My only concern is that companies release their source code for the right reasons, which are a) improvement of the code or b) giving programmers an idea of how to write compliant code. There are other reasons of course, but those spring to mind.
The WRONG reason for releaseing code is for publicity. That is nasty behaviour. I'm sure we will see a lot of companies doing this as the buzz around open source continues to grow.
Beware of nefarious corporations. Releasing a README.txt file is NOT opensourcing code.
I really would'nt expect to see too much difference once the new cycle takes effect. It's either called 2.2.17 or 2.4.0, but you are still going to get basically the same feature set. Quicker kernel release cycles means that major version increments will not necessarily tie to majot feature injections.
1.2 -> 2.0 Major changes 2.0 -> 2.2 Major changes 2.2 -> 2.4 Minor changes 2.4 -> 2.6 Minor...
I would'nt look for anything huge until 3.0. But I suppose that could be a month away;-)
Here is the complete list of cool companies, not in any particular order.
Cool Companies: Intro Third Voice nterTrust Frequency Technology Financial Engines myCFO boo.com VA Linux Systems Bidcom HomeGrocer InfoRay Sycamore Networks Rhythms NetConnections
Good article. I did not know that the VA folks were former pals with the Yahoo fellas. I wonder if Yoohoo has made any financial investment in VA.
I think that VA is a good company, and a great alternative to traditional hardware vendors. Even though Dell etc. are selling Linux systems, I would feel better buying from VA simply because they have been 100% linux from the get-go.
Does anyone know an approximate date for the IPO? Is it just in the planning phase?
Favourite quote from the article: "...and Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison, a user-interface expert who wants to make the Linux interface "suck less."
Does RH plan to control >= 51% of it's stock? I think that issuing more than that to the public could cause issues (as posted above) regarding company direction and control.
RH has a wonderful opportunity to raise funds for itself and to further the linux community through investment and exposure. It would be a shame to see Llib Setag in some position of authority, simply because he bough a gazillion shares.
"It's tough to bet against an operating system that has won the hearts of geeks across the world (damn few of whom actually have the software on their computer)."
What was that? I dont have any statistics handy, but I think that more than a "damn few" people are running Red Hat.
The author's tone and phrasing are meant to inspire anger and trigger immature responses. We must treat this the same as a Jesse Berst article, and simply shrug.
"NASA has been studying the idea of one day sending a methane-producing robot spacecraft to Mars, said Kral."
That sentence just looks and sounds hillarious.
In any case, what would the time frame be for methane producing microbes to actually impact the atmosphere on mars? I have to imagine we are talking about thousands (maybe more) of years.
What we really need is a nitrogen-eating oxygen producing microbe.
PS: It's too bad these things dont eat methane. I could use some in my girlfriends restroom.;-)
I fully understand capitalism and expenses. The only point THAT I HAVE CONTINUALLY TRIED TO MAKE is that people look at Red Hat as the commerical linux leader for the desktop market, and thus any release that they make available to the average joe should be as solid as humanly possible.
I dont care if my install crashes. i do care if a marketing VP of billiondollar co. tries redhat to see if it is ready for the million machines in his company, and it crashes.
Get it? I can crash my own computer, thank you very much. My OS does not need to help.
PS: That was a fairly insightful comment, coming from a possible warez d00d (L1zard_K1n6).
1) Gnome would quit and take X with it 2) Netscape crashed consistantly (waybe not RH's fault) 3) xconfigurator chowed my settings a few times during reconfiguration, leading to a busted X 4) Minor small stuff
I understand and agree with the release early, release often methodology, but my real point was that if they are going to sell this distro and try to sway people to linux with it, it should be rock solid. Even idiot proof, but I know that that is impossible, given the vast number of creative idiots out there:-)
PS: Things like 'Apache Default configuration' do not baffle me. In fact, the only thing that bothered me about the included apache was that I did not compile it.
I dont know the particulars of that distro (mandrake). Like I said, my friend tried it. He said it is really clean and stable, but I have not worked on it yet.
The greatest thing about Red Hat has got to be RPMs. I know that Debian has their schtik and other distro's can user RPM's. It is a cool system, though sometimes kind of unreasonable. I never had too many problems with./configure etc.
Well, once development of the 5.x tree forked into 6.0, it was only in alpha/beta/whatever form on the FTP servers for about a month. Compare that to the 3 or more months most new-version distro's spend getting kicked around before full release.
I have associates running quake 2/3 servers on 5.2, with uptimes of 120+ days. That includes them HUPing init and all sorts of crazy stuff (Kevin;-) ). But then we both installed 6.0. He now runs mandrake and I am going back to Slack.
As stated, I have no problem with Red Hat, I just have seen some things in version 6.0 that should not exists, especially with it sitting on the shelf at Best Boy. (ha ha)
PS: Quote from my boss: "You reading that slapshot page again?!!?!" Hillarious.
I have no problem with the business practices of Red Hat. I think that a commercial linux is a good thing. I do, however, feel that the version of 6.0 released (and sold!) was immature, and not ready for commericial distribution. If PHB's are going to be swayed by a commercial distribution of linux, it should be rock solid. I have had many persistent and perplexing problems with 6.0.
On the flip side, the distribution is feature filled, including many great packages like Gimp, Gnome and Enlightenment. Which, by the way, has matured vastly since the.14 version. It is a shame that development and integration of Enlightenment will no longer be a part of Red Hat. A distribution with a de facto window manager is important, and Enlightenment is not only visually attractive, but powerful as well.
There seemed to be some disfavour upon hiring "Black Hats". This seems entirely logical to me: who could better aid you than an ally of the people you are trying to stop? There are of course concerns, like 'are they loyal?' and 'are they gonna crack us instead?'.
I like the bit about "NT is too unreliable... (et al)". Ha ha.
PS: I wonder what the intersection of the Script Kiddie realm and the Warez D00dz realm is like... most likely it looks like a 14 year old's bedroom.
A really interesting bit would be the prominence of the Internet amongst 19-25 year olds, the people who were there and able to access it when it all went down. I know that I changed more in college than any other time in my life, and it was at around 17 or so that I started really doing the online stuff. Which lead to programming... which lead to college... which lead to my job. So the explosion of Internet babble at a certain age 'changed my life' (not to be lame).
A survey conducted amongst younger people will yeild the same results as surveying us about televsion when we were young: we grew up watching too much of it and thats about it.
The people who are manufacturing these cases are trying to appeal to people who:
a) dont own a computer b) own one but want one to match the couch
They are not trying to sell the poweruser a pink case. They know that you wont buy it, but will instead mock it and the flaming BunnyPeople (deservedly so).
There are two ways to look at this: the more computers that sell, the better, cause it promotes computing as a whole, OR the more pink computers that sell, the worse, because it just leads to more internet load and mindless computer users.
Oh well. I would take one to use as a footrest and / or sendmail server.
Thats a really good point. I didnt even think about my friends, who are now linux users, who started out as Win Quake players.
John Carmack is a remarkable individual who has done much for the linux community (and for cumputing as a whole) by forcing hardware manuf's to adhere to standards, and also by forcing superior standards (OpenGL, MesaGL, etc.) into the limelight.
In retrospect, Quake seems like it could be the perfect teaser to get people interested in Linux.
It seems to me that the average Joe computeruser, even the ones who are really into gaming or whatever, either has not heard the word linux or has no idea what it is. Sure, articles like this one help, as it appeared in a widely-read Windowsesque magazine. But to most, linux is still freak show material.
Some recent improvements have made things better. Though the actual distribution (IMHO) is about as stable as a drunk prom date, the Red Hat 6 installation process was fairly painless (I have always and still do run slack). Personally, I dont care about installation proceedures, but to sway sheep to the flock, it's got to be idiot proof.
Idiot being the key word.
Positive things are happening. I think that with time, the product will improve and 'sell' itself. We simply must be patient, and continue to hone linux into an even more robust and powerful OS.
For many corporations (generalizing), the more handhled you give your employees, the more mischevious they can be (euchre, min sweeper, etc). Since the blackberry is targeted as an email on demand device, perhaps it is a good solution for that purpose.
PS: Though I am pro-Pilot, the idea of a device the size of a pager with a keyboard is very appealing. Grafitti brings back memories of my Newton...
If there were a fewk occurrences in the linux source tree, can you imagine the Win9x source?
kerlel32.dll:8/* this code fscking sucks */ kernel32.dll:9/* damn this fscking code */ kernel32.dll:11/* i am 9 years old and have been kidnapped to write fscking code - halp! */
hah hah hahh
coding is by nature a violent act - getting the machine to do what you want, how you want. A few explatives are bound to erupt from any given programmer.
Am I supposed to take the m seriously with statements like this:
..........priceless at $6295.00 (space travel included for destinations in the continental U.S.A.). Although cruising in "warp drive," please allow 6-8 weeks for the arrival of The Back Station tm .
Come on. If you are going to seel me the BMW of desks, treat me like I am at a BMW dealership, not a comic book shop.
Well I guess that webserver is not running on a K7.
Being a AMD K6 owner, I have found the AMD chips to be a cost effective and performance-comperable alternative to Intel. Plus, buying a non-Intel CPU is good karma;)
People please. Tables are completely fine in HTML. They are crucial, in fact, to forming your page in an effective manner.
As far as layout not being a design consideration... what are you talking about? You think that HTML authors should just plop text on the screen and let the user format it? I think not.
Slashdot Mirror
My only concern is that companies release their source code for the right reasons, which are a) improvement of the code or b) giving programmers an idea of how to write compliant code. There are other reasons of course, but those spring to mind.
The WRONG reason for releaseing code is for publicity. That is nasty behaviour. I'm sure we will see a lot of companies doing this as the buzz around open source continues to grow.
Beware of nefarious corporations. Releasing a README.txt file is NOT opensourcing code.
I really would'nt expect to see too much difference once the new cycle takes effect. It's either called 2.2.17 or 2.4.0, but you are still going to get basically the same feature set. Quicker kernel release cycles means that major version increments will not necessarily tie to majot feature injections.
;-)
1.2 -> 2.0 Major changes
2.0 -> 2.2 Major changes
2.2 -> 2.4 Minor changes
2.4 -> 2.6 Minor...
I would'nt look for anything huge until 3.0. But I suppose that could be a month away
Here is the complete list of cool companies, not in any particular order.
Cool Companies:
Intro
Third Voice
nterTrust
Frequency Technology
Financial Engines
myCFO
boo.com
VA Linux Systems
Bidcom
HomeGrocer
InfoRay
Sycamore Networks
Rhythms NetConnections
Good article. I did not know that the VA folks were former pals with the Yahoo fellas. I wonder if Yoohoo has made any financial investment in VA.
I think that VA is a good company, and a great alternative to traditional hardware vendors. Even though Dell etc. are selling Linux systems, I would feel better buying from VA simply because they have been 100% linux from the get-go.
Does anyone know an approximate date for the IPO? Is it just in the planning phase?
Favourite quote from the article: "...and Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison, a user-interface expert who wants to make the Linux interface "suck less."
Does RH plan to control >= 51% of it's stock? I think that issuing more than that to the public could cause issues (as posted above) regarding company direction and control.
RH has a wonderful opportunity to raise funds for itself and to further the linux community through investment and exposure. It would be a shame to see Llib Setag in some position of authority, simply because he bough a gazillion shares.
Intel chipsets use the Rambus memory standard while the VIA chipset uses the PC-133 Synchronous DRAM, which is nearly 35% cheaper than Rambus memory.
Sneakin' it in the back door. Thats like attaching a handgun bill to a public transit proposition.
Bastards. Go VIA.
"It's tough to bet against an operating system that has won the hearts of geeks across the world (damn few of whom actually have the software on their computer)."
What was that? I dont have any statistics handy, but I think that more than a "damn few" people are running Red Hat.
The author's tone and phrasing are meant to inspire anger and trigger immature responses. We must treat this the same as a Jesse Berst article, and simply shrug.
It would'nt hurt to drop him a note, though.
That sentence just looks and sounds hillarious.
In any case, what would the time frame be for methane producing microbes to actually impact the atmosphere on mars? I have to imagine we are talking about thousands (maybe more) of years.
What we really need is a nitrogen-eating oxygen producing microbe.
PS: It's too bad these things dont eat methane. I could use some in my girlfriends restroom. ;-)
I fully understand capitalism and expenses. The only point THAT I HAVE CONTINUALLY TRIED TO MAKE is that people look at Red Hat as the commerical linux leader for the desktop market, and thus any release that they make available to the average joe should be as solid as humanly possible.
I dont care if my install crashes. i do care if a marketing VP of billiondollar co. tries redhat to see if it is ready for the million machines in his company, and it crashes.
Get it? I can crash my own computer, thank you very much. My OS does not need to help.
PS: That was a fairly insightful comment, coming from a possible warez d00d (L1zard_K1n6).
Specifically, I had the following issues:
:-)
1) Gnome would quit and take X with it
2) Netscape crashed consistantly (waybe not RH's fault)
3) xconfigurator chowed my settings a few times during reconfiguration, leading to a busted X
4) Minor small stuff
I understand and agree with the release early, release often methodology, but my real point was that if they are going to sell this distro and try to sway people to linux with it, it should be rock solid. Even idiot proof, but I know that that is impossible, given the vast number of creative idiots out there
PS: Things like 'Apache Default configuration' do not baffle me. In fact, the only thing that bothered me about the included apache was that I did not compile it.
I dont know the particulars of that distro (mandrake). Like I said, my friend tried it. He said it is really clean and stable, but I have not worked on it yet.
./configure etc.
The greatest thing about Red Hat has got to be RPMs. I know that Debian has their schtik and other distro's can user RPM's. It is a cool system, though sometimes kind of unreasonable. I never had too many problems with
Well, once development of the 5.x tree forked into 6.0, it was only in alpha/beta/whatever form on the FTP servers for about a month. Compare that to the 3 or more months most new-version distro's spend getting kicked around before full release.
;-) ). But then we both installed 6.0. He now runs mandrake and I am going back to Slack.
I have associates running quake 2/3 servers on 5.2, with uptimes of 120+ days. That includes them HUPing init and all sorts of crazy stuff (Kevin
As stated, I have no problem with Red Hat, I just have seen some things in version 6.0 that should not exists, especially with it sitting on the shelf at Best Boy. (ha ha)
PS: Quote from my boss: "You reading that slapshot page again?!!?!" Hillarious.
I have no problem with the business practices of Red Hat. I think that a commercial linux is a good thing. I do, however, feel that the version of 6.0 released (and sold!) was immature, and not ready for commericial distribution. If PHB's are going to be swayed by a commercial distribution of linux, it should be rock solid. I have had many persistent and perplexing problems with 6.0.
.14 version. It is a shame that development and integration of Enlightenment will no longer be a part of Red Hat.
On the flip side, the distribution is feature filled, including many great packages like Gimp, Gnome and Enlightenment. Which, by the way, has matured vastly since the
A distribution with a de facto window manager is important, and Enlightenment is not only visually attractive, but powerful as well.
There seemed to be some disfavour upon hiring "Black Hats". This seems entirely logical to me: who could better aid you than an ally of the people you are trying to stop? There are of course concerns, like 'are they loyal?' and 'are they gonna crack us instead?'.
I like the bit about "NT is too unreliable... (et al)". Ha ha.
PS: I wonder what the intersection of the Script Kiddie realm and the Warez D00dz realm is like... most likely it looks like a 14 year old's bedroom.
A really interesting bit would be the prominence of the Internet amongst 19-25 year olds, the people who were there and able to access it when it all went down. I know that I changed more in college than any other time in my life, and it was at around 17 or so that I started really doing the online stuff. Which lead to programming... which lead to college... which lead to my job. So the explosion of Internet babble at a certain age 'changed my life' (not to be lame).
A survey conducted amongst younger people will yeild the same results as surveying us about televsion when we were young: we grew up watching too much of it and thats about it.
The people who are manufacturing these cases are trying to appeal to people who:
a) dont own a computer
b) own one but want one to match the couch
They are not trying to sell the poweruser a pink case. They know that you wont buy it, but will instead mock it and the flaming BunnyPeople (deservedly so).
There are two ways to look at this: the more computers that sell, the better, cause it promotes computing as a whole, OR the more pink computers that sell, the worse, because it just leads to more internet load and mindless computer users.
Oh well. I would take one to use as a footrest and / or sendmail server.
Thats a really good point. I didnt even think about my friends, who are now linux users, who started out as Win Quake players.
John Carmack is a remarkable individual who has done much for the linux community (and for cumputing as a whole) by forcing hardware manuf's to adhere to standards, and also by forcing superior standards (OpenGL, MesaGL, etc.) into the limelight.
In retrospect, Quake seems like it could be the perfect teaser to get people interested in Linux.
www.pcmagazine.com tuns apache
Check it!
It seems to me that the average Joe computeruser, even the ones who are really into gaming or whatever, either has not heard the word linux or has no idea what it is. Sure, articles like this one help, as it appeared in a widely-read Windowsesque magazine. But to most, linux is still freak show material.
Some recent improvements have made things better. Though the actual distribution (IMHO) is about as stable as a drunk prom date, the Red Hat 6 installation process was fairly painless (I have always and still do run slack). Personally, I dont care about installation proceedures, but to sway sheep to the flock, it's got to be idiot proof.
Idiot being the key word.
Positive things are happening. I think that with time, the product will improve and 'sell' itself. We simply must be patient, and continue to hone linux into an even more robust and powerful OS.
For many corporations (generalizing), the more handhled you give your employees, the more mischevious they can be (euchre, min sweeper, etc). Since the blackberry is targeted as an email on demand device, perhaps it is a good solution for that purpose.
PS: Though I am pro-Pilot, the idea of a device the size of a pager with a keyboard is very appealing. Grafitti brings back memories of my Newton...
If there were a fewk occurrences in the linux source tree, can you imagine the Win9x source?
/* this code fscking sucks */ /* damn this fscking code */ /* i am 9 years old and have been kidnapped to write fscking code - halp! */
kerlel32.dll:8
kernel32.dll:9
kernel32.dll:11
hah hah hahh
coding is by nature a violent act - getting the machine to do what you want, how you want. A few explatives are bound to erupt from any given programmer.
Wow. I had not even considered doing that. I'll bet that is worth a fortune.
10:1 lucas is moderately annoyed by this.
Am I supposed to take the m seriously with statements like this:
..........priceless at $6295.00 (space travel included for destinations in the continental U.S.A.). Although cruising in "warp drive," please allow 6-8 weeks for the arrival of The Back Station tm .
Come on. If you are going to seel me the BMW of desks, treat me like I am at a BMW dealership, not a comic book shop.
Well I guess that webserver is not running on a K7.
;)
Being a AMD K6 owner, I have found the AMD chips to be a cost effective and performance-comperable alternative to Intel. Plus, buying a non-Intel CPU is good karma
People please. Tables are completely fine in HTML. They are crucial, in fact, to forming your page in an effective manner.
As far as layout not being a design consideration... what are you talking about? You think that HTML authors should just plop text on the screen and let the user format it? I think not.
If you dont like HTML, try this: www.gabocorp.com
PS: VIM rules!