstation isn't meant for that. Sun usually sells workstations as part of a package deal. Yeah, the IDE disk drives are slow... but guess what? The fiber disk array sitting behind the U3000 server you do most of your work on is pretty friggin fast. They sell the low-end workstations in bulk to corporations/universities that want to get all their machines from the same vendor. Plus, the workstations run Solaris, so the admin doesn't have to worry about incompatibilities between the workstation and the server.
In short, if you're using a workstation for a web server... well... you're probably a few crayons short of a full box.
> The word-use is a bit strange - it looks like they will be Open Source drivers, correct?
Hmmm... this smells like someone in upper management at Creative Labs heard about "that Linux thing", and decided they needed to get into that. So, the HR department whips something up without too much forethought and puts it out there.
But, still a good sign. Sorry for the pessimism this early in the morning.
When Java first popped up, I was one of the schmoe's who bought a few of the first round of books. I picked up a few things, but never felt like I had a good grasp of Java.
I took a few weeks to get to know the Swing tutorial (and the rest of the online tutorial) back in April. I've since downloaded the entire thing to my laptop, and couldn't be happier.
Of course, it isn't going to teach you Java. The only way to do that is to start writing code now. It doesn't matter which book you read -- if you don't apply the lessons, you won't remember anything. But, the tutorial is the perfect reference.
I've never used a Dvorak, but was curious enough to dig around Google to find a place. Here's my favorite:
DvortyBoards -- interesting site. They sell a switchable board (i.e. swap between Qwerty & Dvorak on the fly). US$50 plus shipping & handling. Apparently the translation is done in the keyboard itself, so it would be compatible with any OS.
I'm sure this won't be popular, but I've got to take issue with Torvolds on bashing Sun's CSL. It isn't meant to be an Open Source initiative. Loosely put, it is there so that people building stuff around Sun technology don't have to pay licensing fees during the development process. Period. To quote:
"SCSL provides a more flexible process for gaining access to technology that allows tool vendors, chip designers, commercial OEMs, universities and research organizations access to the picoJavaTM and SPARCTM microprocessor source files without fees during the initial evaluation and development phases. "
To criticize SCSL's language for being too restrictive (in relation to OSS) is just plain silly. It's like a Guiness drinker decrying O'Douls because it's a non-alcolholic brew... sheesh.
Comparing this to the telephone breakup of the 80's is very worth-while. The US gov't broke up AT&T Bell into Long Distance (AT&T), and seven (I think) regional local telephone companies (Bell South, Bell Atlantic, etc...). This breakup was supposed to end AT&T's monopoly in the telephone carrier business.
Did it work? In short, no. Only after a bit more legislation (the Telecom Act of 1996) have we begun to see some serious competition as far as local and long distance telephone companies.
The Microsoft case has some similarities, in that Microsoft controls the OS market (analogous to the telephone wires of AT&T), and it has used that control to dominate the software market (analogous to local & LD telephone service). OK, maybe weak analogies, but stay with me. Both companies used their monopoly to prohibit competition in another related market.
But there are differences, too. Specifically, AT&T's monopoly was complete & absolute, mostly because of the prohibitive high cost of entry into the market. To sell a competitive telephone service, you'd have to literally string up your own wires & lease your own land all over the country. That's not the case with Microsoft. They have some scant competition (MacOS, *nix, etc), and there isn't the high entry cost.
I think the government remembers the mistakes they made in breaking up AT&T, and all the hassle they had to go through to get the Telecom act of 1996 through (12 years after the fact). So, my guess is if they do break Microsoft up, they'll do it with a vengence. I predict (& hope) that they separate the OS development/marketing/sales structures from the application development/marketing/sales structures, forming at least two different companies in place of Microsoft.
But that doesn't mean Microsoft will disappear. Look at AT&T and all the Baby Bells -- they're still alive & kicking, they're just not making as much money as they used to. That's probably what will happen to MS as well. So, the Linux/OSS community will still have a common enemy to fight; that enemy just won't have as many teeth as before.
-- Mid
N.B. -- for a lengthy discussion of the Bell Telephone System, see the MIT HyperArchives
Realistically, Sun could care less about what OS your home PC uses. Even if you work for a small business, Sun probably isn't all that excited about getting you as a customer. Their vision is not about the home PC/small business side of things.
They want to sell their networked vision of computing to the people with the big money -- the Ford Motor Company & CitiBanks of the world. Selling to a regional ISP so they can offer server-side apps to their customers? If it happens, great -- but don't think they're banking on it.
Don't fool yourself into thinking of Sun as a software company either (at least, not in its current state). Sure, they write lots of software (again, almost exclusively for business) -- but the real $$ is in the hardware they sell (aka Big Honkin Box in the server room). And no individual or small business wants or needs one of these.
Dragging this ramble back on topic, I don't think Sun's 10 year plan includes killing Linux. I doubt it includes jumping onto the OSS bandwagon either. It's simply not their business. They bought StarDivision to go head-to-head with M$ Office in the workplace environment, nothing else.
The funny thing is, I couldn't access my 'free' account previously (I think because someone got to it before me). At least now I can see who's using my name:)
In a world of stupidity, NSI has managed to flaunt their lack of knowledge better than anyone.
I think you're underestimating the usefulness of Java network programming. I'd be interested in seeing someone get this same application up & running (with Jini-like useability) coded in C/C++.
As someone who writes networked code in both, I can testify to the ease of Java's networking API. Also, the advantage of the Jini network (i.e. just plug the damn thing in to start it, unplug it to stop it -- no configuration on either side) is a huge plus....
I'm not disagreeing with you though; my Palm V is one of the most useful things I own -- I just think you're missing the overall usefulness of Jini and Java.
I find it interesting that Raduchel resigned his post @ Sun to take up with AOL. I wonder how far this partnership is going to go? My guess is that this was a brokered deal, designed to make sure Sun & AOL are on the same page in terms of long term strategy.
I'll bet Andreessen is happy about it though. How fun could it possibly be to spend your days politic-ing with the AOL execs? I'd much rather be scouring Silicon Valley for the Next Big Thing too....
A lot of posts here are calling for a Linux/Apache solution to the Army's problem. Ahem... [[stepping on soap box]]
Keep in mind what these army folks were looking for: a secure, virtually administration-free, relatively stable webserver that is resistent to remote attacks. For that application, a Mac server makes sense.
Why didn't they choose *nix? The admins probably aren't big tech heads, and the fact that several flavors of UNIX are free probably scared off their superiors anyway. But for this application (remeber, they're concerned with remote attacks) I'd say MacOS is definately more secure for a couple of reasons:
- No shell, thus no root shell (duh!) - The lack of publicly known kernel knowledge (has anyone even tried hacking a Mac?) - Not multi-user - No remote access
My point is, thinking Linux is the correct OS for every application (and advocating it that way) is just plain naive.
This feature is actually something that the new Sun Ray terminals offer. A lot of people've bashed them for being expensive xterm's that Sun is trying to use to get people to buy more servers (which may or may not be true), but it has a smart-card slot built into the front of it.
Walk up, pop in your card, and your saved desktop (bookmarks & preferences & environment, oh my!) is readily available to you. On a large campus (educational or otherwise), this seems like a good application.
My guess is we'll start to see a lot more apps using Smart Cards. I'm sure the wallet people are already designing the uberWallet, for all your smart card needs;)
Slashdot Mirror
And, since Al Gore invented the Internet, he should get the credit!!
Seriously, Red Hat may have invented the Open Source Business Model, which woo-ed enough venture capital to make God blush. But they only took advantage of the opportunity OSS gave them. I guess to the PR people, cashing in on something is the same thing as inventing it.
-- Mid
Sun knows Solaris. They know how it works, what it's strengths are, and what its weaknesses are. They know how to support it, how to upgrade it, and where it is most likely to fail. In short, it is a smart business decision sheerly in how they will support their own products
Will Sun ever jump onto the Linux bandwagon? Not in the forseeable future. The simple fact is, Sun currently makes its $$ on the big boxes, and Linux has a lot of ground to make up in that arena.
--Mid
As Microsoft, Oracle and many other very, very rich companies have proved, being first does not exactly guarantee success. In fact, it's usually the second or third entries into a market that end up with the motherlode of the market share. Should be fun to watch though....
--Mid
I think the question of 'whether society is ready for this technology' is almost always a pointless question. No offense to the person who asked it, but the correct answer to the question rarely has any effect on that technology. Are people ready for that much bandwidth? Who cares, it's coming anyway.
Now that I've generalized the heck out of things, is all that bandwidth going to destroy the Internet? No. I remember only a few short years ago about how the Internet was going to 'grind to a halt' because of the explosive growth in the number of users. Did that happen? No... instead AOL, Sun, and Cisco made boatloads of cash by providing the equipment to support all those new users.
The Internet is a dynamic environment... it will adjust, even if the changes are as drastic as 100Mb to the home.
--Mid
Keeping track of two different ways of dealing with integers is silly. I should be able to do something like the following in Java but I can't:
;)
Integer a;
for (int i = 0; i < loopBound; i++)
{
a = a + i;
}
OK -- that's just plain silly. Why'd you declare a as an Integer object? Just use the primitive int. There aren't two ways of keeping track of an integer value: int is a primitive, Integer is an object. Why have an Integer object, you ask? You'd be amazed the things you can do by having one of your classes inherit from something as simple as Integer.... OOP really is useful.
What happens when I need access some system pointer?
Well, assuming you're worth your grain of salt as a C programmer, you write a Java Native Interface method. I wonder how many people in this thread have actually written a Java program longer than a few hundred lines. I doubt the originator has... at least not a good one
No reason to flame, I'm just pointing stuff out....
--Mid
You're right -- they could have afforded to keep people on board, but that isn't a good business decision. And, open source company or not, they are here to make money. So, if they can let people go & still make their earnings & growth goals, why spend the extra cash?
/speculation > To do this, they need to keep their financial numbers as positive as possible. Keep expenses low, make the bottom line as attractive as possible, etc etc. They may be privately held for now, but my guess is they were testing the IPO waters when they had their last round of financing. Then the bottom fell out of the .com market, so they decided to wait a little longer.
Also, < speculation > they could be preparing for another round of venture capital gathering.<
Hmm... maybe I should've used that < speculation > tag a bit more...
--Mid
Anyone who had downloaded the program care to mirror it for the rest of us poor schmucks?
Thx,
-- Mid
As far as I can tell, this is yet another intellectual property issue. The ease of digitizing and transmitting of such property has been an obvious concern for anyone who thinks their creations are their's alone.
Our dubious opinionated scribe has taken the point of saying (excuse the paraphrase, Jon) "Shame on you, Metallica, we thought you were cool." I almost spit my morning coffee out my nose. Guess what? It is against the law to duplicate Metallica's music, then send it to someone else. The ease of doing it over the Internet does not negate the law.
Sorry for the possibly antagonistic tone, but this is almost too silly to comment on.
--Mid
> x86 will always be the commodity platform
The commodity platform for the desktop, sure. But it's kind of short-sighted to think that desktop computers are the hot commodity for the future, isn't it?
It's amazing that x86 has lasted this long (read: the WinTel alliance was a stroke of genius), but the design is _old_ and stretched terribly thin. I say good riddance.
--Mid
It's important to note the type of stock options. For instance, if the company you are considering working for is a startup that hasn't gone public yet (the most likely situation), then stock options are an incredibly risky way to get paid. Of course, the upside is the payoff can be absurdly huge.
The company I work for gave me stock options as a bonus, with a vesting period of 5 years, basically to keep me from jumping ship any time soon. The company is already public & has a huge upside, so over 5 years those options will probably be worth big $$$. But, I have to work for the same company for all that time (gasp!!).
The important thing to remember is that stock options (and even stock, for that matter) aren't worth a cent until you cash them in. If you're young & just starting out, it's an exciting opportunity. But if you're at the retirement-planning stage of life, I think it's too risky to take as compensation.
--Mid
I'm usually one of the first to jump on the technology bandwagon, but stuff like this still scares me. Anyone who thinks we have a good understanding of how the human body works is putting a lot of faith into medical experts. These are the same people who still can't tell me why my knees hurt
:)
I'm not saying it won't work -- just that it'll take me a long time before I trust some doctor to go mucking up my DNA.
Remember, they call it "practicing medicine" for a reason
--Mid
Hmm... is that really suprising? They probably had a working version of it, but had trouble making room for the 970MB installation program on the test machine, then the ftp server they were storing it on crashed, then someone opened a MS Word attachment that flooded the server with email responses, then...
:)
--Mid
OK, maybe this is a non-anti-Microsoft post. Should be interesting.
Most people seem to be taking issue with the fact that the NYPD was called in to track down the prototype. This seemed like a Bad Thing/Big Brother/Corporation-Gov't conspiracy at first, I must admit.
But now that I've been thinking about it, maybe we're all succuming to a knee-jerk reaction here. Suppose Ford "accidentally" shipped their 2001 concept car prototype to Joe Bob in Topeka.
After the initial panic attack at Ford Corporate settled down, they'd look for the absolute fastest way to get that thing out of the open. Call the police, explain the situation. Then call the police commissioner, explain the situation. Then call the mayor, explain the situation.
In short, I think the inherent value of the box (well, its value to Microsoft) may justify the use of the police. As someone else posted, it isn't fair the the NY taxpayers picked up the tab, but those are the breaks. Capitalism sucks, but it's better than anything else.
--Mid
I think the title gets the gist of this post, but I'll elaborate a bit. Do you want a desktop system that you can use to play games on, type up a term paper, and email your parents for more money? Great, get an Intel machine and congratulate yourself.
A workstation isn't meant for that. Sun usually sells workstations as part of a package deal. Yeah, the IDE disk drives are slow... but guess what? The fiber disk array sitting behind the U3000 server you do most of your work on is pretty friggin fast. They sell the low-end workstations in bulk to corporations/universities that want to get all their machines from the same vendor. Plus, the workstations run Solaris, so the admin doesn't have to worry about incompatibilities between the workstation and the server.
In short, if you're using a workstation for a web server... well... you're probably a few crayons short of a full box.
--Mid
> The word-use is a bit strange - it looks like they will be Open Source drivers, correct?
Hmmm... this smells like someone in upper management at Creative Labs heard about "that Linux thing", and decided they needed to get into that. So, the HR department whips something up without too much forethought and puts it out there.
But, still a good sign. Sorry for the pessimism this early in the morning.
--Mid
When Java first popped up, I was one of the schmoe's who bought a few of the first round of books. I picked up a few things, but never felt like I had a good grasp of Java.
I took a few weeks to get to know the Swing tutorial (and the rest of the online tutorial) back in April. I've since downloaded the entire thing to my laptop, and couldn't be happier.
Of course, it isn't going to teach you Java. The only way to do that is to start writing code now. It doesn't matter which book you read -- if you don't apply the lessons, you won't remember anything. But, the tutorial is the perfect reference.
--Mid
I've never used a Dvorak, but was curious enough to dig around Google to find a place. Here's my favorite:
DvortyBoards -- interesting site. They sell a switchable board (i.e. swap between Qwerty & Dvorak on the fly). US$50 plus shipping & handling. Apparently the translation is done in the keyboard itself, so it would be compatible with any OS.
--Mid
I'm sure this won't be popular, but I've got to take issue with Torvolds on bashing Sun's CSL. It isn't meant to be an Open Source initiative. Loosely put, it is there so that people building stuff around Sun technology don't have to pay licensing fees during the development process. Period. To quote:
"SCSL provides a more flexible process for gaining access to technology that allows tool vendors, chip designers, commercial OEMs, universities and research organizations access to the picoJavaTM and SPARCTM microprocessor source files without fees during the initial evaluation and development phases. "
To criticize SCSL's language for being too restrictive (in relation to OSS) is just plain silly. It's like a Guiness drinker decrying O'Douls because it's a non-alcolholic brew... sheesh.
--Mid
Comparing this to the telephone breakup of the 80's is very worth-while. The US gov't broke up AT&T Bell into Long Distance (AT&T), and seven (I think) regional local telephone companies (Bell South, Bell Atlantic, etc...). This breakup was supposed to end AT&T's monopoly in the telephone carrier business.
Did it work? In short, no. Only after a bit more legislation (the Telecom Act of 1996) have we begun to see some serious competition as far as local and long distance telephone companies.
The Microsoft case has some similarities, in that Microsoft controls the OS market (analogous to the telephone wires of AT&T), and it has used that control to dominate the software market (analogous to local & LD telephone service). OK, maybe weak analogies, but stay with me. Both companies used their monopoly to prohibit competition in another related market.
But there are differences, too. Specifically, AT&T's monopoly was complete & absolute, mostly because of the prohibitive high cost of entry into the market. To sell a competitive telephone service, you'd have to literally string up your own wires & lease your own land all over the country. That's not the case with Microsoft. They have some scant competition (MacOS, *nix, etc), and there isn't the high entry cost.
I think the government remembers the mistakes they made in breaking up AT&T, and all the hassle they had to go through to get the Telecom act of 1996 through (12 years after the fact). So, my guess is if they do break Microsoft up, they'll do it with a vengence. I predict (& hope) that they separate the OS development/marketing/sales structures from the application development/marketing/sales structures, forming at least two different companies in place of Microsoft.
But that doesn't mean Microsoft will disappear. Look at AT&T and all the Baby Bells -- they're still alive & kicking, they're just not making as much money as they used to. That's probably what will happen to MS as well. So, the Linux/OSS community will still have a common enemy to fight; that enemy just won't have as many teeth as before.
-- Mid
N.B. -- for a lengthy discussion of the Bell Telephone System, see the MIT HyperArchives
Realistically, Sun could care less about what OS your home PC uses. Even if you work for a small business, Sun probably isn't all that excited about getting you as a customer. Their vision is not about the home PC/small business side of things.
They want to sell their networked vision of computing to the people with the big money -- the Ford Motor Company & CitiBanks of the world. Selling to a regional ISP so they can offer server-side apps to their customers? If it happens, great -- but don't think they're banking on it.
Don't fool yourself into thinking of Sun as a software company either (at least, not in its current state). Sure, they write lots of software (again, almost exclusively for business) -- but the real $$ is in the hardware they sell (aka Big Honkin Box in the server room). And no individual or small business wants or needs one of these.
Dragging this ramble back on topic, I don't think Sun's 10 year plan includes killing Linux. I doubt it includes jumping onto the OSS bandwagon either. It's simply not their business. They bought StarDivision to go head-to-head with M$ Office in the workplace environment, nothing else.
My $.02
--Mid
The funny thing is, I couldn't access my 'free' account previously (I think because someone got to it before me). At least now I can see who's using my name :)
In a world of stupidity, NSI has managed to flaunt their lack of knowledge better than anyone.
--Mid
I think you're underestimating the usefulness of Java network programming. I'd be interested in seeing someone get this same application up & running (with Jini-like useability) coded in C/C++.
As someone who writes networked code in both, I can testify to the ease of Java's networking API. Also, the advantage of the Jini network (i.e. just plug the damn thing in to start it, unplug it to stop it -- no configuration on either side) is a huge plus....
I'm not disagreeing with you though; my Palm V is one of the most useful things I own -- I just think you're missing the overall usefulness of Jini and Java.
--Mid
I find it interesting that Raduchel resigned his post @ Sun to take up with AOL. I wonder how far this partnership is going to go? My guess is that this was a brokered deal, designed to make sure Sun & AOL are on the same page in terms of long term strategy.
I'll bet Andreessen is happy about it though. How fun could it possibly be to spend your days politic-ing with the AOL execs? I'd much rather be scouring Silicon Valley for the Next Big Thing too....
--Mid
A lot of posts here are calling for a Linux/Apache solution to the Army's problem. Ahem... [[stepping on soap box]]
Keep in mind what these army folks were looking for: a secure, virtually administration-free, relatively stable webserver that is resistent to remote attacks. For that application, a Mac server makes sense.
Why didn't they choose *nix? The admins probably aren't big tech heads, and the fact that several flavors of UNIX are free probably scared off their superiors anyway. But for this application (remeber, they're concerned with remote attacks) I'd say MacOS is definately more secure for a couple of reasons:
- No shell, thus no root shell (duh!)
- The lack of publicly known kernel knowledge (has anyone even tried hacking a Mac?)
- Not multi-user
- No remote access
My point is, thinking Linux is the correct OS for every application (and advocating it that way) is just plain naive.
--Mid
This feature is actually something that the new Sun Ray terminals offer. A lot of people've bashed them for being expensive xterm's that Sun is trying to use to get people to buy more servers (which may or may not be true), but it has a smart-card slot built into the front of it.
;)
Walk up, pop in your card, and your saved desktop (bookmarks & preferences & environment, oh my!) is readily available to you. On a large campus (educational or otherwise), this seems like a good application.
My guess is we'll start to see a lot more apps using Smart Cards. I'm sure the wallet people are already designing the uberWallet, for all your smart card needs
--Mid