A lot of people are going on and on about what linux can do that solaris can't.. cross platform, open source, etc...
But I think your question was, given the Sparc platform.. why not use solaris?
At this point, you are right. Solaris is where it's at.. I mean, if you are buying Sun.. you obviously want more than just a fast machine... you want the support, etc.
But... as to why I prefer using linux to solaris, in general...
Linux is the new reference platform. new tools are developed on linux first, then ported to other unixes (the mahjority, anyway).
The number of tools quickly & easily available for linux vastly outnumbers the same for Solaris. Yes, you can get, compile, and run pretty much everything on solaris.. it's easy to port form linux to solaris.. but it's still easier to use linux.
Linux is open.. I just, well, I DO like that. Sure, I'm not gonna go out and modify a kernel.. but it means I'm not necessarily stuck with what Sun tells me I'm stuck with.
Would I buy a server farm of solaris boxes and run linux on it now? no.
Would I if Linux sparc supportw as as good as it's intel support? probably (once SPM is fixed)
This new update thing has *nothing whatsoever* to do with the availability of updates to Ximian. It's apples and oranges man.
And free software, as everyone is so fond of putting, is about freedom, not free as in beer.
I don't think you know what you are talking about.
I've read Animal Farm.. please show me how that has anything to do with Ximian offering a service.
Controlling the desktop? What on EARTH doest his have to do with 'controlling the desktop'
This has *nothing* to do with being proprietary!
Once gain.. this 'service' is NOT really directly related to Ximian Gnome.. it is an *updating* service, used to keep your system automatically up to date.. much more than just Ximian Gnome.
Right.
But Ximian isn't charging you for updates to Ximain Gnome. Updates are still free, and easy to install.
They are charging you for a *service* that updates things (a lot more than just gnome) automatically for you.
Linux distros don't charge for updates either.
This is about Red Carpet... an *updating service* Ximian is offering.
I repeat.. they are not charging you for updates, or in any way making it 'harder' for you to update.
What they ARE offering is a managed service to keep systems up to date. It will manage far more than Ximian Gnome as well. This is NOT 'Pay us $10/mo if you want Ximian updates'.. nothing of the sort.
You don't want the service, you are absolutely free to use any of the numerous tools available to you to update your system on your own.
"You know, we saved you about $100,000 in software costs, why don't you donate 10% of that cost to Debian and/or Apache."
"Um, no."
Well.. if it's a public company, that's because doing so would be illegal, and they could be sued by the shareholders. You don't spend their money if you don't have to, period.
Sure, it might sound a bit far fetched.
But.. a computer being able to actually construct something in 3 dimensions instead of simply a colorfield has *huge* implications with regards to image recognition.. it really does.
Take a single image of, say, a user's hands, for gesture recognition. How do you recognize the hands from the background? Color.... heuristics.. and what not.
But now.. it's simple. It's the stuff that's close to you! It's a completely different way to look at things.
See.. regardless of what either side says.. neither has a significant share of the embedded market.
Now.. from what I've seen of real embedded OS, Linux is likely to be much more popular with them than XP.
Now.. if we speak strictly of more 'custom computers'.. like set-top boxes, kiosks, atms, etc, sure, XP 'embedded' might be a good, easy solution in some cases; even better than linux.. especially if you want windows functionality.
But arguing which is a 'better' embedded OS based on things like networking, GUI, web browser, 802.11b zero-config, etc, is absurd; those are ideas from the PC world.. not the embedded world.
I agree that things are a bit complicated.
To those of us who still think as if we were using a cli... who understand what's going on in the background.. it's not so bad.
To joe average.. the fact that his desktop is in his hard drive,but he has to get to the hard drive from the desktop is a bit confusing.
I agree that the 'drives' mentality is a bit messed, as far as basic computer usage goes.. but is it really? I mean, it reflects upon reality.
Folders getting too deeply nested for gui clicks? OH well.. that just means people will tend NOT to do so.
Anything you do to make the desktop 'simpler', though it may help joe average, will also make it MORE complex for us to troubleshoot problems. You have to add more abstraction, not less, to get rid of the HD icon.
The article sort of makes it sound like this is groundbreaking work for UIUC.
UIUIC, if I'm not mistaken, is the location (or one of the locations) of the National Center for Supercompuing Applications (NCSA anyone?). They already HAVE a passel of really funky VR & immersive environments.. CAVE, versadesk, that funky classroom....
So they did a 6 sided cave instead of the old one (3 or 4? I forget if the floor was done or not). I mean, it's great news.. and using linux is cool.. but really... It's interesting, not groundbreaking.
As for those saying 'But they will need good synchronization and trackers'. It's NCSA. They have lots of this gear already.. they already have a cave, remember.
Dammit. I was only a few minutes away from there on my travels once.... I wish I could have gone for a tour.
That's great.
My point was that just because they have one cool product (and it is cool) does not mean everything else they undertake will have the same level of cool.
I didn't realize it was the same team working on it. If it's going to have the same level of openness, that's great.
sonicblue did NOT invent the empeg.... they bought it.
And when they bought it, it was already a complete product, in production, running linux, and it was designed by the designers to be uber-hackable. To change all that, revoke all the cool info on the website, etc, would be to toally screw over all the marketing already done for the product.
Who on earth said you couldn't do mobility? I sure didn't.
The point of my post was that, evey time anything involving wireless data transmission comes up, people whine about how it's not mobile, therefore useless.
People don't whine when a new kind of fiber or ethernet comes out.... "But it's not mobile!".. so why should they whine about wireless?
And regarding your project.. it's really cool.. but I have a couple questions.
1) Now that you've added the amplifier, does the completed setup exceed FCC EIRP regulations for the ISM band? (or are they not ISM radios..). Is it licensed or unlicensed.
2) If this is normal, ISM band wireless lan, yes you can do it mobile.. but it will saturate quickly once a few clients are active at the same time. In other words, it's fantastic for the application you are using it for, but not necessarily a metropolitan solution.
3) What's the effective range?
The point is.. though mobile might always use wireless, wireless does not always mean mobile.
Who on earth said you couldn't do mobility? I sure didn't.
The point of my post was that, evey time anything involving wireless data transmission comes up, people whine about how it's not mobile, therefore useless.
People don't whine when a new kind of fiber or ethernet comes out.... "But it's not mobile!".. so why should they whine about wireless?
The point is.. though mobile might always use wireless, wireless does not always mean mobile.
Yeah. You phrased your question badly.. it could be read as implying that he was a do-nothing as well, though obviously you didn't mean that.
As for answering your question.. he did. His point was that it will not happen. His point was that there will be huge contractual agreements for each individual about what they have to do and how, in order to keep the job. I think he answered it just fine.
but for joe average consumer, it's not a 'hackable computer in a neat case' where they even want to know how it works. IT's just something that can record 30 hours of video for them.
It's like saying we shouldn't call casette tapes '60 minute' tapes.. because, in truth, we can stick a lot more at lower quality, or a lot less at higher quality on the same tape.
I realize that the real 'convenience' of these devicies is the programming & scheduling. If all we wanted was a digital video recorder.. it would be easy.
My question is..
I'm thinking of this as a gift for someone...
but.. is scheduling provided for Canadian cable networks?
I worked sysadmin for several 'mom&pop' ISP's... back in the day.
I don't think the things you are referring to are as 'shady' as you seem to think (or perhaps you just haven't mentioned the really shady stuff).
Splitting a T1 10 ways, believe it or not, was not the evil it was made out to be. (For the laymen, this means selling 10 T1's to remote customers when all you have is one T1 upstream).
Splitting a T1 10 ways is only bad if people can't get the response and bandwidth they expect.. and let me tell you, in the early-mid 90's, many people coudl NOT tell the difference between 128Kbps isdn and a T1.
Sure, if they all saturate their links, you're screwed. But they don't.
As for 'overselling'.. the net is not perfectly heirarchial. EVERY section of it is 'oversold'. There is always more bandwidth downstream than up, or almost always. IT's all how well it's managed against expectations and actual real usage.
In other words 'as long as the bandwidth is there when I want to use it, I don't care if its' not there when I don't'
This is something that really needs to be cleared up.. I think many people don't seem to understand that 'wireless' does not necessarily mean 'mobile'.
With current technology... well, basically, it takes a LOT of infrastructure to roll out 'mobile' wireless (look at cellular for an example). Fixed wireless is much faster, and cheaper to deploy, and has much less infrastructure.
Why is it a 'downside' that an internet connection for your house isnt' mobile? I don't understand.
I mean, hell... if you really look at it, fixed wireless is more 'wireless' than celluar; cellular relies on TONS of wired equipment in order to do it's job.
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Actually...
Females have 23 pairs.
Guys have 22 pairs, plus 2 chromosomes that are not a 'pair'. (XY instead of XX).
The useless Y chromosome, I'm told, is what makes males inferior.
A lot of people are going on and on about what linux can do that solaris can't.. cross platform, open source, etc...
But I think your question was, given the Sparc platform.. why not use solaris?
At this point, you are right. Solaris is where it's at.. I mean, if you are buying Sun.. you obviously want more than just a fast machine... you want the support, etc.
But... as to why I prefer using linux to solaris, in general...
Linux is the new reference platform. new tools are developed on linux first, then ported to other unixes (the mahjority, anyway).
The number of tools quickly & easily available for linux vastly outnumbers the same for Solaris. Yes, you can get, compile, and run pretty much everything on solaris.. it's easy to port form linux to solaris.. but it's still easier to use linux.
Linux is open.. I just, well, I DO like that. Sure, I'm not gonna go out and modify a kernel.. but it means I'm not necessarily stuck with what Sun tells me I'm stuck with.
Would I buy a server farm of solaris boxes and run linux on it now? no.
Would I if Linux sparc supportw as as good as it's intel support? probably (once SPM is fixed)
You are correct... but mixing terms.
It's still Write Once - Read Many. Just like a CD-R, or an old WORM drive.
Regardless of how you are 'seeing' the filesystem on it.. you are still only ever writing to somewhere that has never been written before.
Also... what do you mean, 'practical only for the TOC'? A multisession CD, yes, writes new data (if required) and a new TOC.
How would this memory be any different?
No.. I still don't see it.
"still" was my word, perhaps a bad choice.
Let me put it another way.
This new update thing has *nothing whatsoever* to do with the availability of updates to Ximian. It's apples and oranges man.
And free software, as everyone is so fond of putting, is about freedom, not free as in beer.
I don't think you know what you are talking about.
I've read Animal Farm.. please show me how that has anything to do with Ximian offering a service.
Controlling the desktop? What on EARTH doest his have to do with 'controlling the desktop'
This has *nothing* to do with being proprietary!
Once gain.. this 'service' is NOT really directly related to Ximian Gnome.. it is an *updating* service, used to keep your system automatically up to date.. much more than just Ximian Gnome.
Right.
But Ximian isn't charging you for updates to Ximain Gnome. Updates are still free, and easy to install.
They are charging you for a *service* that updates things (a lot more than just gnome) automatically for you.
Linux distros don't charge for updates either.
This is about Red Carpet... an *updating service* Ximian is offering.
I repeat.. they are not charging you for updates, or in any way making it 'harder' for you to update.
What they ARE offering is a managed service to keep systems up to date. It will manage far more than Ximian Gnome as well. This is NOT 'Pay us $10/mo if you want Ximian updates'.. nothing of the sort.
You don't want the service, you are absolutely free to use any of the numerous tools available to you to update your system on your own.
If $9.95/month is too expensive for you.. DON'T BUY IT. It's that simple. Nobody is forcing it on you. Not at all.
You want to use this particular service, in a particular way, fork out the cash. Otherwise, do things a slightly harder way.
It's called 'providing a service'.
If it's too expensive, it won't take off.. but that is Ximian's problem,not yours.
How, exactly, is it faster than
a) open Word
b) type document, using straightforward GUI tools
c) hit print
What do you mean by 'waste time on typesetting details'?
I'm not saying LyX/LaTeX are not just fine.. but saying that it's better than Word for most things is rediculous.
"You know, we saved you about $100,000 in software costs, why don't you donate 10% of that cost to Debian and/or Apache."
"Um, no."
Well.. if it's a public company, that's because doing so would be illegal, and they could be sued by the shareholders. You don't spend their money if you don't have to, period.
Because my Debian installs take roughly 15 to 20 minutes from start to finish, and any Windows installs I've done take at least a couple hours.
If SUSE took 12 hours to install, you are doing something very seriously wrong.
I think they meant '8 to 20 mbps' every day. All day.
Very useful; especially being somewhat open.
Sure, it might sound a bit far fetched.
But.. a computer being able to actually construct something in 3 dimensions instead of simply a colorfield has *huge* implications with regards to image recognition.. it really does.
Take a single image of, say, a user's hands, for gesture recognition. How do you recognize the hands from the background? Color.... heuristics.. and what not.
But now.. it's simple. It's the stuff that's close to you! It's a completely different way to look at things.
See.. regardless of what either side says.. neither has a significant share of the embedded market.
Now.. from what I've seen of real embedded OS, Linux is likely to be much more popular with them than XP.
Now.. if we speak strictly of more 'custom computers'.. like set-top boxes, kiosks, atms, etc, sure, XP 'embedded' might be a good, easy solution in some cases; even better than linux.. especially if you want windows functionality.
But arguing which is a 'better' embedded OS based on things like networking, GUI, web browser, 802.11b zero-config, etc, is absurd; those are ideas from the PC world.. not the embedded world.
Your new toaster does not need a web browser.
I agree that things are a bit complicated.
To those of us who still think as if we were using a cli... who understand what's going on in the background.. it's not so bad.
To joe average.. the fact that his desktop is in his hard drive,but he has to get to the hard drive from the desktop is a bit confusing.
I agree that the 'drives' mentality is a bit messed, as far as basic computer usage goes.. but is it really? I mean, it reflects upon reality.
Folders getting too deeply nested for gui clicks? OH well.. that just means people will tend NOT to do so.
Anything you do to make the desktop 'simpler', though it may help joe average, will also make it MORE complex for us to troubleshoot problems. You have to add more abstraction, not less, to get rid of the HD icon.
The article sort of makes it sound like this is groundbreaking work for UIUC.
UIUIC, if I'm not mistaken, is the location (or one of the locations) of the National Center for Supercompuing Applications (NCSA anyone?). They already HAVE a passel of really funky VR & immersive environments.. CAVE, versadesk, that funky classroom....
So they did a 6 sided cave instead of the old one (3 or 4? I forget if the floor was done or not). I mean, it's great news.. and using linux is cool.. but really... It's interesting, not groundbreaking.
As for those saying 'But they will need good synchronization and trackers'. It's NCSA. They have lots of this gear already.. they already have a cave, remember.
Dammit. I was only a few minutes away from there on my travels once.... I wish I could have gone for a tour.
That's great.
My point was that just because they have one cool product (and it is cool) does not mean everything else they undertake will have the same level of cool.
I didn't realize it was the same team working on it. If it's going to have the same level of openness, that's great.
sonicblue did NOT invent the empeg.... they bought it.
And when they bought it, it was already a complete product, in production, running linux, and it was designed by the designers to be uber-hackable. To change all that, revoke all the cool info on the website, etc, would be to toally screw over all the marketing already done for the product.
Who on earth said you couldn't do mobility? I sure didn't.
The point of my post was that, evey time anything involving wireless data transmission comes up, people whine about how it's not mobile, therefore useless.
People don't whine when a new kind of fiber or ethernet comes out.... "But it's not mobile!".. so why should they whine about wireless?
And regarding your project.. it's really cool.. but I have a couple questions.
1) Now that you've added the amplifier, does the completed setup exceed FCC EIRP regulations for the ISM band? (or are they not ISM radios..). Is it licensed or unlicensed.
2) If this is normal, ISM band wireless lan, yes you can do it mobile.. but it will saturate quickly once a few clients are active at the same time. In other words, it's fantastic for the application you are using it for, but not necessarily a metropolitan solution.
3) What's the effective range?
The point is.. though mobile might always use wireless, wireless does not always mean mobile.
Who on earth said you couldn't do mobility? I sure didn't.
The point of my post was that, evey time anything involving wireless data transmission comes up, people whine about how it's not mobile, therefore useless.
People don't whine when a new kind of fiber or ethernet comes out.... "But it's not mobile!".. so why should they whine about wireless?
The point is.. though mobile might always use wireless, wireless does not always mean mobile.
Yeah. You phrased your question badly.. it could be read as implying that he was a do-nothing as well, though obviously you didn't mean that.
As for answering your question.. he did. His point was that it will not happen. His point was that there will be huge contractual agreements for each individual about what they have to do and how, in order to keep the job. I think he answered it just fine.
but for joe average consumer, it's not a 'hackable computer in a neat case' where they even want to know how it works. IT's just something that can record 30 hours of video for them.
It's like saying we shouldn't call casette tapes '60 minute' tapes.. because, in truth, we can stick a lot more at lower quality, or a lot less at higher quality on the same tape.
I realize that the real 'convenience' of these devicies is the programming & scheduling. If all we wanted was a digital video recorder.. it would be easy.
My question is..
I'm thinking of this as a gift for someone...
but.. is scheduling provided for Canadian cable networks?
I worked sysadmin for several 'mom&pop' ISP's... back in the day.
I don't think the things you are referring to are as 'shady' as you seem to think (or perhaps you just haven't mentioned the really shady stuff).
Splitting a T1 10 ways, believe it or not, was not the evil it was made out to be. (For the laymen, this means selling 10 T1's to remote customers when all you have is one T1 upstream).
Splitting a T1 10 ways is only bad if people can't get the response and bandwidth they expect.. and let me tell you, in the early-mid 90's, many people coudl NOT tell the difference between 128Kbps isdn and a T1.
Sure, if they all saturate their links, you're screwed. But they don't.
As for 'overselling'.. the net is not perfectly heirarchial. EVERY section of it is 'oversold'. There is always more bandwidth downstream than up, or almost always. IT's all how well it's managed against expectations and actual real usage.
In other words 'as long as the bandwidth is there when I want to use it, I don't care if its' not there when I don't'
This is something that really needs to be cleared up.. I think many people don't seem to understand that 'wireless' does not necessarily mean 'mobile'.
With current technology... well, basically, it takes a LOT of infrastructure to roll out 'mobile' wireless (look at cellular for an example). Fixed wireless is much faster, and cheaper to deploy, and has much less infrastructure.
Why is it a 'downside' that an internet connection for your house isnt' mobile? I don't understand.
I mean, hell... if you really look at it, fixed wireless is more 'wireless' than celluar; cellular relies on TONS of wired equipment in order to do it's job.