"The files that are as of this moment tagged as RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE can't be used to build a release because the MFSROOT kernel (that goes on the kern.flp) overflows a the size of a 1440K floppy disk."
It's 2003 and a sparkling new Unix OS is being held up by... a floppy?
I remember floppies... I used them back in the 80's and very early 90's.
I'm glad that they are sticking by their principles on this. I just wonder if they are principles worth sticking to.
I can believe that one day MS will write perfectly trustworthy software -- okay, I AM being hypothetical -- but I don't think I could ever believe that they would be a trustworthy company.
"I mean no insult to the story's submitter, but that kind of thinking is the heart of the problem. NASA is not a freight service - they're a space program, dammit. Their job is not hauling stuff into orbit, but doing real, hard science."
Yeah, in perfect world. But this isn't a perfect world. If they want a budget they are now expected to do something useful.
Unfortunately, your line of reasoning is academic.
The reality is that part of the current charter is to haul stuff into orbit and be glad that they get funding to do the other fun stuff.
NASA can do anything it damn well pleases the first day it becomes self-sufficient.
"The CompUSA delivery method is only an advantage over apps that you can't currently download and unlock. Many of the small apps that you mention are like this already."
What difference does this make? The point is, they are all in one retail place, ready to go. To you and I that might not matter much, but to the other 99% of the retail consumers it will be a miracle.
The point is that the apps will be visible without the cost of shelf space. In a retail setting this has NOT happened before.
I have observed that public school systems react only from fear of litigation.
Want to know how a school with handle something? Try to anticipate what their lawyers will say.
This is why they BUY the software that they buy and use it the way that they use it.
--Richard
PS: This techique applies to everything about public school systems, not just technology. Football. The chess club. Band uniforms. Cafetera food. Theatre. Whatever.
As a taxpaying Austinite, I'm pretty irritated that I'm paying for that many copies of W2K. A couple years ago, Microsoft payed a visit to the Austin Independent School District and walked away with a freaking huge mountain of money. My money. Of course, it broke the school budget to smithereens.
My son plays paintball at a facility operated on an disused never-paved air field. I've only ever seen the place from one end of what used to be a landing strip but there could be more to it. I assumed that it was used only for crop dusters.
The paintball shop is operated out of the old hanger.
It's about 30-miles east of Austin, Texas, in the middle of nowhere.
Your points are interesting, but I noticed that you gloss over something important: criticality.
When an operation cannot afford downtime, there's still pretty much only one approach, period: quality.
Moving from a Microsoft solution to Unix or Linux is certainly a step in the right direction but as long as people are happy waiting in store checkout lines because their cash registers have "gone down", well, I guess they're safely inside the threshold.
Some people are totally comfortable being in the excuse business but if I was I wouldn't brag about it.
--Richard
Re:Agreed, Sun cannot beat an entire economy
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 1
I don't agree with the assertion in the post title, "Sun cannot beat an entire economy"
Well, they don't have to. The metaphore "beat" is a bit juvenile. Apple didn't have beat an entire economy, either, although many people at one time seemed to think they would have to to survive. Remember, most of the profitable companies in the world are NOT dominant. Companies like Microsoft and Intel are aberrations.
Apple got around its little "can't 'defeat' the whole Wintel economy" with a shrewed business aquitation and leveraging open source. Image that: Immediate, free, high-quality, world-wide development partners. Almost no one saw it coming. I certainly didn't see it coming and Bill Gates didn't, either.
If Sun decides, like many of the posters here, that they most complete with white box manufactures then they have truly lost. In the mid-90's Apple thought that they had to compete against cheap disposable PC's and it almost killed them. Sun won't win a game played that way, either.
Like Apple, Sun must complete on it's own terms. I guarranty that means redefining what "success" means. Nothing wrong with that in my book.
And yes, Mac OS X is clearly a better OS than MS XP but IMO just not worth the extra cost for me.
You get what you pay for. Always. Even when you die.
Replacement parts for Macs cost way too much and take too long to get.
I use Apple hardware so I'm not too sure what the "replacement" stuff is all about. My Mac-using friends are stumped, too.
I can replace any part in my desktop PC in less than 24 hours and do it myself.
Me, too, except it doesn't take me 24-hours. And when it comes to upgrades, I take a lot less time than you probably do. It's a Mac. Upgrades just work. Very little fucking around.
A Mac will cost you atleast twice the price for parts, require professional installation most of the time
So do PC's, if that's what you're into. Personally, DIMMs aren't that tricky.
and take a minimum of one week to get the parts and one week for installation.
I dunno, maybe a dead Powerbook, as long as you aren't talking about RAM or a hard drive. Same is true of PC laptops, too.
Honestly, I'm just yanking your chain. I haven't really had a Mac break in ten years but I've upgraded many of them.
--Richard
PS: I'm a Mac user. I'm also a PPC/Intel Linux user. I do not do any of the various versions of Windows.
It's awfully close to making a case that would have prevented the telephone industry from ever existing: Why buy telephone service if no one else has a telephone?
It's a line of reasoning that's self-defeating and, fortunately, invalid.
Slashdot Mirror
"The files that are as of this moment tagged as RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE can't be used to build a release because the MFSROOT kernel (that goes on the kern.flp) overflows a the size of a 1440K floppy disk."
It's 2003 and a sparkling new Unix OS is being held up by... a floppy?
I remember floppies... I used them back in the 80's and very early 90's.
I'm glad that they are sticking by their principles on this. I just wonder if they are principles worth sticking to.
--Richard
I can believe that one day MS will write perfectly trustworthy software -- okay, I AM being hypothetical -- but I don't think I could ever believe that they would be a trustworthy company.
Anyone would beat the asshole we have now.
--Richard
I'm not familiar with the procedure you propose but wouldn't this work only if the entire shuttle was powered down?
--Richard
"I mean no insult to the story's submitter, but that kind of thinking is the heart of the problem. NASA is not a freight service - they're a space program, dammit. Their job is not hauling stuff into orbit, but doing real, hard science."
Yeah, in perfect world. But this isn't a perfect world. If they want a budget they are now expected to do something useful.
Unfortunately, your line of reasoning is academic.
The reality is that part of the current charter is to haul stuff into orbit and be glad that they get funding to do the other fun stuff.
NASA can do anything it damn well pleases the first day it becomes self-sufficient.
--Richard
"Why bother with the part where you walk into CompUSA?"
Because that's where cash-in-hand customers go to spend money?
--Richard
"The CompUSA delivery method is only an advantage over apps that you can't currently download and unlock. Many of the small apps that you mention are like this already."
What difference does this make? The point is, they are all in one retail place, ready to go. To you and I that might not matter much, but to the other 99% of the retail consumers it will be a miracle.
The point is that the apps will be visible without the cost of shelf space. In a retail setting this has NOT happened before.
--Richard
Seems to me that the author is simply stiring the pot.
Move along.
I have observed that public school systems react only from fear of litigation.
Want to know how a school with handle something? Try to anticipate what their lawyers will say.
This is why they BUY the software that they buy and use it the way that they use it.
--Richard
PS: This techique applies to everything about
public school systems, not just technology.
Football. The chess club. Band uniforms.
Cafetera food. Theatre. Whatever.
"Although I do admit that since I am the Linux guru of the school..."
I hope you are training your replacement. That's part of the job, too, and critical to insure the continued success of your program.
--Richard
As a taxpaying Austinite, I'm pretty irritated that I'm paying for that many copies of W2K. A couple years ago, Microsoft payed a visit to the Austin Independent School District and walked away with a freaking huge mountain of money. My money. Of course, it broke the school budget to smithereens.
Good luck to you guys. We need more like you.
--Richard
"If it ain't compiled into assembly language, it ain't real programming."
Interesting definition. My distinction has always been that if I can fuck up memory, then I'm programming. Otherwise I'm scripting.
--Richard
My son plays paintball at a facility operated on an disused never-paved air field. I've only ever seen the place from one end of what used to be a landing strip but there could be more to it. I assumed that it was used only for crop dusters.
The paintball shop is operated out of the old hanger.
It's about 30-miles east of Austin, Texas, in the middle of nowhere.
--Richard
Your points are interesting, but I noticed that you gloss over something important: criticality.
When an operation cannot afford downtime, there's still pretty much only one approach, period: quality.
Moving from a Microsoft solution to Unix or Linux is certainly a step in the right direction but as long as people are happy waiting in store checkout lines because their cash registers have "gone down", well, I guess they're safely inside the threshold.
Some people are totally comfortable being in the excuse business but if I was I wouldn't brag about it.
--Richard
I don't agree with the assertion in the post title, "Sun cannot beat an entire economy"
Well, they don't have to. The metaphore "beat" is a bit juvenile. Apple didn't have beat an entire economy, either, although many people at one time seemed to think they would have to to survive. Remember, most of the profitable companies in the world are NOT dominant. Companies like Microsoft and Intel are aberrations.
Apple got around its little "can't 'defeat' the whole Wintel economy" with a shrewed business aquitation and leveraging open source. Image that: Immediate, free, high-quality, world-wide development partners. Almost no one saw it coming. I certainly didn't see it coming and Bill Gates didn't, either.
If Sun decides, like many of the posters here, that they most complete with white box manufactures then they have truly lost. In the mid-90's Apple thought that they had to compete against cheap disposable PC's and it almost killed them. Sun won't win a game played that way, either.
Like Apple, Sun must complete on it's own terms. I guarranty that means redefining what "success" means. Nothing wrong with that in my book.
Bend but don't break.
And yes, Mac OS X is clearly a better OS than MS XP but IMO just not worth the extra cost for me.
You get what you pay for. Always. Even when you die.
Replacement parts for Macs cost way too much and take too long to get.
I use Apple hardware so I'm not too sure what the "replacement" stuff is all about. My Mac-using friends are stumped, too.
I can replace any part in my desktop PC in less than 24 hours and do it myself.
Me, too, except it doesn't take me 24-hours. And when it comes to upgrades, I take a lot less time than you probably do. It's a Mac. Upgrades just work. Very little fucking around.
A Mac will cost you atleast twice the price for parts, require professional installation most of the time
So do PC's, if that's what you're into. Personally, DIMMs aren't that tricky.
and take a minimum of one week to get the parts and one week for installation.
I dunno, maybe a dead Powerbook, as long as you aren't talking about RAM or a hard drive. Same is true of PC laptops, too.
Honestly, I'm just yanking your chain. I haven't really had a Mac break in ten years but I've upgraded many of them.
--Richard
PS: I'm a Mac user. I'm also a PPC/Intel Linux user. I do not do any of the various versions of Windows.
"The PIII is mostly a frankenstein of parts either bought or traded from friends. Unfortunatly I could not do this with a Mac."
Damn! Now I'll have to tell all my MacHead friends that what they've been doing for years is really impossible and that they should stop.
Common Rumors
---------------------
White men can't jump.
Black men have big dicks.
Mac's aren't expandable.
--Richard
PS: It is no longer 1986.
"Bill Gates is hoarding cash. What does he know that you don't?"
How to run a monopoly.
It's not lazy... it's creepy.
Next you we'll hear is that Bill Gates has taken to wearing Steve Jobs' old shirts. Unwashed.
Yep, I really like SFTP. It works the way I'm accustomed to working with FTP when I'm at a command line. It's secure.
I'm not sure why more people haven't mentioned SFTP. It really is great.
--Richard
"Does it seem ironic to anyone else that the original main supporter of scsi is now doing ATA software raid in their high end server products?"
No.
"Spam is a technical problem..."
You think spam is a technical problem?
I'm not sure that I see the wisdom in your logic.
It's awfully close to making a case that would have prevented the telephone industry from ever existing: Why buy telephone service if no one else has a telephone?
It's a line of reasoning that's self-defeating and, fortunately, invalid.
--Richard
Austin, Texas
"I hardly call $250-300 ASUS motherboards "pushed-cheaper" "componentry"(?)."
You honestly think $300 is expensive for a motherboard?
How did we come to this?
--Richard
Are you really looking for truth on Slashdot?
Do you feel comfortable comparing two deaths to one, then declaring a winner?
I understand your point but you're arguing yourself into a dead end.
It's relative. You'll never be happy with anyone's response to your "questions".
--Richard
PS: If 500 people die and one of them is
my daughter, then fuck the other 499.