The Citadel/UX project is slowly but surely moving towards becoming an Exchange-killer in more ways than one. It's a very extensive, modular system, originally targeted at BBS applications but being built up as a general purpose groupware platform. Currently the developers are working on getting IMAP support in place, but calendaring is next. With a robust data store already there, calendaring will be well supported.
It can already do SMTP and POP3 natively (i.e. you don't have to plug it into Sendmail to make it work on the Internet). The iCalendar protocols will be built-in in a similar way. --
This is a victory for the free software world, even in the United States. It demonstrates that someone out there has a clue, and (perhaps more importantly) that other countries aren't just going to roll over and adopt the US's unique brand of stupidity.
I wonder if the BushGore fiasco has had anything to do with it (i.e. "those Yanks can't even vote in a president, why should we let them dictate our trade policies?"). --
Ah yes, so you get that "free update" (not really free, but you've gotta pay your subscription fee whether you take the new version or not) but then you've got a few hundred PC's to upgrade, at a fabulously expensive cost (that army of MCSE's doesn't work for peanuts, y'know).
This model works nicely in the mainframe world, where you can upgrade once and suddenly the whole shop has the new version. I've seen it done with stuff like SAS and MXG, and both the users and sysadmins are generally happy with it.
I daresay it could even work if you had Linux on the desktop -- I admin a couple of networks that have shared/opt or/usr/local volumes, and I've upgraded apps like WordPerfect, Netscape, StarOffice, etc. without having to visit any desktops.
Introduce the C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory, though, and you've got a big, unmaintainable mess. You're stuck having to manually upgrade every desktop. If you're really big you can do some of that tedious mucking about with pushed, scripted installs using tools like Novell ZENworks. But it's still much, much easier when the whole shop is working off one copy that can be upgraded. --
It is interesting to see attempts to block TLD's that could be confused with Belize (.bz). Could it be that perhaps Belize is gearing up to position.bz as "The Business TLD" and sell it to American registrants -- similar to the way Tuvalu took advantage of its.tv domain?
I remain convinced that the only solution is to implement a very large number of TLD's, enough to de-value them and stop the two biggest problems: cybersquatting, and people registering in every possible TLD. --
What they really ought to do is release a GPL'ed version of Qt for Windows. This would allow the free software community to write cross-platform applications. It would expand the market for such applications, and TrollTech would be able to sell commercial Qt licenses for the inevitable closed source apps that would emerge.
I really can't think of a single reason why they wouldn't do this. Are you reading this, Haavard? The market for cross-platform apps is going to explode when Linux surfaces on the desktop. Qt can be a part of this. Please give it some consideration. --
The early assessment is correct, and Madhu Siddalingaiah agrees: C# and CLR might be portable -- and sure, it's possible to port them to other operating systems -- but that would still be completely useless, because the.NET framework involves a lot of API's that are, and will be, only available on Windows. The core class libraries in Java, on the other hand, are available anywhere the Java runtime is available.
Make no mistake about it: the.NET framework is designed for this goal: "Write once (on a Windows machine), run anywhere (as long as it's a Windows machine)."
Probably the only useful bit of "portability" the Microsoft CLR will achieve, is that it gives them a migration strategy for upcoming 64-bit Windows. It allows developers to write on Win32 and run on Win64. Oh, how portable! --
Yes, so they could make lots of money. Instead, the made no money...actually negative money.
There were (and still are) enough people at Netscape that you could easily have a showing of lots of people with different interests and priorities. Not everyone was in it for money. You had your suits (Barksdale), your technologists (Andreesen), and your troublemakers (Zawinski).
I can't speak for any of them, of course, but there are people in every technology company (excepting perhaps Microsoft) whose love of technology is greater than their love of money. --
I read the article, and it makes some very good points. It's all about how Mozilla has fixes available for a number of bugs, but Netscape has temporarily forked so they can get a 6.0 release out, and they're not applying Mozilla fixes until after the release.
A very good article, whose discussion here was completely ruined by being posted to Slashdot in an inflammatory way. We could have had a nice, intelligent discussion, but the words "IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so" sparked the usual flamefest. This was completely unnecessary, and terribly irresponsible. --
Yes, you read that correctly. Netscape won the browser war. Netscape's goal was to turn the web into a platform. They succeeded in that goal. We now live in a world where many applications are web-based instead of Windows-based. Microsoft didn't want that. Netscape did. Netscape won.
It was a Pyhrric victory, of course, since Netscape's market share got decimated by Microsoft. But they succeeded in turning the web into a platform.
By the way, I don't fault AOL/Netscape in putting money-making devices in the browser. They have to make money somehow, and they don't have OS or office suite cash cows to support the browser as a loss leader, so they have to recognize some revenue somehow. At least they've continued to support the open source Mozilla project, allowing you to re-build it differently if you so choose. AOL has been more than gracious in keeping the dream of a non-MSproprietary Web alive; they do not deserve our scorn. --
Are there any techies out there with enough social skills to actually find a mate and manage to procreate? Why get married and have kids when you could be spending your evenings in the basement writing code?
Disclaimer: this message is posted in jest (Score: 5, Funny). I happen to be a husband and father (and techie) myself, so I know that this is a serious issue. --
AOL may not be the choice for power users, but they are most certainly not going downhill. They are, by a huge margin, the #1 consumer ISP. Even the Devil of Redmond, with its monopo-bundling power, and loss leading (read: $400 bribe to subscribe) has not been able to crack this nut.
I wouldn't be caught dead on AOL, but what they say is true: it is easy to use. AOL has totally nailed the consumer Internet experience, and most of its users are very happy with the service. If you have never met an AOL customer who didn't feel "seriously abused" then I have to question the identity of the group you sampled. --
Stuff like this is the real danger of UCITA -- it would put a chill on any real criticism of published software. You want to say something bad about Microsoft SQL Server? You have to get Microsoft's permission first (which, of course, they won't give you). IF you say it anyway, they slap you with a law suit.
Sun is more likely now than ever before to move towards open sourcing Java. The competition has emerged: Microsoft CLR and C#. Like all Microsoft products, it sucks. Big time. But Sun knows that that's never stopped Microsoft from taking over a market before.
So now with Satan's Steamroller coming across the horizon, Sun has every incentive to open source Java. Soon, preferably. --
As an aside, it's not the auto companies that don't want us to have air (or water) powered cars, it's the oil companies. They have the resources to either extinguish or simply buy out any alternative means of powering automobiles. Don't expect breakthrough progress until the Earth's supply of petroleum is nearly exhausted -- and then, expect those "breakthroughs" to come from the very same oil companies (a key thing to look for is when they start calling themselves "energy companies" instead -- similar to the way cable television providers now refer to themselves as "broadband" companies to encompass the data and voice services they want to deliver).
Sad, but true. Oil companies are way too rich and powerful. And if we end up with W in the whitehouse, look for them to become even more powerful. --
My favorite X server for MS Windows is Reflection X. It allows you to do expect/send dialogs with a telnet server so that you don't have to diddle with a console window prior to starting X.
I like the idea of running an X Server as a service in Windows, though. Even though it's essentially the same thing, it would definitely feel more natural. --
It'll be nice to have X apps running on MacOS. Still, I think the ultimate thing to have would be a version of Xlib for MacOS that simply translates X11 calls to their Mac native equivalents. That way you don't have to have an X server running on the Mac to display X apps.
It'd be nice to have that on Windows too, actually. --
Linux is the ideal platform for such a system. The problem with all efforts so far to do something like this is that they have all centered around "the home computer" (typically a Windows box). To make something like this work, you have to have something a little more "hands off." It's got to be a box that you mount on a wall in the basement, plug your services (power, telephone, DSL/cable, etc.) into, and forget about it. More likely for most homes, an installer will perform this service. Then you have everything available, a truly automated home. With that shaky PC out of the way, it can actually work.
I have friends with X-10 installations, and they all complain that the problem with tying it into your PC is that they don't want to encumber the PC with home automation tasks. I've had mine running for about two years now, though, with no problem -- I use Linux. My main server, which is also running IP masquerade for my LAN, file/print services, as well as my BBS, handles it all without so much as a hiccup.
Truly effective home automation requires a system that was designed to be "always on" -- and to me, that means more than just the ability to reduce a service down to a tray icon, it means the ability to truly jump into the background, to start automatically even when nobody is logged on, and to seldom (if ever) stop. Once that pesky PC is taken out of the picture, this stuff can really fly. --
Fortunately, the "dot com mania" on Wall Street has died down. Foolishly-spent venture capital is drying up, and startups are now being assessed on their ability to actually deliver some value, instead of simply having a Dot Com name.
History will record the last couple of years as the Internet's gold rush. Surely this has been a phenomenon of historical significance, probably the biggest since the Industrial Revolution. The next couple of years should be interesting to watch, now that the brick-and-mortar companies of old are starting to catch up with the Internet-only startups that hoped to replace them. Only the most well-managed of the latter will survive.
Does this mean that all start-ups are bogus? Of course not. But investing in one now, or taking a job at one now, is something to scrutinize carefully -- and this is something that this book will help to do. --
If you're in an office environment, the computer on your desk belongs to the company. Not you, the company. It is not "your" computer. Therefore the company can regulate what you do with it, and they can monitor what you do with it. You are not entitled to privacy.
Moreover, it is not your God-given right to customize the computer. Yet when some twit installs the latest Leonardo DiCaprio screen saver and it breaks all of the applications installed on the machine, said twit still feels entitled to yell at the poor tech from the IT department who is dispatched to fix the problem, and removes it.
You want to do personal stuff? You want to customize? You want to use the computer for any reason other than to do your job? Then go home and use your own computer. I can see this getting modded down by someone who wants to use their computer to goof off at work, but think about it. If your employer is ok with you casually surfing the web during slow times at work, that's fine, but in the end it's their computer and they make the rules. --
AMD's choice to add 64-bit instructions to the existing 32-bit set opens up some possibilities. While we in the Linux universe don't particularly consider an architecture jump to be something radical (since we have a hardware-agnostic compiler and kernel, as well as source code to most of the important apps), consider what this could mean to Microsoft. All that legacy 32-bit code, all that downloadable Active-X content that is so architecture dependent... it'll probably run on AMD's x86-64 architecture without having to jump the chip into an emulation mode. They can just retarget their compiler for x86-64, do a build of the existing system, and optimize in a few places. All existing apps run natively because the 32-bit instructions aren't running emulated.
Put it all together and you've got a good reason for Microsoft to suddenly declare that IA-64 is a train wreck waiting to happen, and x86-64 is going to be the 64-bit architecture supported by Windows. AMD instantly becomes the king of the CPU market while Intel spends another five years retooling. --
If performance is an issue, you should be looking at the "Tux" kernel-accelerated webserver. It absolutely creams IIS for delivery of static content. --
Slashdot Mirror
The Citadel/UX project is slowly but surely moving towards becoming an Exchange-killer in more ways than one. It's a very extensive, modular system, originally targeted at BBS applications but being built up as a general purpose groupware platform. Currently the developers are working on getting IMAP support in place, but calendaring is next. With a robust data store already there, calendaring will be well supported.
It can already do SMTP and POP3 natively (i.e. you don't have to plug it into Sendmail to make it work on the Internet). The iCalendar protocols will be built-in in a similar way.
--
Separation requires high temperatures... such as those generated by a Pentium IV operating under normal conditions.
oops.
--
This is a victory for the free software world, even in the United States. It demonstrates that someone out there has a clue, and (perhaps more importantly) that other countries aren't just going to roll over and adopt the US's unique brand of stupidity.
I wonder if the BushGore fiasco has had anything to do with it (i.e. "those Yanks can't even vote in a president, why should we let them dictate our trade policies?").
--
Ah yes, so you get that "free update" (not really free, but you've gotta pay your subscription fee whether you take the new version or not) but then you've got a few hundred PC's to upgrade, at a fabulously expensive cost (that army of MCSE's doesn't work for peanuts, y'know).
/opt or /usr/local volumes, and I've upgraded apps like WordPerfect, Netscape, StarOffice, etc. without having to visit any desktops.
This model works nicely in the mainframe world, where you can upgrade once and suddenly the whole shop has the new version. I've seen it done with stuff like SAS and MXG, and both the users and sysadmins are generally happy with it.
I daresay it could even work if you had Linux on the desktop -- I admin a couple of networks that have shared
Introduce the C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory, though, and you've got a big, unmaintainable mess. You're stuck having to manually upgrade every desktop. If you're really big you can do some of that tedious mucking about with pushed, scripted installs using tools like Novell ZENworks. But it's still much, much easier when the whole shop is working off one copy that can be upgraded.
--
It is interesting to see attempts to block TLD's that could be confused with Belize (.bz). Could it be that perhaps Belize is gearing up to position .bz as "The Business TLD" and sell it to American registrants -- similar to the way Tuvalu took advantage of its .tv domain?
I remain convinced that the only solution is to implement a very large number of TLD's, enough to de-value them and stop the two biggest problems: cybersquatting, and people registering in every possible TLD.
--
What they really ought to do is release a GPL'ed version of Qt for Windows. This would allow the free software community to write cross-platform applications. It would expand the market for such applications, and TrollTech would be able to sell commercial Qt licenses for the inevitable closed source apps that would emerge.
I really can't think of a single reason why they wouldn't do this. Are you reading this, Haavard? The market for cross-platform apps is going to explode when Linux surfaces on the desktop. Qt can be a part of this. Please give it some consideration.
--
Nice big optical storage. Now we can rest assured that the install image for Windows "Whistler" will still fit on one disc. :)
--
The early assessment is correct, and Madhu Siddalingaiah agrees: C# and CLR might be portable -- and sure, it's possible to port them to other operating systems -- but that would still be completely useless, because the .NET framework involves a lot of API's that are, and will be, only available on Windows. The core class libraries in Java, on the other hand, are available anywhere the Java runtime is available.
.NET framework is designed for this goal: "Write once (on a Windows machine), run anywhere (as long as it's a Windows machine)."
Make no mistake about it: the
Probably the only useful bit of "portability" the Microsoft CLR will achieve, is that it gives them a migration strategy for upcoming 64-bit Windows. It allows developers to write on Win32 and run on Win64. Oh, how portable!
--
I can't speak for any of them, of course, but there are people in every technology company (excepting perhaps Microsoft) whose love of technology is greater than their love of money.
--
I read the article, and it makes some very good points. It's all about how Mozilla has fixes available for a number of bugs, but Netscape has temporarily forked so they can get a 6.0 release out, and they're not applying Mozilla fixes until after the release.
A very good article, whose discussion here was completely ruined by being posted to Slashdot in an inflammatory way. We could have had a nice, intelligent discussion, but the words "IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so" sparked the usual flamefest. This was completely unnecessary, and terribly irresponsible.
--
Yes, you read that correctly. Netscape won the browser war. Netscape's goal was to turn the web into a platform. They succeeded in that goal. We now live in a world where many applications are web-based instead of Windows-based. Microsoft didn't want that. Netscape did. Netscape won.
It was a Pyhrric victory, of course, since Netscape's market share got decimated by Microsoft. But they succeeded in turning the web into a platform.
By the way, I don't fault AOL/Netscape in putting money-making devices in the browser. They have to make money somehow, and they don't have OS or office suite cash cows to support the browser as a loss leader, so they have to recognize some revenue somehow. At least they've continued to support the open source Mozilla project, allowing you to re-build it differently if you so choose. AOL has been more than gracious in keeping the dream of a non-MSproprietary Web alive; they do not deserve our scorn.
--
Are there any techies out there with enough social skills to actually find a mate and manage to procreate? Why get married and have kids when you could be spending your evenings in the basement writing code?
Disclaimer: this message is posted in jest (Score: 5, Funny). I happen to be a husband and father (and techie) myself, so I know that this is a serious issue.
--
AOL may not be the choice for power users, but they are most certainly not going downhill. They are, by a huge margin, the #1 consumer ISP. Even the Devil of Redmond, with its monopo-bundling power, and loss leading (read: $400 bribe to subscribe) has not been able to crack this nut.
I wouldn't be caught dead on AOL, but what they say is true: it is easy to use. AOL has totally nailed the consumer Internet experience, and most of its users are very happy with the service. If you have never met an AOL customer who didn't feel "seriously abused" then I have to question the identity of the group you sampled.
--
Stuff like this is the real danger of UCITA -- it would put a chill on any real criticism of published software. You want to say something bad about Microsoft SQL Server? You have to get Microsoft's permission first (which, of course, they won't give you). IF you say it anyway, they slap you with a law suit.
UCITA == adios, First Amendment.
--
Sun is more likely now than ever before to move towards open sourcing Java. The competition has emerged: Microsoft CLR and C#. Like all Microsoft products, it sucks. Big time. But Sun knows that that's never stopped Microsoft from taking over a market before.
So now with Satan's Steamroller coming across the horizon, Sun has every incentive to open source Java. Soon, preferably.
--
As an aside, it's not the auto companies that don't want us to have air (or water) powered cars, it's the oil companies. They have the resources to either extinguish or simply buy out any alternative means of powering automobiles. Don't expect breakthrough progress until the Earth's supply of petroleum is nearly exhausted -- and then, expect those "breakthroughs" to come from the very same oil companies (a key thing to look for is when they start calling themselves "energy companies" instead -- similar to the way cable television providers now refer to themselves as "broadband" companies to encompass the data and voice services they want to deliver).
Sad, but true. Oil companies are way too rich and powerful. And if we end up with W in the whitehouse, look for them to become even more powerful.
--
My favorite X server for MS Windows is Reflection X. It allows you to do expect/send dialogs with a telnet server so that you don't have to diddle with a console window prior to starting X.
I like the idea of running an X Server as a service in Windows, though. Even though it's essentially the same thing, it would definitely feel more natural.
--
It'll be nice to have X apps running on MacOS. Still, I think the ultimate thing to have would be a version of Xlib for MacOS that simply translates X11 calls to their Mac native equivalents. That way you don't have to have an X server running on the Mac to display X apps.
It'd be nice to have that on Windows too, actually.
--
A collection of bytes cannot be considered an Operating System until the characters "GNU/" have been prepended to its name!
--
Linux is the ideal platform for such a system. The problem with all efforts so far to do something like this is that they have all centered around "the home computer" (typically a Windows box). To make something like this work, you have to have something a little more "hands off." It's got to be a box that you mount on a wall in the basement, plug your services (power, telephone, DSL/cable, etc.) into, and forget about it. More likely for most homes, an installer will perform this service. Then you have everything available, a truly automated home. With that shaky PC out of the way, it can actually work.
I have friends with X-10 installations, and they all complain that the problem with tying it into your PC is that they don't want to encumber the PC with home automation tasks. I've had mine running for about two years now, though, with no problem -- I use Linux. My main server, which is also running IP masquerade for my LAN, file/print services, as well as my BBS, handles it all without so much as a hiccup.
Truly effective home automation requires a system that was designed to be "always on" -- and to me, that means more than just the ability to reduce a service down to a tray icon, it means the ability to truly jump into the background, to start automatically even when nobody is logged on, and to seldom (if ever) stop. Once that pesky PC is taken out of the picture, this stuff can really fly.
--
Fortunately, the "dot com mania" on Wall Street has died down. Foolishly-spent venture capital is drying up, and startups are now being assessed on their ability to actually deliver some value, instead of simply having a Dot Com name.
History will record the last couple of years as the Internet's gold rush. Surely this has been a phenomenon of historical significance, probably the biggest since the Industrial Revolution. The next couple of years should be interesting to watch, now that the brick-and-mortar companies of old are starting to catch up with the Internet-only startups that hoped to replace them. Only the most well-managed of the latter will survive.
Does this mean that all start-ups are bogus? Of course not. But investing in one now, or taking a job at one now, is something to scrutinize carefully -- and this is something that this book will help to do.
--
If you're in an office environment, the computer on your desk belongs to the company. Not you, the company. It is not "your" computer. Therefore the company can regulate what you do with it, and they can monitor what you do with it. You are not entitled to privacy.
Moreover, it is not your God-given right to customize the computer. Yet when some twit installs the latest Leonardo DiCaprio screen saver and it breaks all of the applications installed on the machine, said twit still feels entitled to yell at the poor tech from the IT department who is dispatched to fix the problem, and removes it.
You want to do personal stuff? You want to customize? You want to use the computer for any reason other than to do your job? Then go home and use your own computer. I can see this getting modded down by someone who wants to use their computer to goof off at work, but think about it. If your employer is ok with you casually surfing the web during slow times at work, that's fine, but in the end it's their computer and they make the rules.
--
AMD's choice to add 64-bit instructions to the existing 32-bit set opens up some possibilities. While we in the Linux universe don't particularly consider an architecture jump to be something radical (since we have a hardware-agnostic compiler and kernel, as well as source code to most of the important apps), consider what this could mean to Microsoft. All that legacy 32-bit code, all that downloadable Active-X content that is so architecture dependent ... it'll probably run on AMD's x86-64 architecture without having to jump the chip into an emulation mode. They can just retarget their compiler for x86-64, do a build of the existing system, and optimize in a few places. All existing apps run natively because the 32-bit instructions aren't running emulated.
Put it all together and you've got a good reason for Microsoft to suddenly declare that IA-64 is a train wreck waiting to happen, and x86-64 is going to be the 64-bit architecture supported by Windows. AMD instantly becomes the king of the CPU market while Intel spends another five years retooling.
--
If performance is an issue, you should be looking at the "Tux" kernel-accelerated webserver. It absolutely creams IIS for delivery of static content.
--
"Rambus' legal department" ??
Isn't that redundant?
--