No, IPO's like this make the entire stock market look bad. There isn't a doubt in my mind that this thing will never get off the ground. They obviously don't have anyone on their team who is even remotely equipped to professionally deal with an actual IPO. They're just scammers who're trying to make a quick buck off of a technological fad. No serious investor would ever take them seriously, and anyone who would isn't of any use to the Linux market anyway.
You're right, of course. It's not like people *just* started inventing things. I guess I'm just thinking about it in the sense that this is really an information boom, unlike any we've seen in awhile. I mean, yeah, if you were around when the radio or television became a viable media you'd have gone through it before. The way I see it, the internet is really just a precursor to what will eventually be a pervasive, and mostly wireless, network all across the globe - that's pretty crazy if you think of the implications it can have.
If some moronic day-trader is willing to throw their money at any IPO with the word Linux in it, then don't they sort of deserve what they get? I mean, if you aren't at least going to research the companies your investing in, you shouldn't be investing in the first place. The market is not a place for kids to play in, and it's easy to get burned if you aren't careful.
Having said that, I think that the SEC should stop this from happening, just because these people clearly aren't serious, or capable of putting out any quality product/service. It would be a waste of a symbol to add them to any stock exchange.
This is just my humble opinion, but isn't this what all those crazy pundits have been saying for so long? You know - the stuff we usually just ignore and chock up with all the William Gibson cyber-blah? The world is seriously starting to move into what we used to call the "future". Stuff like VR and high-speed wireless connectivity are starting to become feasible (and almost affordable) technologies. Hey, isn't it cool to be the forefront of something? You can look back later and say, "Hey - I was there when it all started."
I seriously doubt that this will happen *any* time soon, if it ever does. RedHat doesn't have that much market clout yet. If they tried to charge licensing fees to OEMs wanting to be "Designed for RedHat" they would quickly find many of these manufacturers to be "Debian Compliant" or labelled as "100% Mandrake Compatible".
However, down the road, if RedHat continues to grow as the #1 commercial Linux vendor (at least, here in the US) they may be able to pull that sort of thing off. I make no claims as to whether this would be a good thing for them or not.
I agree with you totally, but from a purely business point-of-view, that solution is unacceptable. Call it a Dilbertism of management, but it's just the way it is in most companies.
A *very* large company like IBM or Dell could do that, and possibly be very sucessful at it. A smaller company might just use RedHat's software and provide their own support system. It's not really in any hardware vendors best interests to do the former, however. A hardware-based company does itself a disservice by spreading it's resources thin dealing with software issues. Linux (and actually all OSS) support is sticky business for companies. They don't really know what to think of it at this point. Is it reliable? They aren't sure, because it hasn't really been tested to any extent. And they're worried about having to deal with the support themselves because naysayers keep telling them that it's impossible to do that with the software continually changing at irregular intervals. Well, we know that a lot of this is fud, but the companies are wary even still. So, what's the solution? Pay another company (like RedHat) to deal with it. Let them be the Linux *experts*.
No large company I know would trust an "in house expert" to know everything about every possible situation. Forget Linux, this is true of any system. These companies want to know that there is someone on the other end of the phone that can give them an answer when their inhouse expert doesn't have one.
RedHat is seen as the name brand in Linux distros of the US. Companies like Dell and Compaq love brand names because, with them, comes customer recognition. When these larger companies start making deals with RedHat to bundle Linux with their server/desktop/workstation, RedHat will start turning a profit. Of course, this is already happening, but RHAT is still at a loss because Linux has yet to receive the mass recognition as a viable product yet. It's getting there, but it still has a little ways to go.
RedHat may be at a loss right now, but I think it's obvious that pretty soon they're going to be making money hand over fist. The Linux market is booming and companies like Dell and IBM are just itching to make deals with Linux companies. RedHat in particular it seems. I'll wager that we're going to see even more items that are labelled as "RedHat Linux Compatible" or "Works with RedHat Linux" as this trend continues. It's not a bad thing, per se, but RedHat is certainly going to have a lot of clout, as they come into more money to throw at Linux application/kernel developers.
I will concede, that is an interesting point, and I had not thought of it before. The question that remains is: Would MS ever do something like that? Well, I suppose if they had to, yes. Of course, for something like that to happen, Linux (or another system) would have to present such a threat to MS's dominance, that this sort of tactic would be the only way to compete. To become such a competitor, this system would have to be much better for the average user than Linux is today. We're making inroads, but this is still a ways off.
The OpenBSD operating system is, in my opinion as a sysadmin, *very* secure. That's precisely why I picked it. But as a good sysadmin, I have to be prepared for the fact that my system will never be perfect. It's a well-accepted fact, that a system is only as secure as the way it is setup, and I'm humble enough to admit that I may have made mistakes. I'm also smart enough to realize that the OpenBSD group could have too. Of course, I have faith that when these mistakes are realized, they will be promptly fixed, but that doesn't make me sleep easy at night:)
The truth is that you're partially right - my OpenBSD machine probably can't be cracked. At least, not by the mundane efforts made by your average script kiddie. Still, there's always someone out there who is smarter, and it's my job to be ready for them.
A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines? Well OS/2 may not have the installed base that Win95 does, but it's far from being unusable. It's *very* usable. So is MacOS (although, admittedly that wouldn't do x86 manufacturers much good). Moreover, by switching to something else entirely, rather than submitting to MS's dominance, these manufacturers could have proved to be the catalyst for pushing the X operating system (say, BeOS) into the limelight. Smaller companies might not be able to get away with that sort of thing, but a larger distributer with an established customer base has the clout to do it. After all - how did Microsoft get to where they are in the first place?
I've got OpenBSD running on a firewall in my office here and I don't kid myself - ANY machine can be cracked. The only secure machines are those that aren't connected, have no usuable input mechanisms, and are in fact turned off. Even still, I can "crack" that sort of machine by picking it up and dropping it on a cement floor.
Okay, I just got a little out of hand there, but the point is this - The hackers/crackers of India are certainly capable of exploiting the holes in the security systems around them, just like they are over here. Just because they're behind a firewall doesn't make them safe. Safer maybe, but safe? Not even close.
Well the e-currency was really just an example of information that didn't have a physical aspect to it. But, to your point, maybe the country that stole it couldn't spend the money. Maybe they could, depending on how the situation went. Conversely, the country they stole it from certainly couldn't spend it either.
Actually, I was thinking more about individuals when I wrote the part about e-currency. With nations it becomes more a matter of communications. If I control your information, I control your communications, and that's something that another country could definitely use as a weapon.
Well sometimes information is only good for physical purposes, and sometimes it's useful in and of itself.
Take money for example - the world is coming closer and closer to a totally electronic monetary system. (I'm not saying it's around the corner, but it's an inevitability). It's not backed by gold or silver anymore, so it doesn't have a physical manifestation.
The way the universe of technology is expanding, I do not find it hard to believe that information is going to be vital to government's and companies. Not just the information, but also the flow of information - Cutting off access to things like server makes communication much more difficult, and that, in turn, makes physical concepts like missiles and cruisers, much harder to utilize effectively.
This is the future, right here. Be prepared to see more and more electronic battlefields, as information becomes more important than weapons and even people. I think this is a sign, more than anything else, of the need for things like strong crypto to be open source and legal, so that our security can never be compromised by backdoors and inside knowledge.
I wouldn't use it either, but -
on
WinLinux 2000
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· Score: 1
They could use an existing FAT partition if they used a filesystem like UMSDOS. They wouldn't be the first to do that sort of thing. It's sort of like a Ext2 on top of FAT. Works pretty well, although it is slower.
I got a slackware CD in 1996 that used the UMSDOS filesystem so that users wouldn't have to screw around with fips or fdisk or any of the other garbage that newbies run crying away from. In my eyes, *that* was the single most important factor in my movement to an almost 100% linux world. If I'd had to remove my Win95 system to install Linux, I would've said "Eh, not worth it", but I was able to do it without changing anything, diskwise, so I went ahead.
I think that any product that makes transition from Windows-to-Linux easier on new users is immeasurably useful. At least, until more manufacturers start preloading Linux.
Linux and other OpenSource OSes have an amazingly powerful advantage that MS can't possibly touch - they're free. Sure, MS can pull an IE and give it's OS away for free, but they won't make any money that way. Then what? Office2000 get's given away too? Well MS needs to get profits from somewhere, so they can't possibly compete with Open Source software forever.
As for specs, well you do have a point. However, I think that companies are starting to accept the fact that people want to use their equipment with more than just one OS. People like John Carmack are helping enormously.
Well if what you are describing really happened (and I'm not saying it didn't but well, you know how it is with ACs) then that's anticompetitive, but I was under the impression that this trial was about MS's role in the desktop/browser market.
Well I understand what the point is, but I do not agree with the premise of the argument. Microsoft clearly does not / did not have a monopoly. There has always been other choices out there, but the point is that computer manufacturers have always been so enamored with Microsoft's software that they've chosen to ignore the competition. I fail to see how anyone can accuse a company of being anticompetitive in an industty where there's a concept like Open Source.
But I kind of think that MS is being unfairly treated here. Okay, not unfairly, since anything anyone does to them is pretty much A-OK with me, but I still don't believe for a second that Microsoft has a monopoly.
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and OS/2 (well, not anymore) are all x86 operating systems that can compete with MS for the Intel desktop. The fact is that MS has an ENORMOUS market share, but just because it's an established powerbase, doesn't mean it's anticompetitive, does it?
There's nothing that MS produces that OEMs and other companies can't get somewhere else - sometimes MS has better leverage to get that software to the user, but I think the Open Source community has shown that Microsoft is in no place to make any demands.
I think TBL's comment about a man's worth not being necessarily tied to his financial success is particularly significant to this forum. The Open Source community is a place where people are judged, not by how much they are worth, but by how much they contribute. TBL has contributed more to the world of technology than almost anyone out there, and I for one feel that his worth is measureless. The same goes for people like Linus Torvalds, who's worth can only be measured in the usefulness of his contributions - and I don't need to tell anyone on/. how wonderful those are.
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Damn! I've been saying "Leh-en-ooks-eh" all this time. Lying fsck'ing salesman!!
No, IPO's like this make the entire stock market look bad. There isn't a doubt in my mind that this thing will never get off the ground. They obviously don't have anyone on their team who is even remotely equipped to professionally deal with an actual IPO. They're just scammers who're trying to make a quick buck off of a technological fad. No serious investor would ever take them seriously, and anyone who would isn't of any use to the Linux market anyway.
You're right, of course. It's not like people *just* started inventing things. I guess I'm just thinking about it in the sense that this is really an information boom, unlike any we've seen in awhile. I mean, yeah, if you were around when the radio or television became a viable media you'd have gone through it before. The way I see it, the internet is really just a precursor to what will eventually be a pervasive, and mostly wireless, network all across the globe - that's pretty crazy if you think of the implications it can have.
Having said that, I think that the SEC should stop this from happening, just because these people clearly aren't serious, or capable of putting out any quality product/service. It would be a waste of a symbol to add them to any stock exchange.
This is just my humble opinion, but isn't this what all those crazy pundits have been saying for so long? You know - the stuff we usually just ignore and chock up with all the William Gibson cyber-blah? The world is seriously starting to move into what we used to call the "future". Stuff like VR and high-speed wireless connectivity are starting to become feasible (and almost affordable) technologies. Hey, isn't it cool to be the forefront of something? You can look back later and say, "Hey - I was there when it all started."
However, down the road, if RedHat continues to grow as the #1 commercial Linux vendor (at least, here in the US) they may be able to pull that sort of thing off. I make no claims as to whether this would be a good thing for them or not.
I agree with you totally, but from a purely business point-of-view, that solution is unacceptable. Call it a Dilbertism of management, but it's just the way it is in most companies.
A *very* large company like IBM or Dell could do that, and possibly be very sucessful at it. A smaller company might just use RedHat's software and provide their own support system. It's not really in any hardware vendors best interests to do the former, however. A hardware-based company does itself a disservice by spreading it's resources thin dealing with software issues. Linux (and actually all OSS) support is sticky business for companies. They don't really know what to think of it at this point. Is it reliable? They aren't sure, because it hasn't really been tested to any extent. And they're worried about having to deal with the support themselves because naysayers keep telling them that it's impossible to do that with the software continually changing at irregular intervals. Well, we know that a lot of this is fud, but the companies are wary even still. So, what's the solution? Pay another company (like RedHat) to deal with it. Let them be the Linux *experts*.
No large company I know would trust an "in house expert" to know everything about every possible situation. Forget Linux, this is true of any system. These companies want to know that there is someone on the other end of the phone that can give them an answer when their inhouse expert doesn't have one.
RedHat is seen as the name brand in Linux distros of the US. Companies like Dell and Compaq love brand names because, with them, comes customer recognition. When these larger companies start making deals with RedHat to bundle Linux with their server/desktop/workstation, RedHat will start turning a profit. Of course, this is already happening, but RHAT is still at a loss because Linux has yet to receive the mass recognition as a viable product yet. It's getting there, but it still has a little ways to go.
RedHat may be at a loss right now, but I think it's obvious that pretty soon they're going to be making money hand over fist. The Linux market is booming and companies like Dell and IBM are just itching to make deals with Linux companies. RedHat in particular it seems. I'll wager that we're going to see even more items that are labelled as "RedHat Linux Compatible" or "Works with RedHat Linux" as this trend continues. It's not a bad thing, per se, but RedHat is certainly going to have a lot of clout, as they come into more money to throw at Linux application/kernel developers.
I will concede, that is an interesting point, and I had not thought of it before. The question that remains is: Would MS ever do something like that? Well, I suppose if they had to, yes. Of course, for something like that to happen, Linux (or another system) would have to present such a threat to MS's dominance, that this sort of tactic would be the only way to compete. To become such a competitor, this system would have to be much better for the average user than Linux is today. We're making inroads, but this is still a ways off.
The truth is that you're partially right - my OpenBSD machine probably can't be cracked. At least, not by the mundane efforts made by your average script kiddie. Still, there's always someone out there who is smarter, and it's my job to be ready for them.
A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines? Well OS/2 may not have the installed base that Win95 does, but it's far from being unusable. It's *very* usable. So is MacOS (although, admittedly that wouldn't do x86 manufacturers much good). Moreover, by switching to something else entirely, rather than submitting to MS's dominance, these manufacturers could have proved to be the catalyst for pushing the X operating system (say, BeOS) into the limelight. Smaller companies might not be able to get away with that sort of thing, but a larger distributer with an established customer base has the clout to do it. After all - how did Microsoft get to where they are in the first place?
Okay, I just got a little out of hand there, but the point is this - The hackers/crackers of India are certainly capable of exploiting the holes in the security systems around them, just like they are over here. Just because they're behind a firewall doesn't make them safe. Safer maybe, but safe? Not even close.
Actually, I was thinking more about individuals when I wrote the part about e-currency. With nations it becomes more a matter of communications. If I control your information, I control your communications, and that's something that another country could definitely use as a weapon.
Take money for example - the world is coming closer and closer to a totally electronic monetary system. (I'm not saying it's around the corner, but it's an inevitability). It's not backed by gold or silver anymore, so it doesn't have a physical manifestation.
The way the universe of technology is expanding, I do not find it hard to believe that information is going to be vital to government's and companies. Not just the information, but also the flow of information - Cutting off access to things like server makes communication much more difficult, and that, in turn, makes physical concepts like missiles and cruisers, much harder to utilize effectively.
This is the future, right here. Be prepared to see more and more electronic battlefields, as information becomes more important than weapons and even people. I think this is a sign, more than anything else, of the need for things like strong crypto to be open source and legal, so that our security can never be compromised by backdoors and inside knowledge.
They could use an existing FAT partition if they used a filesystem like UMSDOS. They wouldn't be the first to do that sort of thing. It's sort of like a Ext2 on top of FAT. Works pretty well, although it is slower.
I think that any product that makes transition from Windows-to-Linux easier on new users is immeasurably useful. At least, until more manufacturers start preloading Linux.
As for specs, well you do have a point. However, I think that companies are starting to accept the fact that people want to use their equipment with more than just one OS. People like John Carmack are helping enormously.
Well if what you are describing really happened (and I'm not saying it didn't but well, you know how it is with ACs) then that's anticompetitive, but I was under the impression that this trial was about MS's role in the desktop/browser market.
Well I understand what the point is, but I do not agree with the premise of the argument. Microsoft clearly does not / did not have a monopoly. There has always been other choices out there, but the point is that computer manufacturers have always been so enamored with Microsoft's software that they've chosen to ignore the competition. I fail to see how anyone can accuse a company of being anticompetitive in an industty where there's a concept like Open Source.
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and OS/2 (well, not anymore) are all x86 operating systems that can compete with MS for the Intel desktop. The fact is that MS has an ENORMOUS market share, but just because it's an established powerbase, doesn't mean it's anticompetitive, does it?
There's nothing that MS produces that OEMs and other companies can't get somewhere else - sometimes MS has better leverage to get that software to the user, but I think the Open Source community has shown that Microsoft is in no place to make any demands.
I think TBL's comment about a man's worth not being necessarily tied to his financial success is particularly significant to this forum. The Open Source community is a place where people are judged, not by how much they are worth, but by how much they contribute. TBL has contributed more to the world of technology than almost anyone out there, and I for one feel that his worth is measureless. The same goes for people like Linus Torvalds, who's worth can only be measured in the usefulness of his contributions - and I don't need to tell anyone on /. how wonderful those are.