At the mere mention of Tibet and Sealand all I could see was those annoying shock the monkey banners with the monk(ey) dressed in the bright orange robes.
I hate to ask a question on/. that my be heresy or brilliance or both:
Simply put, BeOS was an excellent operating system, but OBOS may (or may not) fall under some of the axes that fell on BeOS.
Boot Loader: Acceptance by OEM's I take it is not a concern, but should be in the mind of the developers, just in case.
OSS: Attracting developers did not seem to be a problem, but because of the politics involved with some binary compatability with OSS, there were *drivers* for hardware that were rejected because BeOS was closed. (don't pshaw, that is why you could not get anything beyond a 3com 905 to work despite drivers being written...I ran into that problem) Not a fun place to be, you know the OS and hardware will work, but the person who wrote it gets smacked down. Grrrr.
The "B" in BeOS/OBOS: perhaps the B shoud be for BSD, that way the above OSS conundrum does not present itself. Think about it: forks and usage of the source w/o giving back are welcomed and would avoid the "show your source or piss off" problem. This, I think, would also round out the BSD family (Open/Net/Free) with a Multimedia (crus of BeOS) quite nicely if the developers did decide to use BSD. (and this coming from a Slackware, and slight Redhat, fan).
Interesting that I found myself getting excited, but after the first round of being wowed and then let down when Be dropped BeOS, well, "once bitten, twice shy..."
The point I was trying to make was: Politics played a small role from what I've gathered. The shift was slow (from NT4's availability to about 5 months ago (='s what? 10years or so?) where 2k compatability/shift is just now starting. But, over those 10 years, solaris had all the tools, availability and NT was not in the picture, then was trialed, developed for somewhat, then gained featrues, got parity, and then had more features than Solaris and unix support might be dropped. (don't quote me, but that is what seems to be happening)
I do agree it is a shame, but the expense of the hardware was a big factor. 10K for the Solaris boxes vs 5K for a loaded Dell that does "good enuf" if not "better" and at lower cost. In spite of my distates for politcs, that is exactly what happens. My opinions and actions and how it shapes "The Future". For instance: Which Unix? Solaris, RedHat, Slack, Gentoo? Solaris? Only at gunpoint. RedHat? Only if performance was not an issue and I wanted to be lazy. Slack/Gentoo? If I wanted pure performance and development kept up with the systems capabilities (heh, ya right. Look at the slow evolution of GIS apps on NT).
Yes, "we" (those in my field) are on the treadmill, but the kicker is we set the pace of the application developers and in turn they set the pace of the development on the OS (not an absolute, but you get the gist).
Like the move to VB was delayed because Users/Admins raised holy hell. It had been slowed down 2 maybe 3 years, but will happen it seems. Or something "better" may come up during that time (like the scripting language having *limited* vb interactivity, but who knows).
But the "Final Word" comes down to the best tool for the job, and what works best. That means, for me, Unix on the servers, NT4 on the workstations (possibly 2k w/in a year or less) and SAMBA for compatability between the two.
GIS (Geographical Information Systems)...or maps, all kinds of maps, radar, topographical, infrared ad infinitum.
About 3 to 5 years ago it all ran on Sparc stations and some slight varations/versions of Solaris.
Somewhere during the course of history (ahem, ok, 1/2 a decade) the developers (developers, develo--*SMACK*, sorry) of GIS software slowed or ceased updating and adding functionality to the Solaris version (cost? politics? dunno) and ported quite easily to NT4.
(Opinion: NT4/2k pro does *well* as a workstation OS equaling or besting some unicies...but when it comes to servers...I won't touch NT4/5/6 when it comes to servers or have no other choice because of vendor/developer lock in.)
So most of the updates to GIS software are geared to nt4/win2k with nary a acknowledgement to XP.
Oh, and the macro language native to the dominant GIS stuff is moving to VB (sooner or later) but the outcry was deafening. Sys Admins (aka moi) Oh, hell no, not another virus vector. Users: but there are free tools/custom stuff we have that is already written...you mean we have to write this stuff over again? BS.
VMware and wine are find products, yes, but a lot of GIS apps, again, are geared for NT/2k, period. The suggestion is good, but your idea will cost me (educational discount of VM3 is what 300 bucks a pop?...ahahahahaha, you're funny) a lot in *addition* to 2k's cost and ARC's cost and ESRI's cost and machine upgrade/replacement cost when people still want the data, the data still has to be validated/refined and one of the *major* sources of funding got cut (hint: major station with a "T" and a "B" and an "S") because of a stock downturn or something.
Oh, and the less overhead the better: Unix to run VMware to run NT/2k?
I know it can be done, but why in "$deity's" name would you?
Ok, I'm getting slightly off track, but in a nutshell: NT4 *specific* as far as content creation with a slow (past, what 4years) migration 3'ish months ago to 2000.
Tied to network.
Alternatives (GRASS) do less than 1/2 of what users need, not want, but NEED.
SPEED is of the essence. does running nt under vmware under $unix_distro make sense to you? Me neither.
I hope that made sense because the coffee wore off half way thru this message. .
The trust issue is only part of it, compatability with hardware, software and network infrastructure/ protocals etc, etc.
Another reason I'm holding off is some of the machines are going to be upgraded to dual processors, so there really is no reason to jump in so soon if I'm going to have to re-do the boxes anyway (there are several ways to do that, but only a reinstall is the "sure" way).
That, and uless SP3 turns out to be really intrusive and a major (ball) breaker of compatability with samba, I don't see to much of a problem in the near future.
But if there is too much of a hassle with 2k in the push for XP...I just might say "FSCK it, we move back to NT4 or Unix/Solaris".
So, yeah, Microsoft is "Shooting itself squarely in the foot" and if the trend continuse with Lic. 6.X, we'll help steady their aim for the other foot. .
I think you've nailed the problem right there, but I'd like to add a few other thoughts as a former "Webmonkey".
The majority of WYSIWYG HTML editors do not generate HTML, the defacate it. Frontpage is infamous for it. Some of the others (dreamweaver, homesite, adobe something or other) do the same to a lesser degree. (I mean, really, does *every* word need its own font tag?)
The most aggrivating thing about IE (Mac/PC) was that the browser *allows* programming mistakes to be made and attempts/gets a good guess about what you meant (Missing tags and such). But when you view it in other browsers (generated or hand edited) that *don't allow FSCKups/bad HTML* the browser won't generate it, or puts it and odd location.
Any developer (programs, web et al) should *not*, IMO, allow such poor practices to continue much less perpetuate in thier own code.
Most aggrivating to a lot of "normal" people was IE/Microsofts mucking about with fonts (remember that?) whereby a page rendered in (IE or other browsers, I forget which) would make the author look like an illiterate moron.
You are correct about the two types of site creators. Perhaps that is why IR and wireless mice are being invented: 1) mouse ball + muzzle loader = seige upon the redmond campus 2) the IE team found garroted by the wired mice in a back alley somewhere. Oddly enough, the mice were Intellimice.
Why is it when this stuff comes up I keep thinking of the saying: "The chains of addiction are never heavy until its bond is too strong to break".
Anyone else taking care of a network of more than a couple dozen PCs does think like me?
Bingo.
I run a GIS lab, and quite frankly most of the apps are geared for NT and are just now being moved to Win2k.
Yeah, they say it *should* work (esri?) but don't gurantee it. You see there is something about GIS that requires you be able to run for days and in some cases bend to the OS of choice to gurantee stability. Strangly enuf, moved from Solaris to NT before I got here and now *thinking* about 2000.
See, the point is: Microsoft is killing off its own profit (potential/actual/otherwise) because most of us Sys Admin types are just now warming to the use of 2000. ( I know I am just now getting there )
I offer myself and another admin as an example: I've got a few dozen boxes to maintain and the other admin (with a pfy) has 2 labs with a few more than me.
Ok, I'm testing, re-creating a SAMBA PDC before I even touch my server and anything beyond 2 trial boxes (NT to 2k migration). Issues: Need to upgrade SAMBA (a given) or just perform a couple of manual steps (for each account, ugh) to get win2k to connect to my PDC. Upgrade goes smoothly, everyone is happy...if something bombs out or goes wrong, I have 2 "outs" at the least.
The other admin went from 98 to XP directly...migrated over the weekend, ran into massive compatability issue, network issue, viral infection issues (new or existing is not clear... prolly both from the users POV) main file server crashed to boot (or not to boot, in this case) and guess what? No backup, naturally.
Instead of rolling back to "the way it was", well, he pressed on and is still having problems. I wonder why.
I'd asked his co-hort/pfy if they'd considerd moving back until things could be tested further.
Nope.
GAH....
I'd never thought I'd repeat/rephrase this from the military (related to drugs/XP), but; Not on My Machines, Not on My Network, Not on MY WATCH!
Optical mice an innovation of MS? (matter of fact, I think it was a link on/from/.)
Hardly. That honor goes to an engineer at HP if memory serves.
No opinion on anything else, but MTM is really good, mindless fun and the Sidewinder is Second only to The Logitec Wingman (too bad the hat switch did not last worth a damn)...or if you have money to burn...a ThrustMaster (really stiff stick, but, what would you expect from a company called "ThrustMaster"?).
Perhaps they should get out of the software business and make gaming/input hardware? (joking, BTW...tho that depends on what CKK will say in the near future).
I used to say "Windows: the best hardware detection a Slackware user needs".
Now it is "RedHat: The best hardware detection a Slackware user needs".
But considering I just did an install of RedHat 7.3 on a p-pro 200 that took almost 4 hours (nfs, samba, apache and X) and a full Slackware 7 install (full) took 30 some-odd minutes. (we'll see about 8.1 tomorrow...heh this makes me glad I did not d/l the alpha/beta 2 days ago).
"People who own their modems are pretty much locked in to staying with AT&T," Kersey said. "It's a way to extract a little more money out of a small percentage of people. That's a fairly politically smart thing to do because it doesn't affect the vast majority of customers."
/Spicole from Fast times at ridgemont high
You DICK!!
/Spicole off
Sounds like a good plan: Charge more to the people who invested in the technology, are your best/longest customers and probably sold your service to *other* people before you fscked it up and capped to the point of being useless.
"extract a little more money", eh? Yeah, the more you tighten your grasp, fsck-head the more your business will slip thru your fingers.
after all, the dude's name way Hymen, someone was getting "fscked" (Eminem, I suppose) only thing missing was comment from Virgin records.
Talk about flawed logic; The don't release for fear of piracy (but it gets on the shelves and pulled) it gets pirated because it does get out, and the don't release it again for fear of piracy...after it has been pirated?
Eh? Isn't that like burning down the locked barn down out of spite for the horse escaping? .
Slashdot Mirror
...such as the Tibetan Government in Exile...
(Funny, but probably in poor taste)
At the mere mention of Tibet and Sealand all I could see was those annoying shock the monkey banners with the monk(ey) dressed in the bright orange robes.
First I chuckled, then said boo-hiss.
.
I hate to ask a question on /. that my be heresy or brilliance or both:
Simply put, BeOS was an excellent operating system, but OBOS may (or may not) fall under some of the axes that fell on BeOS.
Boot Loader: Acceptance by OEM's I take it is not a concern, but should be in the mind of the developers, just in case.
OSS: Attracting developers did not seem to be a problem, but because of the politics involved with some binary compatability with OSS, there were *drivers* for hardware that were rejected because BeOS was closed. (don't pshaw, that is why you could not get anything beyond a 3com 905 to work despite drivers being written...I ran into that problem)
Not a fun place to be, you know the OS and hardware will work, but the person who wrote it gets smacked down. Grrrr.
The "B" in BeOS/OBOS: perhaps the B shoud be for BSD, that way the above OSS conundrum does not present itself. Think about it: forks and usage of the source w/o giving back are welcomed and would avoid the "show your source or piss off" problem.
This, I think, would also round out the BSD family (Open/Net/Free) with a Multimedia (crus of BeOS) quite nicely if the developers did decide to use BSD. (and this coming from a Slackware, and slight Redhat, fan).
Interesting that I found myself getting excited, but after the first round of being wowed and then let down when Be dropped BeOS, well, "once bitten, twice shy..."
.
Stats on the server are interesting that either it stopped being "up" or stopped bein monitored before june.
Or did I read the graph wrong?
.
Ah. Apologies, I did kind of misunderstand.
The point I was trying to make was:
Politics played a small role from what I've gathered.
The shift was slow (from NT4's availability to about 5 months ago (='s what? 10years or so?) where 2k compatability/shift is just now starting. But, over those 10 years, solaris had all the tools, availability and NT was not in the picture, then was trialed, developed for somewhat, then gained featrues, got parity, and then had more features than Solaris and unix support might be dropped.
(don't quote me, but that is what seems to be happening)
I do agree it is a shame, but the expense of the hardware was a big factor. 10K for the Solaris boxes vs 5K for a loaded Dell that does "good enuf" if not "better" and at lower cost.
In spite of my distates for politcs, that is exactly what happens. My opinions and actions and how it shapes "The Future".
For instance: Which Unix? Solaris, RedHat, Slack, Gentoo?
Solaris? Only at gunpoint.
RedHat? Only if performance was not an issue and I wanted to be lazy.
Slack/Gentoo? If I wanted pure performance and development kept up with the systems capabilities (heh, ya right. Look at the slow evolution of GIS apps on NT).
Yes, "we" (those in my field) are on the treadmill, but the kicker is we set the pace of the application developers and in turn they set the pace of the development on the OS (not an absolute, but you get the gist).
Like the move to VB was delayed because Users/Admins raised holy hell. It had been slowed down 2 maybe 3 years, but will happen it seems.
Or something "better" may come up during that time (like the scripting language having *limited* vb interactivity, but who knows).
But the "Final Word" comes down to the best tool for the job, and what works best.
That means, for me, Unix on the servers, NT4 on the workstations (possibly 2k w/in a year or less) and SAMBA for compatability between the two.
But move to XP?
Heh, Not on my Watch.
.
GIS (Geographical Information Systems)...or maps, all kinds of maps, radar, topographical, infrared ad infinitum.
About 3 to 5 years ago it all ran on Sparc stations and some slight varations/versions of Solaris.
Somewhere during the course of history (ahem, ok, 1/2 a decade) the developers (developers, develo--*SMACK*, sorry) of GIS software slowed or ceased updating and adding functionality to the Solaris version (cost? politics? dunno) and ported quite easily to NT4.
(Opinion: NT4/2k pro does *well* as a workstation OS equaling or besting some unicies...but when it comes to servers...I won't touch NT4/5/6 when it comes to servers or have no other choice because of vendor/developer lock in.)
So most of the updates to GIS software are geared to nt4/win2k with nary a acknowledgement to XP.
Oh, and the macro language native to the dominant GIS stuff is moving to VB (sooner or later) but the outcry was deafening.
Sys Admins (aka moi) Oh, hell no, not another virus vector.
Users: but there are free tools/custom stuff we have that is already written...you mean we have to write this stuff over again? BS.
VMware and wine are find products, yes, but a lot of GIS apps, again, are geared for NT/2k, period.
The suggestion is good, but your idea will cost me (educational discount of VM3 is what 300 bucks a pop?...ahahahahaha, you're funny) a lot in *addition* to 2k's cost and ARC's cost and ESRI's cost and machine upgrade/replacement cost when people still want the data, the data still has to be validated/refined and one of the *major* sources of funding got cut (hint: major station with a "T" and a "B" and an "S") because of a stock downturn or something.
Oh, and the less overhead the better: Unix to run VMware to run NT/2k?
I know it can be done, but why in "$deity's" name would you?
Ok, I'm getting slightly off track, but in a nutshell:
NT4 *specific* as far as content creation with a slow (past, what 4years) migration 3'ish months ago to 2000.
Tied to network.
Alternatives (GRASS) do less than 1/2 of what users need, not want, but NEED.
SPEED is of the essence. does running nt under vmware under $unix_distro make sense to you?
Me neither.
I hope that made sense because the coffee wore off half way thru this message.
.
Exactly.
The trust issue is only part of it, compatability with hardware, software and network infrastructure/ protocals etc, etc.
Another reason I'm holding off is some of the machines are going to be upgraded to dual processors, so there really is no reason to jump in so soon if I'm going to have to re-do the boxes anyway (there are several ways to do that, but only a reinstall is the "sure" way).
That, and uless SP3 turns out to be really intrusive and a major (ball) breaker of compatability with samba, I don't see to much of a problem in the near future.
But if there is too much of a hassle with 2k in the push for XP...I just might say "FSCK it, we move back to NT4 or Unix/Solaris".
So, yeah, Microsoft is "Shooting itself squarely in the foot" and if the trend continuse with Lic. 6.X, we'll help steady their aim for the other foot.
.
I think you've nailed the problem right there, but I'd like to add a few other thoughts as a former "Webmonkey".
The majority of WYSIWYG HTML editors do not generate HTML, the defacate it. Frontpage is infamous for it.
Some of the others (dreamweaver, homesite, adobe something or other) do the same to a lesser degree.
(I mean, really, does *every* word need its own font tag?)
The most aggrivating thing about IE (Mac/PC) was that the browser *allows* programming mistakes to be made and attempts/gets a good guess about what you meant (Missing tags and such).
But when you view it in other browsers (generated or hand edited) that *don't allow FSCKups/bad HTML* the browser won't generate it, or puts it and odd location.
Any developer (programs, web et al) should *not*, IMO, allow such poor practices to continue much less perpetuate in thier own code.
Most aggrivating to a lot of "normal" people was IE/Microsofts mucking about with fonts (remember that?) whereby a page rendered in (IE or other browsers, I forget which) would make the author look like an illiterate moron.
You are correct about the two types of site creators. Perhaps that is why IR and wireless mice are being invented:
1) mouse ball + muzzle loader = seige upon the redmond campus
2) the IE team found garroted by the wired mice in a back alley somewhere. Oddly enough, the mice were Intellimice.
Why is it when this stuff comes up I keep thinking of the saying:
"The chains of addiction are never heavy until its bond is too strong to break".
Explains a lot.
Anyone else taking care of a network of more than a couple dozen PCs does think like me?
Bingo.
I run a GIS lab, and quite frankly most of the apps are geared for NT and are just now being moved to Win2k.
Yeah, they say it *should* work (esri?) but don't gurantee it. You see there is something about GIS that requires you be able to run for days and in some cases bend to the OS of choice to gurantee stability. Strangly enuf, moved from Solaris to NT before I got here and now *thinking* about 2000.
See, the point is: Microsoft is killing off its own profit (potential/actual/otherwise) because most of us Sys Admin types are just now warming to the use of 2000. ( I know I am just now getting there )
I offer myself and another admin as an example:
I've got a few dozen boxes to maintain and the other admin (with a pfy) has 2 labs with a few more than me.
Ok, I'm testing, re-creating a SAMBA PDC before I even touch my server and anything beyond 2 trial boxes (NT to 2k migration).
Issues: Need to upgrade SAMBA (a given) or just perform a couple of manual steps (for each account, ugh) to get win2k to connect to my PDC.
Upgrade goes smoothly, everyone is happy...if something bombs out or goes wrong, I have 2 "outs" at the least.
The other admin went from 98 to XP directly...migrated over the weekend, ran into massive compatability issue, network issue, viral infection issues (new or existing is not clear... prolly both from the users POV) main file server crashed to boot (or not to boot, in this case) and guess what? No backup, naturally.
Instead of rolling back to "the way it was", well, he pressed on and is still having problems.
I wonder why.
I'd asked his co-hort/pfy if they'd considerd moving back until things could be tested further.
Nope.
GAH....
I'd never thought I'd repeat/rephrase this from the military (related to drugs/XP), but;
Not on My Machines,
Not on My Network,
Not on MY WATCH!
.
Shat. A wonderful word falling into disuse. THAT's the true pity.
I'd find it a relief, actually.
If my last name happen to have that word in it....like perhaps the name "Shatner" or something similar.
.
...Pay pal did not just put itself up for auction on Ebay?
After all, Ebay is usually know for getting top dollar for useless stuff...prolly could have gotten 3+ billion.
Spam: Yes, it is a Royal Pain.
Dell: Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the net we give you spam and then the dell dork.
Intel: It makes spamming the intraweb faster!
The trick is that no software will ever be released bug free that does much more than print "Hello World!" to the console
Spoken like someone who has never tried Modula 3.
Only language I know of that segfaulted on a Hello World program...straight from the book.
Or a MS Visual C++ programmer lamenting on a Hello World program taking 6+Meg...
Heh.
Optical mice an innovation of MS? (matter of fact, I think it was a link on/from /.)
Hardly. That honor goes to an engineer at HP if memory serves.
No opinion on anything else, but MTM is really good, mindless fun and the Sidewinder is Second only to The Logitec Wingman (too bad the hat switch did not last worth a damn)...or if you have money to burn...a ThrustMaster (really stiff stick, but, what would you expect from a company called "ThrustMaster"?).
Perhaps they should get out of the software business and make gaming/input hardware?
(joking, BTW...tho that depends on what CKK will say in the near future).
I used to say "Windows: the best hardware detection a Slackware user needs".
Now it is "RedHat: The best hardware detection a Slackware user needs".
But considering I just did an install of RedHat 7.3 on a p-pro 200 that took almost 4 hours (nfs, samba, apache and X) and a full Slackware 7 install (full) took 30 some-odd minutes.
(we'll see about 8.1 tomorrow...heh this makes me glad I did not d/l the alpha/beta 2 days ago).
.
a story.
An American employee working in Mexico at the time was doing the excact same thing you describe to a, obviously, Mexican employee.
After explaining what was going on the Mexican employee said something to the effect of, "You know, you are prostituting yourself".
The response was "True, but we all prostitute ourselves...the good ones know when to change pimps!".
Funny, but true...you gotta know when to say "Fsck it" and move on.
There is a reason you started looking in the first place...so I suppose I fail to see why this is an issue.
respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download
By that logic a piece of shareware I tried, did not like, and deleted...I'm a pirate?
Sounds like the BSA's logic.
The Smart-Ass in me thinks; "Since when did the MPAA start offering SVCD's? I must have missed that announcement."
Oh, wait...
does it make the intraweb go faster?
"People who own their modems are pretty much locked in to staying with AT&T," Kersey said. "It's a way to extract a little more money out of a small percentage of people. That's a fairly politically smart thing to do because it doesn't affect the vast majority of customers."
/Spicole from Fast times at ridgemont high
You DICK!!
/Spicole off
Sounds like a good plan:
Charge more to the people who invested in the technology, are your best/longest customers and probably sold your service to *other* people before you fscked it up and capped to the point of being useless.
"extract a little more money", eh?
Yeah, the more you tighten your grasp, fsck-head the more your business will slip thru your fingers.
standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance
So instead of taking market share from Windows, the idea is to take it from Red Hat?
Doesn't this strike anyone else as just a wee bit stupid? After all, the strenght of linux is choice and now the goal is to limit that choice.
/me shakes head
/tigger voice
It's a Jaguler
(Jag' U' ler)
Hooo hoo hoo hooooOO
/end tigger
You can't handle the TRUTH!
They were using the GXP series harddisks for more than 8 hours at a time!
Peace. Love. Linux. Head Crash.
after all, the dude's name way Hymen, someone was getting "fscked" (Eminem, I suppose) only thing missing was comment from Virgin records.
Talk about flawed logic;
The don't release for fear of piracy (but it gets on the shelves and pulled) it gets pirated because it does get out, and the don't release it again for fear of piracy...after it has been pirated?
Eh? Isn't that like burning down the locked barn down out of spite for the horse escaping?
.
Not just you, I read it wrong the first time and had a double-take on the name.
Of course, after reading slashdot for so long (and other forums also) I was translating loose=lose and vice versa.
(sigh)
.
Heh, reminds me of that quote from faisal.com:
"You have the right to remain silent, if you give up that right, anything you say can an will be misquoted and then used agianst you.
Thankfully, nothing like that would ever happen here on Slahdot.
Oh, wait.
.
C.A.N (car area network)
or
Special Highway Interstate Transmitter Car Area Netowork, or S.H.I.T.C.A.N, for short.
And run a MS imbedded os, that way when you have a tailgater you can just send a default.ida?XXXXXXXX to get him/her off your back.
.