I don't quite agree with this. The cost to the individual consumer probably would be no different. I don't think MS feels threatened at all on the individual sale. Linux offers better competition on the bigger deals, to corporations and governments. And even when it does, I (personally) don't believe MS lowers its price based on TCO -- rather it's the licensing costs that make Linux more competitive. TCO varies too widely in Linux shops, I feel, to make a consistent and compelling argument in its favor. Some shops can get by with supporting Debian themselves -- some need that RedHat or Suse support contract.
It seems to me most of the projected revenues from Linux sales will be going to hardware server vendors. Why so? Are they selling so many Linux servers that they're making a killing? Not at all. See, they're robbing the customers.
Check out the support sites for major server vendors. On the support sites, look for the software available for downloading. You may notice that there's a lot more software (drivers, etc.) available for Windows Server 2k/2k3 than for Linux. Or, if an equivalent software package exists, it's only supported on a particular distribution, usually an out-of-date one. What's going on here? Many server vendors know their (x86,x86-64) servers are being sold to run Linux. But it seems they're getting away with doing support work only for Windows. Commercial third-parties, volunteers, and the customers themselves are making up the short-fall.
Not every server vendor should be indited for poor Linux support. But a few of the major ones out there have figured out how to save a few dollars on their support costs.
This is only slightly off topic since GNU is a project under FSF...
I tried twice last year to support the Savannah Project by purchasing a Verisign SSL certificate for their website. I received zero responses.
Looks like they have a cert from Entrust now. But shouldn't donators get faster responses?
Has anyone volunteered to help Al-Jazeera get its online, English news coverage, stable? Wether by volunteering skills or resources? I've noticed english.aljazeera.net is all in Arabic now, and still using IIS...
I would be willing to volunteer some skills and resources. Why would I volunteer to help Al-Jazeera?
1) I support free speech, even if I don't agree with what's being said. 2) I can't even READ what the biased opinion of Al-Jazeera is because the site is in Arabic, overloaded, DoS'd, or cracked, and I don't have a satellite dish. 3) All news services are biased in one manner or another. I can make up my own mind about what I read and hear, but I still need to see what is being reported.
Perhaps Al-Jazeera wouldn't even trust anyone to help them with all the problems they seem to be having. I like some of the previously posted ideas of using P2P, like Gnutella, to distrubute the load more. I'm sure a whole host of things could be contributed by volunteers to get their English coverage up again.
Racists should ALWAYS have the right to say what they want, no matter how idiotic their comments might be. No, I don't want them talking, but I'll be damned before I attempt to take that right away from them.
Single player works quite well... I'm playing both a multi-player game and a single player to see the differences. The big deals are:
- Can't switch characters from multi-player to single-player and vice-versa. BUT, you can play a TCP/IP game (LAN or whatever) with a single-player character. - Single-player is immune to the whims and crashes of Battle.Net. - You can save your character in multi-player and quit the game, but when you come back, the dungeons are all different (randomly generated of course)
Multi-player is really for people who want to play together online and trade weapons and fight against Player Killers.
Yeah, right on! I'm amazed some distro hasn't tried to do this yet. There are more ways to innovate besides the initial installer.
Standard XML config file would be hard between the kernels because of so many different features, as well as the same. But it's a great idea, none the less...
I was just thinking about the same thing jburroug said when I came accross this post. The thing running around my mind was a networked TV tuner(s)... no more buying tv cards for your computer or tvs with tuners in them - just get firewire interfaces for your pcs and monitors with firewire interfaces. Stereo systems could be done the same way, as could the remote control systems. And there would still be a lot of bandwidth if done correctly.
I'm running Redhat-6.2 beta with kernel 2.3.99-pre3 on an Ultra 5, 360MHz, 128M RAM.
Solaris emulation seems to suck so far. I'm looking for a good place to post most my experiences in detail in a useful manner to the developers. It may be I didn't copy enough library files from Solaris 7 to make my apps work.
I believe Linux runs faster as a desktop box on the Ultra 5 than Solaris 2.6 or 7 does, but the graphics are still kinda poky. If I can get Xfree86 4.0 compiled, I'll give that a try. I can also try compiling X with the 64-bit gcc compiler, but I don't know how well that will work.
I can say the box has been very solid so far, even with the new kernel. The biggest problem I've had with the new kernel is the floppy drive seems to write corrupt data. Well, it's a dev kernel, so...
I checked out the link and found it to be most incredible. However, my idea for the site was a pretty different. In my idea, LXR would simply be a tool available in the site, along with many others. One of the big tools the site would be be focused around would be people, doing user testing and reporting back with problems. Automated testing via other tools and code viewers like LXR would also be there. Perhaps you'd like to collaborate with me on this site?
Are you suggesting someone create Microsoft Bob for Linux? anyone remember this product? Incidentally, I liked Bob. But then again, I also like cartoons and computer games. Bob was definetly not for the office user.
My only experience with a VA Linux box was fixing one. The internal HD would sometimes not be available at boot time. Troubleshooting finally led me to opening the box and peering at the SCSI cable. The cable was pretty long for an Ultra Fast/WIDE SCSI setup... I ended up putting the hard drive on the connecter at the beginning of the cable as opposed to the middle where I found it. Never had a problem with the thing since.
What was funny about that was tech support thought they were selling Ultra2 (LVD) setups, which could support the longer cables. Maybe the builder thought so too. Oh well.
No one in the industry should be surprised by that posting. WE MADE IT THIS WAY. We were the ones to push computers on households and businesses. We were the ones who decided to spend outrageous hours working in an effort to prove ourselves to our employers. We were the ones who set the system up, figured it'd be okay as is, never made a backup plan, and let it crash horribly. This is our fault and the only way it can be fixed is if we fix it. Find a REAL 40 hour a week job; plan the installation or upgrade; and don't apply for a job that you know is over your head. Someone once told me "God punishes us by granting our wishes ". Look out - here comes success.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't quite agree with this. The cost to the individual consumer probably would be no different. I don't think MS feels threatened at all on the individual sale. Linux offers better competition on the bigger deals, to corporations and governments. And even when it does, I (personally) don't believe MS lowers its price based on TCO -- rather it's the licensing costs that make Linux more competitive. TCO varies too widely in Linux shops, I feel, to make a consistent and compelling argument in its favor. Some shops can get by with supporting Debian themselves -- some need that RedHat or Suse support contract.
It seems to me most of the projected revenues from Linux sales will be going to hardware server vendors. Why so? Are they selling so many Linux servers that they're making a killing? Not at all. See, they're robbing the customers.
Check out the support sites for major server vendors. On the support sites, look for the software available for downloading. You may notice that there's a lot more software (drivers, etc.) available for Windows Server 2k/2k3 than for Linux. Or, if an equivalent software package exists, it's only supported on a particular distribution, usually an out-of-date one. What's going on here? Many server vendors know their (x86,x86-64) servers are being sold to run Linux. But it seems they're getting away with doing support work only for Windows. Commercial third-parties, volunteers, and the customers themselves are making up the short-fall.
Not every server vendor should be indited for poor Linux support. But a few of the major ones out there have figured out how to save a few dollars on their support costs.
Cat5e is only good to around 350 Mbits I believe...
This is only slightly off topic since GNU is a project under FSF... I tried twice last year to support the Savannah Project by purchasing a Verisign SSL certificate for their website. I received zero responses. Looks like they have a cert from Entrust now. But shouldn't donators get faster responses?
Has anyone volunteered to help Al-Jazeera get its online, English news coverage, stable? Wether by volunteering skills or resources? I've noticed english.aljazeera.net is all in Arabic now, and still using IIS...
I would be willing to volunteer some skills and resources. Why would I volunteer to help Al-Jazeera?
1) I support free speech, even if I don't agree with what's being said.
2) I can't even READ what the biased opinion of Al-Jazeera is because the site is in Arabic, overloaded, DoS'd, or cracked, and I don't have a satellite dish.
3) All news services are biased in one manner or another. I can make up my own mind about what I read and hear, but I still need to see what is being reported.
Perhaps Al-Jazeera wouldn't even trust anyone to help them with all the problems they seem to be having. I like some of the previously posted ideas of using P2P, like Gnutella, to distrubute the load more. I'm sure a whole host of things could be contributed by volunteers to get their English coverage up again.
Racists should ALWAYS have the right to say what they want, no matter how idiotic their comments might be. No, I don't want them talking, but I'll be damned before I attempt to take that right away from them.
Actually, I had first post, so nyah! :)
Lately I've found my real life to be more interesting than what's on broadcast television. Occasionaly, cable brings about something interesting. :)
I promote dumber TV shows! It only drives people to interact with the real world, or at least get on the web
Single player works quite well... I'm playing both a multi-player game and a single player to see the differences. The big deals are:
- Can't switch characters from multi-player to single-player and vice-versa. BUT, you can play a TCP/IP game (LAN or whatever) with a single-player character.
- Single-player is immune to the whims and crashes of Battle.Net.
- You can save your character in multi-player and quit the game, but when you come back, the dungeons are all different (randomly generated of course)
Multi-player is really for people who want to play together online and trade weapons and fight against Player Killers.
Um, I hate to sound like a "me too", but...
Yeah, right on! I'm amazed some distro hasn't tried to do this yet. There are more ways to innovate besides the initial installer.
Standard XML config file would be hard between the kernels because of so many different features, as well as the same. But it's a great idea, none the less...
I was just thinking about the same thing jburroug said when I came accross this post. The thing running around my mind was a networked TV tuner(s)... no more buying tv cards for your computer or tvs with tuners in them - just get firewire interfaces for your pcs and monitors with firewire interfaces. Stereo systems could be done the same way, as could the remote control systems. And there would still be a lot of bandwidth if done correctly.
I'm running Redhat-6.2 beta with kernel 2.3.99-pre3 on an Ultra 5, 360MHz, 128M RAM.
Solaris emulation seems to suck so far. I'm looking for a good place to post most my experiences in detail in a useful manner to the developers. It may be I didn't copy enough library files from Solaris 7 to make my apps work.
I believe Linux runs faster as a desktop box on the Ultra 5 than Solaris 2.6 or 7 does, but the graphics are still kinda poky. If I can get Xfree86 4.0 compiled, I'll give that a try. I can also try compiling X with the 64-bit gcc compiler, but I don't know how well that will work.
I can say the box has been very solid so far, even with the new kernel. The biggest problem I've had with the new kernel is the floppy drive seems to write corrupt data. Well, it's a dev kernel, so...
I checked out the link and found it to be most incredible. However, my idea for the site was a pretty different. In my idea, LXR would simply be a tool available in the site, along with many others. One of the big tools the site would be be focused around would be people, doing user testing and reporting back with problems. Automated testing via other tools and code viewers like LXR would also be there. Perhaps you'd like to collaborate with me on this site?
I just made an AskSlashdot post about making an open source QA lab - bughunter.org. Perhaps we could collaborate? :)
Are you suggesting someone create Microsoft Bob for Linux? anyone remember this product? Incidentally, I liked Bob. But then again, I also like cartoons and computer games. Bob was definetly not for the office user.
My only experience with a VA Linux box was fixing one. The internal HD would sometimes not be available at boot time. Troubleshooting finally led me to opening the box and peering at the SCSI cable. The cable was pretty long for an Ultra Fast/WIDE SCSI setup... I ended up putting the hard drive on the connecter at the beginning of the cable as opposed to the middle where I found it. Never had a problem with the thing since.
What was funny about that was tech support thought they were selling Ultra2 (LVD) setups, which could support the longer cables. Maybe the builder thought so too. Oh well.
No one in the industry should be surprised by that posting. WE MADE IT THIS WAY. We were the ones to push computers on households and businesses. We were the ones who decided to spend outrageous hours working in an effort to prove ourselves to our employers. We were the ones who set the system up, figured it'd be okay as is, never made a backup plan, and let it crash horribly. This is our fault and the only way it can be fixed is if we fix it. Find a REAL 40 hour a week job; plan the installation or upgrade; and don't apply for a job that you know is over your head. Someone once told me "God punishes us by granting our wishes
". Look out - here comes success.
For the record, tmpfs is not used for swap space and /tmp can be mounted on a real file system instead of mounting it on swap (ramdisk).