Hotmail.com used to use PERL. One of the first things Microsoft did after purchasing them was move this to CGI written in C++.
From the Microsoft article:
"All of the Hotmail web servers are dual Pentium processor servers. Originally, these servers were built with FreeBSD running Apache as the web server. Most of the Web pages were generated by Perl-based CGIs. The version of Apache that was being used was not multi-threaded so each request was handled by another Apache process that was spawned off by the parent process. Spawning a new process is costly and Perl is an interpreted language so the performance of these machines was not optimal.
One of the first tasks undertaken by the dev team when Microsoft purchased Hotmail was to convert all the CGIs from Perl to C++. This was done for several reasons--the most important of which was performance. After this was completed, a couple of developers were tasked with getting the code to build and run on Windows NT® operating system. This was done because of the need for better debugging tools. "
The time between the announced purchase of Hotmail.com and the rumors of an NT 4.0 migration was only 4 months.
Corporate mergers do not move that fast, for one thing. For another that 4 months would never have allowed enough time for any analysis of the problem, much less code conversion.
Also shortly after this, I went and did a search on deja.com, various other search engines, etc. I could find no references to any hotmail.com outages. No enduser complaints, etc. Although there was ample evidence of such complaints during other time periods.
This is an urban legend, much akin to "Microsoft can't ever enter the Unix market" legend promoted by RE Ballard on c.o.l.a.
Why is it that people can't understand the difference between the GPL and the BSD licenses? You can attack one without attacking the other, and Microsoft has focused their complaints against the GPL, implying that the BSD license is better.
Furthermore as far as hotmail.com goes. Again, if you read the article that Microsoft has on their site regarding the migration to Windows 2000 they acknowledge the support/mindshare issue.
The support people were used to monitoring the FreeBSD servers. As a result, they installed syslog tools on the Windows 2000 servers(by way of Services for Unix). Microsoft fully admits they still have some FreeBSD machines in house, it's just the main web servers they migrated. They also say in the article that the development machines had been using Windows NT/2k for quite a while beforehand. Initial development had been done on NT, then recompiled on FreeBSD and retested.
According to the article Microsoft migrated the entirety of several thousand web servers running FreeBSD to Windows 2000.
According to the hotmail migration article, not only did switch over to Win2k servers seamlessly, they also increased the number of users they could support on hotmail without buying additional hardware.
Sounds to me like a terrific success for Microsoft, and something just last year open source zealots were claiming they could not do.
As the veteran hacker, I've been tossed too many of these techno-wannabees to train. They are clueless. They ask me why I don't replace our Windows sytems with Linux. When I ask them why I should do that, they say "Because Linux is better." That's it. No qualification beyond that. Geez.
I guess one thing that bothers me. It appears to me that this "GNU movement" led by the likes of Richard Stallman, et al. is actually working against those of us in the tech world who would prefer to be paid commiserate salaries based on our actual knowledge. At least I view his attitude as being one of "you should do this for love, not money." and in so doing undercuts us.
Anyway, I guess I feel I'm one of the tech people who does have no problem understanding the business. I just find it rather boring and have no interest in doing that sort of work.
But I don't believe that someone who understands the business side is somehow worth more than someone who understand the technical side. They both have different types of domain knowledge and both play an important role for the profitability of the company.
I honestly have no disdain for the work of the business managers. Sometimes I wish they would be more focused. But I certainly do not appreciate disdain being shown towards technical staff such as the above poster mentioned.
I had an Amiga as well, and had probably spent close to $2k on commercial software. I had WordPerfect, several editors(TurboText comes to mind as one really good one, Cygnus Ed another), etc.
But A lot of people I knew had games, software, etc. that was not purchased. Again there were a few who did, but overwhelmingly most did not.
The Amiga community lobbied the stores hard to get them to carry software. I recall Software Etc. being an example, they carried Amiga then dropped it, and then we lobbied them hard to carry it again.
But even after lobbying them, nobody bought product and it languished on the shelves.
Now on the C-64 there was a tremendous amount of piracy as well. Today with the PC the same is true. But the difference is/was that the userbase is so tremendously large that companies can still make enough money to survive without worrying too much about those problems.
When the userbase is drastically small, if you want to grow the support the piracy cannot be tolerated.
Now I don't know about this articles example. It could be that their product was just poor. If so, they die, that's part of the evolution of the business.
But how many Linux users have copies of Loki games they did not pay for? I don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect that might be quite a high figure.
I don't believe the question was ever that there are not some sales of commercial product on Linux.
But the other guy is correct, as a whole Linux users are unwilling to spend money on software.
I don't believe this is an assertion that can be proved simply by counter example. You would have to show 51% of Linux users buying product from Loki, not just one person.
For the record, this was the same problem the Amiga world faced. The lack of market sales eventually drove stores and producers away from the OS.
Don't any of you find it all amazing how you blindly accept the statistics from IDC, but question the ones from Gartner?
All because IDC has larger numbers.
I would seriously like to see IDC justify these numbers as accurate. From what I've seen of their press releases they extrapolate off some pretty questionable data.
At least Gartner went to the trouble of performing a survey.
I could understand this if you were actually using C or C++ in a procedural manner. This type of step by step programming is much more intuitive and conducive to learning.
Other than that, there's absolutely nothing about C++ that is more intuitive than Java!:)
Claim #1. XP breaks MP3.
This is pure unadulterated FUD. Beta XP shipped with an MP3 encoder to test the ability to plug other audio encoders into Windows Media Player. The encoder they shipped was limited to 56kbps because that is the limit before you have to license the technology from Fraunhoffer. The latest XP builds do not include an MP3 encoder, and there was never any plans to ship with one. Windows Media has never had this ability, but they wanted to allow for third parties to extend the product in such a way.
#2. Breaks CD Burner Software.
I don't know the specifics. But given every Windows upgrade known to man has broken CD Burner software it does not surprise me. This is because CD Burner software still tries to operate at a low-level API. I don't know why they can't standardize on a device driver API, but Roxio, et al does seem to want to do that.
#3. Prevents you from upgrading your computer.
It's unclear at this point the details. I'll give you this point.
#4. Requires activation. Requires giving out info.
Point #1 is true, Point #2 is FUD. The activation does not require giving out personal information unless you choose to register your product at the same time.
#5. Is a very MINOR technical upgrade from Win2k.
Well this is true, but Windows XP is designed as an upgrade from Win95/98/Me, and in that case is a very MAJOR technical upgrade. Again this point is FUD.
#6. Has a GUI that would make anyone outside Miss Shirley's Romper Room throw up.
One of the benefits of growing up in Chicago was being able to see Romper Room and Bozo live. So perhaps I've been warped by those shows, but honestly having worked with the WinXP beta I think the GUI is pretty nice. Sorry, I'll have to call this FUD as well since it's obvious you haven't used it.
Well so far it seems the score for your post is:
Fear Uncertainty Doubt: 4
Insightful Opinion: 1
Pointing out the Obvious: 2
I think that's because IDC made the claim that 25% of servers ship with Linux. Hewitt is questioning that. It's especially difficult because IDC tried to include downloads in it's "ship with" statistics.
It appears from my reading that the Gartner numbers are based upon going out and surveying a variety of IT companies ranging from small to large. They asked them how many servers did they install and what OS are they running. Given the nature of Linux distribution, that is really the only way you'll ever know who is using what.
Whereas the IDC numbers were "extrapolated" with some pretty wild assumptions. I recall reading that they just automatically made the assumption that every copy being purchased or downloaded was installed to 15 machines. How can you know that?
There is also an issue of what's the point of these numbers. Looking at marketshare tends to ignore installed base figures so I assume that the point is to show what is growing, where the market is moving... i.e. where the money is.
As such, I think Gartner raises a very valid point that a Linux install that doesn't have some sort of support contract going along with it, says "what's the point?" Gartner points out that not many companies are going to do something like that anyway.
But more importantly, if the installs aren't being accompanied by support contracts, then they really don't play a part in accounting for "where the money is".
If the money isn't there, it's not useful for someone like RedHat to show market share growth. At least not to encourage investment, maybe to get warm fuzzies.
It's all relative. Honestly, from what I've read the Gartner numbers are much more supportable by facts. The IDC numbers appear to have a tint of "I pulled this out of my ass monday morning because we wanted a headline."
Agreed. I used to do a lot of typing back many years ago on the Digital Equipment LK201 keyboard.
This was the standard keyboard that came with VT340 terminals, DECstations, etc. Wow was it ever a bad keyboard, very mushy plus you had to press hard to register keys. So a days worth of typing was a lot of work.
My wrists were incredibly screwed up after about two years of that. About that time I got a new machine, switched keyboards, started doing wrist excercises, etc.
Now my pains have gone away.
Actually if I recall DEC was sued over that keyboard, but convinced the judge that the pains were imaginary.;)
The prices for CDs at Best Buy have not changed substantially in the past 18 years I've been shopping at that chain(back when they were called Sound of Music).
Most CDs I buy are around $12-13, I've purchased a few new releases there for $10.
I honestly don't think Best Buy cared about that lawsuit. It dealt with the record labels forcing fixed prices or failing to provide advertising money to the stores.
I rather doubt you'll ever seen prices of CDs go down from where they are today. But you can keep hoping, I guess.
Troll? Again, I'd call claiming PERL is a serious language is a troll.
PERL is good for what it was designed for, true.
But the same is just as true for Visual BASIC.
But trying to say any of these languages is a good all-purpose language, or that any one of them is a more "real" language than the other is ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Hotmail.com used to use PERL. One of the first things Microsoft did after purchasing them was move this to CGI written in C++.
From the Microsoft article:
"All of the Hotmail web servers are dual Pentium processor servers. Originally, these servers were built with FreeBSD running Apache as the web server. Most of the Web pages were generated by Perl-based CGIs. The version of Apache that was being used was not multi-threaded so each request was handled by another Apache process that was spawned off by the parent process. Spawning a new process is costly and Perl is an interpreted language so the performance of these machines was not optimal.
One of the first tasks undertaken by the dev team when Microsoft purchased Hotmail was to convert all the CGIs from Perl to C++. This was done for several reasons--the most important of which was performance. After this was completed, a couple of developers were tasked with getting the code to build and run on Windows NT® operating system. This was done because of the need for better debugging tools. "
This is what we call Urban legend.
The time between the announced purchase of Hotmail.com and the rumors of an NT 4.0 migration was only 4 months.
Corporate mergers do not move that fast, for one thing. For another that 4 months would never have allowed enough time for any analysis of the problem, much less code conversion.
Also shortly after this, I went and did a search on deja.com, various other search engines, etc. I could find no references to any hotmail.com outages. No enduser complaints, etc. Although there was ample evidence of such complaints during other time periods.
This is an urban legend, much akin to "Microsoft can't ever enter the Unix market" legend promoted by RE Ballard on c.o.l.a.
Or rather the standard copyright header text...
Why can't we talk about ACLs?
Why is it that people can't understand the difference between the GPL and the BSD licenses? You can attack one without attacking the other, and Microsoft has focused their complaints against the GPL, implying that the BSD license is better.
Furthermore as far as hotmail.com goes. Again, if you read the article that Microsoft has on their site regarding the migration to Windows 2000 they acknowledge the support/mindshare issue.
The support people were used to monitoring the FreeBSD servers. As a result, they installed syslog tools on the Windows 2000 servers(by way of Services for Unix). Microsoft fully admits they still have some FreeBSD machines in house, it's just the main web servers they migrated. They also say in the article that the development machines had been using Windows NT/2k for quite a while beforehand. Initial development had been done on NT, then recompiled on FreeBSD and retested.
According to the article Microsoft migrated the entirety of several thousand web servers running FreeBSD to Windows 2000.
According to the hotmail migration article, not only did switch over to Win2k servers seamlessly, they also increased the number of users they could support on hotmail without buying additional hardware.
Sounds to me like a terrific success for Microsoft, and something just last year open source zealots were claiming they could not do.
As the veteran hacker, I've been tossed too many of these techno-wannabees to train. They are clueless. They ask me why I don't replace our Windows sytems with Linux. When I ask them why I should do that, they say "Because Linux is better." That's it. No qualification beyond that. Geez.
:)
Heh. Welcome to my world.
I guess one thing that bothers me. It appears to me that this "GNU movement" led by the likes of Richard Stallman, et al. is actually working against those of us in the tech world who would prefer to be paid commiserate salaries based on our actual knowledge. At least I view his attitude as being one of "you should do this for love, not money." and in so doing undercuts us.
Anyway, I guess I feel I'm one of the tech people who does have no problem understanding the business. I just find it rather boring and have no interest in doing that sort of work.
But I don't believe that someone who understands the business side is somehow worth more than someone who understand the technical side. They both have different types of domain knowledge and both play an important role for the profitability of the company.
I honestly have no disdain for the work of the business managers. Sometimes I wish they would be more focused. But I certainly do not appreciate disdain being shown towards technical staff such as the above poster mentioned.
Why did this troll get modded up?
How is Real an open standard?
How has Microsoft subverted Kerberos? Hint: They haven't.
Why must Microsoft bend over backwards to integrate AOL's crappy software into Windows XP?
You know, if AOL actually used open standards they wouldn't have to build specialized crappy software.
Don't you think that this companies developers probably lobbied management "Let us release under Linux, please!?"
Finally management relented and said yes.
Then reality set in.
I had an Amiga as well, and had probably spent close to $2k on commercial software. I had WordPerfect, several editors(TurboText comes to mind as one really good one, Cygnus Ed another), etc.
But A lot of people I knew had games, software, etc. that was not purchased. Again there were a few who did, but overwhelmingly most did not.
The Amiga community lobbied the stores hard to get them to carry software. I recall Software Etc. being an example, they carried Amiga then dropped it, and then we lobbied them hard to carry it again.
But even after lobbying them, nobody bought product and it languished on the shelves.
Now on the C-64 there was a tremendous amount of piracy as well. Today with the PC the same is true. But the difference is/was that the userbase is so tremendously large that companies can still make enough money to survive without worrying too much about those problems.
When the userbase is drastically small, if you want to grow the support the piracy cannot be tolerated.
Now I don't know about this articles example. It could be that their product was just poor. If so, they die, that's part of the evolution of the business.
But how many Linux users have copies of Loki games they did not pay for? I don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect that might be quite a high figure.
I don't believe the question was ever that there are not some sales of commercial product on Linux.
But the other guy is correct, as a whole Linux users are unwilling to spend money on software.
I don't believe this is an assertion that can be proved simply by counter example. You would have to show 51% of Linux users buying product from Loki, not just one person.
For the record, this was the same problem the Amiga world faced. The lack of market sales eventually drove stores and producers away from the OS.
Don't any of you find it all amazing how you blindly accept the statistics from IDC, but question the ones from Gartner?
All because IDC has larger numbers.
I would seriously like to see IDC justify these numbers as accurate. From what I've seen of their press releases they extrapolate off some pretty questionable data.
At least Gartner went to the trouble of performing a survey.
Charge you? Beta testers get free copies of the product they are testing.
I could understand this if you were actually using C or C++ in a procedural manner. This type of step by step programming is much more intuitive and conducive to learning.
:)
Other than that, there's absolutely nothing about C++ that is more intuitive than Java!
Well actually the IDC figures are also supposed to be 24% of server shipped.
The 8.6% sounds more likely.
"Lets face it, my 16 year old sister can learn to be a windows admin from one of those tech schools that'll make you certified in 3 months. "
Actually that's not true.
"And you can pay 5 of those newbie admins for the price of one unix admin."
Either is that.
", I think if you want to run a windows server, you'll need the extra admins to take care of the additional crashes and glitches, "
Is there some sort of three strikes rule?
Claim #1. XP breaks MP3.
This is pure unadulterated FUD. Beta XP shipped with an MP3 encoder to test the ability to plug other audio encoders into Windows Media Player. The encoder they shipped was limited to 56kbps because that is the limit before you have to license the technology from Fraunhoffer. The latest XP builds do not include an MP3 encoder, and there was never any plans to ship with one. Windows Media has never had this ability, but they wanted to allow for third parties to extend the product in such a way.
#2. Breaks CD Burner Software.
I don't know the specifics. But given every Windows upgrade known to man has broken CD Burner software it does not surprise me. This is because CD Burner software still tries to operate at a low-level API. I don't know why they can't standardize on a device driver API, but Roxio, et al does seem to want to do that.
#3. Prevents you from upgrading your computer.
It's unclear at this point the details. I'll give you this point.
#4. Requires activation. Requires giving out info.
Point #1 is true, Point #2 is FUD. The activation does not require giving out personal information unless you choose to register your product at the same time.
#5. Is a very MINOR technical upgrade from Win2k.
Well this is true, but Windows XP is designed as an upgrade from Win95/98/Me, and in that case is a very MAJOR technical upgrade. Again this point is FUD.
#6. Has a GUI that would make anyone outside Miss Shirley's Romper Room throw up.
One of the benefits of growing up in Chicago was being able to see Romper Room and Bozo live. So perhaps I've been warped by those shows, but honestly having worked with the WinXP beta I think the GUI is pretty nice. Sorry, I'll have to call this FUD as well since it's obvious you haven't used it.
Well so far it seems the score for your post is:
Fear Uncertainty Doubt: 4
Insightful Opinion: 1
Pointing out the Obvious: 2
Not bad for one day of trolling.
I think that's because IDC made the claim that 25% of servers ship with Linux. Hewitt is questioning that. It's especially difficult because IDC tried to include downloads in it's "ship with" statistics.
Hmm, you must have read a different article than I did. The one I read indicated Gartner surveyed the IT depts to see what they were actually using.
My boss has a Gartner account, and I'll have to try to get access to the real study.
It appears from my reading that the Gartner numbers are based upon going out and surveying a variety of IT companies ranging from small to large. They asked them how many servers did they install and what OS are they running. Given the nature of Linux distribution, that is really the only way you'll ever know who is using what.
Whereas the IDC numbers were "extrapolated" with some pretty wild assumptions. I recall reading that they just automatically made the assumption that every copy being purchased or downloaded was installed to 15 machines. How can you know that?
There is also an issue of what's the point of these numbers. Looking at marketshare tends to ignore installed base figures so I assume that the point is to show what is growing, where the market is moving... i.e. where the money is.
As such, I think Gartner raises a very valid point that a Linux install that doesn't have some sort of support contract going along with it, says "what's the point?" Gartner points out that not many companies are going to do something like that anyway.
But more importantly, if the installs aren't being accompanied by support contracts, then they really don't play a part in accounting for "where the money is".
If the money isn't there, it's not useful for someone like RedHat to show market share growth. At least not to encourage investment, maybe to get warm fuzzies.
It's all relative. Honestly, from what I've read the Gartner numbers are much more supportable by facts. The IDC numbers appear to have a tint of "I pulled this out of my ass monday morning because we wanted a headline."
"I can't see MS leaving something like this user-editable - it's just not like them. They play the control game "
Now that's curious because it's not at all like Microsoft.
Why do you say such things when they are obviously not true?
Agreed. I used to do a lot of typing back many years ago on the Digital Equipment LK201 keyboard.
;)
This was the standard keyboard that came with VT340 terminals, DECstations, etc. Wow was it ever a bad keyboard, very mushy plus you had to press hard to register keys. So a days worth of typing was a lot of work.
My wrists were incredibly screwed up after about two years of that. About that time I got a new machine, switched keyboards, started doing wrist excercises, etc.
Now my pains have gone away.
Actually if I recall DEC was sued over that keyboard, but convinced the judge that the pains were imaginary.
The prices for CDs at Best Buy have not changed substantially in the past 18 years I've been shopping at that chain(back when they were called Sound of Music).
Most CDs I buy are around $12-13, I've purchased a few new releases there for $10.
I honestly don't think Best Buy cared about that lawsuit. It dealt with the record labels forcing fixed prices or failing to provide advertising money to the stores.
I rather doubt you'll ever seen prices of CDs go down from where they are today. But you can keep hoping, I guess.
Troll? Again, I'd call claiming PERL is a serious language is a troll.
PERL is good for what it was designed for, true.
But the same is just as true for Visual BASIC.
But trying to say any of these languages is a good all-purpose language, or that any one of them is a more "real" language than the other is ridiculous.
Guns don't kill people.
It's the damn bullets!