Please tell me you're joking. Regardless of who you vote for, I'd hate to think that people are actually casting votes based on the web servers that candidates are running. There are much bigger issues at stake, people! Realize that the web sites are probably contracted out, anyway. If any mandate did come from Gore to use Linux, it would probably be for political reasons, not technological ones.
What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power, and yet the throughput capacity was hardly changing at all.
Gore seems to come dangerously close to asserting that he essentially came up with Moore's Law before Gordon Moore.
BTW, the article does say some good things about Bush compared to Gore, such as:
Bush also supported the controversial exportation of cryptographic technology, an issue on which Gore dragged his feet. In addition, Bush took a George père-type "Read my lips: no new taxes" stand on e-commerce and ISPs, whereas Gore supports the current moratorium but has indicated that Net taxes are inevitable.
And strictly anti-Gore fodder:
But Gore has a less consistent record on the kinds of free-speech issues that are important to many in the online community... Gore supported what became known as CDA 2, the Child Online Protection Act, a bill that First Amendment advocates find objectionable because it attempts to regulate speech on the Net.
Keep that in mind if you think Gore "gets" all technology issues better than Bush.
If you want to work on Unix itself, rather than just using it, Compaq hires interns to work on parts of Tru64 UNIX. Feel free to mail me at bobbell@zk3.dec.com for more info.
Lots of stores (like buy.com) allow $10-$30 discounts for first time customers. Most stores (buy.com for sure) verify this through the use of the credit card number. If the credit card number has never been used before, they'll let you have the discount. Otherwise, you'll have to pay the normal price. I... er, someone I might know... has purchased several items from buy.com under different credit card numbers for just this reason. Now, with disposable numbers, I^Hhe will be able to get a discount every time!
Well, what is the 'killer app' that sells Tru64? In that market, it's obviously Digital's C & Fortran compilers and libraries, since they produce much better code than gcc, and this is a performance-critical market segment. However, since Compaq decided to port this software to GNU/Linux, the remaining advantages of Tru64 are merely technical features (better scalability than Linux, etc.) that will soon be matched by advances in Linux kernel development.
Yes, the compiler suite is a killer app. So is the TruCluster software. It's what really helps sell Tru64. Rated #1 by D.H. Brown.
And don't think Compaq will drop Tru64 anytime soon. They look at it as a big brother-little brother approach. Tru64 is for the high end; Linux is for the lower-end. Start them on Linux, and maybe they'll be ready for Tru64 some day. I love Linux, but currently it can't handle the same configurations that Tru64 can.
Any doubts, ask Jon 'maddog' Hall. He'll verify for you that Tru64 really is a quality Unix.
Mr. Pike is comparing apples to oranges. First, by comparing 1990 MS software to 2000 MS software, he's really just noting that MS has improved. That has nothing to do with the source of innovation. If Mercedes-Benz comes out with a radical new car design, and then Ford makes a car with the same concepts but better suited to the average buyer, who had the real innovation? M-B, of course, even if Ford sells more cars with the feature.
I also take issue with Mr.Pike's statement:
[Linux] is just another copy of the same old stuff... Compare program development on Linux with Microsoft Visual Studio or one of the IBM Java/web toolkits.
Mr.Pike doesn't seem to notice that he's comparing an operating system with an integrated development environment. This is the really apples/oranges comparision. IDE's can be developed just as easily for Linux as for Windows. Kdevelop is progressing and Borland is working on Linux. It's just that these applications aren't as far along on the Linux platform yet. It says nothing about Linux itself.
His point that the excitement over Linux is more in the development model may be true, and perhaps it even shows a lack of innovation, but his examples are flawed. I won't argue with statements regarding the failure of systems research (as I am unqualified), but I certainly disagree that most recent innovation comes from Redmond.
For several different explanations of Higgs, try http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs.html . It's the results from a challenge to try to explain Higgs and its meaningfulness in one page.
How about the guys working on the ATI TV Tuner drivers? They've managed to create a successful petition, hack a chipset without any documentation, get a multi-billion dollar company (ATI) to change it's Linux philosophy (and now provide some docs), and create a useable interface for the popular ATI tv tuner cards. See http://www.core.binghamton.edu/ati/ and http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~ins omnia/gatos/. Congrats and thanks to Bob, Insomnia/Stea, Oyvind, and others.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am at work right now, where I run on Alpha hardware with Tru64 Unix 5.0. I run Netscape Communicator 4.7 and it crashes every time I bring up the Fox page.
Actually, I believe the most profitable front is the one that competes with both Intel and Microsoft. Tru64 Unix systems running on Alpha hardware have much higher profit margins margins than the very competitive PC market. I lot of revenue for Compaq comes from the Enterprise division.
Disclaimer: I work for Compaq on Tru64 Unix, so my view could be biased. Oh, and all that "my views are not necessary those of my employer" stuff, too.
Re:Other than the other corrections.
on
Happy Odd Day!
·
· Score: 1
I have a problem with these arbitrary rules that mathmaticians make up so that everything works out nice.
They're really not arbitrary rules. What you have to do is go back to the definition of the mathematics terms and symbols, and you'll find that things actually make sense. Not the definitions you learned in eighth grade, or even in calculus, but hard-core rigorous definitions found in real analysis courses and the like. Being a math geek as well, I've been there, and believe me, you don't want to go there yourself. One of the toughest courses I've ever taken. Can you imagine proving that "1 > 0"? (Actually, it's not too tough, but I use it as a good example of how low-level everything is)
Re:Other than the other corrections.
on
Happy Odd Day!
·
· Score: 1
"For example, on two dice, how many combinations of results that add up to 7 are there? So, do you have a 3 in 36 chance of a lucky seven, or 6 in 36? My money says 6.:)"
Congratulations, you win! Yes, the chances of a seven are 6 in 36 (or one in six). However, I'm not sure you picked an appropriate example about not counting a number "seprately". What you would really have to do is go back to the definition of prime, and then you would see that 1 is not prime (nor composite, actually).
I think the author was considering the numbers, not the digits. For instance, 11, 19, and 1999 are all prime. So's 29 (hence 11-29-1999 as a prime day). December (12) is out, and so is all of 2000, 2001, and 2002. Assuming 2003 is prime, January is left out due to the 1 issue, but 2-2-2003 is the next prime day. There's lots more later in the year, though.
Please read the article. To measure the polarity of photons, Eve needs to use a filter (I believe any direct measurement falls under Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). The key point is that when a photon is blocked by Eve's filter, she doesn't know the polarization of the photon. This is because one of the filters has a 50-50 chance of blocking a photon. This randomness is the at the center of quantum mechanics and this approach. By transmitting enough photons, the chances that Eve can correctly reproduce her intercepted photons are reduced to statistical nothingness. Her incorrect reproductions are detected when the key is verified over an insecure channel, in which case Alice and Bob start over again (or call the cops). Thus, the key exchange is secure.
Heh, Precursors was from a computer game. Ack, I can't think of the name, but it was in a series, I think three games. Typically, you has a Precursor vehicle and you went around talking to various races, getting resources, artifacts, etc. The Ur-Quan were evil, at least some of them, some of the time. Star Control, I think.
I work for Compaq (formerly Digital) in the ZKO facility, which does a large portion of the operating system work. We also recently had a visit from our CEO. I think it's safe to say that Tru64 (not "True64") Unix will be here to stay for quite a while. There are a bunch of people here who work with Linux for Compaq or just at home (like me). Linux will not replace Tru64 Unix (as far as Compaq is concerned) anytime in the near future. Both products will be in use: Tru64 Unix is being targeted at much higher end areas with capibilities such as TruCluster (what I work on) and Linux is for "normal" size servers or desktops. Most of the work going on is to make sure Linux and Tru64 Unix play well together, not to drop one or the other. In fact, we'll even be keeping OpenVMS around for quite some time.
Our new CEO is big on "enterprise level computing", which to him/Compaq means high-end Alphas running Tru64 Unix, possibly in large, highly-available clusters. Ask maddog sometime about Tru64 Unix; he'll probably agree that in many areas it is better than Linux from a "computer science" point of view.
Note: Putting quotes around something makes AV search it as a phrase. So "I like to maim and kill puppies and kittens" netted all the pages that had the words 'puppies' or 'maim' or 'kittens' or 'like' or 'kill'... you get the idea:-).
Actually, not even that. Altavista doesn't enforce that a word absolutely has to be in the search unless you prefix it with a '+'.
It's just an attempt to be cute. The machine's name is crack, so it's just a cute way of saying - "Break into this machine and you can have this machine" -- "crack crack win crack":)
If the machine is ever compromised, I can see the winner saying, "Oh, you mean I get this LinuxPPC machine? I thought I was going to get *crack*!":)
The point of cracking is to be able to do something you shouldn't. Usually this means getting root access, which should let you do just about anything. Just giving out the root password doesn't let you log in as root, since by default the telnet port doesn't allow root logins (it is a secure pseudo-tty).
Wow, VA certainly has been hiring a bunch of "purely-Linux" folks recently. They've signed Mandrake, Raster, and Jon "maddog" Hall (who, btw, I got to eat dinner with and is a pretty cool guy). None of them directly affect VA's business of selling computers. Rather, it sounds like they will all be working mostly independently of VA and will help VA just by helping Linux, which is part of VA's product. I know from talking with maddog that at least he will be basically 100% separate from VA -- they are basically just paying his salary as head of Linux International, but he will remain vendor neutral.
I have to give credit to VA for supporting the Linux community so well.
Well, I'm having problems getting Qt to even compile. I've got an Alpha Tru64 workstation, but the main problem is with egcs/gcc (--version='egcs-2.91.66'). It has problems with the QString class. It warns of an implicit declaration for va_start on line 10922, and then procedes to report a bunch of parse errors. Any ideas?
Below is a letter I just sent to Mr. Metcalfe. I didn't mention how I personally know his "ultimate boss", the CEO and president of IDG, Kelly Conlin.:)
To: metcalfe@idg.net CC: letters@infoworld.com
Mr. Metcalfe:
I can only assume your latest article (http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/990621op metcalfe.xml) was written to try and get a reaction from readers. I am sure that you have done that. After the article being reported on Slashdot.org, I'm sure that you have gotten a _lot_ of reactions, too, ranging in length and "quality".
Let's put aside any beliefs I may have on the future of Linux for the moment (for the record, I give it more credit than you, but less than some "fanatics"). You still have glaring errors in your article, which, sadly, are indicative of poor journalism.
First of all, it is true that some members of the Linux community disagree on how to pronounce Linux, since it was a name given to the product by someone other than Linus Torvalds himself. However, make no mistake that Linus pronounces the first syllable of _his name_ with a strong e ("leenus"), but pronounces _Linux_ with a soft i ("lihnucks"). Perhaps a minor error in your article, but something that is blatantly wrong.
Secondly, you misunderstand EMACS. I am not a user of EMACS myself, as I am not accustomed to it and it does not currently fit my needs. However, many programmers find that they are much more productive using EMACS than they could be using a tool such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. EMACS' real strength is as a highly customizable and programmable development environment. It is not nearly as suited to word processing as you seem to imply that it should be, although some users do choose at their own discretion to use it for those purposes. How often have you seen Microsoft Word used work on the development of an operating system or other large C/C++ project?
Lastly, you article clearly is intended to be incilliatory, instead of journalism. You use unnecessary derogatory terms such as the "Open Sores Movement" and "a notch above Luddism". You imply that open source software, such as EMACS, is normally written in a weekend with a lot of caffeine; the truth couldn't be more different. This is not the type of journalism I would expect from a magazine like InfoWorld, even for as a personal commentary in the magazine.
We appreciate the many contributions you have made over the years via 3COM and Ethernet. However, this latest article accomplishes nothing productive.
-- Bob Bell | Compaq Computer Corp. Software Engineer | 110 Spit Brook Rd - ZKO3-3U/22 TruCluster Group | Nashua, NH 03062-2698 (E-Mail omitted) | (Phone omitted)
(The views expressed are my own, and do not necessary reflect those of my employer)
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Please tell me you're joking. Regardless of who you vote for, I'd hate to think that people are actually casting votes based on the web servers that candidates are running. There are much bigger issues at stake, people! Realize that the web sites are probably contracted out, anyway. If any mandate did come from Gore to use Linux, it would probably be for political reasons, not technological ones.
BTW, the article does say some good things about Bush compared to Gore, such as: And strictly anti-Gore fodder: Keep that in mind if you think Gore "gets" all technology issues better than Bush.
If you want to work on Unix itself, rather than just using it, Compaq hires interns to work on parts of Tru64 UNIX. Feel free to mail me at bobbell@zk3.dec.com for more info.
Lots of stores (like buy.com) allow $10-$30 discounts for first time customers. Most stores (buy.com for sure) verify this through the use of the credit card number. If the credit card number has never been used before, they'll let you have the discount. Otherwise, you'll have to pay the normal price. I ... er, someone I might know ... has purchased several items from buy.com under different credit card numbers for just this reason. Now, with disposable numbers, I^Hhe will be able to get a discount every time!
And don't think Compaq will drop Tru64 anytime soon. They look at it as a big brother-little brother approach. Tru64 is for the high end; Linux is for the lower-end. Start them on Linux, and maybe they'll be ready for Tru64 some day. I love Linux, but currently it can't handle the same configurations that Tru64 can.
Any doubts, ask Jon 'maddog' Hall. He'll verify for you that Tru64 really is a quality Unix.
I also take issue with Mr.Pike's statement: Mr.Pike doesn't seem to notice that he's comparing an operating system with an integrated development environment. This is the really apples/oranges comparision. IDE's can be developed just as easily for Linux as for Windows. Kdevelop is progressing and Borland is working on Linux. It's just that these applications aren't as far along on the Linux platform yet. It says nothing about Linux itself.
His point that the excitement over Linux is more in the development model may be true, and perhaps it even shows a lack of innovation, but his examples are flawed. I won't argue with statements regarding the failure of systems research (as I am unqualified), but I certainly disagree that most recent innovation comes from Redmond.
For several different explanations of Higgs, try http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs.html . It's the results from a challenge to try to explain Higgs and its meaningfulness in one page.
How about the guys working on the ATI TV Tuner drivers? They've managed to create a successful petition, hack a chipset without any documentation, get a multi-billion dollar company (ATI) to change it's Linux philosophy (and now provide some docs), and create a useable interface for the popular ATI tv tuner cards. See http://www.core.binghamton.edu/ati/ and http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~ins omnia/gatos/. Congrats and thanks to Bob, Insomnia/Stea, Oyvind, and others.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am at work right now, where I run on Alpha hardware with Tru64 Unix 5.0. I run Netscape Communicator 4.7 and it crashes every time I bring up the Fox page.
I work on Tru64 Unix, and I can tell you most assuredly that Tru64 and Alpha are both available today, and both are thoroughly 64-bit!
Actually, I believe the most profitable front is the one that competes with both Intel and Microsoft. Tru64 Unix systems running on Alpha hardware have much higher profit margins margins than the very competitive PC market. I lot of revenue for Compaq comes from the Enterprise division.
Disclaimer: I work for Compaq on Tru64 Unix, so my view could be biased. Oh, and all that "my views are not necessary those of my employer" stuff, too.
I have a problem with these arbitrary rules that mathmaticians make up so that everything works out nice.
They're really not arbitrary rules. What you have to do is go back to the definition of the mathematics terms and symbols, and you'll find that things actually make sense. Not the definitions you learned in eighth grade, or even in calculus, but hard-core rigorous definitions found in real analysis courses and the like. Being a math geek as well, I've been there, and believe me, you don't want to go there yourself. One of the toughest courses I've ever taken. Can you imagine proving that "1 > 0"? (Actually, it's not too tough, but I use it as a good example of how low-level everything is)
"For example, on two dice, how many combinations of results that add up to 7 are there? So, do you have a 3 in 36 chance of a lucky seven, or 6 in 36? My money says 6. :)"
Congratulations, you win! Yes, the chances of a seven are 6 in 36 (or one in six). However, I'm not sure you picked an appropriate example about not counting a number "seprately". What you would really have to do is go back to the definition of prime, and then you would see that 1 is not prime (nor composite, actually).
I think the author was considering the numbers, not the digits. For instance, 11, 19, and 1999 are all prime. So's 29 (hence 11-29-1999 as a prime day). December (12) is out, and so is all of 2000, 2001, and 2002. Assuming 2003 is prime, January is left out due to the 1 issue, but 2-2-2003 is the next prime day. There's lots more later in the year, though.
Please read the article. To measure the polarity of photons, Eve needs to use a filter (I believe any direct measurement falls under Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). The key point is that when a photon is blocked by Eve's filter, she doesn't know the polarization of the photon. This is because one of the filters has a 50-50 chance of blocking a photon. This randomness is the at the center of quantum mechanics and this approach. By transmitting enough photons, the chances that Eve can correctly reproduce her intercepted photons are reduced to statistical nothingness. Her incorrect reproductions are detected when the key is verified over an insecure channel, in which case Alice and Bob start over again (or call the cops). Thus, the key exchange is secure.
Uh, what exactly is the difference between "pulse of light" and "photon"? Just the amount of photons?
Heh, Precursors was from a computer game. Ack, I can't think of the name, but it was in a series, I think three games. Typically, you has a Precursor vehicle and you went around talking to various races, getting resources, artifacts, etc. The Ur-Quan were evil, at least some of them, some of the time. Star Control, I think.
I work for Compaq (formerly Digital) in the ZKO facility, which does a large portion of the operating system work. We also recently had a visit from our CEO. I think it's safe to say that Tru64 (not "True64") Unix will be here to stay for quite a while. There are a bunch of people here who work with Linux for Compaq or just at home (like me). Linux will not replace Tru64 Unix (as far as Compaq is concerned) anytime in the near future. Both products will be in use: Tru64 Unix is being targeted at much higher end areas with capibilities such as TruCluster (what I work on) and Linux is for "normal" size servers or desktops. Most of the work going on is to make sure Linux and Tru64 Unix play well together, not to drop one or the other. In fact, we'll even be keeping OpenVMS around for quite some time.
Our new CEO is big on "enterprise level computing", which to him/Compaq means high-end Alphas running Tru64 Unix, possibly in large, highly-available clusters. Ask maddog sometime about Tru64 Unix; he'll probably agree that in many areas it is better than Linux from a "computer science" point of view.
(Flame gear on)
Actually, not even that. Altavista doesn't enforce that a word absolutely has to be in the search unless you prefix it with a '+'.
It's just an attempt to be cute. The machine's name is crack, so it's just a cute way of saying - "Break into this machine and you can have this machine" -- "crack crack win crack" :)
:)
If the machine is ever compromised, I can see the winner saying, "Oh, you mean I get this LinuxPPC machine? I thought I was going to get *crack*!"
The point of cracking is to be able to do something you shouldn't. Usually this means getting root access, which should let you do just about anything. Just giving out the root password doesn't let you log in as root, since by default the telnet port doesn't allow root logins (it is a secure pseudo-tty).
When you say "free", do you mean "free" as in "free speech", or "free" as in ... oh, wait, never mind :)
Wow, VA certainly has been hiring a bunch of "purely-Linux" folks recently. They've signed Mandrake, Raster, and Jon "maddog" Hall (who, btw, I got to eat dinner with and is a pretty cool guy). None of them directly affect VA's business of selling computers. Rather, it sounds like they will all be working mostly independently of VA and will help VA just by helping Linux, which is part of VA's product. I know from talking with maddog that at least he will be basically 100% separate from VA -- they are basically just paying his salary as head of Linux International, but he will remain vendor neutral.
I have to give credit to VA for supporting the Linux community so well.
Well, I'm having problems getting Qt to even compile. I've got an Alpha Tru64 workstation, but the main problem is with egcs/gcc (--version='egcs-2.91.66'). It has problems with the QString class. It warns of an implicit declaration for va_start on line 10922, and then procedes to report a bunch of parse errors. Any ideas?
Below is a letter I just sent to Mr. Metcalfe. I didn't mention how I personally know his "ultimate boss", the CEO and president of IDG, Kelly Conlin. :)
p metcalfe.xml) was written to try and get a reaction from readers. I am sure that you have done that. After the article being reported on Slashdot.org, I'm sure that you have gotten a _lot_ of reactions, too, ranging in length and "quality".
To: metcalfe@idg.net
CC: letters@infoworld.com
Mr. Metcalfe:
I can only assume your latest article (http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/990621o
Let's put aside any beliefs I may have on the future of Linux for the moment (for the record, I give it more credit than you, but less than some "fanatics"). You still have glaring errors in your article, which, sadly, are indicative of poor journalism.
First of all, it is true that some members of the Linux community disagree on how to pronounce Linux, since it was a name given to the product by someone other than Linus Torvalds himself. However, make no mistake that Linus pronounces the first syllable of _his name_ with a strong e ("leenus"), but pronounces _Linux_ with a soft i ("lihnucks"). Perhaps a minor error in your article, but something that is blatantly wrong.
Secondly, you misunderstand EMACS. I am not a user of EMACS myself, as I am not accustomed to it and it does not currently fit my needs. However, many programmers find that they are much more productive using EMACS than they could be using a tool such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. EMACS' real strength is as a highly customizable and programmable development environment. It is not nearly as suited to word processing as you seem to imply that it should be, although some users do choose at their own discretion to use it for those purposes. How often have you seen Microsoft Word used work on the development of an operating system or other large C/C++ project?
Lastly, you article clearly is intended to be incilliatory, instead of journalism. You use unnecessary derogatory terms such as the "Open Sores Movement" and "a notch above Luddism". You imply that open source software, such as EMACS, is normally written in a weekend with a lot of caffeine; the truth couldn't be more different. This is not the type of journalism I would expect from a magazine like InfoWorld, even for as a personal commentary in the magazine.
We appreciate the many contributions you have made over the years via 3COM and Ethernet. However, this latest article accomplishes nothing productive.
--
Bob Bell | Compaq Computer Corp.
Software Engineer | 110 Spit Brook Rd - ZKO3-3U/22
TruCluster Group | Nashua, NH 03062-2698
(E-Mail omitted) | (Phone omitted)
(The views expressed are my own, and do not necessary reflect those of my employer)