A third option is that they will support Linux on a range of machines, with full support for the hardware.
In fact, the community should encourage them to do just that - support Linux with foster open drivers that work well. The community that cares about Linux should follow through with help and with our purchase dollars if they follow through.
Keep in mind, these guys can lean on hardware companies to support Linux better. This could help us do something we haven't been able to do on our own -- coordinate market forces to influence companies that only respond to economic demand.
There is no contest here: Microsoft runs the show because they are virtually an OS monopoly for the vast majority of customers that Dell has.
Role play it out. If MS refused to let Dell sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). If Dell refused to sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). Microsoft has plenty of other vendors to sell their OS, Dell doesn't have plenty of in-demand OS's to sell (trust me- I wish linux counted, but that is nowhere near the volume business of selling XP/Vista).
For future scenarios, this is the basic rule of supply chain economics. Think of this chart. Producer -> MiddleMan -> Distributor
As you go towards the right, your power increases in all cases EXCEPT where someone to the left has a monopoloy (or somewhat close to it). Wallmart is all the way to the right and all they sell are commodities, that's why Wall mart can gouge their suppliers. Dell wishes they were in the same boat, but they have a monopoly to the left.
RedHat support is some of the worst support I've ever seen in the marketplace. Indeed, it is far worse than Microsoft's (which is pathetic). All the companies that I'm affiliated with use Suse if they want support nowadays. (and I HATE the patent deal that Novell did with Microsoft, but Redhat is so damn miserable at support, there isn't much of a choice).
Novell's support isn't great, but at least they call you back. I don't think I've ever gotten Redhat to call back on any support issue over the 4 years I was a customer. (The only reaction I've ever seen from their customer support is to quietly close my tickets that stayed open for more than a year -- without ever putting in an explanatory note or fixing the problem, of course)
If that company wants to go with Oracle so they can actually get real support, more power to them. They could switched to using Microsoft Windows. . . but they didn't - and for that I'm glad.
In case you were wondering, the Chomsky of the "hierarchy of formal languages" is the same Noam Chomsky that you probably know of in a political context.
Check out the Wikipedia page on him. . . agree with his politics or not, he's had an interesting career in linguistics. . .
OEM linux installs are good for two important reasons: 1) This could be the leverage that community needs over driver manufacturers that refuse to cooperate with the OSS community. If OEMs won't/can't ship machines with drivers that support their cards, then OEMs will stop buying that hardware to include in their builds. 2) This becomes an easy entre for new users enterring the linux market.
It doesn't really matter _which_ distro they include, as long as the driver issue gets cleaned up for commodity hardware and new users can use/learn linux without having to install from scratch.
The experts will reinstall anyway, but they will start the reinstall knowing that it is possible to get all of the components working.
The new users may eventually become experts, but they can start learning Unix fundamentals without having to start out struggling with IRQ conflicts, buggy drivers, and difficult configs (X11).
That would be the question I'd like to ask. Does it work well as a phone, have good reception, etc?
If it is a great phone, I'd be more likely to buy it. . . and tinker with it. All these years, I've just wanted phone I could customize in a real way, and I'd pay money for that.
They are a billion dollar company with shareholders to report to.
Wrong. . . they are a nearly 144 billion dollar with shareholders to report to.
The only thing you can trust a company for is to try to hoard as many resources as it can and give as little as it can in return. They call that "profit". Those that can't do it are considered fiducially "irresponsible".
On one hand, you probably lost out on a lot of money, on the other hand, you can know that that you didn't profit from a scam.
Broadcast.com was just that, a scam. I remember the Cuban road-show where he and Mary Meeker (who was an equity advisor at Morgan Stanley) both tried to pitch the sale of Broadcast.com. Not only was the presentation full of exaggerations and outright lies, Marky Meeker was grossly breaking the law and directly working for Morgan's IBanking side as an equity analyst (Equity analysts are supposed to have a "chinese-wall" in place where they can't work on IBanking relationships).
Cuban is rich, and you (probably) aren't. Cuban made his money as a despicable liar, side by side with a professional con-artist -- you have a chance to do otherwise and don't have to live down their deceitfulness.
Contrary to popular opinion, bags of money aren't so wonderful if you have trouble sleeping at night.
We chose Confluence at my firm ( http://www.atlassian.com/ ). They are the same people who write Jira (the project management system on a bunch of open-source sites). It handled all of our requirements (very similar to yours) and it works really, really well. I don't work for the company, but I feel good talking-up people who make good products.
My favorite features:
WYSIWYG editor built in with an option to do wiki-markup if you want.
Full versioning of the docs and attachments
Full searchable indexing of both docs and attachments (even word, powerpoint, excel, and pdfs)
Customizable navigation and templating
Easily customizable permissions
It works great with open-source databases (postgres in our case) and pay ones and its searching is very powerful
You can be set-up and running in about 30 minutes
My favorite feature is that we don't have to mess with it at all. We set it up and both non-developers and developers get along with it well.
I would chose it over Sharepoint or Notes in a heartbeat (both of which I used before and thought were a mess).
We went with Confluence from atlassian for our knowledge sharing. It uses real open-standards, is easy to use and costs less.
It is a hell of a lot easier than either of those two behemoths, won't lock you into anything, and the company isn't going to force to you into upgrades you don't want and don't need.
My solution for this. ..by my relative a mac, set it up, and then help them sign up for a user group/class.
The Mac made things easier to use, but the user group served two purposes. My relative got to ask regular questions and also gave a sense of community and involvement that my intermittent remote involvement just couldn't provide.
The other reason that the Mac made sense is all of the iLife focus of the Mac. All the things that it provides can all be construed as potentially family-related and creative. . . something that the unfriendly Windows world doesn't provide and that the Linux community could learn from.
I had tremendous problems until I switched to a Kinesis Ergo Classic Keyboard and a Logitech trackball (the one where you move the ball with your thumb).
The Kinesis was expensive but it was worth every penny. Not only was it way better than the MS Natural at alleviating my symptoms, it has built in macros (for software/OS independent key macro), a sound chip, etc. It takes about 4 days to get used to, but then I was able to type faster than I _ever_ was able to in the past (without any pain).
I don't work for either company, but I am very grateful to them for helping solve my painful RSI issues.
HP has a line called its "digital senders". They aren't cheap but they are standalone scanners (just hook up to a network - no computer needed) that are capable of scanning and sending directly to an email address or to a network share -- They also integrate with LDAP/active directory for lookups and are capable of high-volume scaning (ie. 50 pages at a time)
Just go to any Denny's or Perkins in the midwest. This technology is used in the incredibly accurate Lov 'o meter and other devices that use your biorythms to detect how personable you are or your capacity for romance.
If you use this technology instead of passwords, you get authentication AND validation at the same time!
If you can stomach paying for it (it's pretty cheap). Jira from Atlassian is the best out there right now. it has all of the features of the free ones and a whole lot more and they are a pretty good citizen of free software (they contribute quite a bit to the community).
I spent a long while looking at the free alternatives and jira really blew them away.
don't count on it. Microsoft doesn't have a history of contributing to the community and I wouldn't hold your breath. . .
Much as IBM, for it's own financial convience, became a "good guy" by supporting Linux and open source, Microsoft may make a similar transformation: They split with Sony over Blu-ray because they demanded that the next DVD format allow consumers to use media they had purchased the way they wanted to (i.e. store on a Microsoft powered media center).
That's weird. . . I thought they split with Blu-ray because Blu-ray uses Java. . . which they compete with (and their customers want. . . but they tried to pollute and the refused to bundle it according contracts they had signed.)
BTW: You are the first person I've heard of to congratulate a DRM vendor on their openness.
Basically, this is FUD from a BSD vendor who wants to hurt linux and promote BSD by Fudding the GPL.
Although started by some really bright netBSD folks, they've ejected all of their really bright founding engineers and are resorting to scare-tactics and other garbage like this to try to gain market share.
Stupid tricks like this hurt free software in general. I hope Wasabi garners enough ill-will from this stunt to hurt their business in a serious way.
Slashdot Mirror
A third option is that they will support Linux on a range of machines, with full support for the hardware.
In fact, the community should encourage them to do just that - support Linux with foster open drivers that work well. The community that cares about Linux should follow through with help and with our purchase dollars if they follow through.
Keep in mind, these guys can lean on hardware companies to support Linux better. This could help us do something we haven't been able to do on our own -- coordinate market forces to influence companies that only respond to economic demand.
There is no contest here: Microsoft runs the show because they are virtually an OS monopoly for the vast majority of customers that Dell has.
Role play it out. If MS refused to let Dell sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). If Dell refused to sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). Microsoft has plenty of other vendors to sell their OS, Dell doesn't have plenty of in-demand OS's to sell (trust me- I wish linux counted, but that is nowhere near the volume business of selling XP/Vista).
For future scenarios, this is the basic rule of supply chain economics. Think of this chart.
Producer -> MiddleMan -> Distributor
As you go towards the right, your power increases in all cases EXCEPT where someone to the left has a monopoloy (or somewhat close to it). Wallmart is all the way to the right and all they sell are commodities, that's why Wall mart can gouge their suppliers. Dell wishes they were in the same boat, but they have a monopoly to the left.
RedHat support is some of the worst support I've ever seen in the marketplace. Indeed, it is far worse than Microsoft's (which is pathetic). All the companies that I'm affiliated with use Suse if they want support nowadays. (and I HATE the patent deal that Novell did with Microsoft, but Redhat is so damn miserable at support, there isn't much of a choice).
Novell's support isn't great, but at least they call you back. I don't think I've ever gotten Redhat to call back on any support issue over the 4 years I was a customer. (The only reaction I've ever seen from their customer support is to quietly close my tickets that stayed open for more than a year -- without ever putting in an explanatory note or fixing the problem, of course)
If that company wants to go with Oracle so they can actually get real support, more power to them. They could switched to using Microsoft Windows. . . but they didn't - and for that I'm glad.
In case you were wondering, the Chomsky of the "hierarchy of formal languages" is the same Noam Chomsky that you probably know of in a political context.
Check out the Wikipedia page on him. . . agree with his politics or not, he's had an interesting career in linguistics. . .
OEM linux installs are good for two important reasons:
1) This could be the leverage that community needs over driver manufacturers that refuse to cooperate with the OSS community. If OEMs won't/can't ship machines with drivers that support their cards, then OEMs will stop buying that hardware to include in their builds.
2) This becomes an easy entre for new users enterring the linux market.
It doesn't really matter _which_ distro they include, as long as the driver issue gets cleaned up for commodity hardware and new users can use/learn linux without having to install from scratch.
The experts will reinstall anyway, but they will start the reinstall knowing that it is possible to get all of the components working.
The new users may eventually become experts, but they can start learning Unix fundamentals without having to start out struggling with IRQ conflicts, buggy drivers, and difficult configs (X11).
That would be the question I'd like to ask. Does it work well as a phone, have good reception, etc?
If it is a great phone, I'd be more likely to buy it. . . and tinker with it. All these years, I've just wanted phone I could customize in a real way, and I'd pay money for that.
Anyone out there know if these things work well?
1. Naive programmers implement patented microsoft CLR/C#
2. Novell buys liability nightmare language/runtime implementation
3. Novell does patent deal with Microsoft
4. Novell releases patented information for Office translator
5. Microsoft starts raising legitimate lawsuits against both Novel (mono) and everyone else (using Novell precedent of signing patent protection agreement)
6. . . .
7. Loss!!!
Wake up, little Suse. . .
You would think this would be a wake up call for Bill Gates.
No, it's a wakeup call for everyone who thought Microsoft was led by decent people.
They are a billion dollar company with shareholders to report to.
Wrong. . . they are a nearly 144 billion dollar with shareholders to report to.
The only thing you can trust a company for is to try to hoard as many resources as it can and give as little as it can in return. They call that "profit". Those that can't do it are considered fiducially "irresponsible".
On one hand, you probably lost out on a lot of money, on the other hand, you can know that that you didn't profit from a scam.
Broadcast.com was just that, a scam. I remember the Cuban road-show where he and Mary Meeker (who was an equity advisor at Morgan Stanley) both tried to pitch the sale of Broadcast.com. Not only was the presentation full of exaggerations and outright lies, Marky Meeker was grossly breaking the law and directly working for Morgan's IBanking side as an equity analyst (Equity analysts are supposed to have a "chinese-wall" in place where they can't work on IBanking relationships).
Cuban is rich, and you (probably) aren't. Cuban made his money as a despicable liar, side by side with a professional con-artist -- you have a chance to do otherwise and don't have to live down their deceitfulness.
Contrary to popular opinion, bags of money aren't so wonderful if you have trouble sleeping at night.
This is the most perverse thing I've ever read. A computer built by Microsoft that uses a linux-powered glove to stroke its victims.
I'd read more about it but I don't really read articles. . . .
- WYSIWYG editor built in with an option to do wiki-markup if you want.
- Full versioning of the docs and attachments
- Full searchable indexing of both docs and attachments (even word, powerpoint, excel, and pdfs)
- Customizable navigation and templating
- Easily customizable permissions
- It works great with open-source databases (postgres in our case) and pay ones and its searching is very powerful
- You can be set-up and running in about 30 minutes
My favorite feature is that we don't have to mess with it at all. We set it up and both non-developers and developers get along with it well. I would chose it over Sharepoint or Notes in a heartbeat (both of which I used before and thought were a mess).We went with Confluence from atlassian for our knowledge sharing. It uses real open-standards, is easy to use and costs less.
It is a hell of a lot easier than either of those two behemoths, won't lock you into anything, and the company isn't going to force to you into upgrades you don't want and don't need.
My solution for this. . .by my relative a mac, set it up, and then help them sign up for a user group/class.
The Mac made things easier to use, but the user group served two purposes. My relative got to ask regular questions and also gave a sense of community and involvement that my intermittent remote involvement just couldn't provide.
The other reason that the Mac made sense is all of the iLife focus of the Mac. All the things that it provides can all be construed as potentially family-related and creative. . . something that the unfriendly Windows world doesn't provide and that the Linux community could learn from.
I had tremendous problems until I switched to a Kinesis Ergo Classic Keyboard and a Logitech trackball (the one where you move the ball with your thumb).
The Kinesis was expensive but it was worth every penny. Not only was it way better than the MS Natural at alleviating my symptoms, it has built in macros (for software/OS independent key macro), a sound chip, etc. It takes about 4 days to get used to, but then I was able to type faster than I _ever_ was able to in the past (without any pain).
I don't work for either company, but I am very grateful to them for helping solve my painful RSI issues.
Until ZFS is released for the real production version of Solaris (Not Solaris Express), then a lot of people will spend some real time with it.
Otherwise. . . it is just a piece of software with lots of promises with no real release.
Win ;)
Mac
*nix
Religions
Emacs beats vi
HP has a line called its "digital senders". They aren't cheap but they are standalone scanners (just hook up to a network - no computer needed) that are capable of scanning and sending directly to an email address or to a network share -- They also integrate with LDAP/active directory for lookups and are capable of high-volume scaning (ie. 50 pages at a time)
Just go to any Denny's or Perkins in the midwest. This technology is used in the incredibly accurate Lov 'o meter and other devices that use your biorythms to detect how personable you are or your capacity for romance.
If you use this technology instead of passwords, you get authentication AND validation at the same time!
If you can stomach paying for it (it's pretty cheap). Jira from Atlassian is the best out there right now. it has all of the features of the free ones and a whole lot more and they are a pretty good citizen of free software (they contribute quite a bit to the community).
I spent a long while looking at the free alternatives and jira really blew them away.
They took out the trackpoint, switched to an awkward front-loading cd drive, shrank the keyboard and didn't use
the latest cpus.
This doesn't look like an ad for lenovo to me. This looks like an advertisement for apple.
If you hate the word usage, I hate to ask what you think of "utilize".
don't count on it. Microsoft doesn't have a history of contributing to the community and I wouldn't hold your breath. . .
Much as IBM, for it's own financial convience, became a "good guy" by supporting Linux and open source, Microsoft may make a similar transformation: They split with Sony over Blu-ray because they demanded that the next DVD format allow consumers to use media they had purchased the way they wanted to (i.e. store on a Microsoft powered media center).
That's weird. . . I thought they split with Blu-ray because Blu-ray uses Java. . . which they compete with (and their customers want. . . but they tried to pollute and the refused to bundle it according contracts they had signed.)
BTW: You are the first person I've heard of to congratulate a DRM vendor on their openness.
Basically, this is FUD from a BSD vendor who wants to hurt linux and promote BSD by Fudding the GPL.
Although started by some really bright netBSD folks, they've ejected all of their really bright founding engineers and are resorting to scare-tactics and other garbage like this to try to gain market share.
Stupid tricks like this hurt free software in general. I hope Wasabi garners enough ill-will from this stunt to hurt their business in a serious way.
These benchmarks don't seem entirely objective.
The older imac was sporting twice the memory, and the g5 desktop had 9 times the memory.
Clearly the memory disparity was a factor in many of the tests.
I would give more credence to a test where all three machines had the same amount of memory so that paging/swapping/caching would be more at parity.