guys, some analysts have taken MS to task for this. they say it's very "insincere" of MS to do this. this zdnet editorial -- Software Assurance not so assuring asks: "Does this mean that prior to June 1, 2004, these users contravened their agreements by having Microsoft software on their back-up machines?". it quotes meta group as saying Microsoft has had an interesting history of "finely-tuned licensing rules."
Perfect. You have just proven my point. You are going to pay a premium price for what?
mp3's? Okay, thats a valid use. What's the sound quality like, how many mp3's can you store on it at one time? What is the battery life going to be if I want to listen to mp'3s all day long? I'll get a walkman and listen to tapes for next to nothing if I want mobile music.
Portable gaming machine? Okay, another neat app. So I'm going to play quake and doom on this little tiny screen? And that will be fun how???? Sure that's cool, but it's a gimick. What else...tetris??? come on...
ebook reader? Okay, another neat use. I'm going to read a book on that little tiny screen? No. I don't even read books on my PC with my nice big screen and my cushy chair. It's a strain on my eyes and not nearly as enjoyable as a dead tree.
My point isn't that they aren't cool, or that they haven't created a demand for them... I just think for my $$$$ it's a toy and an expensive one at that. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with anyone buying one.
I really have to wonder why. Who are they targeting with these? I would buy one if it was priced at lt. $100 but otherwise I just don't get it. Not when I can buy a fast (low end) desktop for ~$500. Sure it's not mobile, but they need to look at the big picture when they price these things. I just can't see spending three or four hundred dollars to have a little tiny screen with limited functionality. I mean basically it's a mobile phone number and address book. At least that's what the majority of people who I know that carry them (actually palms but it's the same difference) use it for.
Now don't get me wrong, these are cool and I think they are great. In fact I would love to have one, but realistically I can't justify the money.
I disagree with you. I have bought four different Linux distro's from MicroCenter. I do it for a couple of reasons:
1) I like Linux and want to support the companies who put these distro's out, it certainly isn't free for them to do all that work, they deserve to be compensated.
2) $70 is a drop in the bucket
3) I like the boxes and docs... I'm into saving that kind of stuff.. don't know why
4) I have a slow internet connection and I have more important things to do with my time than download a full distro from the net
So you can see, no I am not a newbie, no I do not need or want support and I'm pretty much "in the know."
I think if you really like an alternative to Windows and you actually care about the software industry as a whole then you should give some thought to purchasing your next distro too. Sure it's all well and good to jump on the Linux bandwagon but unless these companies can make money they will not continue to do what they do. It's pretty simple economics really.
I have to wonder why they have not gone to bigger L2 caches. Even my old sparcserver has a 1MB L2 cache. (It actually keeps up fairly well for a box that came out in 95)
Is this due to cost factors? It seems to me that by having a larger L2 cache you can get a nice performance boost without needing any high-tech advancements. But then again I'm not a real hardware kinda guy, so maybe I'm being a bit simple here.
***1. improved productivity, thanks to the improvements in software effected between upgrades***
This is one of the biggest falshoods propagated by big software companies, and for the most part they get away with it. It's almost like saying you should buy the new Mrs. Smiths cookies because they are new and improved and have 25% more flavor than the competitors cookies. If you say it enough it becomes true to the general public.
****2. no compatibility issues - again these cost money; by constantly being up-to-date, we have no risk of not being able to read that vital document.****
In theory, yes. I think reality might be a different issue though.
***3. better budgeting.****
Here you do have a good point. However you must also realize that the goal of any company is to increase profits. Thus you can be sure that your costs will contiue to rise and after you have committed to this platform you will have very little choice. Thats why competition is a good thing. If we are not going to see competition between similar services then you should be aware of the dangers.
In theory you are correct. In reality the problem is that the new products will eventually not have any backward compatability built in. This happens naturally over time as technology advances, as well as intentionally to attempt to force people to upgrade to the latest and greatest to generate more revenues.
That's why companies hold onto and try to lock people into using their own proprietary formats/protocols. Once something is an "industry standard" , ie MS word, then if you want to do busines in the real world you will need to be able to talk the same language, which means you better be prepared to start shelling out the bucks.
Yes it's evil, but it's not anything the software industry invented, it's just big business. It is, however, very well suited to software and MS has done it very well.
It's a good thing for both sides. On the one hand it'a all about momentum. There is a huge amount of development being done on the Gnome side, both for Gnome/Eazel/Ximian/etc, and also for apps that run under Gnome/Gtk+. In the computer world it's not always a matter of what's best (that's often a matter of personal taste anyways) but a matter of what's hot at the moment. Gnome is hot at the moment.
Meanwhile CDE, while not bad, (I actually like CDE under Solaris) certainly doesn't have a large number of people rushing to write apps for it. I think it's all part of the evolution of Open Source merging with the old school Unix stuff.
Uh.... Apple is an innovator????? Uh... they used to be but I think those days are long gone. I'm not sure you can even get by with the "make a better product" statement anymore. Lets face it, Apple has been behind the curve for years now and they are in catch-up mode, not in industry leader/innovator mode.
But alas, I like Apple and I like Macs too, but I've never bought into the ease of use / brilliant gui / user friendly stuff that gets repeated over and over. I think that ease of use is directly related to what you are used to. I think that gnome under Linux is real easy use but that's probably because it's what I use on a daily basis.
I never thought I would see the day when a whole gaggle of geeks would celebrate a big bunch of Sun boxes replaced with an IBM mainframe, but I guess shit happens.
LOL.... yeah... Big Blue is no longer the enemy. It's funny how things change over a couple decades. WRT the single point of failure you might have a point but I seem to recall reading somwhere where the S/390 is pretty much as reliable as they come. You have to pay for it but the IBM hardware is probably beter then Sun's with regards to reliability. (Even though I'm a Sun fan IMHO this is true)
"In the early days of Linux' entry into the mainstream (late 1998) Slashdot covered interesting wins for the OS like Burlington Coat Factory.
Yeah, not to sound like a jerk but that's when slashdot was really cool. Now it seems that being mainstream has watered it down a bit and altered the personality. Ah well, nothing stays the same I suppose.
Hey Bob, long time no see. I thought you would show up here on slashdot. I haven't seen you since you left Apple. That was a real mess, one of the biggest scandals that I can remember. I didn't know you were working for the netpliance people, I had heard you were at Sun for a while fixing up the networking code for the Sparc's, but anyways, good to see you here. Slashdot needs some industry experts to give it some credability.
Nice try sloth boy, this is an obvious troll. We all know that Loreena McKenitt is a japanese porn star who has been in such films as "One country, one hole" and "The Girlz R back in town"
She has nothing to do with music or technology or insanity for that matter.
I've seen your posts quite a bit and I'm on to you. You go around denouncing the real trolls while you are troll yourself. The gig is up fatboy, it's time to come clean.
Well, it's all a metter of word-play I suppose. What Gore is quoted as actually saying is:
"During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet"
Now I don't know about you, but I could take that as meaning that he is claiming he "invented" the Internet. Sure, what he is really saying is that he was a supporter of ARPANET before it became what we know as the Internet. But come on, he DID NOT create the Internet. ARPANET was created in the late 60's, Gore didn't even graduate from Harvard until 1969 and he wasn't a member of Congress until 1976. No sir, Al Gore had nothing to do with "creating" the Internet. Now, if you want to play with words and say that the Internet didn't exist until 1994 when the web came alive, then I suppose his claim of being an early supporter has some weight. It's a pretty good stretch either way in my book.
Because of his generous claim I think he deserves to be made fun of a little.
Actually you bring up a valid question, with regards to slashdot anyways. If Win2K had this bug it would certainly been on slahsdot, and met with much approval. Many MS friendly posters will go on about how slashdot is biased and unfair towards MS, well, posting this story pretty much lets RH have the MS treatment. Seems fair enough to me.
Now with regards to the bug, I think the obvious fix is to simply kill -9 rhnsd. There ya go, bug fixed. Yes it's a serious bug, but it's hardly a service that any production server needs so it's a non-issue in my mind. If you are running a serious server you are probably not going to let the the software update itself. You are going to get it up, apply any security patches that come out, and lock it in a closet somewhere. The "idea" that you must be running the most current version of software is a marketing ploy (which MS does very well) and is hogwash. If you have software that meets your needs and is stable and secure you certainly don't want to screw it up by randomly updating it.
I think it was poor of RH not to actually test this properly, but I also understand that this is partly just the nature of the beast. They feel that they must move forward at a fast pace and this is the result.
Well.. Sun's marketing has always been *ambitious*... some might have other adjectives but I suppose ambitious is a friendly way to put it. I'm not a big fan of Sun but I think this is a good thing, even if they are doing it for the wrong reasons. In my mind this is what makes Sun a longterm player, as opposed to.. uh..say.. SCO. Sun might not want to recognize Linux and the GPL and OSS and the like... but they realize that it's impposible to stop a speeding train so you're best bet is to simply hop on board.
What do you mean "ick"? Name one other distribution that caters to desktop users who are NOT Linux savvy
Well... if I read the article correctly it said that:
The laptops are aimed at computer professionals and scientists, two groups that have embraced Linux, said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the head of IBM's Linux group.
Hmmm.. doesn't sound like they are trying to target my Grandmother here..
Not to bag on Caldera here, I've never tried it so I would be remiss to do so, but..uh...well..yeah... why not use a distro that's aimed more for the computer proffesional or scientist?
Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer. Apple hadn't been concerned about that anyway, because a certain company in Redmond had already proven there was gold in operating systems.
Actually this makes little sense. MS makes most of it's money from the Office suite, not from sales of Windows. Of course Windows is the "gold" here because it locks people into other MS products(including Office), but that would not transfer to OSX. I also doubt that Apple will ever "not be concerned" about the revenue it generates from hardware. They do quite well selling hardware. Witness the evolution of Solaris as an example. You can get Solaris for a song and a dance these days because Sun really only cares about selling hardware.
What about Linux? The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line
You've either been living under a rock or you just haven't been paying attention to the evolution of GUI's for Linux. One can install Linux and be pretty much CLI free if one chooses. That's the great thing about *nix as a platform, you can use whatever interface works best for you, you're not locked into what "The Man" thinks works best for you.
Microsoft burned themselves with their integration
I disagree. I think Microsoft burned themselves with their attitude. If you piss off enough people you will pay for it. That's the thing that gets me. I think that MS could have been the dominant software company without all the nasty things they did. When they got DOS bundled on the IBM... well.. it was pretty much their game to lose at that point.
The fact is that many of these other companies basically shot themselves as much as MS did. Apple refused to compete on price...IBM had no clue how to market OS/2. Netscape imploded while it still had marketshare. Sure MS played a part in their demise... but not all of it
If MS had been a little more politically correct the government would never have gone after them. All they had to do was give a little and it would have saved them more than a lot.
This kind of puts Linux in a bad light, don't you think?
You might be looking for something that isn't there. It read to me like his response was taken out of context. Time might have edited his response down a bit.
I find it amusing that some of the Linux community are so paranoid that we jump at every little comment. Are we destined to be defensive or will we outgrow this at some point
There is a book which you can find at ye ol Fatbrain titled Where Wizards Stay Up Late that is an interesting read (if your a true geek) about the whole ARPANET thing. It talks a bit about Davies and the whole idea of breaking data into packets. It turns out that there was a fellow in the US who came up with the idea at about the same time as Davies.
The books a bit dry at times but worth a read if your into that sort of thing
Slashdot Mirror
good commentary in response to the article. tear's MSFT's claims apart:
3 76 9,39179296,00.htm
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/0,3902
guys, some analysts have taken MS to task for this. they say it's very "insincere" of MS to do this. this zdnet editorial -- Software Assurance not so assuring asks: "Does this mean that prior to June 1, 2004, these users contravened their agreements by having Microsoft software on their back-up machines?". it quotes meta group as saying Microsoft has had an interesting history of "finely-tuned licensing rules."
Perfect. You have just proven my point. You are going to pay a premium price for what?
mp3's? Okay, thats a valid use. What's the sound quality like, how many mp3's can you store on it at one time? What is the battery life going to be if I want to listen to mp'3s all day long? I'll get a walkman and listen to tapes for next to nothing if I want mobile music.
Portable gaming machine? Okay, another neat app. So I'm going to play quake and doom on this little tiny screen? And that will be fun how???? Sure that's cool, but it's a gimick. What else...tetris??? come on...
ebook reader? Okay, another neat use. I'm going to read a book on that little tiny screen? No. I don't even read books on my PC with my nice big screen and my cushy chair. It's a strain on my eyes and not nearly as enjoyable as a dead tree.
My point isn't that they aren't cool, or that they haven't created a demand for them... I just think for my $$$$ it's a toy and an expensive one at that. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with anyone buying one.
I really have to wonder why. Who are they targeting with these? I would buy one if it was priced at lt. $100 but otherwise I just don't get it. Not when I can buy a fast (low end) desktop for ~$500. Sure it's not mobile, but they need to look at the big picture when they price these things. I just can't see spending three or four hundred dollars to have a little tiny screen with limited functionality. I mean basically it's a mobile phone number and address book. At least that's what the majority of people who I know that carry them (actually palms but it's the same difference) use it for.
Now don't get me wrong, these are cool and I think they are great. In fact I would love to have one, but realistically I can't justify the money.
I disagree with you. I have bought four different Linux distro's from MicroCenter. I do it for a couple of reasons:
1) I like Linux and want to support the companies who put these distro's out, it certainly isn't free for them to do all that work, they deserve to be compensated.
2) $70 is a drop in the bucket
3) I like the boxes and docs... I'm into saving that kind of stuff.. don't know why
4) I have a slow internet connection and I have more important things to do with my time than download a full distro from the net
So you can see, no I am not a newbie, no I do not need or want support and I'm pretty much "in the know."
I think if you really like an alternative to Windows and you actually care about the software industry as a whole then you should give some thought to purchasing your next distro too. Sure it's all well and good to jump on the Linux bandwagon but unless these companies can make money they will not continue to do what they do. It's pretty simple economics really.
I have to wonder why they have not gone to bigger L2 caches. Even my old sparcserver has a 1MB L2 cache. (It actually keeps up fairly well for a box that came out in 95)
Is this due to cost factors? It seems to me that by having a larger L2 cache you can get a nice performance boost without needing any high-tech advancements. But then again I'm not a real hardware kinda guy, so maybe I'm being a bit simple here.
***1. improved productivity, thanks to the improvements in software effected between upgrades***
This is one of the biggest falshoods propagated by big software companies, and for the most part they get away with it. It's almost like saying you should buy the new Mrs. Smiths cookies because they are new and improved and have 25% more flavor than the competitors cookies. If you say it enough it becomes true to the general public.
****2. no compatibility issues - again these cost money; by constantly being up-to-date, we have no risk of not being able to read that vital document.****
In theory, yes. I think reality might be a different issue though.
***3. better budgeting.****
Here you do have a good point. However you must also realize that the goal of any company is to increase profits. Thus you can be sure that your costs will contiue to rise and after you have committed to this platform you will have very little choice. Thats why competition is a good thing. If we are not going to see competition between similar services then you should be aware of the dangers.
In theory you are correct. In reality the problem is that the new products will eventually not have any backward compatability built in. This happens naturally over time as technology advances, as well as intentionally to attempt to force people to upgrade to the latest and greatest to generate more revenues.
That's why companies hold onto and try to lock people into using their own proprietary formats/protocols. Once something is an "industry standard" , ie MS word, then if you want to do busines in the real world you will need to be able to talk the same language, which means you better be prepared to start shelling out the bucks.
Yes it's evil, but it's not anything the software industry invented, it's just big business. It is, however, very well suited to software and MS has done it very well.
It's a good thing for both sides. On the one hand it'a all about momentum. There is a huge amount of development being done on the Gnome side, both for Gnome/Eazel/Ximian/etc, and also for apps that run under Gnome/Gtk+. In the computer world it's not always a matter of what's best (that's often a matter of personal taste anyways) but a matter of what's hot at the moment. Gnome is hot at the moment.
Meanwhile CDE, while not bad, (I actually like CDE under Solaris) certainly doesn't have a large number of people rushing to write apps for it. I think it's all part of the evolution of Open Source merging with the old school Unix stuff.
Speaking of SCO.... what's up with them. Didn't Caldera or sombody purchase a big chunk of them?
Uh.... Apple is an innovator????? Uh... they used to be but I think those days are long gone. I'm not sure you can even get by with the "make a better product" statement anymore. Lets face it, Apple has been behind the curve for years now and they are in catch-up mode, not in industry leader/innovator mode.
But alas, I like Apple and I like Macs too, but I've never bought into the ease of use / brilliant gui / user friendly stuff that gets repeated over and over. I think that ease of use is directly related to what you are used to. I think that gnome under Linux is real easy use but that's probably because it's what I use on a daily basis.
Who marked this as flambait/troll ??????
Good grief - this man speaketh the truth. Boy, I remember when your typical slashdotter had a clue
I never thought I would see the day when a whole gaggle of geeks would celebrate a big bunch of Sun boxes replaced with an IBM mainframe, but I guess shit happens.
LOL.... yeah... Big Blue is no longer the enemy. It's funny how things change over a couple decades. WRT the single point of failure you might have a point but I seem to recall reading somwhere where the S/390 is pretty much as reliable as they come. You have to pay for it but the IBM hardware is probably beter then Sun's with regards to reliability. (Even though I'm a Sun fan IMHO this is true)
"In the early days of Linux' entry into the mainstream (late 1998) Slashdot covered interesting wins for the OS like Burlington Coat Factory.
Yeah, not to sound like a jerk but that's when slashdot was really cool. Now it seems that being mainstream has watered it down a bit and altered the personality. Ah well, nothing stays the same I suppose.
Does netBSD run on a Sparcstation?
Hey Bob, long time no see. I thought you would show up here on slashdot. I haven't seen you since you left Apple. That was a real mess, one of the biggest scandals that I can remember. I didn't know you were working for the netpliance people, I had heard you were at Sun for a while fixing up the networking code for the Sparc's, but anyways, good to see you here. Slashdot needs some industry experts to give it some credability.
Nice try sloth boy, this is an obvious troll. We all know that Loreena McKenitt is a japanese porn star who has been in such films as "One country, one hole" and "The Girlz R back in town"
She has nothing to do with music or technology or insanity for that matter.
I've seen your posts quite a bit and I'm on to you. You go around denouncing the real trolls while you are troll yourself. The gig is up fatboy, it's time to come clean.
Well, it's all a metter of word-play I suppose. What Gore is quoted as actually saying is:
"During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet"
Now I don't know about you, but I could take that as meaning that he is claiming he "invented" the Internet. Sure, what he is really saying is that he was a supporter of ARPANET before it became what we know as the Internet. But come on, he DID NOT create the Internet. ARPANET was created in the late 60's, Gore didn't even graduate from Harvard until 1969 and he wasn't a member of Congress until 1976. No sir, Al Gore had nothing to do with "creating" the Internet. Now, if you want to play with words and say that the Internet didn't exist until 1994 when the web came alive, then I suppose his claim of being an early supporter has some weight. It's a pretty good stretch either way in my book.
Because of his generous claim I think he deserves to be made fun of a little.
Uh... you.ve got a uid of 5851 and you don't know what a service pack is ??????? Sheesh... what rock have you been living under ?????
Actually you bring up a valid question, with regards to slashdot anyways. If Win2K had this bug it would certainly been on slahsdot, and met with much approval. Many MS friendly posters will go on about how slashdot is biased and unfair towards MS, well, posting this story pretty much lets RH have the MS treatment. Seems fair enough to me.
Now with regards to the bug, I think the obvious fix is to simply kill -9 rhnsd. There ya go, bug fixed. Yes it's a serious bug, but it's hardly a service that any production server needs so it's a non-issue in my mind. If you are running a serious server you are probably not going to let the the software update itself. You are going to get it up, apply any security patches that come out, and lock it in a closet somewhere. The "idea" that you must be running the most current version of software is a marketing ploy (which MS does very well) and is hogwash. If you have software that meets your needs and is stable and secure you certainly don't want to screw it up by randomly updating it.
I think it was poor of RH not to actually test this properly, but I also understand that this is partly just the nature of the beast. They feel that they must move forward at a fast pace and this is the result.
Well.. Sun's marketing has always been *ambitious*... some might have other adjectives but I suppose ambitious is a friendly way to put it. I'm not a big fan of Sun but I think this is a good thing, even if they are doing it for the wrong reasons. In my mind this is what makes Sun a longterm player, as opposed to .. uh..say .. SCO. Sun might not want to recognize Linux and the GPL and OSS and the like... but they realize that it's impposible to stop a speeding train so you're best bet is to simply hop on board.
Anyways.... kudos to Sun.
What do you mean "ick"? Name one other distribution that caters to desktop users who are NOT Linux savvy
..uh...well..yeah... why not use a distro that's aimed more for the computer proffesional or scientist?
Well... if I read the article correctly it said that:
The laptops are aimed at computer professionals and scientists, two groups that have embraced Linux, said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the head of IBM's Linux group.
Hmmm.. doesn't sound like they are trying to target my Grandmother here..
Not to bag on Caldera here, I've never tried it so I would be remiss to do so, but
Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer. Apple hadn't been concerned about that
anyway, because a certain company in Redmond had already proven there was gold in operating systems.
Actually this makes little sense. MS makes most of it's money from the Office suite, not from sales of Windows. Of course Windows is the "gold" here because it locks people into other MS products(including Office), but that would not transfer to OSX. I also doubt that Apple will ever "not be concerned" about the revenue it generates from hardware. They do quite well selling hardware. Witness the evolution of Solaris as an example. You can get Solaris for a song and a dance these days because Sun really only cares about selling hardware.
What about Linux? The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line
You've either been living under a rock or you just haven't been paying attention to the evolution of GUI's for Linux. One can install Linux and be pretty much CLI free if one chooses. That's the great thing about *nix as a platform, you can use whatever interface works best for you, you're not locked into what "The Man" thinks works best for you.
Microsoft burned themselves with their integration
I disagree. I think Microsoft burned themselves with their attitude. If you piss off enough people you will pay for it. That's the thing that gets me. I think that MS could have been the dominant software company without all the nasty things they did. When they got DOS bundled on the IBM... well.. it was pretty much their game to lose at that point.
The fact is that many of these other companies basically shot themselves as much as MS did. Apple refused to compete on price...IBM had no clue how to market OS/2. Netscape imploded while it still had marketshare. Sure MS played a part in their demise... but not all of it
If MS had been a little more politically correct the government would never have gone after them. All they had to do was give a little and it would have saved them more than a lot.
This kind of puts Linux in a bad light, don't you think?
You might be looking for something that isn't there. It read to me like his response was taken out of context. Time might have edited his response down a bit.
I find it amusing that some of the Linux community are so paranoid that we jump at every little comment. Are we destined to be defensive or will we outgrow this at some point
There is a book which you can find at ye ol Fatbrain titled Where Wizards Stay Up Late that is an interesting read (if your a true geek) about the whole ARPANET thing. It talks a bit about Davies and the whole idea of breaking data into packets. It turns out that there was a fellow in the US who came up with the idea at about the same time as Davies.
The books a bit dry at times but worth a read if your into that sort of thing