Sadly, the word has lost it's original meeting because so-called consultants and trainers have turned "agile" into the buzzword du jour. It has been turned into a rigid set of must follow ceremonies, mostly coming from Scrum, which totally violate the original principles of the agile manifesto. If you feel daily meetings are useful do them. Personally, in my 30+ years of experience, the best way to ensure good communication (for after all that is a key agile principle) is to have the whole project team work in the same room and to use a good tracking system. As the manager/leader I half listen to the conversations going around the room and intervene when I think my input is useful or necessary or make sure people who arent in the conversation who need to be, join in. The tracking system keeps everyone focused and informed on what's important. That, along with the whip hand of a good QA manager who ensures things don't fall between the cracks. Formal meetings are important at iteration kickoffs and to discuss complex issues with customers. A strong leader will ensure meetings are short and to the point whether they take place standing or sitting.
I also live a block from Wall Street & agree with the above - mostly. The fact is there never were "thousands" flooding the street - at most a few hundred and that only at the height. However, there IS a legitimate critique of US "capitalism" that can make you appreciative of productive companies like Apple while strongly opposing the predatory financialization of the world economy. Read Keen, Hudson and Graeber for thoughtful analysis on this. "Wall Street" is the name of that predatory economy that needs to be shut down, even if one is appreciative of markets and productive corporations, and understands the use of real banks and capital in creating a better life. however, I don't think the protestors are all that bright or have a clear critique and a vision of an alternative system. The fact that when I visited Liberty Park and heard and saw either Ron Paul libertarians or new agee types was enough for me to see just how sad and pathetic these protestors are. It also annoys me that when some white middle class girl gets pepper sprayed it's all OMG and everybody & the media gets their panties in a twist, while ignoring the day to day brutality poor people have to put up with. And if the cops, instead of eating donuts and being fat pigs, stayed in shape, they could subdue protestors without having to use pepper spray. Seeing the NYPD occupying my neighborhood, does not instill much confidence in our "finest."
Are you looking to start a flame war or for advice
on
Which Language To Learn?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As someone who has worked in software development in various capacities for over thirty years, I find your comments puzzling and your concotenation of those three languages even more mysterious. If you are talking about the corporate world then please be aware change comes exceedingly slowly. COBOL and Fortran were king into the nineties. Now Java and C++ have replaced those two and aren't going anywhere- Java for enterprise business applications (with or without a web front end) and C++ for anything where performance is of the essence. Microsoft tried ton replace Java with.net and failed. Nonetheless, it still is the number two platform in the corporate world. So having skills in the enterprise version of Java and/or being a c++ wizard guarantees you a programming job for the next 20 years. I don't know where you have been looking, but jobs haven't fallen off in those two domains and won't.
PHP is a whole different animal and really shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as the other two languages. PHP was the choice language for web development for mom and pop sites (yea, yea I know, yahoo) and startup quick and dirty websites. Ruby became the platform that "cool" web developers came to prefer, so yes if you aren't interested in the corporate world, learn ruby and rails. Of course, since I pay less attention to that sector, maybe there is something newer and cooler these days.
Python should be in every programmers tool set because it is such a versatile tool. Unfortunately it's not enough in most cases for a guaranteed job.
Finally an intelligent comment. Think people. Last week IBM aligns itself with Oracle on Java. This week Apple drops its own version of Java. Ellison is pulling in all the sheep that wandered when Sun alienated the rest of the tech world. The only thing left is for him to make nice with Microsoft. Then Herr Schmidt, the ex-Sun guy, will find Google standing all alone in it's battle with Larry Ellison.
Also don't forget that Apple also sells servers and wants to get more into enterprise space (the Steve himself said so). Killing off Java on OS X would be an absurd move. They have killed off Apple branded Java and deprecated it for desktop apps. Thats not the same as deprecating Java on Mac OS X or restricting Java developers from using Macs as server software development platforms.
...by cutting our annual defense spending in half. We would still be spending $500 billion a year, more than any government any where ever (including the US just a few short years ago) so no one can argue we will be "less safe." Until tea par tiers get behind such a proposal their "anti-government" rhetoric is just that - hot air.
Or one can say Google continues to co-operate with Chinese censorship just making it slightly easier to get around for those who will make the effort not to use the default (and who would likely know how to get around the censorship anyway). Give up business with China or mollify authorities - not a tough choice for yet another big corporation.
There is no such thing as Agile software. And it is completely ignorant to say "we use Agile". Agile is just an umbrella term for a whole bunch of software development methods. You can say we use Extreme Programming or Scrum or whatever.
In any case, the discussion between Joel and Dmitri has little or no relationship to the relative merits of Agile methods. Dmitri is just some relatively unknown consultant/guru and his individual opinion is just that. In fact, Joel didn't seem to be dissing Agile methods in general, at least not the way I read it. He is dissing Dmitri's doctrinaire approach.
Moreover, the whole discussion is far from illuminating since it is based on a totally hypothetical example. Give me a real world and specific example where we can get a concrete view of what the real priorities and politics of the situation are, and then we can form an opinion on how to behave. Dmitri in his response to Joel talks about "trust." But if the customer involved is critical to the company, you can be sure as hell that the project manager would (justifiably) get his ass kicked if he ignored the sales request and got all touchy feely about "trust." On the other hand if this is some nundik sales person then it probably can and should be managed by the project manager.
Ultimately, Agile is all about human-centric. As such, you need to understand that organizational politics and behavior can be just as important to the success of a software project as the programming language you choose. Both Joel and Dmitri seem to be ignoring that.
Basically the poster is arguing that we need to increase the public health infrastructure. This is an excellent idea not only because it is a more effective tool at "countering terrorism" but it will be more effective for society overall, because it will reduce the number of deaths from real public health threats which kill far more people than terrorists.
What I find so absolutely infuriating is that the same political party (and its dumbass supporters) that has been fighting to destroy the public health system over the past several decades (and doing a great job at that), by using the argument that "government is inefficient" sees no problem in pouring multi billions of dollars in government spending on a useless and ineffective "war". Of course when it comes to building out the public health infrastructure, mega-business can't profit and actually stands to lose (if we dealt with diabetes properly through prevention programs, drug companies stand to lose etc. etc. etc.). But war always mean big bucks for big business, hence the "war on crime" the "war on drugs" and now the "war on terrorism." Follow the money and it all makes sense. Smedly Butler's "War is a Racket" is still the most intelligent and insightful commentary on war ever written, and it applies to all of the above "wars" not just the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Remember when police and laws were used to protect citizens, not criminialize millions for hurting corporate profit machines...?"
No I don't actually. There never was a place or period in the history of the human race where the "police" (or their equivalent) worked to protect the average citizen. Yes, some individual police officers do great and important work helping people, at great personal risk. But for the most part, "the law" is structured to protect wealthy interests and the police are used to protect those interests. The biggest dealers of harmful addictive drugs in the U.S. are big pharma, but the police system is used to persecute sellers and users of drugs not produced by big pharma, which threaten its profits.
In the early 1900s, who did corporations use to break up unions? The police. In the West the police were used to protect the railroads and other landed interests. Before there were corporations, there were feudal lords. They used the equivalent of the police to keep down the peasants. Remember the Robin Hood story? Who was he fighting? The SHERIFF of Notingham.
The powerful have always used force and violence and "the law" to protect their interests and to keep the weak and powerless in their place. Nothing has changed here.
I have installed Boot Camp three times already and I must say if you follow the instructions it works flawlessly. And it it screws up you DON'T need to use the command line. You just reinstall Mac OS X from the disks that come with the computer. I know, becuause I had to do it. I had prepped a Macbook for the hack install for one of my customers, and partitioned the disk. A few days later, before I had time to install Windows, Boot Camp came out. So I tried installing Boot Camp using my existing partitions and it didn't work (they now say explicitely that you can't have a pre-partioned disk, but I don't think it was on the site the day I did it which was quite early on). Anyway, I repartioned the hard disk and reinstalled Mac OS X, after backing up the user data. No command line necessary. It is quite trivial, although a bit time consuming. In all the time the jerk wastes whining in front of the whole world and showing what an absolute idiot he is, he could have Boot Camp and Parellels both working and using his computer productively.
Since then I have installed it on a new unpartioned Macbook and it works fine. As everyone notes, make sure you back up and important data, make sure you install in the C drive (make it a different size so you know for sure you have the right one) and note that it will automatically boot back into whatever you were last working in unless you hold the alt key down, so don't panic when it reboots into Windoze.
Zimbra is a neat new open source offering that is very Mac OS X friendly, integrates with just about everything and runs on OS X server and various Linux flavors.
Actually, I think the sick and dying in poor countries would prefer if Bill Gates and the United States didn't force so-called "Intellectual property" laws (or unfair monopolies as they really should be called) down their throats and prevent them from creating generic versions of critical drugs. If Bill Gates really cared about the sick and dying, he would support such efforts and save billions and billions of dollars. Then he could use the saved money for other, more worthwhile causes. In fact, one can say that Gates public and strong opposition to relaxing such IP laws makes him bear direct responsibility for the death of millions of people. Giving away his moeny doesn't compensate for that.
As for the ad hominem attacks on me, they don't make your arguments any more valid. Essentially, what the two of you seem to be saying is Bill Gates is a hero because he is giving away his money. The flaw in your argument is the assumption that it is HIS money to give. The company he led is a convicted monopolist which engaged in illegal and immoral behavior in order to dominate its markets. In a fair world, all those illegal gains would have been confiscated, leaving Mr. Gates with very little money to give away.
In any case, as I explicitely stated, my problem is not so much with Bill Gates the individual but the culture of greed and corruption his type of capitalism represents. From your responses, you just reinforce my point that people in the US seemed to be enamored of such greedy behavior and oblivious to the harmful consequences it wreaks across the globe.
Recently there was a posting here of an article from Wired about what a wonderful philanthropist Bill Gates is. This article shows the true face of the man, and it is quite ugly. Instead of getting behind, or at least out of the way, of someone else's altruistic efforts, he tries to create FUD and undermine the effort. Why? Because they aren't playing HIS way with HIS toys.
It takes an incredible amount of effort and hard work to overcome the huge obstacles required to get a project like Negroponte's off the ground. If Gates had one ounce of decency in him, once the choice had been made, he should have got out of the way (if he couldn't find it in him to help out). Bill Gates sticking his foot out to trip Negroponte up is the despicable act of a despicable man.
Call this flame bait if you like, but this has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a FOSS fanboy or sees Microsoft as the evil empire. There are far more serious issues at play here. And it's not only about Bill Gates, who merely represents a trend. Apparently greed has become the supreme value in the U.S., and the greedy men who run it, no matter how much damage they cause, are somehow seen as admirable.
If Bill Gates really wanted to help AIDS victims in poor countries, he could save his billions of dollars and instead encourage the relaxation of so-called "intellectual property" laws and allow these countries to create generic versions of the drugs. But he and his company (along with all the other Corporate Capitalist fundamentalists and led by the U.S. government) fight tooth and nail to stop that from happening. God forbid IP monopolies should be undermined. Better people should die.
Bill Gates is not just a greedy monopilist - he uses his power in ways that cause untold numbers of deaths and suffering. Throwing his stolen billions at the problem is not compensation for his evil practices. Disliking Bill Gates has nothing to do with disliking Microsoft software. It has everything to do with an immoral man trying to buy good publicity to cover up for his sins.
"Also, you might note that Gaiman, Moore, and Miller manage to cite when using direct quotes."
Oh really? Now its been some time since I've read the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, and I don't have the book in front of me right now, but the main characters were lifted whole cloth out of other people's books. I don't recall an acknowledgement or bibliography anywhere (although there might have been). But I do know specific incidents from those books regarding the characters, were used and referenced in their entirety without any footnotes. An uninformed reader might easily surmise that Moore had invented those characters and incidents himself, which is precisely the charge against plagiarists. Of course, half the fun of the book is figuring out for yourself who and what was being referred to. I am not in the least criticizing Moore and I believe what he did is extremely creative and precisely what art is about. But if you think such behavior is immoral, unethical and/or worthy of censure, then what Alan Moore did is a thousand-fold "worse" than what Tim Ryan did.
Is it just me, or is no one else out there outraged by this story. Not at what Tim Ryan did but by the disgusting, low-life behavior of the Wikipedia "community."
First, lets put the term "plagiarism" in a bit of perspective. Ever since the first ape began telling stories, humanoids have been copying ideas and stories verbatim one from another. Hell, half of the stories in the Bible, which millions of people around the world believe is "The Word of God" lifted huge chunks verbatim from Mesopatamian and Egyptian legends and myths without any attribution. In a type of reverse plagerism many authors attributed their writing to ancient holy men in order to gain immortality for their words. o false attribution or lack of attribution was certainly not considered immoral or unethical until very recently. It goes hand in hand with our worship of property above all other human values (and that is one idolatrous practice that gets worse with every passing day). " And even today, many of the so-called "works of art" the unwashed/. masses waste their childhood and adult life on, are totally plagerized. The writers/directors lift their key ideas, themes, protagonists and plots from other works and writers (who did a far better job presenting them). Even truly original modern artists like Gaiman, Miller and Moore are strongly indebted and make free use of the art and ideas of others. In fact, that is a Good Thing and they will tell you so themselves. Gaiman's "American Gods" has no footnotes (I wish it did so I could trace back to their original source many of the myths and gods he mentioned). Is he worthy of condemnation as a plagerist? Fuck no.
I understand to a certain extent in certain situations, why people get their panties in a twist when someone tries to pass someone else' work off as their own. Yes it should be common courtesy in a research environment to cite your sources. And if you lift verbatim the core thesis of your paper without proper attribution, then of course you should not be given any credit for your work. But to be enraged about a few unattributed lines in a paper or book - give me a fucking break! And considering how little truly interesting/original stuff gets written in academia, I would attribute the holy self-righteousness plagerism or alleged plagerism causes, to over-inflated and insecure egos. There are very rare occassions where I would say plagerism is worthy of the uproar it causes.
In the case at hand, I wouldn't even use the word plagerism. We're not talking about "original" work here. Sure a bunch of lil (losers in search of a life TM) people, who have nothing better to do with themselves, wast^H^H^H^Hspend hours of their obviously worthless time gathering other people's original ideas and thoughts and putting them down on a wiki page ("Gee I wrote the page on Princess Leia ORGANA (holy fuck, how utterly loserish can you be that you make the pedantic distinction between TWO Princess Leias). And true I wanked off about a hundred times over the picture of her in the bikini which I lifted from somewhere without permission, BUT that's cool because I have a standard Wikipedia disclaimer that this is PROBABLY fair use). Maybe now I can finally lose my virginity.") I have no doubt that Tim Ryan innocently related to Wikipedia as a public domain commons and so didn't think twice about taking factual material from it. And you know what? He was perfectly right to do so.
But a bunch of $%$$%$&^ with over-inflated egos took it upon themselves to destroy someone's career and life. Hey guys, remember, Tim Ryan is a man with a family and a job who works hard at what he does and has for 21 years. But in these days when people are expendable, his corporate bosses decided its not worth the trouble and bother fighting off the enraged wikipedia hordes, so they ditched the man for the alleged "crime" of not attributing that he got a few FACTS (not original ideas but FACTS) from some site that collects facts and publishes them anonymously. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREA
Most people want computing not computers
on
Ajax in Action
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· Score: 1
In the debate over whether Ajax is hype (it is) or the next best thing since sliced bread (it is that too) many are forgetting this simple fact: most people are interested in computing (i.e. the power of applications that computers provide us) not computers (i.e. being a sysadmin in order to get computing facilities). Yes it is true that AJAX in particular and the Web in general are implementing technological ideas that are decades old and in a worse way than some of the older alternatives. But all the older alternatives require people to "have" computers which means that on some level they need to be sysadmins. All the crap that is happening now in terms of internet security problems etc. starts and (mostly) ends with the fact that, through no fault of their own, non-technical people are forced into the role of sysadmin against their will.
The promise of the Internet in general and the Web specifically, is that it gives people access to computing without having to be a sysadmin, and most importantly in a distributed environment - pervasive access to data and applications wherever you happen to be. The computer will fade away into the background - no one will know there is a computer there at all. They would just have computng service devices. The hype is only that we are promised it would be here yesterday, when it fact it is still many tomorrows away. But AJAX is one more step down that road and it works now. Sure in ten years we will think it is way primitive. But think of the World Wide Web in 1995 and look where it is now. Was it hyped in the dot com era? You bet. Is it revolutionary in the context of computing? Yes, because the way people work and play with computers has fundamentally changed in the past ten years because of the Internet and the Web.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - this is great news. There are many, many people who grew up with Palm OS. I have been using it since the Palm III days and in that period I went on the desktp from Mac to Windows to Icewm to Gnome (version 0.7) to KDE to Gnome and back to Mac OS X. I write faster in grafitti than on pen and paper. I have several Palm OS add on apps that I use everyday, several times a day. The Treo is popular because of the Palm OS not Palm (which why, as others have noted, the Apple analogy is way off - its the Mac OS X experience that people love, not PowerPC chips).
Palm as a company has grown to suck big time (it began with the 3Com purchase and it has been downhill ever since). When I had a choice, I avoided Palm products. The only decent Palm since the Palm V is the T3, but Palm support is less then useless (lot's of horror stories here).
Now that Palm has become just one more Microsoft OEM it will die a long, protracted painful death. But its customers like me, won't have to endure the death rattle. We will be able to go out out and buy Palm-enabled or rather ACCESS-enabled devices. And there is a great likelihood there will be many of those from multiple vendors and with multiple options.
Here's why: Let's face it - the PDA market is dying, and the cell phone market is rapidly on the rise. Does Palm/Microsoft really think it can compete with Nokia, Motorola, Sony/Erricson, Samsung and China Inc? How many cell phones do those companies sell? How many does Palm sell, with all the success of Treo? How many of the latter companies are using Microsoft's WinMobile? How many of those companies do/plan to sell embedded Linux phones?
In case you don't know the answers to the above rhetorical questions, it is likely the case that by now Motorola has shipped more embedded Linux phones in China alone than all the Treos out there. These phones will soon be available outside the US. Isn't it likely that these companies will add ACCESS as a feature/add-on to entice millions of Palm customers like me? When that happens, how many TreoNGs do you think are going to be sold? All of you can count on one hand.
So yes, Palm is dead. But fortunately, Palm OS has just been reborn. With it's old master dead it will take off even more rapidly.
Cheap - $1K for an unlimited server license, and the Xserves come with the license and are great performers in their own right and cost-effective.
It has ease of use GUI goodness, with a full open source stack underneath: supports Open/LDAP directory services, single sign-on, kerberros, email, calendering (via WebDav), file services (via Samba for Windows and Linux), CUPS, Apache, DNS, Mailman - the list goes on and on. It plays extremely well in mixed environments and is extremely easy to administer - no steep learning curve.
It's far cheaper than all the other alternatives, including Novell and RH, not to speak of Microsoft. And soon you will be migrating all your users to OS X boxen as well once you see all the advantages.
I have done administration on all the other alternatives and I'm far from an Apple fanboy, so don't start flaming me on that score.
As ususal, Zonk's headlines are totally misleading (when will we get to moderate the editors?) This is not the end of PalmOS. This is just the beginning. It's the end of Palm. Here's why:
When I recently heard that the next generation Treo was rumored to be running Windows Mobile I nearly had a heart attack. I have been using Palm OS since the days of the Palm III, my first Palm device. In the interim I have switched desktop platforms numerous times (Mac, Windows, IceWM, Gnome, KDE, Gnome, Mac OS X). But I have stuck with PalmOS through thick and thin. I love it for two reasons - the perfectly simple UI which exactly matches the nature of the platform and graffiti. Heck, I can write quicker in graffiti then with a pen. (It pissed the hell out of me that Treo's don't come with grafffiti).
Palm, otoh, is a sucky company. Except for the T3, most of their products since the days of the Palm V have sucked wind. I bought Handspring and bought Clie's and only bought another Palm (the T3) because i had no alternative. Plus, Palm has developed a "fuck you" attitude towards its customers. I bought a used T3 off their site about a year ago, only to discover Palm is the ONLY hardware vendor I know that provide NO warrenty (not the usual 90 days) on refurbished products they themselves sell.
This story confirms several things: the next generation Treo will contain Windows. PalmOS sold itself because it had lost its one remaining paying customer - Palm. The results will be fantastic. I haven't bought a Treo, because the platform is feature poor, both in terms of hardware and software. Access will sell this new Linux/Palm OS hybrid to tons of cell-phone manufacturors around the world who will be offering many new and innovative alternatives products to PalmOS lovers like me (and finally reinvigorate the platform by making it stable, secure, multi-processing and network ready with its Linux base). I wouldn't be surprised if Sony came back with with a Access OS based cell phone product.
Meanwhile, only someone brain-dead would buy a Windows Mobile based product from Palm (heck if I was in the market for that platform, there are plenty of vendors with higher quality products and better customer support and service). Which will mean Palm will go into a tailspin and suffer the ignomius death it deserves.
I started reading this thread, because after reading the review I still didn't understand why Solaris 10 was such a big deal. The reviewer kept on saying "Solaris 10 has some really cool stuff" but except for a few cryptic sentances that probably make sense to people who already know about Solaris, it didn't really enlighten me any.
So against my better judgement (given the quality of discussions on/.), I decided to read the thread. Sometimes I do find some nuggets of additional information, and I really want to know more about Solaris. I was shocked to see the attitude of the Solaris users. Basically, they project this "you're idiots, we're gods because we do ENTERPRISE computing" attitude.
Over the years I had the unfortunate need to deal with Sun from time to time, in various business capacities. I was always put off by their arrogance. But to see that many Sun USERS also seem to be Mini McNealys -- wow, that's really something special.
At this point, I don't know much more about Solaris than I did before reading the review and the comments here. But I do know some things about businesses and how they work and think. In re: the guy who made the snide comment re: Linux and Stallman etc. What the writer (or rather the person he was quoting) seems to forget, is that Sun isn't competing against "Linux" in the enterprise. Linux isn't a company. Sun is competing against IBM. IBM has been selling into the "enterprise" market, from when Scott McNealy was in diapers. And IBM has Sun in its gun sights, and it is shooting Linux bullets and not just AIX bullets. I heard an IBM Senior VP state that IBM is spending millions helping VARs to port Sun-based applications to Linux.
Sure CIOs of big companies are conservative and don't change easily. But they also look at Sun's stock price and other financials, and when IBM comes knocking with an alternative solution which won't be all that disruptive, making the switch won't seem like a radical act.
So where does that leave Sun and Solaris? Many of you forget that Sun started by snapping at IBM's heels from the workstation market, which was the low-end of the computer world in its days. Now Gnu/Linux in all its variants is eating Sun's lunch on the low end and moving up the feeding chain. IBM is relentlessly crushing down from the high end. What's left? However superior Solaris technology may be (and I haven't yet gotten a clear picture why it is superior), Sun is certainly facing huge business challenges. It's future is by no means guaranteed. And McNealy's arrogant attitude, which seems to be part of the Sun culture, to the extent of even effecting Sun users, sure doesn't help.
Perhaps. Since I don't personally use Windows or have any need to, I don't know how it works in that environment. I never tried VNC remotely on a Windows machine. But I use it over a WAN to manage remote Debian servers and it works more than fine and at quite a reasonable speed. Of course, I have icewm running on the remote server, not gnome nor kde. KDE sucks on VNC even on a LAN.
MAC OS X official remote desktop uses VNC, and someone I know used it to connect from a machine in New York to a machine in Israel and it also worked great.
The original poster was comparing GNU/Linux to Windows. VNC on GNU/Linux is as useable as remote desktop on Windows. And it has other advantages in that it is multi-platform. You yourself admit you no longer have the remote desktop option on Windows. So its wonderful that its faster than VNC in principle, but since its not supported it is essentially useless. Ergo, VNC is a superior product for your needs as well.
Also, getting back to your specific situation,if you were in a GNU/Linux environment you would "control" your desktop machine by ssh-ing into a shell, an option you don't have in windows. You can also run an x-client on your desktop that communicates with an X-server on your laptop and control your desktop machine that way in a LAN environment. In other words within the brain-dead world of Windows, remote desktop is the only alternative for remote management but it is of limited applicability. Unix-based solutions are the superior alternative for what most people need to do in remote management, whether on a LAN or WAN.
The complaint with your post is your sweeping claim that Windows is the "most versatile" OS somehow implies Windows is "superior" to the alternatives. If by that your statment you mean that Windows supports just about everything that Mac OS X and Gnu/Linux does, then you are, for the most part, correct. But that it a meaningless achievement when it comes to choosing a platform.
You, yourself admit that other OSes are superior in certain areas and so you use them for those areas. The fact is, that in terms of productivity, people should use the superior tool not the most versatile tool. A hammer is the most versatile tool in my toolbox. But only fools use hammers for everything.
Graphic designers almost univerally agree that Mac OS X is the superior platofrom for that kind of work. Sure Photoshop is avalable on Windows, but so what? As for animation work, Disney paid Codeweavers to develop Wine support for Photoshop precisely because they find GNU/Linux superior for their animation needs. Excellence, not versatility, is their main criteria in choosing a platform and they worked to make their platform of choice more versatile.
As for office productivity, personally I find Mac OS X the best platform for me to get my writing work done. And GNU/Linux is my platform of choice for server work and software development.
So, despite Windows admitted versatality, it is inferior for everything I and many other people do. So I and they never use it. And as more peopel become aware of superior alternatives, the number of people making that choice is growing.
As for hardware compatibility, how much hardware upgrades do most people do? When I initially buy a computer, I find that the hardware bundeled with a Macintosh and the tight OS integragration makes Apple hardware a far more cost-effective, choice than Intel-based hardware, particularly when taking into consideration after-purchase maintenance. This is particularly true for laptops - I can't understand why anyone would buy an Intel based laptop when Apple products are superior quality, have more options built in, give better after-purchase support and are less expensive. Once I have a Macintosh, all my peripherals that I buy are either firewire or USB, so with very rare exceptions I have no limits in terms of my hardware choices. And in the cases where there are exceptions (manufacturer X does not provide a Mac OS X driver for their printer) I don't feel at a great loss. There is always an equivalent product. When I buy a server, I hardly ever will subsequently upgrade the hardware, and finding Linux-compatible server hardware is not at all limiting in today's market.
So yes it is true Windows has more hardware support than alternative OSes. But the practical implications are pretty trivial.
There are several points that need to be made here:
1. The money Bill Gates is giving away are ill-gotten gains derived from monopolistic practices. if we had a government with balls, they would have confiscated most of Microsoft (and Bill Gates) money. Why should he have the right to decide how to spend stolen money? Maybe society as a whole has different priorities.
2. Bill Gates recently called people who oppose his view of "intellectual property" communists! Well if it makes me a communist to believe that drugs should not be developed for corporate profit then so be it. [N.B. Please: before you start flaming me about how all "innovation" happens because of greed and how without copyright and patent monopilies life would be nasty, brutish and short, pick up a book on the history of science or the history of art or the history of music or the hostoty of philosophy or the history of any human artistic and/or intellectual endeavor].
If Bill Gates would support the restraint of insanely restrictive copyright and patent laws, we could eradicate many diseases around the world without him having to give a $750 million donation. In terms of benefit to the world, it would be far preferable if he used his money and clout to fight ridiculous IP laws, than give this money away on vaccinations. Far more lives could and would be saved. But precisely because he uses his money and clout to oppose such modifications, he is partially responsible for many people dying, and his $750 million gift cannot compensate for that.
3. The article is pure flame bait. But since it was posted as "news" it is our right and duty to respond to its huge BS factor.
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Sadly, the word has lost it's original meeting because so-called consultants and trainers have turned "agile" into the buzzword du jour. It has been turned into a rigid set of must follow ceremonies, mostly coming from Scrum, which totally violate the original principles of the agile manifesto. If you feel daily meetings are useful do them. Personally, in my 30+ years of experience, the best way to ensure good communication (for after all that is a key agile principle) is to have the whole project team work in the same room and to use a good tracking system. As the manager/leader I half listen to the conversations going around the room and intervene when I think my input is useful or necessary or make sure people who arent in the conversation who need to be, join in. The tracking system keeps everyone focused and informed on what's important. That, along with the whip hand of a good QA manager who ensures things don't fall between the cracks. Formal meetings are important at iteration kickoffs and to discuss complex issues with customers. A strong leader will ensure meetings are short and to the point whether they take place standing or sitting.
I also live a block from Wall Street & agree with the above - mostly. The fact is there never were "thousands" flooding the street - at most a few hundred and that only at the height. However, there IS a legitimate critique of US "capitalism" that can make you appreciative of productive companies like Apple while strongly opposing the predatory financialization of the world economy. Read Keen, Hudson and Graeber for thoughtful analysis on this. "Wall Street" is the name of that predatory economy that needs to be shut down, even if one is appreciative of markets and productive corporations, and understands the use of real banks and capital in creating a better life. however, I don't think the protestors are all that bright or have a clear critique and a vision of an alternative system. The fact that when I visited Liberty Park and heard and saw either Ron Paul libertarians or new agee types was enough for me to see just how sad and pathetic these protestors are. It also annoys me that when some white middle class girl gets pepper sprayed it's all OMG and everybody & the media gets their panties in a twist, while ignoring the day to day brutality poor people have to put up with. And if the cops, instead of eating donuts and being fat pigs, stayed in shape, they could subdue protestors without having to use pepper spray. Seeing the NYPD occupying my neighborhood, does not instill much confidence in our "finest."
As someone who has worked in software development in various capacities for over thirty years, I find your comments puzzling and your concotenation of those three languages even more mysterious. If you are talking about the corporate world then please be aware change comes exceedingly slowly. COBOL and Fortran were king into the nineties. Now Java and C++ have replaced those two and aren't going anywhere- Java for enterprise business applications (with or without a web front end) and C++ for anything where performance is of the essence. Microsoft tried ton replace Java with .net and failed. Nonetheless, it still is the number two platform in the corporate world. So having skills in the enterprise version of Java and/or being a c++ wizard guarantees you a programming job for the next 20 years. I don't know where you have been looking, but jobs haven't fallen off in those two domains and won't.
PHP is a whole different animal and really shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as the other two languages. PHP was the choice language for web development for mom and pop sites (yea, yea I know, yahoo) and startup quick and dirty websites. Ruby became the platform that "cool" web developers came to prefer, so yes if you aren't interested in the corporate world, learn ruby and rails. Of course, since I pay less attention to that sector, maybe there is something newer and cooler these days.
Python should be in every programmers tool set because it is such a versatile tool. Unfortunately it's not enough in most cases for a guaranteed job.
Finally an intelligent comment. Think people. Last week IBM aligns itself with Oracle on Java. This week Apple drops its own version of Java. Ellison is pulling in all the sheep that wandered when Sun alienated the rest of the tech world. The only thing left is for him to make nice with Microsoft. Then Herr Schmidt, the ex-Sun guy, will find Google standing all alone in it's battle with Larry Ellison.
Also don't forget that Apple also sells servers and wants to get more into enterprise space (the Steve himself said so). Killing off Java on OS X would be an absurd move. They have killed off Apple branded Java and deprecated it for desktop apps. Thats not the same as deprecating Java on Mac OS X or restricting Java developers from using Macs as server software development platforms.
...by cutting our annual defense spending in half. We would still be spending $500 billion a year, more than any government any where ever (including the US just a few short years ago) so no one can argue we will be "less safe." Until tea par tiers get behind such a proposal their "anti-government" rhetoric is just that - hot air.
Or one can say Google continues to co-operate with Chinese censorship just making it slightly easier to get around for those who will make the effort not to use the default (and who would likely know how to get around the censorship anyway). Give up business with China or mollify authorities - not a tough choice for yet another big corporation.
There is no such thing as Agile software. And it is completely ignorant to say "we use Agile". Agile is just an umbrella term for a whole bunch of software development methods. You can say we use Extreme Programming or Scrum or whatever.
In any case, the discussion between Joel and Dmitri has little or no relationship to the relative merits of Agile methods. Dmitri is just some relatively unknown consultant/guru and his individual opinion is just that. In fact, Joel didn't seem to be dissing Agile methods in general, at least not the way I read it. He is dissing Dmitri's doctrinaire approach.
Moreover, the whole discussion is far from illuminating since it is based on a totally hypothetical example. Give me a real world and specific example where we can get a concrete view of what the real priorities and politics of the situation are, and then we can form an opinion on how to behave. Dmitri in his response to Joel talks about
"trust." But if the customer involved is critical to the company, you can be sure as hell that the project manager would (justifiably) get his ass kicked if he ignored the sales request and got all touchy feely about "trust." On the other hand if this is some nundik sales person then it probably can and should be managed by the project manager.
Ultimately, Agile is all about human-centric. As such, you need to understand that organizational politics and behavior can be just as important to the success of a software project as the programming language you choose. Both Joel and Dmitri seem to be ignoring that.
Basically the poster is arguing that we need to increase the public health infrastructure. This is an excellent idea not only because it is a more effective tool at "countering terrorism" but it will be more effective for society overall, because it will reduce the number of deaths from real public health threats which kill far more people than terrorists.
What I find so absolutely infuriating is that the same political party (and its dumbass supporters) that has been fighting to destroy the public health system over the past several decades (and doing a great job at that), by using the argument that "government is inefficient" sees no problem in pouring multi billions of dollars in government spending on a useless and ineffective "war". Of course when it comes to building out the public health infrastructure, mega-business can't profit and actually stands to lose (if we dealt with diabetes properly through prevention programs, drug companies stand to lose etc. etc. etc.). But war always mean big bucks for big business, hence the "war on crime" the "war on drugs" and now the "war on terrorism." Follow the money and it all makes sense. Smedly Butler's "War is a Racket" is still the most intelligent and insightful commentary on war ever written, and it applies to all of the above "wars" not just the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Remember when police and laws were used to protect citizens, not criminialize millions for hurting corporate profit machines...?"
No I don't actually. There never was a place or period in the history of the human race where the "police" (or their equivalent) worked to protect the average citizen. Yes, some individual police officers do great and important work helping people, at great personal risk. But for the most part, "the law" is structured to protect wealthy interests and the police are used to protect those interests. The biggest dealers of harmful addictive drugs in the U.S. are big pharma, but the police system is used to persecute sellers and users of drugs not produced by big pharma, which threaten its profits.
In the early 1900s, who did corporations use to break up unions? The police. In the West the police were used to protect the railroads and other landed interests. Before there were corporations, there were feudal lords. They used the equivalent of the police to keep down the peasants. Remember the Robin Hood story? Who was he fighting? The SHERIFF of Notingham.
The powerful have always used force and violence and "the law" to protect their interests and to keep the weak and powerless in their place. Nothing has changed here.
I have installed Boot Camp three times already and I must say if you follow the instructions it works flawlessly. And it it screws up you DON'T need to use the command line. You just reinstall Mac OS X from the disks that come with the computer. I know, becuause I had to do it. I had prepped a Macbook for the hack install for one of my customers, and partitioned the disk. A few days later, before I had time to install Windows, Boot Camp came out. So I tried installing Boot Camp using my existing partitions and it didn't work (they now say explicitely that you can't have a pre-partioned disk, but I don't think it was on the site the day I did it which was quite early on). Anyway, I repartioned the hard disk and reinstalled Mac OS X, after backing up the user data. No command line necessary. It is quite trivial, although a bit time consuming. In all the time the jerk wastes whining in front of the whole world and showing what an absolute idiot he is, he could have Boot Camp and Parellels both working and using his computer productively.
Since then I have installed it on a new unpartioned Macbook and it works fine. As everyone notes, make sure you back up and important data, make sure you install in the C drive (make it a different size so you know for sure you have the right one) and note that it will automatically boot back into whatever you were last working in unless you hold the alt key down, so don't panic when it reboots into Windoze.
Zimbra is a neat new open source offering that is very Mac OS X friendly, integrates with just about everything and runs on OS X server and various Linux flavors.
Actually, I think the sick and dying in poor countries would prefer if Bill Gates and the United States didn't force so-called "Intellectual property" laws (or unfair monopolies as they really should be called) down their throats and prevent them from creating generic versions of critical drugs. If Bill Gates really cared about the sick and dying, he would support such efforts and save billions and billions of dollars. Then he could use the saved money for other, more worthwhile causes. In fact, one can say that Gates public and strong opposition to relaxing such IP laws makes him bear direct responsibility for the death of millions of people. Giving away his moeny doesn't compensate for that.
As for the ad hominem attacks on me, they don't make your arguments any more valid. Essentially, what the two of you seem to be saying is Bill Gates is a hero because he is giving away his money. The flaw in your argument is the assumption that it is HIS money to give. The company he led is a convicted monopolist which engaged in illegal and immoral behavior in order to dominate its markets. In a fair world, all those illegal gains would have been confiscated, leaving Mr. Gates with very little money to give away.
In any case, as I explicitely stated, my problem is not so much with Bill Gates the individual but the culture of greed and corruption his type of capitalism represents. From your responses, you just reinforce my point that people in the US seemed to be enamored of such greedy behavior and oblivious to the harmful consequences it wreaks across the globe.
Recently there was a posting here of an article from Wired about what a wonderful philanthropist Bill Gates is. This article shows the true face of the man, and it is quite ugly. Instead of getting behind, or at least out of the way, of someone else's altruistic efforts, he tries to create FUD and undermine the effort. Why? Because they aren't playing HIS way with HIS toys.
It takes an incredible amount of effort and hard work to overcome the huge obstacles required to get a project like Negroponte's off the ground. If Gates had one ounce of decency in him, once the choice had been made, he should have got out of the way (if he couldn't find it in him to help out). Bill Gates sticking his foot out to trip Negroponte up is the despicable act of a despicable man.
Call this flame bait if you like, but this has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a FOSS fanboy or sees Microsoft as the evil empire. There are far more serious issues at play here. And it's not only about Bill Gates, who merely represents a trend. Apparently greed has become the supreme value in the U.S., and the greedy men who run it, no matter how much damage they cause, are somehow seen as admirable.
If Bill Gates really wanted to help AIDS victims in poor countries, he could save his billions of dollars and instead encourage the relaxation of so-called "intellectual property" laws and allow these countries to create generic versions of the drugs. But he and his company (along with all the other Corporate Capitalist fundamentalists and led by the U.S. government) fight tooth and nail to stop that from happening. God forbid IP monopolies should be undermined. Better people should die.
Bill Gates is not just a greedy monopilist - he uses his power in ways that cause untold numbers of deaths and suffering. Throwing his stolen billions at the problem is not compensation for his evil practices. Disliking Bill Gates has nothing to do with disliking Microsoft software. It has everything to do with an immoral man trying to buy good publicity to cover up for his sins.
"You should probably take your medication."
What an original and devestating put down.
"Also, you might note that Gaiman, Moore, and Miller manage to cite when using direct quotes."
Oh really? Now its been some time since I've read the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, and I don't have the book in front of me right now, but the main characters were lifted whole cloth out of other people's books. I don't recall an acknowledgement or bibliography anywhere (although there might have been). But I do know specific incidents from those books regarding the characters, were used and referenced in their entirety without any footnotes. An uninformed reader might easily surmise that Moore had invented those characters and incidents himself, which is precisely the charge against plagiarists. Of course, half the fun of the book is figuring out for yourself who and what was being referred to. I am not in the least criticizing Moore and I believe what he did is extremely creative and precisely what art is about. But if you think such behavior is immoral, unethical and/or worthy of censure, then what Alan Moore did is a thousand-fold "worse" than what Tim Ryan did.
Is it just me, or is no one else out there outraged by this story. Not at what Tim Ryan did but by the disgusting, low-life behavior of the Wikipedia "community."
/. masses waste their childhood and adult life on, are totally plagerized. The writers/directors lift their key ideas, themes, protagonists and plots from other works and writers (who did a far better job presenting them). Even truly original modern artists like Gaiman, Miller and Moore are strongly indebted and make free use of the art and ideas of others. In fact, that is a Good Thing and they will tell you so themselves. Gaiman's "American Gods" has no footnotes (I wish it did so I could trace back to their original source many of the myths and gods he mentioned). Is he worthy of condemnation as a plagerist? Fuck no.
First, lets put the term "plagiarism" in a bit of perspective. Ever since the first ape began telling stories, humanoids have been copying ideas and stories verbatim one from another. Hell, half of the stories in the Bible, which millions of people around the world believe is "The Word of God" lifted huge chunks verbatim from Mesopatamian and Egyptian legends and myths without any attribution. In a type of reverse plagerism many authors attributed their writing to ancient holy men in order to gain immortality for their words. o false attribution or lack of attribution was certainly not considered immoral or unethical until very recently. It goes hand in hand with our worship of property above all other human values (and that is one idolatrous practice that gets worse with every passing day).
"
And even today, many of the so-called "works of art" the unwashed
I understand to a certain extent in certain situations, why people get their panties in a twist when someone tries to pass someone else' work off as their own. Yes it should be common courtesy in a research environment to cite your sources. And if you lift verbatim the core thesis of your paper without proper attribution, then of course you should not be given any credit for your work. But to be enraged about a few unattributed lines in a paper or book - give me a fucking break! And considering how little truly interesting/original stuff gets written in academia, I would attribute the holy self-righteousness plagerism or alleged plagerism causes, to over-inflated and insecure egos. There are very rare occassions where I would say plagerism is worthy of the uproar it causes.
In the case at hand, I wouldn't even use the word plagerism. We're not talking about "original" work here. Sure a bunch of lil (losers in search of a life TM) people, who have nothing better to do with themselves, wast^H^H^H^Hspend hours of their obviously worthless time gathering other people's original ideas and thoughts and putting them down on a wiki page ("Gee I wrote the page on Princess Leia ORGANA (holy fuck, how utterly loserish can you be that you make the pedantic distinction between TWO Princess Leias). And true I wanked off about a hundred times over the picture of her in the bikini which I lifted from somewhere without permission, BUT that's cool because I have a standard Wikipedia disclaimer that this is PROBABLY fair use). Maybe now I can finally lose my virginity.") I have no doubt that Tim Ryan innocently related to Wikipedia as a public domain commons and so didn't think twice about taking factual material from it. And you know what? He was perfectly right to do so.
But a bunch of $%$$%$&^ with over-inflated egos took it upon themselves to destroy someone's career and life. Hey guys, remember, Tim Ryan is a man with a family and a job who works hard at what he does and has for 21 years. But in these days when people are expendable, his corporate bosses decided its not worth the trouble and bother fighting off the enraged wikipedia hordes, so they ditched the man for the alleged "crime" of not attributing that he got a few FACTS (not original ideas but FACTS) from some site that collects facts and publishes them anonymously. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREA
In the debate over whether Ajax is hype (it is) or the next best thing since sliced bread (it is that too) many are forgetting this simple fact: most people are interested in computing (i.e. the power of applications that computers provide us) not computers (i.e. being a sysadmin in order to get computing facilities). Yes it is true that AJAX in particular and the Web in general are implementing technological ideas that are decades old and in a worse way than some of the older alternatives. But all the older alternatives require people to "have" computers which means that on some level they need to be sysadmins. All the crap that is happening now in terms of internet security problems etc. starts and (mostly) ends with the fact that, through no fault of their own, non-technical people are forced into the role of sysadmin against their will.
The promise of the Internet in general and the Web specifically, is that it gives people access to computing without having to be a sysadmin, and most importantly in a distributed environment - pervasive access to data and applications wherever you happen to be. The computer will fade away into the background - no one will know there is a computer there at all. They would just have computng service devices. The hype is only that we are promised it would be here yesterday, when it fact it is still many tomorrows away. But AJAX is one more step down that road and it works now. Sure in ten years we will think it is way primitive. But think of the World Wide Web in 1995 and look where it is now. Was it hyped in the dot com era? You bet. Is it revolutionary in the context of computing? Yes, because the way people work and play with computers has fundamentally changed in the past ten years because of the Internet and the Web.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - this is great news. There are many, many people who grew up with Palm OS. I have been using it since the Palm III days and in that period I went on the desktp from Mac to Windows to Icewm to Gnome (version 0.7) to KDE to Gnome and back to Mac OS X. I write faster in grafitti than on pen and paper. I have several Palm OS add on apps that I use everyday, several times a day. The Treo is popular because of the Palm OS not Palm (which why, as others have noted, the Apple analogy is way off - its the Mac OS X experience that people love, not PowerPC chips).
Palm as a company has grown to suck big time (it began with the 3Com purchase and it has been downhill ever since). When I had a choice, I avoided Palm products. The only decent Palm since the Palm V is the T3, but Palm support is less then useless (lot's of horror stories here).
Now that Palm has become just one more Microsoft OEM it will die a long, protracted painful death. But its customers like me, won't have to endure the death rattle. We will be able to go out out and buy Palm-enabled or rather ACCESS-enabled devices. And there is a great likelihood there will be many of those from multiple vendors and with multiple options.
Here's why: Let's face it - the PDA market is dying, and the cell phone market is rapidly on the rise. Does Palm/Microsoft really think it can compete with Nokia, Motorola, Sony/Erricson, Samsung and China Inc? How many cell phones do those companies sell? How many does Palm sell, with all the success of Treo? How many of the latter companies are using Microsoft's WinMobile? How many of those companies do/plan to sell embedded Linux phones?
In case you don't know the answers to the above rhetorical questions, it is likely the case that by now Motorola has shipped more embedded Linux phones in China alone than all the Treos out there. These phones will soon be available outside the US. Isn't it likely that these companies will add ACCESS as a feature/add-on to entice millions of Palm customers like me? When that happens, how many TreoNGs do you think are going to be sold? All of you can count on one hand.
So yes, Palm is dead. But fortunately, Palm OS has just been reborn. With it's old master dead it will take off even more rapidly.
Cheap - $1K for an unlimited server license, and the Xserves come with the license and are great performers in their own right and cost-effective.
It has ease of use GUI goodness, with a full open source stack underneath: supports Open/LDAP directory services, single sign-on, kerberros, email, calendering (via WebDav), file services (via Samba for Windows and Linux), CUPS, Apache, DNS, Mailman - the list goes on and on. It plays extremely well in mixed environments and is extremely easy to administer - no steep learning curve.
It's far cheaper than all the other alternatives, including Novell and RH, not to speak of Microsoft. And soon you will be migrating all your users to OS X boxen as well once you see all the advantages.
I have done administration on all the other alternatives and I'm far from an Apple fanboy, so don't start flaming me on that score.
As ususal, Zonk's headlines are totally misleading (when will we get to moderate the editors?) This is not the end of PalmOS. This is just the beginning. It's the end of Palm. Here's why:
When I recently heard that the next generation Treo was rumored to be running Windows Mobile I nearly had a heart attack. I have been using Palm OS since the days of the Palm III, my first Palm device. In the interim I have switched desktop platforms numerous times (Mac, Windows, IceWM, Gnome, KDE, Gnome, Mac OS X). But I have stuck with PalmOS through thick and thin. I love it for two reasons - the perfectly simple UI which exactly matches the nature of the platform and graffiti. Heck, I can write quicker in graffiti then with a pen. (It pissed the hell out of me that Treo's don't come with grafffiti).
Palm, otoh, is a sucky company. Except for the T3, most of their products since the days of the Palm V have sucked wind. I bought Handspring and bought Clie's and only bought another Palm (the T3) because i had no alternative. Plus, Palm has developed a "fuck you" attitude towards its customers. I bought a used T3 off their site about a year ago, only to discover Palm is the ONLY hardware vendor I know that provide NO warrenty (not the usual 90 days) on refurbished products they themselves sell.
This story confirms several things: the next generation Treo will contain Windows. PalmOS sold itself because it had lost its one remaining paying customer - Palm. The results will be fantastic. I haven't bought a Treo, because the platform is feature poor, both in terms of hardware and software. Access will sell this new Linux/Palm OS hybrid to tons of cell-phone manufacturors around the world who will be offering many new and innovative alternatives products to PalmOS lovers like me (and finally reinvigorate the platform by making it stable, secure, multi-processing and network ready with its Linux base). I wouldn't be surprised if Sony came back with with a Access OS based cell phone product.
Meanwhile, only someone brain-dead would buy a Windows Mobile based product from Palm (heck if I was in the market for that platform, there are plenty of vendors with higher quality products and better customer support and service). Which will mean Palm will go into a tailspin and suffer the ignomius death it deserves.
The emperor is dead! Long live the emperor!
I started reading this thread, because after reading the review I still didn't understand why Solaris 10 was such a big deal. The reviewer kept on saying "Solaris 10 has some really cool stuff" but except for a few cryptic sentances that probably make sense to people who already know about Solaris, it didn't really enlighten me any.
/.), I decided to read the thread. Sometimes I do find some nuggets of additional information, and I really want to know more about Solaris. I was shocked to see the attitude of the Solaris users. Basically, they project this "you're idiots, we're gods because we do ENTERPRISE computing" attitude.
So against my better judgement (given the quality of discussions on
Over the years I had the unfortunate need to deal with Sun from time to time, in various business capacities. I was always put off by their arrogance. But to see that many Sun USERS also seem to be Mini McNealys -- wow, that's really something special.
At this point, I don't know much more about Solaris than I did before reading the review and the comments here. But I do know some things about businesses and how they work and think. In re: the guy who made the snide comment re: Linux and Stallman etc. What the writer (or rather the person he was quoting) seems to forget, is that Sun isn't competing against "Linux" in the enterprise. Linux isn't a company. Sun is competing against IBM. IBM has been selling into the "enterprise" market, from when Scott McNealy was in diapers. And IBM has Sun in its gun sights, and it is shooting Linux bullets and not just AIX bullets. I heard an IBM Senior VP state that IBM is spending millions helping VARs to port Sun-based applications to Linux.
Sure CIOs of big companies are conservative and don't change easily. But they also look at Sun's stock price and other financials, and when IBM comes knocking with an alternative solution which won't be all that disruptive, making the switch won't seem like a radical act.
So where does that leave Sun and Solaris? Many of you forget that Sun started by snapping at IBM's heels from the workstation market, which was the low-end of the computer world in its days. Now Gnu/Linux in all its variants is eating Sun's lunch on the low end and moving up the feeding chain. IBM is relentlessly crushing down from the high end. What's left? However superior Solaris technology may be (and I haven't yet gotten a clear picture why it is superior), Sun is certainly facing huge business challenges. It's future is by no means guaranteed. And McNealy's arrogant attitude, which seems to be part of the Sun culture, to the extent of even effecting Sun users, sure doesn't help.
Perhaps. Since I don't personally use Windows or have any need to, I don't know how it works in that environment. I never tried VNC remotely on a Windows machine. But I use it over a WAN to manage remote Debian servers and it works more than fine and at quite a reasonable speed. Of course, I have icewm running on the remote server, not gnome nor kde. KDE sucks on VNC even on a LAN.
MAC OS X official remote desktop uses VNC, and someone I know used it to connect from a machine in New York to a machine in Israel and it also worked great.
The original poster was comparing GNU/Linux to Windows. VNC on GNU/Linux is as useable as remote desktop on Windows. And it has other advantages in that it is multi-platform. You yourself admit you no longer have the remote desktop option on Windows. So its wonderful that its faster than VNC in principle, but since its not supported it is essentially useless. Ergo, VNC is a superior product for your needs as well.
Also, getting back to your specific situation,if you were in a GNU/Linux environment you would "control" your desktop machine by ssh-ing into a shell, an option you don't have in windows. You can also run an x-client on your desktop that communicates with an X-server on your laptop and control your desktop machine that way in a LAN environment. In other words within the brain-dead world of Windows, remote desktop is the only alternative for remote management but it is of limited applicability. Unix-based solutions are the superior alternative for what most people need to do in remote management, whether on a LAN or WAN.
The complaint with your post is your sweeping claim that Windows is the "most versatile" OS somehow implies Windows is "superior" to the alternatives. If by that your statment you mean that Windows supports just about everything that Mac OS X and Gnu/Linux does, then you are, for the most part, correct. But that it a meaningless achievement when it comes to choosing a platform.
You, yourself admit that other OSes are superior in certain areas and so you use them for those areas. The fact is, that in terms of productivity, people should use the superior tool not the most versatile tool. A hammer is the most versatile tool in my toolbox. But only fools use hammers for everything.
Graphic designers almost univerally agree that Mac OS X is the superior platofrom for that kind of work. Sure Photoshop is avalable on Windows, but so what? As for animation work, Disney paid Codeweavers to develop Wine support for Photoshop precisely because they find GNU/Linux superior for their animation needs. Excellence, not versatility, is their main criteria in choosing a platform and they worked to make their platform of choice more versatile.
As for office productivity, personally I find Mac OS X the best platform for me to get my writing work done. And GNU/Linux is my platform of choice for server work and software development.
So, despite Windows admitted versatality, it is inferior for everything I and many other people do. So I and they never use it. And as more peopel become aware of superior alternatives, the number of people making that choice is growing.
As for hardware compatibility, how much hardware upgrades do most people do? When I initially buy a computer, I find that the hardware bundeled with a Macintosh and the tight OS integragration makes Apple hardware a far more cost-effective, choice than Intel-based hardware, particularly when taking into consideration after-purchase maintenance. This is particularly true for laptops - I can't understand why anyone would buy an Intel based laptop when Apple products are superior quality, have more options built in, give better after-purchase support and are less expensive. Once I have a Macintosh, all my peripherals that I buy are either firewire or USB, so with very rare exceptions I have no limits in terms of my hardware choices. And in the cases where there are exceptions (manufacturer X does not provide a Mac OS X driver for their printer) I don't feel at a great loss. There is always an equivalent product. When I buy a server, I hardly ever will subsequently upgrade the hardware, and finding Linux-compatible server hardware is not at all limiting in today's market.
So yes it is true Windows has more hardware support than alternative OSes. But the practical implications are pretty trivial.
Linux lacks "(usably fast) remote desktop"?
/. posters
How about VNC> I use it all the time. And it is totally cross platform, so I can access a MAc or Windows box from Linux and vice versa.
Along with not RTFA, saying "OS Y lack software Z"without doing some basic research is the second most annoying habi of
There are several points that need to be made here:
1. The money Bill Gates is giving away are ill-gotten gains derived from monopolistic practices. if we had a government with balls, they would have confiscated most of Microsoft (and Bill Gates) money. Why should he have the right to decide how to spend stolen money? Maybe society as a whole has different priorities.
2. Bill Gates recently called people who oppose his view of "intellectual property" communists! Well if it makes me a communist to believe that drugs should not be developed for corporate profit then so be it. [N.B. Please: before you start flaming me about how all "innovation" happens because of greed and how without copyright and patent monopilies life would be nasty, brutish and short, pick up a book on the history of science or the history of art or the history of music or the hostoty of philosophy or the history of any human artistic and/or intellectual endeavor].
If Bill Gates would support the restraint of insanely restrictive copyright and patent laws, we could eradicate many diseases around the world without him having to give a $750 million donation. In terms of benefit to the world, it would be far preferable if he used his money and clout to fight ridiculous IP laws, than give this money away on vaccinations. Far more lives could and would be saved. But precisely because he uses his money and clout to oppose such modifications, he is partially responsible for many people dying, and his $750 million gift cannot compensate for that.
3. The article is pure flame bait. But since it was posted as "news" it is our right and duty to respond to its huge BS factor.