Let's see... Have the processing power located in a central system, then export the displays out to multiple client machines.
Hmmm...
Take away the high speed aspect of this plan, and I'll be damned if this doesn't sound like a typical X-Terminal scenario. Am I missing something here? High speed X interaction isn't that exciting.
IBM is a major partner of Caldera as well -- Caldera's OS products are the only Linux products preloaded on IBM hardware by IBM -- but Caldera has a Sparc port. They don't offer commercial support for it, but they have it and have not announced that they're dropping it. I doubt that IBM cares about Sparc ports. When IBM offers a commercial OS that works well on Sparc hardware, then they'll have a say. Until then, I believe they are probably not interested in the existing Sparc market.
(Granted, Caldera's Sparc port is not the most recent version of their offering (OpenLinux 2.2 based, if I recall correctly), but it's there.)
Let's be consistent here, folks...
on
KBasic
·
· Score: 3
This group says hoorah when someone wastes their time porting Linux to Palm devices (which is useless: the Palm is the LAST device that will be running Linux effectively. Devices like the iPaq, Yopy, and the soon to be released Agenda VR* are MUCH better suited for Linux use), but when a group of people seek to provide something people can actually use you thrash 'em, and it's only because of some kind of M$ association.
Come on... I'll never touch KBasic, but I think it's cool that it's being done.
In my opinion, the problems with VB viruses in Outlook, Word, Excel, et al are issues with Outlook, Word, Excel, et al, not VB. First off, there's nothing saying that apps need to support KBasic as a scripting language. Second, the apps themselves -- if written correctly -- should not allow the same idiocy that Outlook et al allowed from VB.
Besides, M$ didn't invent BASIC. They cloned it from another system (VMS? I can't remember).
This is the exact type of nasty response that the Linux community is known for outside (hell, even inside) Linux circles. No matter how many times we all plea that people keep their cool, there's always someone who just can't resist blowing it.
Please, people, keep your cool when people say negative things about Linux stuff. I don't know why I'm saying it seeing as how very few people seem to hear it, but I'm saying it anyway. Maybe if some of us say it enough, the abrasive minority will start to listen.
You do all of us a disservice when you react like Ben. Yes, the review was misinformed. Yes, this Kurt guy didn't do his homework.
That's the press. If I had a dollar for every time I read a misinformed review of a Linux product, I'd have that MR2 Spider that I've had my eye on.
One day they'll "get it", but until they do we need to guide them a little. Flamage will get us nowhere. Be calm, and people will listen. We need to come out on top here, folks.
The example you used isn't the greatest... If you submit a patch to the FSF, it's going to be open and available to the general public. If someone offers a patch to the FSF and asks that it remain closed, the FSF will reject it.
If a service is up front about how it will handle information, people who have information to submit will be able to make a solid judgement on where they would like to direct their info. If someone does not want a patch to GCC to be open to the public, they will know not to submit it to the FSF. Likewise, if I had known that my contributions to CDDB were going to be locked down at a later date, I would have directed the data to a service that would not put restrictions on it.
Here's the deal... CDDB has solicited data from users for quite some time w/o telling them (in my observation) that what they're giving to CDDB is going to be sold back to them at a later date. This, my friend, is questionable.
I have no qualms with people making money for providing a service. Be up front about it, though. CDDB has received "donations" from me, and at no point in time was I made aware of the idea that I or someone else would have to purchase back this data. In my opinion, that's like borrowing your friend's lawn mower and then asking that he pay you to get it back. I put my information in CDDB so I would not have to store it in some other way. I also figured my info was going to be shared with others. Just like many companies offer resources to house mail lists w/o expecting compensation, I figured CDDB was going to share my information in an open fashion. Had I known they were going to lock down the data and sell it at a later date, I would have taken my info elsewhere.
If that makes me selfish, so be it. I still think it's wrong to ask for info w/o stating that it's going to be proprietary at some point in the future.
Well, for one thing these are free at RadioShack. That's a $20 savings right there.
Also, you must keep in mind that it's not the functionality that people seem to be after (what the hell am I going to do with a barcode scanner??); it's taking something that's made to do one thing and converting it through software or some other means to do something different. In other words, it's the hack that's important, not the fact that you can read barcodes with it.
Just look at the whole I-Opener thing. Face it, to hack that thing into something useful you'd have to dump a couple hundred bucks into it, which would instantly negate the novelty of a "$99 computer". You could assemble a faster system for about the same money and some spare parts. But where's the fun in that? The beauty of the I-Opener was the plethora of creative things you could do to it. I don't know that a scanner would offer the same diversity, but wouldn't it be goofy to check it out?
Your idea of buying a canned solution is too practical. There's no fun in that. Taking a Cat thing and plunking away at some code to make it do something other than send remote commands to Netscape is fun. I'll probably throw the damn thing away when its lost its novelty... But it's free, so who cares? There's something to say for disposable fun...
"VNC" isn't a product; it's a technology. Some company in England used it as a product name of sorts, but if I named a secure tunnelling package "VPN" that wouldn't effectively hijack the "VPN" acronym away from everyone else.
VNC is "virtual network computer", which as far as I know is not a product, but a technology. If anyone has proof otherwise, I can be easily swayed...
For those who are not aware of the software SCO actually sells (and until the merger is approved, the software that they still sell), OpenServer and Unixware are only two of their offerings. They have been offering a virtual network server/client system called Tarantella for some time now. It mimics Citrix's VNC client for Windows, but Tarantella is run through any web browser (maybe Citrix's offering is as well; I haven't tried either, personally).
SCO is selling off their server and service divisions, but they're keeping their Tarantella division. It's only logical that they rename their company after the only product they're going to be selling. Everything that made SCO known other than this new product is being sold, so in essence what is SCO if it only sells Tarantella?
It's an odd name, yes, but the name change is logical IMNSHO.
I dislike the idea of using MS products as well, but I'm approaching this from a different direction...
Currently, Netscape is the only game in town when it comes to feature-rich browsers on Linux (sorry, Nautilus and Konqueror people; you'll get there some day, but today it's still Netscape). The problem is Netscape browsers on Linux SUCK. I mean, of all the pieces of software on a typical Linux distribution (free, open sourced, or otherwise), Netscape browsers infuriate me the most. They are crap, plain and simple. One could argue that web browsers are some of the most important software packages on any modern networked system, though. It sucks having the central app on a typical Linux system be a turd.
The problem? NO COMPETITION. Mozilla doesn't even offer the features that Netscape's browsers do. If something commercial grade came along and gave Netscape a run for its money, you'd see dramatic improvements very quickly. As it stands, Netscape/AOL can put out crap browsers for Linux and not sweat over it much because what the hell else are you going to use??
Netscape needs SERIOUS competition. The open sourced browsers are not coming along fast enough. Mozilla shows promise, but more for Gecko than for the browser itself (will we EVER get a stable version of Mozilla???). If IE will provide the competition, so be it. I'm tired of waiting for Netscape to get its ducks in line.
I'm not saying this as a troll; I'm saying this because Red Hat honestly is perceived as equalling Linux, and I don't see Red Hat doing anything to stop it (I'm not saying they're TRYING to steal Linux either. They are just conveniently remaining quiet about this).
Please consider adding this to the myth dispeller document. It may end up being more important than many people think.
It's great reading all the armchair analysts here on Slashdot.
SCO is not Monterey. Monterey is not SCO. Caldera purchased the server division and the professional services division. In all of this, Monterey was but a tile in the SCO mosaic. A small one at that.
Exactly how Caldera is being dragged into this announcement is beyond me. It's like saying Red Hat is clueless because LinuxCare had to lay people off.
I think you may be right about the Reform party, but Nader should be quite aware of what O/S he's using. Remember, Nader headed up the "Assessing Microsoft" conference a few years back, long before the various lawsuits against MS were so popular.
Okay, so let's say someone decides to go to the company's NT server and tweak some registry settings, and ends up really screwing things up. And let's say that the person who did this didn't write down what (s)he did.
Is this Microsoft's fault or is it the fault of the person to made the change?
This smacks of those parents out there who think it's better to eliminate everything that could be "damaging" to their kids than it is to actually be parents. Any IS group worth its salt will not only be careful who it hires, but it will also establish procedures for making/documenting changes, and it'll employ solid "geographic" security measures to ensure that only the IS staff can get to the servers.
Don't shoot the OS; shoot the idiot who fscked it up.
... most commercial games that I've seen for Linux (the Q* series excluded) are -- in my opinion -- lame. I don't care what O/S I can use these games on; I wouldn't buy them period just because I don't care for them.
The Quake games are it as far as I'm concerned, and maybe Unreal, but the rest (Myth? Watching grass grow is more interesting than playing Myth) are too boring for me to bother buying them. I could start up with the sympathy thing (buy the game just so I can support Linux gaming, even if I never play the damn thing), but I think I can support Linux more effectively by supporting other causes.
(This is not a reflection on Loki or any of the other groups that are bringing games to Linux. This is a problem that I have with game developers, period. Sorry, guys, but your games just aren't interesting to me. Thrill me with something different and I'll buy it. Shoot-em-up games have been done to death, and only the Quake series still seems interesting in this realm.)
What amazes me about these *NIX GUIs is that quite often they try to include so much that they end up being just as complex (if not more complex) than just editing files by hand. I mean, look at the hosts file GUI; it has 100% of everything that would go in a hosts file, but it also has lots of buttons and things surrounding it making it -- in my opinion -- more complex than just editing/etc/hosts by hand.
Don't get me wrong, when a newbie faces creating a hosts file, they'll probably learn quicker with a complex GUI than they would with a simple text editor (I can't figure that out, but it's true). I'll stick with editing files by hand, personally.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see... Have the processing power located in a central system, then export the displays out to multiple client machines.
Hmmm...
Take away the high speed aspect of this plan, and I'll be damned if this doesn't sound like a typical X-Terminal scenario. Am I missing something here? High speed X interaction isn't that exciting.
I MUST be missing something...
IBM is a major partner of Caldera as well -- Caldera's OS products are the only Linux products preloaded on IBM hardware by IBM -- but Caldera has a Sparc port. They don't offer commercial support for it, but they have it and have not announced that they're dropping it. I doubt that IBM cares about Sparc ports. When IBM offers a commercial OS that works well on Sparc hardware, then they'll have a say. Until then, I believe they are probably not interested in the existing Sparc market.
(Granted, Caldera's Sparc port is not the most recent version of their offering (OpenLinux 2.2 based, if I recall correctly), but it's there.)
This group says hoorah when someone wastes their time porting Linux to Palm devices (which is useless: the Palm is the LAST device that will be running Linux effectively. Devices like the iPaq, Yopy, and the soon to be released Agenda VR* are MUCH better suited for Linux use), but when a group of people seek to provide something people can actually use you thrash 'em, and it's only because of some kind of M$ association.
Come on... I'll never touch KBasic, but I think it's cool that it's being done.
In my opinion, the problems with VB viruses in Outlook, Word, Excel, et al are issues with Outlook, Word, Excel, et al, not VB. First off, there's nothing saying that apps need to support KBasic as a scripting language. Second, the apps themselves -- if written correctly -- should not allow the same idiocy that Outlook et al allowed from VB.
Besides, M$ didn't invent BASIC. They cloned it from another system (VMS? I can't remember).
So, like, chill dudes...
Salon didn't do its homework. Here is the full list of supporters:
IBM
NEC
Intel
SGI
Dell
HP
Caldera Systems
SuSE
Turbolinux
Red Hat
VA Linux
Linuxcare
LynuxWorks
Why Salon didn't report all the names is beyond me.
This is the exact type of nasty response that the Linux community is known for outside (hell, even inside) Linux circles. No matter how many times we all plea that people keep their cool, there's always someone who just can't resist blowing it.
Please, people, keep your cool when people say negative things about Linux stuff. I don't know why I'm saying it seeing as how very few people seem to hear it, but I'm saying it anyway. Maybe if some of us say it enough, the abrasive minority will start to listen.
You do all of us a disservice when you react like Ben. Yes, the review was misinformed. Yes, this Kurt guy didn't do his homework.
That's the press. If I had a dollar for every time I read a misinformed review of a Linux product, I'd have that MR2 Spider that I've had my eye on.
One day they'll "get it", but until they do we need to guide them a little. Flamage will get us nowhere. Be calm, and people will listen. We need to come out on top here, folks.
The example you used isn't the greatest... If you submit a patch to the FSF, it's going to be open and available to the general public. If someone offers a patch to the FSF and asks that it remain closed, the FSF will reject it.
If a service is up front about how it will handle information, people who have information to submit will be able to make a solid judgement on where they would like to direct their info. If someone does not want a patch to GCC to be open to the public, they will know not to submit it to the FSF. Likewise, if I had known that my contributions to CDDB were going to be locked down at a later date, I would have directed the data to a service that would not put restrictions on it.
Here's the deal... CDDB has solicited data from users for quite some time w/o telling them (in my observation) that what they're giving to CDDB is going to be sold back to them at a later date. This, my friend, is questionable.
I have no qualms with people making money for providing a service. Be up front about it, though. CDDB has received "donations" from me, and at no point in time was I made aware of the idea that I or someone else would have to purchase back this data. In my opinion, that's like borrowing your friend's lawn mower and then asking that he pay you to get it back. I put my information in CDDB so I would not have to store it in some other way. I also figured my info was going to be shared with others. Just like many companies offer resources to house mail lists w/o expecting compensation, I figured CDDB was going to share my information in an open fashion. Had I known they were going to lock down the data and sell it at a later date, I would have taken my info elsewhere.
If that makes me selfish, so be it. I still think it's wrong to ask for info w/o stating that it's going to be proprietary at some point in the future.
All annoyanced with CDDB aside, I question the ethics of taking information submitted by people around the globe and making it closed/proprietary.
Did Network Solutions buy them when I wasn't looking? This sounds like something they would do...
Well, for one thing these are free at RadioShack. That's a $20 savings right there.
Also, you must keep in mind that it's not the functionality that people seem to be after (what the hell am I going to do with a barcode scanner??); it's taking something that's made to do one thing and converting it through software or some other means to do something different. In other words, it's the hack that's important, not the fact that you can read barcodes with it.
Just look at the whole I-Opener thing. Face it, to hack that thing into something useful you'd have to dump a couple hundred bucks into it, which would instantly negate the novelty of a "$99 computer". You could assemble a faster system for about the same money and some spare parts. But where's the fun in that? The beauty of the I-Opener was the plethora of creative things you could do to it. I don't know that a scanner would offer the same diversity, but wouldn't it be goofy to check it out?
Your idea of buying a canned solution is too practical. There's no fun in that. Taking a Cat thing and plunking away at some code to make it do something other than send remote commands to Netscape is fun. I'll probably throw the damn thing away when its lost its novelty... But it's free, so who cares? There's something to say for disposable fun...
"VNC" isn't a product; it's a technology. Some company in England used it as a product name of sorts, but if I named a secure tunnelling package "VPN" that wouldn't effectively hijack the "VPN" acronym away from everyone else.
VNC is "virtual network computer", which as far as I know is not a product, but a technology. If anyone has proof otherwise, I can be easily swayed...
For those who are not aware of the software SCO actually sells (and until the merger is approved, the software that they still sell), OpenServer and Unixware are only two of their offerings. They have been offering a virtual network server/client system called Tarantella for some time now. It mimics Citrix's VNC client for Windows, but Tarantella is run through any web browser (maybe Citrix's offering is as well; I haven't tried either, personally).
SCO is selling off their server and service divisions, but they're keeping their Tarantella division. It's only logical that they rename their company after the only product they're going to be selling. Everything that made SCO known other than this new product is being sold, so in essence what is SCO if it only sells Tarantella?
It's an odd name, yes, but the name change is logical IMNSHO.
I dislike the idea of using MS products as well, but I'm approaching this from a different direction...
Currently, Netscape is the only game in town when it comes to feature-rich browsers on Linux (sorry, Nautilus and Konqueror people; you'll get there some day, but today it's still Netscape). The problem is Netscape browsers on Linux SUCK. I mean, of all the pieces of software on a typical Linux distribution (free, open sourced, or otherwise), Netscape browsers infuriate me the most. They are crap, plain and simple. One could argue that web browsers are some of the most important software packages on any modern networked system, though. It sucks having the central app on a typical Linux system be a turd.
The problem? NO COMPETITION. Mozilla doesn't even offer the features that Netscape's browsers do. If something commercial grade came along and gave Netscape a run for its money, you'd see dramatic improvements very quickly. As it stands, Netscape/AOL can put out crap browsers for Linux and not sweat over it much because what the hell else are you going to use??
Netscape needs SERIOUS competition. The open sourced browsers are not coming along fast enough. Mozilla shows promise, but more for Gecko than for the browser itself (will we EVER get a stable version of Mozilla???). If IE will provide the competition, so be it. I'm tired of waiting for Netscape to get its ducks in line.
Here's one that I'm getting rather worried about:
Red Hat = Linux
I'm not saying this as a troll; I'm saying this because Red Hat honestly is perceived as equalling Linux, and I don't see Red Hat doing anything to stop it (I'm not saying they're TRYING to steal Linux either. They are just conveniently remaining quiet about this).
Please consider adding this to the myth dispeller document. It may end up being more important than many people think.
Um, IBM is a Caldera business partner. They didn't lose anything when the merger was announced. IBM and Caldera actually work closely together.
The Monterey decision must not have been linked to the SCO/Caldera merger. There must have been other criteria behind the decision.
It's great reading all the armchair analysts here on Slashdot.
SCO is not Monterey. Monterey is not SCO. Caldera purchased the server division and the professional services division. In all of this, Monterey was but a tile in the SCO mosaic. A small one at that.
Exactly how Caldera is being dragged into this announcement is beyond me. It's like saying Red Hat is clueless because LinuxCare had to lay people off.
What, no video feed this time? What's the point of announcing it if we can't watch?
LOL is right... I'd like to know where they got their crystal ball. I had no idea Indrema and Red Hat predicted the future.
What was I thinking?
I think you may be right about the Reform party, but Nader should be quite aware of what O/S he's using. Remember, Nader headed up the "Assessing Microsoft" conference a few years back, long before the various lawsuits against MS were so popular.
Okay, so let's say someone decides to go to the company's NT server and tweak some registry settings, and ends up really screwing things up. And let's say that the person who did this didn't write down what (s)he did.
Is this Microsoft's fault or is it the fault of the person to made the change?
This smacks of those parents out there who think it's better to eliminate everything that could be "damaging" to their kids than it is to actually be parents. Any IS group worth its salt will not only be careful who it hires, but it will also establish procedures for making/documenting changes, and it'll employ solid "geographic" security measures to ensure that only the IS staff can get to the servers.
Don't shoot the OS; shoot the idiot who fscked it up.
... most commercial games that I've seen for Linux (the Q* series excluded) are -- in my opinion -- lame. I don't care what O/S I can use these games on; I wouldn't buy them period just because I don't care for them.
The Quake games are it as far as I'm concerned, and maybe Unreal, but the rest (Myth? Watching grass grow is more interesting than playing Myth) are too boring for me to bother buying them. I could start up with the sympathy thing (buy the game just so I can support Linux gaming, even if I never play the damn thing), but I think I can support Linux more effectively by supporting other causes.
(This is not a reflection on Loki or any of the other groups that are bringing games to Linux. This is a problem that I have with game developers, period. Sorry, guys, but your games just aren't interesting to me. Thrill me with something different and I'll buy it. Shoot-em-up games have been done to death, and only the Quake series still seems interesting in this realm.)
What amazes me about these *NIX GUIs is that quite often they try to include so much that they end up being just as complex (if not more complex) than just editing files by hand. I mean, look at the hosts file GUI; it has 100% of everything that would go in a hosts file, but it also has lots of buttons and things surrounding it making it -- in my opinion -- more complex than just editing /etc/hosts by hand.
Don't get me wrong, when a newbie faces creating a hosts file, they'll probably learn quicker with a complex GUI than they would with a simple text editor (I can't figure that out, but it's true). I'll stick with editing files by hand, personally.