I used the word "monoculture" in my response to the Linux: Look Before You Leap article. Glad to see that the consequences have been raised here. Now let's see if someone comes up with an article containing Serendipity.
The implication of the argument is that only if you buy all your software from the same source can you guarantee that the applications will work together. In other words, an Information Monoculture.
I cannot think of any other Industry where this occurs (apart, perhaps, from the Kansas wheat fields). To take his argument to its conclusion, uou should only buy your computer hardware from Intel, and ensure that all your car parts are produced by Ford.
What he doesn't seem to realise is that open standards and open source mean that you can download or buy software that suits your requirements, not those of the company that supplies the software.
Speaking from Manchester. Where Whitworth's screw making machine meant that you could get nuts from one supplier and bolts from another and guarantee they would work together.
If you read the link that they provide you will find that they are currently appealing a decision that held them responsible for a defamatory statement in a Usenet News Group. The law on defamation is (unfortunately) very much stronger in the UK than in the US.
All that they seem to be doing at the moment is following the ruling from the High Court until the appeal comes through.
This looks biased already. Most corporate desktops are NT, and this is what Samba serves best. It doesn't do as well with 9X.
If they can't win on speed with the Web server I presume they will want to use ASP. Expect a whole lot of MS "features" that Linux can't support, or only supports poorly.
KDE/Gnome components and component models.
on
The Desktop Wars
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· Score: 1
The Swing environment is nice, but it is still Just Another UI Toolkit. Some of it is reasonable, some of it is baroque. It is dreadfully slow, and this isn't improved by HotSpot (UI's tend to be too transient for HotSpot to improve things).
What KDE and Gnome could use is the component model that lives behind Swing, namely Java Beans and Enterprise Java Beans. This would allow the two systems to interconnect easily.
For those of you that don't like Java in any shape or form then consider that the OMG is using the EJB as a baseline for its forthcoming component model. Contrary to received opinion this has bindings for C++ and Java at the moment. I would expect bindings for other languages to be incorporated later.
There were actually four articles, one of them being a Q & A session with Ed Muth .
It would seem, according to the esteemed Mr. Muth, that Linux is missing many features, including security and Web services, which mean that it is no competitor to Windows NT. I though I was reading Segfault.
The only mention I have seen in the UK press about the recent Office 2000 conference were in Network News, no mention in PC Week.
And before you ask, it was a total disaster. About 90% of the demonstrations crashed and none of the marketing droids could give any answers. The consensus of opinion seems to be that MS are trying to squeeze it in before Y2K change freezes come into place.
You mean after you came into WWII 3 years late, once you had sold us a lot of rusty destoyers that never worked.
I thought this was meant to be a serious debate, but I guess what Nicholas Monsarrat said in the "Cruel Sea" was true "America isn't a great nation, there are just a lot of them".
At a recent seminar that I went to it was stated that 54% of all NT servers are used for authentication, file and print. There wasn't a figure for servers used to support MS or Citrix "thin client", but it must be fairly substantial.
This being so the number of systems running real applications can't be that great.
I didn't say it was right, or that the author had a clue what he was talking about. I simply said that it was well-written, by a master propogandist.
There were some nice little touches, for example Richard Stallman having a genius award, with the word genius in quotes. What does that say about the award?
This one needs a reasoned response, picking the mistakes and misdirections very carefully.
Let's assume that it isn't a joke. What we need to know is who the company really is that issuing the lawyers letters.
Once we get this far then publicity is the answer.Small, humorous sites being suppressed by a large company is a story too good for the press to miss.
We must fight this, if we don't then we can expect all of our favourite sites, including Slashdot to disappear.
Transaction Processing Council?
on
Few Quickies
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· Score: 1
Yes, in the same way as SPEC exists for compute intensive benchmarks.
No, it isn't government funded. It is funded by the computing industry itself.
And don't be so bloody parochial. Where would we be without the likes of the IETF and ANSI. I won't even mention ISO, since your own national standards organisations make you froth at the mouth I would hate to think what international ones do.
Is this the major cause? The amount of data doesn't seem paticularly large. The company that I work for (a large British bank) has 36 STK Powderhorn silos each of which holds 12TB.
Alternatively are they limited by the speed of the old tape drives, rather than CPU throughput?
Slashdot Mirror
I used the word "monoculture" in my response to the Linux: Look Before You Leap article. Glad to see that the consequences have been raised here. Now let's see if someone comes up with an article containing Serendipity.
The implication of the argument is that only if you buy all your software from the same source can you guarantee that the applications will work together. In other words, an Information Monoculture.
I cannot think of any other Industry where this occurs (apart, perhaps, from the Kansas wheat fields). To take his argument to its conclusion, uou should only buy your computer hardware from Intel, and ensure that all your car parts are produced by Ford.
What he doesn't seem to realise is that open standards and open source mean that you can download or buy software that suits your requirements, not those of the company that supplies the software.
Speaking from Manchester. Where Whitworth's screw making machine meant that you could get nuts from one supplier and bolts from another and guarantee they would work together.
or Middlesex come to that.
Hmm.. I wonder if any of the Australian cricket team are playing for Essex this year?
It would seem that Dr. Godrey is somewhat litigious.
If you read the link that they provide you will find that they are currently appealing a decision that held them responsible for a defamatory statement in a Usenet News Group. The law on defamation is (unfortunately) very much stronger in the UK than in the US.
All that they seem to be doing at the moment is following the ruling from the High Court until the appeal comes through.
This looks biased already. Most corporate desktops are NT, and this is what Samba serves best. It doesn't do as well with 9X.
If they can't win on speed with the Web server I presume they will want to use ASP. Expect a whole lot of MS "features" that Linux can't support, or only supports poorly.
Sun managed to get ECMA to ratify a Windows API specification, only to have it blown out of the water by MS when they tried to move it through ISO.
Though MS are claiming that they haven't interfered this time I wouldn't put all the blame on Sun's head.
Need I say more
What KDE and Gnome could use is the component model that lives behind Swing, namely Java Beans and Enterprise Java Beans. This would allow the two systems to interconnect easily.
For those of you that don't like Java in any shape or form then consider that the OMG is using the EJB as a baseline for its forthcoming component model. Contrary to received opinion this has bindings for C++ and Java at the moment. I would expect bindings for other languages to be incorporated later.
There were actually four articles, one of them being a Q & A session with Ed Muth .
It would seem, according to the esteemed Mr. Muth, that Linux is missing many features, including security and Web services, which mean that it is no competitor to Windows NT. I though I was reading Segfault.
The only mention I have seen in the UK press about the recent Office 2000 conference were in Network News, no mention in PC Week.
And before you ask, it was a total disaster. About 90% of the demonstrations crashed and none of the marketing droids could give any answers. The consensus of opinion seems to be that MS are trying to squeeze it in before Y2K change freezes come into place.
You mean after you came into WWII 3 years late, once you had sold us a lot of rusty destoyers that never worked.
I thought this was meant to be a serious debate, but I guess what Nicholas Monsarrat said in the "Cruel Sea" was true "America isn't a great nation, there are just a lot of them".
This whole situation is too complex for the media to cope with. I would guess that factors that were involved included, but by no means limited to:
At a recent seminar that I went to it was stated that 54% of all NT servers are used for authentication, file and print. There wasn't a figure for servers used to support MS or Citrix "thin client", but it must be fairly substantial.
This being so the number of systems running real applications can't be that great.
I didn't say it was right, or that the author had a clue what he was talking about. I simply said that it was well-written, by a master propogandist.
There were some nice little touches, for example Richard Stallman having a genius award, with the word genius in quotes. What does that say about the award?
This one needs a reasoned response, picking the mistakes and misdirections very carefully.
There is more to it. Things like descriptions in tables and images which can be converted to speech.
If you want to check conformance to usability guidelines and have some advice on what you could do to improve usability try Bobby
But they need to sort out the processing power.
The site has been slashdotted already.
Has been missed by everybody. Try
, 1014247,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153
It says that Windows 2000 will be out in October.
Let's assume that it isn't a joke. What we need to know is who the company really is that issuing the lawyers letters.
Once we get this far then publicity is the answer.Small, humorous sites being suppressed by a large company is a story too good for the press to miss.
We must fight this, if we don't then we can expect all of our favourite sites, including Slashdot to disappear.
Yes, in the same way as SPEC exists for compute intensive benchmarks.
No, it isn't government funded. It is funded by the computing industry itself.
And don't be so bloody parochial. Where would we be without the likes of the IETF and ANSI. I won't even mention ISO, since your own national standards organisations make you froth at the mouth I would hate to think what international ones do.
Is this the major cause? The amount of data doesn't seem paticularly large. The company that I work for (a large British bank) has 36 STK Powderhorn silos each of which holds 12TB.
Alternatively are they limited by the speed of the
old tape drives, rather than CPU throughput?