Intel may be anti-competitive in some ways, but I no longer hate them like I hate Microsoft, for a very simple reason:
Microsoft is a monopoly with horrible products. Intel also used to be a monopoly with horrible products, but roughly around the advent of the 486 and/or Pentium, their CPUs became acceptable (e.g. they run Unix/Linux well, now, where the 286 did not ). And that was the point at which I bought a PC for the first time (running Linux).
That doesn't excuse using monopoly market powers in restraint of trade, etc, but it certainly sharply limits the damage done, compared with forcing shoddy goods on the public.
I suppose it's possible that if Microsoft had always gone with as Unix-like a system as possible, ending up with full blown real Unix (whether BSD, Linux, or whatever) around the era of the 80486, then perhaps I wouldn't passionately hate them today.
(And yes, I'm aware of Xenix in Microsoft's past, and no, it wasn't a good excuse for a real Unix...it sucked for no good reason.)
That's all very true. But there's nothing at stake here, unlike the courtroom, and your tone was very annoying, as was the fact that you didn't bother to read the article before taking a (sharply worded) position.
Microsoft admitted it, idiot
on
Windows ID
·
· Score: 1
Microsoft already admitted it, you idiot, so there's no need to prove it.
This sort of knee jerk defense of Microsoft is almost as nauseating as Microsoft's own evil actions.
I had wondered about the pronunciation of S.u.S.E., too, so I was pleased to hear Linus pronounce it during his keynote... he said "sooze" (rhymes with "snooze") -- which was my previous first guess. (yay!:-)
The previous comments about Sousa seem to have confused folks, since there are continuing questions, so I thought it was worth answering again.
True, it's debatable. On the other hand, merely starting out spreads the word that Linux is in fact an OS with support, which helps kill some of the FUD almost no matter what LinuxCare does over the next year.
It's also the case that a good fraction of awards presented to anyone for anything in any field are debatable.:-) One example was the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year, for the discovery of prions, which was controversial because the existence of prions is still under debate in some quarters.
But I figure it's in good grace to cheer anyway; no harm has been done even given your point.
I do hope that they do a good job, giving Linux support a good name rather than a bad name. We shall see about that. If they screw up, presumably they'll face quick competition.
In my book, offering 24/7 Linux support is an achievement.
Consider, for instance: we have a client with ten thousand systems in the field who asked us to recommend their next operating system. One big issue in recommending Linux is whether they can find (hopefully platinum level) 24/7 support from any source whatsoever.
Originally the answer was "er...not exactly, although there are some ways to get Linux support in some form." (This client builds their own rack-mount PC's, so it wouldn't help to point to PC vendors that offer support; that helps only if you buy that particular PC.)
(It helps to show that Microsoft doesn't offer platinum-quality support, but it doesn't help much; we want positives.)
Now, however, we can point to LinuxCare as an example of big time support, and have one less roadblock to recommending Linux to clients like that.
The net effect will be to vastly increase the opportunity for corporations to use Linux. That's an achievement for the Linux community, and it's quite okay that LinuxCare will be making money in the process. That's what business is about.
Slashdot Mirror
It took eighty NeXT stations to administrate two Sun Servers??? :-)
Not quite what you meant to say, I suspect.
Ken Arnold (now at Sun) was the original author of curses at Berkeley.
Microsoft is a monopoly with horrible products. Intel also used to be a monopoly with horrible products, but roughly around the advent of the 486 and/or Pentium, their CPUs became acceptable (e.g. they run Unix/Linux well, now, where the 286 did not ). And that was the point at which I bought a PC for the first time (running Linux).
That doesn't excuse using monopoly market powers in restraint of trade, etc, but it certainly sharply limits the damage done, compared with forcing shoddy goods on the public.
I suppose it's possible that if Microsoft had always gone with as Unix-like a system as possible, ending up with full blown real Unix (whether BSD, Linux, or whatever) around the era of the 80486, then perhaps I wouldn't passionately hate them today.
(And yes, I'm aware of Xenix in Microsoft's past, and no, it wasn't a good excuse for a real Unix...it sucked for no good reason.)
That's all very true. But there's nothing at stake here, unlike the courtroom, and your tone was very annoying, as was the fact that you didn't bother to read the article before taking a (sharply worded) position.
This sort of knee jerk defense of Microsoft is almost as nauseating as Microsoft's own evil actions.
And I haven't checked, but are you sure that glibc 2.1 supports 64 bit mallocs? How could it, if brk() itself doesn't?
The previous comments about Sousa seem to have confused folks, since there are continuing questions, so I thought it was worth answering again.
It's also the case that a good fraction of awards presented to anyone for anything in any field are debatable. :-) One example was the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year, for the discovery of prions, which was controversial because the existence of prions is still under debate in some quarters.
But I figure it's in good grace to cheer anyway; no harm has been done even given your point.
I do hope that they do a good job, giving Linux support a good name rather than a bad name. We shall see about that. If they screw up, presumably they'll face quick competition.
In my book, offering 24/7 Linux support is
an achievement.
Consider, for instance: we have a client with
ten thousand systems in the field who asked us
to recommend their next operating system. One
big issue in recommending Linux is whether they
can find (hopefully platinum level) 24/7 support from any
source whatsoever.
Originally the answer was "er...not exactly,
although there are some ways to get
Linux support in some form." (This client
builds their own rack-mount PC's, so it wouldn't
help to point to PC vendors that offer support;
that helps only if you buy that particular PC.)
(It helps to show that Microsoft doesn't offer
platinum-quality support, but it doesn't help
much; we want positives.)
Now, however, we can point to
LinuxCare as an example of big time support,
and have one less roadblock to recommending
Linux to clients like that.
The net effect will be to vastly increase
the opportunity for corporations to use
Linux. That's an achievement for the Linux
community, and it's quite
okay that LinuxCare will be making money in
the process. That's what business is about.