Gentoo is great if you have a week to wait for your system to compile. Hell, by the time an "emerge gnome" is done they've gotten to the next release.:)
... that setting up infrastructure, paying staff, purchasing bandwith and then giving your product away for free wasn't a viable business model. Still sucks tho.
1. Spend money 2. Give product away 3. profit??? I don't think so.
Please, huge amount of R&D? Bell Labs and UCB deserve most of the credit for whatever R&D is in Linux.
True enough, but a lot of people put a lot of time into Linux. Far more than number of people the IBM would want to employ to work on a similar project I imagine.
IBM has spent untold billions on R&D. They don't need to "steal" it from Linux.
I never said they stole it. They found a perfectly legitimate way to incorporate it into their corporate portfolio. Just because they have spent billions on R&D doesn't imply that they would spend a single dollar on something that was freely available.
I'm just pointing out that basically Microsoft learned everything they know by watching what IBM has done in the past. It's great if the Linux/Open Source/GNU/etc communities get any benefit from IBM's actions, but I won't believe for a second that IBM has an altruistic intentions.
I find this kind of logic amusing -- "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". IBM isn't on "our" side. IBM is on IBM's side. Nobody else.
Earlier posts have pointed out how they only partner with other companies so they don't have to release any kernel code that they don't wish to.
IBM saw an opportunity to grab a huge amount of R&D knowledge for essentially free and went for it. They don't give a rats ass about Linux or Open Souce in any way other than how it effects their bottom line.
IF there ever comes a time when a new kernel is developed that contains features that IBM has patented, I really doubt that they will just let it slide. Especially if they start losing revenue because of it.
I've been mentioning things like that in a bunch of Sun related threads lately because I just don't understand the animosity towards Solaris. It's fast, stable, well documented and Sun provides great support (but you do pay for it). The only reasons that I read are because it't not free or open source. If it works, who cares? Business decisions shouldn't be made based on ideaology, but rather on what can get the job done.
I have nothing against Linux at all, and have it on several x86 systems. It's great to play with and decent for engineering workstations. But none of them can touch Solaris on Sparc for overall stability IMHO. (Solaris x86 is a PITA with drivers when you're dealing with very new or proprietary hardware tho.)
You make some very good points, and I agree with most of them. But I don't think that hedging bets is an unethical thing to do in any business environment.
Also, your description of Sun and McNealy as willing to "take a stand and fight for what he thought was right" is probably what garnered Sun respect in those days from the very people who are slamming them now.
IMO, the "geeks" used to be able to see Sun as the coolest kid on the block. Fairly open about their stuff, and not as entrenched at IBM or HP. Then Linux came along, and all the zealots flocked to it and started moving away from any proprietary unix. Not because Solaris was bad (it isn't), but because they could do the job with Linux and make a political statement at the same time. (mind you, none of this would have been possible if the x86 architecture hadn't gotten so much faster over the past few years)
So once Linux hit it big, Sun had a major problem. There was no way for them to regain their "coolness" factor without going open source, but I believe that would basically mean that they couldn't be profitable either. IBM could probably survive on their Service and Support revenue as well as their other sources of revenue if they open-sourced AIX. I don't think that Sun could. Even if they take a stand now, there is no community willing to stand behind them any more.
Finally, you have the typical Slashdot slant on stuff where if Sun bought anything from SCO then Sun is evil by association. Sun probably wanted to free themselves from SCO as much as possible and made the move for themselves. If it hurts their competition (whoever it is) then that is just an added benefit for them. They are a business after all.
It's a shame to see them flailing like they are. I hope they survive.
Doesn't seem like that to me. I think it is a decent marketing move by a company that has an excellent track record with their OS on their hardware. They spent the money up front to make sure that they were clear, and they should advertise it now.
If there was a similar issue where Linux was clear and started advertising that fact, everybody on/. would think that it was brilliant.
I'll never understand the Sun bashing that goes on here. Microsoft, yeah, they suck. HP blows too IMHO. I've been an admin working with Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and even Unixware over the past 10 years. Solaris on Sparc owns them all IMHO for ease of setup and maintaince (but if you gotta run on x86 stuff, Solaris has a long way to go).
Sometimes, the problem with a free OS is that you get what you paid for. People who are interested in reliability and uptime of critical systems should still want a solution from a major *nix vendor with centralized, competent support. Solaris and AIX seem to be the only two choices for that, and there is still the possibility that IBM could lose.
Re:Moderators beware casual trolling!
on
Working with ADHD?
·
· Score: 1
yah, and let's also assume that he isn't just somebody who isn't disciplied enough to work for a living. Let's further assume that he was probably alternately neglected and abused, and has no control over his own life.
"I can't cope, I need drugs" will always sound like a junkie cop-out to me, even if it is the "medical establisment" rather than my corner pusher who is cashing in.
I don't want to trivalize this person's issues, but where's MY out when I don't feel like coping anymore? What syndrome can I suddenly have?
You must have a really crappy system then, because my WinXP workstation goes from power-on to logon in about 20 seconds total. That's a far cry from the 3 minute bootups of yesteryear.
Yeah, but how long until it actually logs in? That's a typical MS gimmick. They only measure from power on to logon prompt appearing.
It was incredibly obvious on NT 4.0 workstations. The logon box pops up, but the TCP/IP stack isn't even up yet. You get to type your login info 45 seconds after power on, but you still can't use the machine for another 90. Longer if you have to wait for all it's system tray stuff to load (chat clients, anti-virus, etc).
That's just a dream on your part. If that was true, actual experience would be worth something instead of a few extra letters after your name.
Talk to somebody in science with 10+ years of experience and a B.S. who is now working for a zero experience post-doctoral moron. Anybody who works in a lab at a biotech firm should do.
...for both the college and the professors. As simple as that.
The more kids that they keep enrolled, the more money the college collects. At $25k+ a year per student, that shouldn't be a mysterey.
Another factor is how the professor is perceived. If kids don't pass, their parents get irate and call the Dean of whatever school they are enrolled in and harass them. Then the only thing that can save the prof is how much grant money they can pull in to offset the annoyance.
I've seen excellent professors denied tenure because they spent too much time on lectures and with students. If they couldn't crank out the papers and bring in the money, they weren't wanted. I've also witnessed the worst professor I ever had awarded tenure based on 36 papers in 3 years and a $500k grant. Never mind that nobody understood anything he tried to teach. Since everybody got passing grades, he must be doing a good job, right?
The whole system is a farce anyway. Grades have been relegated to a pointless anachronism. People have come to believe that they are *entitled* to a college degree, and most universities can use the money.
is the reasoning that Sony is trying to force you into spending as much time online as possible. Is it just me, or does that not fit in with a flat-rate $12.95/month subscription?
If they were trying to keep you online forever, charging on a per-hour or per-login basis would make them way more money. As it is, it doesn't cost the "addicts" any more to play 70 hours a week than it costs others to play 10. Charging $0.25/hour for connect time is probably a better model.
Mind you, I'm not saying that Sony/EQ doesn't suck in many ways. I've played EQ, gotten involved in the time-sink crap, and since quit. They keep trying to make something special out of the basic "kill monster, collect better stuff, kill more powerful monster" progression, and it just gets boring as hell after a while.
Or all the genetically modified corn that grows in the fields today. Or all the genetically modified meat and vegtables that you eat every day from (I'm sure) your neighborhood organic food store.
Chances are good that even your dog has been genetically modified.
It's called selective breeding, and has been around for quite a while. However, with today's technology it is much less of a crap-shoot than it used to be. You can isolate and change a gene rather than stirring up a whole shitload of them and seeing what happens. You stand a much better chance of getting a faster dog with genetic engineering, rather than a fast, stupid, blind dog as a result of too much inbreeding. Or sweeter tasting corn that has a short growing season vs needing a season too long to be viable.
The same net result can be had either way, just the time involved and the technique differs.
That is the biggest problem I have with users and Trash/Recycle Bins. They never empty them. The minute I get the call "I'm out of disk space" I ask if they have emptied the Recycle Bin. 99/100 times, they say "oops" and hang up.
MS Recycle bin has a limit on size, but how friggin hard could it be to set up something which natively (no extra cron jobs to stuff into each one of 150 machines, please) deletes anything that has been in the trash for more than 2 weeks?
You know, I'm probably going to hell for this, but I agree.
What really needs to happen in a case like this is a judge needs to laugh it right out of court, pausing only to fine the plantiff $10M for wasting peoples time.
Isn't this also called chording or something? I seem to remember that the guy who also invented the mouse (Engelbark?) had an input device like this. It was part of the work that he was doing at SRI.
Does that sound familiar to anybody, or am I on crack?
Gentoo is great if you have a week to wait for your system to compile. Hell, by the time an "emerge gnome" is done they've gotten to the next release. :)
... that setting up infrastructure, paying staff, purchasing bandwith and then giving your product away for free wasn't a viable business model. Still sucks tho.
1. Spend money
2. Give product away
3. profit??? I don't think so.
yep. Only took us a couple of hundred years to come full circle.
As soon as I find a new continent, I'm outta here.
Apparently, they can't even if they wanted to. There was a comment in the previous thread on HL2/ATI.
& ci d=6930186
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=78019
SPEWS exists so that the people who are violently against spam can pass the burden of fighting it onto the innocents who aren't as bothered by it.
amazingly succinct. If I had mod points, they'd be yours.
nobody gives a shit there either.
Please, huge amount of R&D? Bell Labs and UCB deserve most of the credit for whatever R&D is in Linux.
True enough, but a lot of people put a lot of time into Linux. Far more than number of people the IBM would want to employ to work on a similar project I imagine.
IBM has spent untold billions on R&D. They don't need to "steal" it from Linux.
I never said they stole it. They found a perfectly legitimate way to incorporate it into their corporate portfolio. Just because they have spent billions on R&D doesn't imply that they would spend a single dollar on something that was freely available.
I'm just pointing out that basically Microsoft learned everything they know by watching what IBM has done in the past. It's great if the Linux/Open Source/GNU/etc communities get any benefit from IBM's actions, but I won't believe for a second that IBM has an altruistic intentions.
I find this kind of logic amusing -- "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". IBM isn't on "our" side. IBM is on IBM's side. Nobody else.
Earlier posts have pointed out how they only partner with other companies so they don't have to release any kernel code that they don't wish to.
IBM saw an opportunity to grab a huge amount of R&D knowledge for essentially free and went for it. They don't give a rats ass about Linux or Open Souce in any way other than how it effects their bottom line.
IF there ever comes a time when a new kernel is developed that contains features that IBM has patented, I really doubt that they will just let it slide. Especially if they start losing revenue because of it.
It still sounds like a bargain to me when Windows is $150+ per copy.
Just my $20 (apparently).
I've been mentioning things like that in a bunch of Sun related threads lately because I just don't understand the animosity towards Solaris. It's fast, stable, well documented and Sun provides great support (but you do pay for it). The only reasons that I read are because it't not free or open source. If it works, who cares? Business decisions shouldn't be made based on ideaology, but rather on what can get the job done.
I have nothing against Linux at all, and have it on several x86 systems. It's great to play with and decent for engineering workstations. But none of them can touch Solaris on Sparc for overall stability IMHO. (Solaris x86 is a PITA with drivers when you're dealing with very new or proprietary hardware tho.)
You make some very good points, and I agree with most of them. But I don't think that hedging bets is an unethical thing to do in any business environment.
Also, your description of Sun and McNealy as willing to "take a stand and fight for what he thought was right" is probably what garnered Sun respect in those days from the very people who are slamming them now.
IMO, the "geeks" used to be able to see Sun as the coolest kid on the block. Fairly open about their stuff, and not as entrenched at IBM or HP. Then Linux came along, and all the zealots flocked to it and started moving away from any proprietary unix. Not because Solaris was bad (it isn't), but because they could do the job with Linux and make a political statement at the same time. (mind you, none of this would have been possible if the x86 architecture hadn't gotten so much faster over the past few years)
So once Linux hit it big, Sun had a major problem. There was no way for them to regain their "coolness" factor without going open source, but I believe that would basically mean that they couldn't be profitable either. IBM could probably survive on their Service and Support revenue as well as their other sources of revenue if they open-sourced AIX. I don't think that Sun could. Even if they take a stand now, there is no community willing to stand behind them any more.
Finally, you have the typical Slashdot slant on stuff where if Sun bought anything from SCO then Sun is evil by association. Sun probably wanted to free themselves from SCO as much as possible and made the move for themselves. If it hurts their competition (whoever it is) then that is just an added benefit for them. They are a business after all.
It's a shame to see them flailing like they are. I hope they survive.
Doesn't seem like that to me. I think it is a decent marketing move by a company that has an excellent track record with their OS on their hardware. They spent the money up front to make sure that they were clear, and they should advertise it now.
/. would think that it was brilliant.
If there was a similar issue where Linux was clear and started advertising that fact, everybody on
I'll never understand the Sun bashing that goes on here. Microsoft, yeah, they suck. HP blows too IMHO. I've been an admin working with Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and even Unixware over the past 10 years. Solaris on Sparc owns them all IMHO for ease of setup and maintaince (but if you gotta run on x86 stuff, Solaris has a long way to go).
Sometimes, the problem with a free OS is that you get what you paid for. People who are interested in reliability and uptime of critical systems should still want a solution from a major *nix vendor with centralized, competent support. Solaris and AIX seem to be the only two choices for that, and there is still the possibility that IBM could lose.
yah, and let's also assume that he isn't just somebody who isn't disciplied enough to work for a living. Let's further assume that he was probably alternately neglected and abused, and has no control over his own life.
"I can't cope, I need drugs" will always sound like a junkie cop-out to me, even if it is the "medical establisment" rather than my corner pusher who is cashing in.
I don't want to trivalize this person's issues, but where's MY out when I don't feel like coping anymore? What syndrome can I suddenly have?
You must have a really crappy system then, because my WinXP workstation goes from power-on to logon in about 20 seconds total. That's a far cry from the 3 minute bootups of yesteryear.
Yeah, but how long until it actually logs in? That's a typical MS gimmick. They only measure from power on to logon prompt appearing.
It was incredibly obvious on NT 4.0 workstations. The logon box pops up, but the TCP/IP stack isn't even up yet. You get to type your login info 45 seconds after power on, but you still can't use the machine for another 90. Longer if you have to wait for all it's system tray stuff to load (chat clients, anti-virus, etc).
That's just a dream on your part. If that was true, actual experience would be worth something instead of a few extra letters after your name.
Talk to somebody in science with 10+ years of experience and a B.S. who is now working for a zero experience post-doctoral moron. Anybody who works in a lab at a biotech firm should do.
...for both the college and the professors. As simple as that.
The more kids that they keep enrolled, the more money the college collects. At $25k+ a year per student, that shouldn't be a mysterey.
Another factor is how the professor is perceived. If kids don't pass, their parents get irate and call the Dean of whatever school they are enrolled in and harass them. Then the only thing that can save the prof is how much grant money they can pull in to offset the annoyance.
I've seen excellent professors denied tenure because they spent too much time on lectures and with students. If they couldn't crank out the papers and bring in the money, they weren't wanted. I've also witnessed the worst professor I ever had awarded tenure based on 36 papers in 3 years and a $500k grant. Never mind that nobody understood anything he tried to teach. Since everybody got passing grades, he must be doing a good job, right?
The whole system is a farce anyway. Grades have been relegated to a pointless anachronism. People have come to believe that they are *entitled* to a college degree, and most universities can use the money.
is the reasoning that Sony is trying to force you into spending as much time online as possible. Is it just me, or does that not fit in with a flat-rate $12.95/month subscription?
If they were trying to keep you online forever, charging on a per-hour or per-login basis would make them way more money. As it is, it doesn't cost the "addicts" any more to play 70 hours a week than it costs others to play 10. Charging $0.25/hour for connect time is probably a better model.
Mind you, I'm not saying that Sony/EQ doesn't suck in many ways. I've played EQ, gotten involved in the time-sink crap, and since quit. They keep trying to make something special out of the basic "kill monster, collect better stuff, kill more powerful monster" progression, and it just gets boring as hell after a while.
Or all the genetically modified corn that grows in the fields today. Or all the genetically modified meat and vegtables that you eat every day from (I'm sure) your neighborhood organic food store.
Chances are good that even your dog has been genetically modified.
It's called selective breeding, and has been around for quite a while. However, with today's technology it is much less of a crap-shoot than it used to be. You can isolate and change a gene rather than stirring up a whole shitload of them and seeing what happens. You stand a much better chance of getting a faster dog with genetic engineering, rather than a fast, stupid, blind dog as a result of too much inbreeding. Or sweeter tasting corn that has a short growing season vs needing a season too long to be viable.
The same net result can be had either way, just the time involved and the technique differs.
... should have been:
"Sure, just show is the license for even one copy that you're running."
I think the company would be Tatung, and I have also worked on Sparc based boxes built by Axil.
"How could the makers of such a thing sleep at night?"
On a big pile of money, undoubtedly.
That is the biggest problem I have with users and Trash/Recycle Bins. They never empty them. The minute I get the call "I'm out of disk space" I ask if they have emptied the Recycle Bin. 99/100 times, they say "oops" and hang up.
MS Recycle bin has a limit on size, but how friggin hard could it be to set up something which natively (no extra cron jobs to stuff into each one of 150 machines, please) deletes anything that has been in the trash for more than 2 weeks?
Now I'll have Linux developers with a full 20GB drive, 19GB of which is the Recycle Bin.
You know, I'm probably going to hell for this, but I agree.
What really needs to happen in a case like this is a judge needs to laugh it right out of court, pausing only to fine the plantiff $10M for wasting peoples time.
Isn't this also called chording or something? I seem to remember that the guy who also invented the mouse (Engelbark?) had an input device like this. It was part of the work that he was doing at SRI.
Does that sound familiar to anybody, or am I on crack?