Apart from the fact that CNBC don't acually bring any evidence to back up their theory, it defies logic. I mean, for Microsoft to suddenly to back Linux and try to distribute it would be to say they were wrong all along. They have continuously through press statements and articles belittled Linux to try to make it look like a hobbiest OS. Not something that people should take seriously. They would have to do a complete u-turn and try to convince the same public that they have tried to brain wash against Linux, that in fact Linux does rock after all.
I just don't see that this sort of approach at all fits in with Microsoft's past or their character. They will never open up their source code. They can not stand the idea of someone else making money out of things that they develop. For us its different. Whether its Red Hat, Suse or individuals. We don't mind if someone else makes a buck out of our work. As long as what we make stays free. We don't want to horde everything for ourselves in some self-centered greedy way. And that is exactly Microsoft's attitude. Not only do they want to be top in everything; they also want to keep all the money making for themselves.
There are two thing I always keep in mind when working on an Open Source project.
Do something you like - One of the reasons that the Open Source development model works so well is that people are involved in coding things that they like. This is unlike the cathedral model where often programmers are working on things that, not only they don't like, but are meaningless to them. If you enjoy games...write one! If you like encryption....get involved with an encryption library. If you enjoy what you are doing you will eventually achieve something that is good.
Do something you need - Even Linus started off with a selfish intention. He designed Linux for his own use. He wanted a UNIX compatible system that he could run on his cheap i386 architecture. He didn't start out by saying, "What can I design to benefit the world?" Likewise, the projects were I have a need for a finished program are the ones that I really throw myself into. If I am not interested it seems more like a peice of University course work or working for the Cathedral. For me to come home in the evening and think, "Right, let do some coding!" The project has to be good......Good for me.
What they seem to forget is that Open Source projects like Linux excell at bringing out standards. Further more, it is standards that allow the highly compatible environments (like the Internet) that we all enjoy working in. Linux developers have always tried to bring Linux in line with standards and have contributed to creating new standards. Most of what we use, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3 haven't been developed by the closed source developers like Microsoft and Sun. Rather they have been hacked out by a group of distributed people working openly to produce something that is not fragmented. In contrast, it is peole like Microsoft that always try to do things against the standards and hence fragment themselves from the rest. (Front page server extensions as an example).
It therefore seems absurd to even talk about Linux fragmenting. In reality they should talk more about Linux providing a solution that will work on many different architectures and providing high interoperability with other Operating Systems like Windows and Mac (through SAMBA, Appletalk, etc) let alone other Unices. Let alone other Linux distributions!!
Yeah, well man pages aren't really what most people need these days. May be for the likes of you and me it is fine. I mean, I understand most of the technical crap they put in man pages because I have been working on UNIX for 10 years. Also, I have a sturdy background training in computing so I can understand the issues easily. Heck, I don't even need the man pages, just read the source Luke!
But, if we want average Joe Bloggs to start using Linux rather than windoze we have to begin understanding that not everyone comes from a technical background. Shouting at them "RTFM!" isn't going to help them much. What is needed is freely available, easy to understand documentation that explains the concepts and ideas involved in running Linux successfully.
I am giving some lectures in some Arab countries to people in the Medical profession. The possiblities for them using Linux are hugh. They are so restricted by their present closed source unstable solutions. They are very interested in using Linux. How are they meant to start understanding it?
We all like to complain how crap windoze is. Personally the only time I use windoze is when I go to my Mum's house because that is all she has. But she is not likely to run Linux unless we make decent documentation available. Enough of "RTFM" lets write some decent documenatition so that Linux can truely be used beyond the current limited cliche of geeks.
Basically what happens, if the company is originally worth $10,000 before the IPO, made up of 1000 shares ($10 each). The financial company doing the float works a float such that there is a new share issue so the company will have 10000 shares. These new shares are flogged on the s/e for probably a lot more than $10 each. Probably $50 or more. Basically, the guys with the orignal shares, now have only 20% of the company, yet have jumped 5 times in value. The IPO usually dictates that they are can't sell their stake for 6 months. In turn they (apart from loads of cash) usually secure their job contracts etc. Not a bad deal really.Huh?
But hey, any company can crash in 6 months. dot.coms are crashing left right and center. The market has become cautious now.
they are currently the two highest clocked x86 CPUs available
Since when were high performance Intel chips available? Someone at Intel has managed to redfine "available". Does available mean we can go down to our local h/w shop and buy it? Available in the Intel sense means that some h/w review companies might get hold of some if they are sponsored by Intel.
Intel should look at AMD...they have the fastest available chips!
Its strange that you seem to miss the whole point of what Open Source is and the distance between OS s/w and what MS is putting out here. Open Source is all about choice. It means you have the choice to do what you wish with your software.
Micrsoft however, are always looking for ways to restrict the choice of there customers. They restrict it by making their software more and more restrictive so that in reality they have a "cinema ticket". You pay, use it once but have to pay again to keep on using it. This isn't choice. It is yet another idea to restrict your freedom.
If you look around you, you will see that this is what is happenning everywhere. Continuously companies like Microsoft are inventing new ways to restrict customers' choice and tie them down to their products. Don't be blind, you can see the result of this action, in the way that so many Microsoft products dominate the market. The average user is left without choice. He is tied down to an operating system and an office suite that he keeps paying for every couple of years (95,97,98,2000 etc.) yet there is little innovation. That is because MS don't need to innovate. So where's your choice now?
I don't think democratic styled companies are the right way forward at all. Every developer has his own special areas of interest and expertise. One guy might know hardware level stuff, another CORBA, another GUI development. Whatever, the project, the project members don't have equal skills. So why the equality?
A more just way is to let people make the decisions about their area of expertise. It doesn't mean you can't discuss, propose and conclude on ideas. Simply it is unfair to let the guys who is a novice in a field to be equal to the one who wrote the book!.
Actually, this is one of the biggest flaws in democracy. Some guy who reads page 3 of The Sun gets to decide when the UK joins the Euro. Where's the logic in that?
The problems I have always faced with developing free software in a commercial environment is to find sales/marketing people who truly understand why we are doing it. Do other people find this too? The marketing guys always want to squeeze as much money out of a product as possible and often can't see the many arguements behind making software for free.
I think to successfully develop GNU software the company has to be technology driver rather than market driven. How is this new company going to deal with the marketing issues? Just out number the marketing guys with techies?
Reminds me of when I was young and got my first HiFi system. I was so happy and the first thing I did was take it to pieces to see how it worked. I broke it down until I had taken all the drive belts off the cassette player and and all the cogs off the spindles.
My parents were horrified that I had trashed my birthday present within a few hours. I guess though some people have a natural inclination to find out how things work. Even at the risk of breaking something you love. Hey, this is how we all manage to be Linux hackers. We want to know how things work inside. We can never settle for the closed world of Windows(tm).
It is correct that RIPE has effectively done this for years. We have to justify the use of every IP on our networks and RIPE won't except seperate IPs for every web site on our servers. This hasn't been a problem though. I have some web servers that are for the masses that have hundreds of sites on one IP. Then I have some servers with an IP address for just one site. I even have some sites with multiple IPs that are doing load balancing. RIPE don't have a problem with this, as long as I can justify the use of the IPs. I am sure ARIN will take a similar line. Heck, they should understand the technical implications.
I haven't had any problems with relying on Named Virtual Hosts. Anyway, if someone is still using IE1 or Netscape 2 then they aren't going to see the features on my customers sites anyway. It really isn't an issue worth hasseling yourself about.
I don't think it would be a good idea for the US to give up the.gov,.edu and.mil. Here in the UK we accept that these are American domains and to be honest, you are welcome to them. It is too hard for you to change because it isn't just the Americans who have got used to them but everyone on the Internet.
However, the.com,.org and.net are different because anyone in the world can register them and they do. If I was developing a site that was purely for UK interests then I would register a.uk domain. That would help to mark my site as attended for a UK audience. However, for anything where I wanted to attract a world audience I would use a.com,.org or.net.
May be in the US if you could make the.US domains cheap enough and you changed the social acceptance of the domains, you could start to use the.US domains for truely US business. For example, imagine a site for a small social club in some small US town, we in the UK are not interested in it. It would be nice to be able to explictly mark sites that are for US interest rather than the using the.com which is possibly for International or possibly for US interest.
Well, I think you will find that the/.ers did quite a bit by discussing the issues around the Intel chip. I think many large companies will now be watching/. to feel the vibes of the community. Some may think we're all just a bunch of free loafers but by discussing these issues we make people aware and that in turn has a knock on effect.
I for one have advised 3-4 other companies in the last few weeks not to buy the new Intel chips after reading/. I hope that Intel learn their lesson and don't just release early to beat AMD but listen to their technical department about the real state of their chips.
There I am typing an email when BAM! up pops a Linux Penguin Office Assistant and says to me in a patronising way: It looks like you are trying to write an email
I hate this attitude that people have of always wanting to put down that other database. It doesn't have to be that way. Both Postgres and MySQL are storming databases. They are both OpenSource and they are both developing (in there own way) at a nice speed.
I think that when we develop OpenSource database applications we should, wherever possible, seperate out the database layer to allow users to decide which database backends to use. This is what makes applications like TWIG so great.
We should be happy that we have two good Open Source database systems. We should push the development of both and give support to both. Of course they both have advantages and disadvantages so individuals should evaluate these based on their own requirements.
Arabic is a very well defined langauge with very strict rules of grammer and strict rules of prounciation. However, modern day Arabic is some what diluted by mixing with other languages but the classical Arabic is well defined still today.
The dummah, fatha etc. are put their as a reading aid so that you know how to read the word. These are excellent for a person learning the language as you can tell, unlike English, exactly how the word should be pronounced. However, you wouldn't find the symbols for the vowles present in every day writings like the Arabic news papers. Personally, I have been learing Arabic for 4 years and can read it well with the accents but would struggle a lot with out them.You have to know the word to know how to prounounce it.
The grammer is also very strict. It reminds me of Latin sometimes. It is definately stricter than English. However, the modern day Arabs tend to speak in a very lazy and casual way. You know what I mean? Yanni....
Star office is sad. I did install it on my Linux workstation just to see what the fuss was about. It took me less time to get fed up with it and un-install it than it did to install it in the first place. For a start it takes (on my nice old Pentium 200) about minute before I see anything. And then, I get a crappy start button and a whole new interface. It hogged all of my RAM, slowed down my machine to a halt when all I wanted to do was write a quick letter.
Unforunatly it has been designed with that awful attitude of One product to do everything attitude.
I think it is fine if commercial companies want to work on a free Office Suite. I just hope that they don't make the same mistakes that are currently abundant in Star Office.
First, we don't need the whole new UI stuff. Gnome and KDE are both cool for that. Separate applications for word processor, spread sheet, calander etc. so that loading one doesn't load all.
It would be nice if a project team could be set up where community members could do their normal volunteer work along side the paid commercial programmers from Sun, HP etc. Then we can get good feedback into the project and ensure that the project goes in a direction that will please the community. Not in a direction that will make the fat cats fatter.
I started out on UNIX about 10 years ago at Uni where all the computing students had to work on Sun boxes. I used to think UNIX was great. It amazed me at the advanced state of a UNIX workstation/server. Looking over at other users using MS-DOS I used to laugh. It was like looking at "pretend" computing.
After leaving Uni, I didn't want to have to work on MS-DOS but I couldn't afford my own Sun box. So, for the past 6 years I have been working on Linux. To start off with I thought Linux sucked a bit. It was cool to have the same sort of environment as at Uni but there were so many things missing.
These days however. Linux rocks! I mean, everything I want to do I can do under Linux. Also, Linux is moving at a fast pace and every day people are bringing out new things, kernel patches and security enhancements etc.
Recently, I have had to work on Sun Solaris machines. It was the first time I had had to do this since Uni. I was quited excited at first when my new Solaris workstation and server arrived in the office. Soon though, disappointment sunk into my heart. Solaris really sucks! I couldn't believe at how antiquated and stagnated Solaris was. I couldn't believe that some of the things I used to hate about Solaris years ago...still hadn't been fixed.
I am not saying that Solaris hasn't changed at all. Most of the changes though are for the high end server market. May be this is where Sun see their market niche. However, they better watch out because Linux is racing and they are going to loose out.
What annoys me today is when I hear people say The trouble with Linux is it is not mature These people should take a closer look and the commerical UNIX distributions should look too. If the commerical Unices don't start proper innovation across the market they are sure to loose out. The battle isn't over. We still need to innovate ourselves more in pushing Linux forward. But it isn't the commerial Unices who are going to compete with Linux in taking the market.
Instead of selective denial, the best you can do is selective allowance.
Nice theory but impossible in practice. Unless we are talking about 5 year old kids who would be happy just looking at disney and a few other sites. After that age they want to explore for themselves. How many sites can you allow through selective allowance? 10,000? More?
The WWW is excellent for children to explore and learn things and this shouldn't be restricted by selective allowance. It is just too limiting.It removes the whole possiblity of researching new ideas. The only information that you will find will be the information that someone else has already put aside for you.
I think schools should log children's activity to show which types of sites the children have gone to. Children would then be deterred from going to Porn sites etc. knowing that teachers, parents, librarians or whoever, might find out.
Slashdot Mirror
Apart from the fact that CNBC don't acually bring any evidence to back up their theory, it defies logic. I mean, for Microsoft to suddenly to back Linux and try to distribute it would be to say they were wrong all along. They have continuously through press statements and articles belittled Linux to try to make it look like a hobbiest OS. Not something that people should take seriously. They would have to do a complete u-turn and try to convince the same public that they have tried to brain wash against Linux, that in fact Linux does rock after all.
I just don't see that this sort of approach at all fits in with Microsoft's past or their character. They will never open up their source code. They can not stand the idea of someone else making money out of things that they develop. For us its different. Whether its Red Hat, Suse or individuals. We don't mind if someone else makes a buck out of our work. As long as what we make stays free. We don't want to horde everything for ourselves in some self-centered greedy way. And that is exactly Microsoft's attitude. Not only do they want to be top in everything; they also want to keep all the money making for themselves.
What they seem to forget is that Open Source projects like Linux excell at bringing out standards. Further more, it is standards that allow the highly compatible environments (like the Internet) that we all enjoy working in. Linux developers have always tried to bring Linux in line with standards and have contributed to creating new standards. Most of what we use, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3 haven't been developed by the closed source developers like Microsoft and Sun. Rather they have been hacked out by a group of distributed people working openly to produce something that is not fragmented. In contrast, it is peole like Microsoft that always try to do things against the standards and hence fragment themselves from the rest. (Front page server extensions as an example).
It therefore seems absurd to even talk about Linux fragmenting. In reality they should talk more about Linux providing a solution that will work on many different architectures and providing high interoperability with other Operating Systems like Windows and Mac (through SAMBA, Appletalk, etc) let alone other Unices. Let alone other Linux distributions!!
Yeah, well man pages aren't really what most people need these days. May be for the likes of you and me it is fine. I mean, I understand most of the technical crap they put in man pages because I have been working on UNIX for 10 years. Also, I have a sturdy background training in computing so I can understand the issues easily. Heck, I don't even need the man pages, just read the source Luke!
But, if we want average Joe Bloggs to start using Linux rather than windoze we have to begin understanding that not everyone comes from a technical background. Shouting at them "RTFM!" isn't going to help them much. What is needed is freely available, easy to understand documentation that explains the concepts and ideas involved in running Linux successfully.
I am giving some lectures in some Arab countries to people in the Medical profession. The possiblities for them using Linux are hugh. They are so restricted by their present closed source unstable solutions. They are very interested in using Linux. How are they meant to start understanding it?
We all like to complain how crap windoze is. Personally the only time I use windoze is when I go to my Mum's house because that is all she has. But she is not likely to run Linux unless we make decent documentation available. Enough of "RTFM" lets write some decent documenatition so that Linux can truely be used beyond the current limited cliche of geeks.
Basically what happens, if the company is originally worth $10,000 before the IPO, made up of 1000 shares ($10 each). The financial company doing the float works a float such that there is a new share issue so the company will have 10000 shares. These new shares are flogged on the s/e for probably a lot more than $10 each. Probably $50 or more. Basically, the guys with the orignal shares, now have only 20% of the company, yet have jumped 5 times in value. The IPO usually dictates that they are can't sell their stake for 6 months. In turn they (apart from loads of cash) usually secure their job contracts etc. Not a bad deal really.Huh?
But hey, any company can crash in 6 months. dot.coms are crashing left right and center. The market has become cautious now.
Please don't buy the baby any toy penguins. I can imagine they already have thousands around the house. Enough to driver any kid crazy.
they are currently the two highest clocked x86 CPUs available
Since when were high performance Intel chips available? Someone at Intel has managed to redfine "available". Does available mean we can go down to our local h/w shop and buy it? Available in the Intel sense means that some h/w review companies might get hold of some if they are sponsored by Intel.
Intel should look at AMD...they have the fastest available chips!
Its strange that you seem to miss the whole point of what Open Source is and the distance between OS s/w and what MS is putting out here. Open Source is all about choice. It means you have the choice to do what you wish with your software.
Micrsoft however, are always looking for ways to restrict the choice of there customers. They restrict it by making their software more and more restrictive so that in reality they have a "cinema ticket". You pay, use it once but have to pay again to keep on using it. This isn't choice. It is yet another idea to restrict your freedom.
If you look around you, you will see that this is what is happenning everywhere. Continuously companies like Microsoft are inventing new ways to restrict customers' choice and tie them down to their products. Don't be blind, you can see the result of this action, in the way that so many Microsoft products dominate the market. The average user is left without choice. He is tied down to an operating system and an office suite that he keeps paying for every couple of years (95,97,98,2000 etc.) yet there is little innovation. That is because MS don't need to innovate. So where's your choice now?
The thing is....we all know the advantages of using MS Exchange as I have listed below.
I don't think democratic styled companies are the right way forward at all. Every developer has his own special areas of interest and expertise. One guy might know hardware level stuff, another CORBA, another GUI development. Whatever, the project, the project members don't have equal skills. So why the equality?
A more just way is to let people make the decisions about their area of expertise. It doesn't mean you can't discuss, propose and conclude on ideas. Simply it is unfair to let the guys who is a novice in a field to be equal to the one who wrote the book!.
Actually, this is one of the biggest flaws in democracy. Some guy who reads page 3 of The Sun gets to decide when the UK joins the Euro. Where's the logic in that?
The problems I have always faced with developing free software in a commercial environment is to find sales/marketing people who truly understand why we are doing it. Do other people find this too? The marketing guys always want to squeeze as much money out of a product as possible and often can't see the many arguements behind making software for free.
I think to successfully develop GNU software the company has to be technology driver rather than market driven. How is this new company going to deal with the marketing issues? Just out number the marketing guys with techies?
Not if they've only found a zero...it is exactly the same as before!
"Must take apart anything electronic..."
Reminds me of when I was young and got my first HiFi system. I was so happy and the first thing I did was take it to pieces to see how it worked. I broke it down until I had taken all the drive belts off the cassette player and and all the cogs off the spindles.
My parents were horrified that I had trashed my birthday present within a few hours. I guess though some people have a natural inclination to find out how things work. Even at the risk of breaking something you love. Hey, this is how we all manage to be Linux hackers. We want to know how things work inside. We can never settle for the closed world of Windows(tm).
It is correct that RIPE has effectively done this for years. We have to justify the use of every IP on our networks and RIPE won't except seperate IPs for every web site on our servers. This hasn't been a problem though. I have some web servers that are for the masses that have hundreds of sites on one IP. Then I have some servers with an IP address for just one site. I even have some sites with multiple IPs that are doing load balancing. RIPE don't have a problem with this, as long as I can justify the use of the IPs. I am sure ARIN will take a similar line. Heck, they should understand the technical implications.
I haven't had any problems with relying on Named Virtual Hosts. Anyway, if someone is still using IE1 or Netscape 2 then they aren't going to see the features on my customers sites anyway. It really isn't an issue worth hasseling yourself about.
I don't think it would be a good idea for the US to give up the .gov, .edu and .mil. Here in the UK we accept that these are American domains and to be honest, you are welcome to them. It is too hard for you to change because it isn't just the Americans who have got used to them but everyone on the Internet.
.com, .org and .net are different because anyone in the world can register them and they do. If I was developing a site that was purely for UK interests then I would register a .uk domain. That would help to mark my site as attended for a UK audience. However, for anything where I wanted to attract a world audience I would use a .com, .org or .net.
.US domains cheap enough and you changed the social acceptance of the domains, you could start to use the .US domains for truely US business. For example, imagine a site for a small social club in some small US town, we in the UK are not interested in it. It would be nice to be able to explictly mark sites that are for US interest rather than the using the .com which is possibly for International or possibly for US interest.
However, the
May be in the US if you could make the
Well, I think you will find that the /.ers did quite a bit by discussing the issues around the Intel chip. I think many large companies will now be watching /. to feel the vibes of the community. Some may think we're all just a bunch of free loafers but by discussing these issues we make people aware and that in turn has a knock on effect.
/. I hope that Intel learn their lesson and don't just release early to beat AMD but listen to their technical department about the real state of their chips.
I for one have advised 3-4 other companies in the last few weeks not to buy the new Intel chips after reading
There I am typing an email when BAM! up pops a Linux Penguin Office Assistant and says to me in a patronising way: It looks like you are trying to write an email
Quick kill all MS applications:
ps aux | grep -i "\Wmsoffice" | awk '{print $2;}' | xargs kill -9
I hate this attitude that people have of always wanting to put down that other database. It doesn't have to be that way. Both Postgres and MySQL are storming databases. They are both OpenSource and they are both developing (in there own way) at a nice speed.
I think that when we develop OpenSource database applications we should, wherever possible, seperate out the database layer to allow users to decide which database backends to use. This is what makes applications like TWIG so great.
We should be happy that we have two good Open Source database systems. We should push the development of both and give support to both. Of course they both have advantages and disadvantages so individuals should evaluate these based on their own requirements.
Take great care in evaluating arguments that claim one language's superiority over another on some internal basis.
Good point. Anyway it was Winston Churchill who made the following comment about split infinitives in the English language.
"This is the type of language up with which, I will not put."
Arabic is a very well defined langauge with very strict rules of grammer and strict rules of prounciation. However, modern day Arabic is some what diluted by mixing with other languages but the classical Arabic is well defined still today.
The dummah, fatha etc. are put their as a reading aid so that you know how to read the word. These are excellent for a person learning the language as you can tell, unlike English, exactly how the word should be pronounced. However, you wouldn't find the symbols for the vowles present in every day writings like the Arabic news papers. Personally, I have been learing Arabic for 4 years and can read it well with the accents but would struggle a lot with out them.You have to know the word to know how to prounounce it.
The grammer is also very strict. It reminds me of Latin sometimes. It is definately stricter than English. However, the modern day Arabs tend to speak in a very lazy and casual way. You know what I mean? Yanni....
Can you imagine if we still used Roman numerals rather than Arabic numerals. Imagine what vector graphics would be like:
vector_a = { IV, MX, X } + { -XI, C, 0};
Forget calculating the projectory of a rocket!
Star office is sad. I did install it on my Linux workstation just to see what the fuss was about. It took me less time to get fed up with it and un-install it than it did to install it in the first place. For a start it takes (on my nice old Pentium 200) about minute before I see anything. And then, I get a crappy start button and a whole new interface. It hogged all of my RAM, slowed down my machine to a halt when all I wanted to do was write a quick letter.
Unforunatly it has been designed with that awful attitude of One product to do everything attitude.
I think it is fine if commercial companies want to work on a free Office Suite. I just hope that they don't make the same mistakes that are currently abundant in Star Office.
First, we don't need the whole new UI stuff. Gnome and KDE are both cool for that. Separate applications for word processor, spread sheet, calander etc. so that loading one doesn't load all.
It would be nice if a project team could be set up where community members could do their normal volunteer work along side the paid commercial programmers from Sun, HP etc. Then we can get good feedback into the project and ensure that the project goes in a direction that will please the community. Not in a direction that will make the fat cats fatter.
I started out on UNIX about 10 years ago at Uni where all the computing students had to work on Sun boxes. I used to think UNIX was great. It amazed me at the advanced state of a UNIX workstation/server. Looking over at other users using MS-DOS I used to laugh. It was like looking at "pretend" computing.
After leaving Uni, I didn't want to have to work on MS-DOS but I couldn't afford my own Sun box. So, for the past 6 years I have been working on Linux. To start off with I thought Linux sucked a bit. It was cool to have the same sort of environment as at Uni but there were so many things missing.
These days however. Linux rocks! I mean, everything I want to do I can do under Linux. Also, Linux is moving at a fast pace and every day people are bringing out new things, kernel patches and security enhancements etc.
Recently, I have had to work on Sun Solaris machines. It was the first time I had had to do this since Uni. I was quited excited at first when my new Solaris workstation and server arrived in the office. Soon though, disappointment sunk into my heart. Solaris really sucks! I couldn't believe at how antiquated and stagnated Solaris was. I couldn't believe that some of the things I used to hate about Solaris years ago...still hadn't been fixed.
I am not saying that Solaris hasn't changed at all. Most of the changes though are for the high end server market. May be this is where Sun see their market niche. However, they better watch out because Linux is racing and they are going to loose out.
What annoys me today is when I hear people say The trouble with Linux is it is not mature These people should take a closer look and the commerical UNIX distributions should look too. If the commerical Unices don't start proper innovation across the market they are sure to loose out. The battle isn't over. We still need to innovate ourselves more in pushing Linux forward. But it isn't the commerial Unices who are going to compete with Linux in taking the market.
"Wait a mo....just starting Mozilla on my Linux watch...I haven't voted yet today!"
Instead of selective denial, the best you can do is selective allowance.
Nice theory but impossible in practice. Unless we are talking about 5 year old kids who would be happy just looking at disney and a few other sites. After that age they want to explore for themselves. How many sites can you allow through selective allowance? 10,000? More?
The WWW is excellent for children to explore and learn things and this shouldn't be restricted by selective allowance. It is just too limiting.It removes the whole possiblity of researching new ideas. The only information that you will find will be the information that someone else has already put aside for you.
I think schools should log children's activity to show which types of sites the children have gone to. Children would then be deterred from going to Porn sites etc. knowing that teachers, parents, librarians or whoever, might find out.