My dis is a well-informed dis: I've spent hours and hours using it. That's why I can't see using it as my main browser. Again, this is under Linux. YMMV.
I've been following the Mozilla milestones and I seriously doubt that a stable Mozilla will be produced by the end of the year. The Gecko rendering engine has been rendering pretty-good HTML for at least *one year*. From what I can see, the problem is not the underlying HTML rendering technology, it is the application environment built around the technology.
For instance, chrome/skins are a nice idea in theory. But they're butt-slow in practice. I cannot believe the people who claim they use Mozilla daily. Any site with a little bit of Javascript looks like crap. window.open() is not implemented, for example.
I write software for a living. I'm sorry that the Mozilla developers are way behind schedule. I've been on projects like that too, and they're no fun. Also, open sourcing Mozilla was a great thing, no doubt. But I can't let my empathy for the Mozilla team, and my respect for Netscape's bold move, cloud the fact that the end product is terrible.
Why don't you look at Star Office, in addition to the other office packages mentioned? The upside is that it is free and pretty good. The downside is that it's huge. You'd have to see if the performance with your "fast processors" and 64 meg is good enough.
These announcements are generally meaningless. Another example: Dell. Like IBM, they tout their Linux commitment. However, their hardware plans were set long ago, and those plans were not made with Linux in mind. Like IBM's Thinkpad, which has a modem unusable under Linux, Dell has just released a server (the 2400) which has a RAID controller that has no Linux driver. Go to www.dell.com and try to buy one bundled with Linux. You can't, even though Dell's press releases state that all of their hardware works with Linux.
The part about the stereotype is in the introduction as sort of a straw man. The rest of the article is a sensitive, positive look at the programmer's personality type.
Though Sun touts itself as the Java company, I think Sun's behavior (and this incident is just one of may) shows that the real Java company is IBM. IBM has a quality JDK 1.1 implementation and will soon have their JDK 1.2 implementation done. Their JDK is developed in-house, and they don't put their name on other people's efforts.
Disclaimer: I don't have anything to do with IBM -- just an observation.
I am writing a large application -- thousands of lines of code -- in Perl and the people working on it are all CS types (BS/MS in CS). They all were trained to think that the only way to write complex apps is using C/C++.
After working with perl for a few weeks, they all love it. We are producing maintainable, modular code much faster than we would with C/C++.
In my experience, language is mostly irrelevant to code quality. An undisciplined, untrained programmer is like a teenager with whiskey and car keys. They'll write bad perl code, bad C code, or bad eiffel code.
The term "powerful language" is often thrown around when talking about C. Perl is also a powerful language because it empowers the capable, traditional programmer. Give it a try -- you won't want to go back.
SQL Navigator and TOAD (which is similar and was recently purchased by Quest, the company that makes SQL Navigator) are essentially IDEs for Oracle. Using SQL Navigator or TOAD, you can browse tables in an Oracle database, edit table data, edit and compile stored procedures using a syntax-highlighting editor, and run ad-hoc sql queries.
I recently evaluated all of the Linux tools mentioned here (Kora, Matt's suite of tools, Orac) and none of them has all of the features of SQL Navigator or TOAD. Kora comes closest, but it does not have a table data editor, and the stored procedure editor is not as nice as TOAD or SQL Navigator. Also, Kora uses its own proprietary client/server protocol which requires a server running on the Oracle database. SQL*Net does this already.
That being said, I do most of my Oracle work in emacs with a combination of sql mode and sqlplus. Some people I work with have become quite reliant on SQL Navigator, and the downside is that they are in trouble when they are outside of that environment. It's the same issue as the GUI/command-line debate -- the SQL Navigator GUI insulates you from the command line (in this case, SQL*Plus).
I agree with the top of this thread--SO as a web-based Java application is a _bad_ idea. But I disagree about the impact of the non-Java SO.
The crucial difference is that IE and Netscape are both free. Office 2K is expensive. A free (as in free beer) SO has got to be worrisome to Microsoft. Large corporations who are dollar-conscious may want to use SO and not pay hundreds per workstation to license Office2K. Consumers might also use SO rather than Office2K for simple tasks.
Look at the WordPerfect suite. Granted, it doesn't rule the world. But companies like Gateway are bundling it with their lowest-priced computers simply because Office2K raises the price point of the low end too much.
I don't have an axe to grind against Microsoft. I'm simply a business user looking for a secure and robust operating system for Internet applications. I've run both WinNT and Linux for years.
I look at the Windows 2K log and what I see mirrors my experience with WinNT: a lot of reboots for fairly minor things (tweaking the web server and tweaking tcp/ip). I look at the Linux log and I see stability.
The bottom line is that NT is not as stable as Linux for Internet applications.
People will probably make money in the short term from the RedHat IPO, especially in an overheated market where Linux is looking like the "next big thing". However, I would not purchase RedHat as a long-term investment at what is sure to be an overvalued initial price. Even if RedHat "corners the Linux market" (which is, of course, impossible thanks to the GPL), their core business is services. Large technology companies (Microsoft, PeopleSoft, SAP, etc.) make the bulk of their money on licensing their products. Services make good money, but the huge profits aren't made there.
You're going to have a lot of convincing to do, for two reasons.
First, StarOffice lacks a lot of features. One example: Word's revision marks. SO doesn't have this feature. Word does. It is pretty common to want to mark different revisions of, e.g., a contract.
Second, SO's import feature isn't 100%, and sometimes it isn't even close. If people are passing around Word files, a lot of formatting will be missed.
I work in the real world, too, on web-based applications. According to everything I've read, Linux stops scaling at about a dual processor machine with 512MB of RAM. Let's get some perspective: Dual PIII with 512MB is a huge amount of computing power. At the point that my application needs that much power, I'd want to look into (affordable) redundancy, which would mean adding another server.
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My dis is a well-informed dis: I've spent hours and hours using it. That's why I can't see using it as my main browser. Again, this is under Linux. YMMV.
Sorry, should have said: window.open() does not work under Linux.
I've been following the Mozilla milestones and I seriously doubt that a stable Mozilla will be produced by the end of the year. The Gecko rendering engine has been rendering pretty-good HTML for at least *one year*. From what I can see, the problem is not the underlying HTML rendering technology, it is the application environment built around the technology.
For instance, chrome/skins are a nice idea in theory. But they're butt-slow in practice. I cannot believe the people who claim they use Mozilla daily. Any site with a little bit of Javascript looks like crap. window.open() is not implemented, for example.
I write software for a living. I'm sorry that the Mozilla developers are way behind schedule. I've been on projects like that too, and they're no fun. Also, open sourcing Mozilla was a great thing, no doubt. But I can't let my empathy for the Mozilla team, and my respect for Netscape's bold move, cloud the fact that the end product is terrible.
Why don't you look at Star Office, in addition to the other office packages mentioned? The upside is that it is free and pretty good. The downside is that it's huge. You'd have to see if the performance with your "fast processors" and 64 meg is good enough.
How will our favorite Apache modules, like mod_perl and php, be helped by TUX? Will my mod_perl code or php code run faster with TUX?
Does anyone know of a project to do for KDE what Helix has done for Gnome? The Helix updater makes updates painless.
Oracle plays a central role in your current toolkit. Have you considered switching to an an open-source database?
These announcements are generally meaningless. Another example: Dell. Like IBM, they tout their Linux commitment. However, their hardware plans were set long ago, and those plans were not made with Linux in mind. Like IBM's Thinkpad, which has a modem unusable under Linux, Dell has just released a server (the 2400) which has a RAID controller that has no Linux driver. Go to www.dell.com and try to buy one bundled with Linux. You can't, even though Dell's press releases state that all of their hardware works with Linux.
The part about the stereotype is in the introduction as sort of a straw man. The rest of the article is a sensitive, positive look at the programmer's personality type.
Does anyone have real-world experience with a current-generation Cube? What's the performance of this compared to Pentium/Pro/II/III?
Though Sun touts itself as the Java company, I think Sun's behavior (and this incident is just one of may) shows that the real Java company is IBM. IBM has a quality JDK 1.1 implementation and will soon have their JDK 1.2 implementation done. Their JDK is developed in-house, and they don't put their name on other people's efforts.
Disclaimer: I don't have anything to do with IBM -- just an observation.
I am writing a large application -- thousands of lines of code -- in Perl and the people working on it are all CS types (BS/MS in CS). They all were trained to think that the only way to write complex apps is using C/C++.
After working with perl for a few weeks, they all love it. We are producing maintainable, modular code much faster than we would with C/C++.
In my experience, language is mostly irrelevant to code quality. An undisciplined, untrained programmer is like a teenager with whiskey and car keys. They'll write bad perl code, bad C code, or bad eiffel code.
The term "powerful language" is often thrown around when talking about C. Perl is also a powerful language because it empowers the capable, traditional programmer. Give it a try -- you won't want to go back.
SQL Navigator and TOAD (which is similar and was recently purchased by Quest, the company that makes SQL Navigator) are essentially IDEs for Oracle. Using SQL Navigator or TOAD, you can browse tables in an Oracle database, edit table data, edit and compile stored procedures using a syntax-highlighting editor, and run ad-hoc sql queries.
I recently evaluated all of the Linux tools mentioned here (Kora, Matt's suite of tools, Orac) and none of them has all of the features of SQL Navigator or TOAD. Kora comes closest, but it does not have a table data editor, and the stored procedure editor is not as nice as TOAD or SQL Navigator. Also, Kora uses its own proprietary client/server protocol which requires a server running on the Oracle database. SQL*Net does this already.
That being said, I do most of my Oracle work in emacs with a combination of sql mode and sqlplus. Some people I work with have become quite reliant on SQL Navigator, and the downside is that they are in trouble when they are outside of that environment. It's the same issue as the GUI/command-line debate -- the SQL Navigator GUI insulates you from the command line (in this case, SQL*Plus).
I agree with the top of this thread--SO as a web-based Java application is a _bad_ idea. But I disagree about the impact of the non-Java SO.
The crucial difference is that IE and Netscape are both free. Office 2K is expensive. A free (as in free beer) SO has got to be worrisome to Microsoft. Large corporations who are dollar-conscious may want to use SO and not pay hundreds per workstation to license Office2K. Consumers might also use SO rather than Office2K for simple tasks.
Look at the WordPerfect suite. Granted, it doesn't rule the world. But companies like Gateway are bundling it with their lowest-priced computers simply because Office2K raises the price point of the low end too much.
I don't have an axe to grind against Microsoft. I'm simply a business user looking for a secure and robust operating system for Internet applications. I've run both WinNT and Linux for years.
I look at the Windows 2K log and what I see mirrors my experience with WinNT: a lot of reboots for fairly minor things (tweaking the web server and tweaking tcp/ip). I look at the Linux log and I see stability.
The bottom line is that NT is not as stable as Linux for Internet applications.
People will probably make money in the short term from the RedHat IPO, especially in an overheated market where Linux is looking like the "next big thing". However, I would not purchase RedHat as a long-term investment at what is sure to be an overvalued initial price. Even if RedHat "corners the Linux market" (which is, of course, impossible thanks to the GPL), their core business is services. Large technology companies (Microsoft, PeopleSoft, SAP, etc.) make the bulk of their money on licensing their products. Services make good money, but the huge profits aren't made there.
First, StarOffice lacks a lot of features. One example: Word's revision marks. SO doesn't have this feature. Word does. It is pretty common to want to mark different revisions of, e.g., a contract.
Second, SO's import feature isn't 100%, and sometimes it isn't even close. If people are passing around Word files, a lot of formatting will be missed.
I work in the real world, too, on web-based applications. According to everything I've read, Linux stops scaling at about a dual processor machine with 512MB of RAM. Let's get some perspective: Dual PIII with 512MB is a huge amount of computing power. At the point that my application needs that much power, I'd want to look into (affordable) redundancy, which would mean adding another server.