Not only will this move by Microsoft force I.T managers to rethink their budgeting plans.... at most companies, like it or not, the attitude is:
"well, just make a few copies of [Microsoft Product] and install it.... then do a software audit and we will license the products before the Business Software Allaince comes and raids us....but don't bother buying the licenses at first - just copy the software and install it..."
Yes, that's illegal, but in reality that's what happens at 9/10 companies...companies aren't organized and they need flexibility in this area...I think if Microsoft tries and forces this draconian licensing system on them, they will end up with customers that are taking a closer look at the alternatives...
I don't think.NET has been released yet, though.
As for the "open source hype", well, I am using open source technology exclusively on our systems at work and it has been an extremely successful venture. To give you some idea, we have up to 5,000 mail accounts running on exim, 3,000 shell accounts, run an industrial strength DNS system, industrial strength, internally developed network management systems running on Zope/Python, and a staunch news server all running off an 8-node MOSIX cluster.
I'm using a modified version of Mosix on a cluster of Linux servers at work. The uptime has been 394 days. When I need to patch a kernel on one of the nodes I simply take down that machine, but thanks to the software the overall computing entity is still in tact - all I need to do is switch root servers for the daemons that are running at that particular time. It's an 8-node cluser of P2/400s
, which handles the company mail, webserver, and ZEO Clustering/Zope Serving. So, I'm sorry to say - there goes your theory about "Linux is not a real OS and can't get high uptimes". Sorry about that. I didn't mean to burst your bubble:-)
Compare the stability of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems and there you have it - death to Windows.
It definitely doesn't help that Microsoft is trying to extend their vendor lock-in tactics to MEDIA files too, now!!
Windows 2000 is Microsoft's best offer. Let's look at it logically:
All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000. Some of the current problems will be fixed in Windows Whistler, but "code bloat" is almost certain to introduce many more reliability problems.
In the performace arena, there is no comparison...Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows 2000, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message:
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]
Can't allocate space for object 'queryHistory' in database 'web' because the 'default' segment is full.
The software development world in particular is becoming more and more open source. In the future, most development tools will be free and open source - already the free software world has grabbed a large portion of the developer mindshare. With Ximian, this will soon include an even larger portion of user mindshare. So let's see how well Windows 2000 does in regards to free software...Oh, wait. The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is available for Unix. Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user.
Ok then, let's move on to support. Although support is available for Windows 2000, you should be prepared to spend as long as an hour on hold, with no guarantee that your problem will be resolved. Because of the closed source nature of Windows 2000, there is no informal, free support available, and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule, not your's. Since Windows 2000 is not updated frequently (besides an SP before it was released), you may wait years for bugs to be fixed. (Or alternatively just shell out another $600 for Windows Whistler).
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. Documentation is expensive, and very little on-line documentation is provided. A license is required for every computer, which means delays and administrative overhead.
I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
We all knew this was going to happen eventually. Microsoft put up their "Linux Myths" page and released the so-called "Halloween Documents". That was the first sign...the rapid growth of the KDE and GNOME (especially Helix (now Ximian)) is another factor. Combine this with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems compared to Windows 2000, and there you have it - death to Windows. Windows 2000 is Microsoft's best offer. Let's look at it logically:
All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000. Some of the current problems will be fixed in Windows Whistler, but "code bloat" is almost certain to introduce many more reliability problems.
In the performace arena, there is no comparison...Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows 2000, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message:
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]
Can't allocate space for object 'queryHistory' in database 'web' because the 'default' segment is full.
The software development world in particular is becoming more and more open source. In the future, most development tools will be free and open source - already the free software world has grabbed a large portion of the developer mindshare. With Ximian, this will soon include an even larger portion of user mindshare. So let's see how well Windows 2000 does in regards to free software...Oh, wait. The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is available for Unix. Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user.
Ok then, let's move on to support. Although support is available for Windows 2000, you should be prepared to spend as long as an hour on hold, with no guarantee that your problem will be resolved. Because of the closed source nature of Windows 2000, there is no informal, free support available, and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule, not your's. Since Windows 2000 is not updated frequently (besides an SP before it was released), you may wait years for bugs to be fixed. (Or alternatively just shell out another $600 for Windows Whistler).
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. Documentation is expensive, and very little on-line documentation is provided. A license is required for every computer, which means delays and administrative overhead.
I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
allows you to embed Python Power statements directly into HTML code.
Perl is quite cool too, but I don't know how good it would be for new programmers (post 1994). I think that the majority of new programmers will choose Python over Perl, but older programmers who are familiar with Perl will probably stay with Perl.
I've used Perl in several of my projects, but more often than not the project consisted more of Python code. Well, a mixture between Perl, Python, Java and C isn't unusual in some large projects, but 70% of the code, you'd find, will probably be Python.
What you have to realize is that I have installed and used several operating systems over the last few years, including several flavours of Linux, Solaris/SPARC, Solaris/Intel, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 and Real/32. I have NEVER had as many problems as I had with Debian the 2 days that I tried it than with any other operating system.
This has now been compounded by the fact that I have had a rude Debian user (you) attempting to belittle me. However, this does not disturb me in the least. I have been a professional programmer for the last 2 years.
I like the Debian philosophy...but....
on
Stormix Bankruptcy
·
· Score: 2
I actually do like the concepts behind Debian, and the fact that it's not as commercial as some of the other releases. Unfortunately, it doesn't measure up to the pure level of usability that other distributions are at. I tried it last week for 2 days and it didn't want to cooperate.
I installed it from a local FTP mirror. The installation went fine and dandy. I would have preferred an ISO image, but I didn't find one on the local FTP mirror. Anyways, that wasn't a major problem and the system was installed within a fairly short time.
Everything went fine until I tried to set up the XFree86 system. Then everything seemed to fall over. I have the i810 chipset at work where I was attempting to install the Debian system...the version of XFree86 they had didn't support it. I knew this from dealing with the same problem under Red Hat. But unfortunately, Intel only provides Red Hat specific patches. somehow on their site.
The next step was to change what the Debian folks call the "/etc/apt/sources.list"...so I changed it to unstable and downloaded all of the updated packages, including XFree86 4.0.2 which has support for i810. Unfortauntely half the the deb packages failed to install, so I went into the archives directory manually and installed all of the packages which were showing failed dependencies. That seemed to work and after running apt-get update-dist a few times more, all the packages were sucessfully installed.
So I tried the new XFree86 system....but all I got was "Waiting for X11 to accept connections..............(screen was soon full of dots). Note that this was several hours later. I reinstalled and tried everything again the next day, but I didn't have any luck.
In retrospect, I have had much better luck with Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE.
Any server software will be slow if there is a blip in the bandwidth.
Also, it could be a glitch in the Perl code...or a number of other things. Or maybe your ISP is just having problems:=)
You know, arguments like this really grate me. If someone walked up to me and started tuning me for using one OS over another, I'd tell them that I had more important things to worry about than what OS I use - like looking after my polo ponies!
I do use Linux because it's currently the best enviroment to host a Zope Server on. On the client side I use both Linux and Windows to get a feel of what the end result of Zope intranet sites I program will look like and perform like in various enviroments and browsers.
But, I am NOT attached to either OS. They are mere tools for me to get my job done so that I can get money to feed my polo ponies and myself.
Perhaps the problem is Perl. Slashcode should be re-written in Pyton:=) Just kidding - seriously though, lighten up, rebelcool !
That Zope includes Perl scripting, Perl will gain more popularity with application developers. I for one could not do without Zope and it essentially was the key factor in my descision to use Python as my main language. I was pondering Java and Perl, too, but Zope convinced me that Python was truly a superior language.
Of course, perhaps the next version of Perl will include the ease-of-use and clean-factor of Python. Perhaps the next version of Perl will allow ultra-fast development time and allow programmers to do what they enjoy most: look after their polo ponies, and not have to spend weeks developing applications that would take 3 days in Python and Zope.
I certainly hope that they fix the lexical scope problem in Perl and also make it less obfusticated in the next release. I have had dealings with legacy Perl code and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Luckily a lot of the system in question has been rewritten in Python and Zope and only some esoteric Perl code remains. (Well, actually, the size of the system in question runs into hundreds of thousands of lines of code, there is a lot of Perl code left in it, but it seems to work fine, and I don't have time to go through it:-).
I used it a while back when I read about it on Slashdot in one of the users' comments. The only thing I don't like about it is that it has a tendency to make 40,000 files in/etc/firestarter/
All I do is delete the stuff in the script in the first few lines to do with the deny-host-all etc etc and use the rest of it - works very well. It's just the initial setup of the firewall that I think most users hate. I know that was the case with me. I don't mind adding rules manually afterwards...anyway, I highly recommend your program...Congrats!
I never claimed that all math was easy, I just stated that it's not the god-like task that a lot of people claim it is. I'm sure there is math that I would find hard, but I wouldn't just give up and say : "Oh well, this math is way beyond me and I'll leave it to the math gods to do..."
Sorry to tell you this, but math is one of the easiest subjects you'll find. Those students who "can't" do it merely have pyschological problems with it , possibly because of bad experiences with it previously.
Math is too hyped up and dubbed as "tough subject" by popular culture. In reality, only a small percentage of students should be struggling with it, because, it is NOT a difficult subject. It's 95% approach to the subject and 5% " mathematical intelligence".
Sorry to dissapoint those of you who worship math as some sort of all-powerful skill, but it is not. Try polo pony pyschology if you want a challenging subject.
For the record, after being told I would never do well in math by my secondary school teachers and early high school teachers, I ended up with a "A" in my math final. Besides the fact that I found it total boring shit, it's actually quite easy and if students who "struggle" with it just wake up and realize how reptitive and easy it is, they would probably do a lot better than sitting there saying: "Oh wow, this is so hard...I guess I'm not a math person."
It's scientifically known that eating meat is not neccessary. Humans do not need meat in their diet, all they need is fruit and vegetables (uncooked).
Think of the sentient beings that died, and you are eating every time you put a steak in your mouth. I heard they eat horses in France. If they tried to eat one of my polo ponies, I would be extremely pissed off.
No, there is no excuse for eating meat. Horses don't need meat, cows don't need meat, monkeys don't need meat - and neither do humans, in fact, no living being needs cooked food at all, for that matter.
You're assuming that client-end technologies need to be developed further. I know this is a bit cliched, but it's true nevertheless: In future, distributed computing will be taken to the next level.
Products like Zope and Modsnake, as well as propreitry solutions like Allaire's ColdFusion and Vignettes' Story Server, will enable applications to be distributed via networked computers. This will allow current technology to run applications of tommorrow without huge infrastructure upgrades.
The good news is that this method of application development saves time, too. So you can spend time on things you consider more important than application development/information systems - like feeding your polo ponies or brushing their manes, etc etc.
Slashdot Mirror
"well, just make a few copies of [Microsoft Product] and install it .... then do a software audit and we will license the products before the Business Software Allaince comes and raids us....but don't bother buying the licenses at first - just copy the software and install it..."
Yes, that's illegal, but in reality that's what happens at 9/10 companies...companies aren't organized and they need flexibility in this area...I think if Microsoft tries and forces this draconian licensing system on them, they will end up with customers that are taking a closer look at the alternatives...I don't think .NET has been released yet, though.
As for the "open source hype", well, I am using open source technology exclusively on our systems at work and it has been an extremely successful venture. To give you some idea, we have up to 5,000 mail accounts running on exim, 3,000 shell accounts, run an industrial strength DNS system, industrial strength, internally developed network management systems running on Zope/Python, and a staunch news server all running off an 8-node MOSIX cluster.
I'm using a modified version of Mosix on a cluster of Linux servers at work. The uptime has been 394 days. When I need to patch a kernel on one of the nodes I simply take down that machine, but thanks to the software the overall computing entity is still in tact - all I need to do is switch root servers for the daemons that are running at that particular time. It's an 8-node cluser of P2/400s , which handles the company mail, webserver, and ZEO Clustering/Zope Serving. So, I'm sorry to say - there goes your theory about "Linux is not a real OS and can't get high uptimes". Sorry about that. I didn't mean to burst your bubble:-)
Compare the stability of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems and there you have it - death to Windows.
It definitely doesn't help that Microsoft is trying to extend their vendor lock-in tactics to MEDIA files too, now!! Windows 2000 is Microsoft's best offer. Let's look at it logically:All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000. Some of the current problems will be fixed in Windows Whistler, but "code bloat" is almost certain to introduce many more reliability problems. In the performace arena, there is no comparison...Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows 2000, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message:
The software development world in particular is becoming more and more open source. In the future, most development tools will be free and open source - already the free software world has grabbed a large portion of the developer mindshare. With Ximian, this will soon include an even larger portion of user mindshare. So let's see how well Windows 2000 does in regards to free software...Oh, wait. The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is available for Unix. Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user. Ok then, let's move on to support. Although support is available for Windows 2000, you should be prepared to spend as long as an hour on hold, with no guarantee that your problem will be resolved. Because of the closed source nature of Windows 2000, there is no informal, free support available, and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule, not your's. Since Windows 2000 is not updated frequently (besides an SP before it was released), you may wait years for bugs to be fixed. (Or alternatively just shell out another $600 for Windows Whistler).
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. Documentation is expensive, and very little on-line documentation is provided. A license is required for every computer, which means delays and administrative overhead.I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
We all knew this was going to happen eventually. Microsoft put up their "Linux Myths" page and released the so-called "Halloween Documents". That was the first sign...the rapid growth of the KDE and GNOME (especially Helix (now Ximian)) is another factor. Combine this with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems compared to Windows 2000, and there you have it - death to Windows. Windows 2000 is Microsoft's best offer. Let's look at it logically:
All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000. Some of the current problems will be fixed in Windows Whistler, but "code bloat" is almost certain to introduce many more reliability problems.In the performace arena, there is no comparison...Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows 2000, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message:
The software development world in particular is becoming more and more open source. In the future, most development tools will be free and open source - already the free software world has grabbed a large portion of the developer mindshare. With Ximian, this will soon include an even larger portion of user mindshare. So let's see how well Windows 2000 does in regards to free software...Oh, wait. The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is available for Unix. Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user.Ok then, let's move on to support. Although support is available for Windows 2000, you should be prepared to spend as long as an hour on hold, with no guarantee that your problem will be resolved. Because of the closed source nature of Windows 2000, there is no informal, free support available, and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule, not your's. Since Windows 2000 is not updated frequently (besides an SP before it was released), you may wait years for bugs to be fixed. (Or alternatively just shell out another $600 for Windows Whistler).
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. Documentation is expensive, and very little on-line documentation is provided. A license is required for every computer, which means delays and administrative overhead.I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
Modsnake
allows you to embed Python Power statements directly into HTML code. Perl is quite cool too, but I don't know how good it would be for new programmers (post 1994). I think that the majority of new programmers will choose Python over Perl, but older programmers who are familiar with Perl will probably stay with Perl.I've used Perl in several of my projects, but more often than not the project consisted more of Python code. Well, a mixture between Perl, Python, Java and C isn't unusual in some large projects, but 70% of the code, you'd find, will probably be Python.
What you have to realize is that I have installed and used several operating systems over the last few years, including several flavours of Linux, Solaris/SPARC, Solaris/Intel, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 and Real/32. I have NEVER had as many problems as I had with Debian the 2 days that I tried it than with any other operating system.
This has now been compounded by the fact that I have had a rude Debian user (you) attempting to belittle me. However, this does not disturb me in the least. I have been a professional programmer for the last 2 years.I actually do like the concepts behind Debian, and the fact that it's not as commercial as some of the other releases. Unfortunately, it doesn't measure up to the pure level of usability that other distributions are at. I tried it last week for 2 days and it didn't want to cooperate.
I installed it from a local FTP mirror. The installation went fine and dandy. I would have preferred an ISO image, but I didn't find one on the local FTP mirror. Anyways, that wasn't a major problem and the system was installed within a fairly short time.Everything went fine until I tried to set up the XFree86 system. Then everything seemed to fall over. I have the i810 chipset at work where I was attempting to install the Debian system...the version of XFree86 they had didn't support it. I knew this from dealing with the same problem under Red Hat. But unfortunately, Intel only provides Red Hat specific patches. somehow on their site.
The next step was to change what the Debian folks call the "/etc/apt/sources.list"...so I changed it to unstable and downloaded all of the updated packages, including XFree86 4.0.2 which has support for i810. Unfortauntely half the the deb packages failed to install, so I went into the archives directory manually and installed all of the packages which were showing failed dependencies. That seemed to work and after running apt-get update-dist a few times more, all the packages were sucessfully installed.So I tried the new XFree86 system....but all I got was "Waiting for X11 to accept connections ..............(screen was soon full of dots). Note that this was several hours later. I reinstalled and tried everything again the next day, but I didn't have any luck.
In retrospect, I have had much better luck with Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE.Any server software will be slow if there is a blip in the bandwidth.
Also, it could be a glitch in the Perl code...or a number of other things. Or maybe your ISP is just having problems:=)You know, arguments like this really grate me. If someone walked up to me and started tuning me for using one OS over another, I'd tell them that I had more important things to worry about than what OS I use - like looking after my polo ponies!
I do use Linux because it's currently the best enviroment to host a Zope Server on. On the client side I use both Linux and Windows to get a feel of what the end result of Zope intranet sites I program will look like and perform like in various enviroments and browsers.But, I am NOT attached to either OS. They are mere tools for me to get my job done so that I can get money to feed my polo ponies and myself.
Perhaps the problem is Perl. Slashcode should be re-written in PytonOf course, perhaps the next version of Perl will include the ease-of-use and clean-factor of Python. Perhaps the next version of Perl will allow ultra-fast development time and allow programmers to do what they enjoy most: look after their polo ponies, and not have to spend weeks developing applications that would take 3 days in Python and Zope.
I certainly hope that they fix the lexical scope problem in Perl and also make it less obfusticated in the next release. I have had dealings with legacy Perl code and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Luckily a lot of the system in question has been rewritten in Python and Zope and only some esoteric Perl code remains. (Well, actually, the size of the system in question runs into hundreds of thousands of lines of code, there is a lot of Perl code left in it, but it seems to work fine, and I don't have time to go through it:-).I used it a while back when I read about it on Slashdot in one of the users' comments. The only thing I don't like about it is that it has a tendency to make 40,000 files in /etc/firestarter/
All I do is delete the stuff in the script in the first few lines to do with the deny-host-all etc etc and use the rest of it - works very well. It's just the initial setup of the firewall that I think most users hate. I know that was the case with me. I don't mind adding rules manually afterwards...anyway, I highly recommend your program...Congrats!I never claimed that all math was easy, I just stated that it's not the god-like task that a lot of people claim it is. I'm sure there is math that I would find hard, but I wouldn't just give up and say : "Oh well, this math is way beyond me and I'll leave it to the math gods to do ..."
Sorry to tell you this, but math is one of the easiest subjects you'll find. Those students who "can't" do it merely have pyschological problems with it , possibly because of bad experiences with it previously.
Math is too hyped up and dubbed as "tough subject" by popular culture. In reality, only a small percentage of students should be struggling with it, because, it is NOT a difficult subject. It's 95% approach to the subject and 5% " mathematical intelligence".Sorry to dissapoint those of you who worship math as some sort of all-powerful skill, but it is not. Try polo pony pyschology if you want a challenging subject.
For the record, after being told I would never do well in math by my secondary school teachers and early high school teachers, I ended up with a "A" in my math final. Besides the fact that I found it total boring shit, it's actually quite easy and if students who "struggle" with it just wake up and realize how reptitive and easy it is, they would probably do a lot better than sitting there saying: "Oh wow, this is so hard...I guess I'm not a math person."It's scientifically known that eating meat is not neccessary. Humans do not need meat in their diet, all they need is fruit and vegetables (uncooked).
Think of the sentient beings that died, and you are eating every time you put a steak in your mouth. I heard they eat horses in France. If they tried to eat one of my polo ponies, I would be extremely pissed off.No, there is no excuse for eating meat. Horses don't need meat, cows don't need meat, monkeys don't need meat - and neither do humans, in fact, no living being needs cooked food at all, for that matter.
Products like Zope and Modsnake, as well as propreitry solutions like Allaire's ColdFusion and Vignettes' Story Server, will enable applications to be distributed via networked computers. This will allow current technology to run applications of tommorrow without huge infrastructure upgrades.
The good news is that this method of application development saves time, too. So you can spend time on things you consider more important than application development/information systems - like feeding your polo ponies or brushing their manes, etc etc.Just my 2c