Rob, given the glacial POSIX process to standardize system/user administration or even shells, what do you want to see prioritized in this area?
The major vendors are using such interfaces as selling-points, while the open OS's can't agree on such apparently simple matters as the arguments to cat let alone generalized administration.
You guys just don't understand what it's like for an IT business analyst. There's all this stuff going on that you have to make sense of so you can sell what you've learnt. And there's all these other people trying to beat you to it so they get the money from the IT media and companies. If you don't say something different, noone will listen. And look at all the work Forrester got from M$ and SCO lately. It's not fair. Just because you said it looked like M$ wasn't going to make more billions this month than last month.
And then a bright spark comes up with the great idea: claim that no-OS OR linux OS PC's are really just for pirating Windows. Looks like we won't have to close down the Cleveland office after all.Thanks, M$! We'll keep the good news coming:)
There's actually a LOT of FOSS software out there for other OS's, you're correct. And in many cases FOSS is supplying a need not met even by shareware on those platforms. From a user's perspective, that's pretty much it, right?
Well not from a developer's perspective. Every commercial OS requires you to pay to play; it protects their API and incidentally makes good money. A FOSS OS is better for developers because that barrier to entry is gone, and they benefit from FOSS sourcecode, which means the user SHOULD benefit from better applications, since the motivation for writing software is different.
And the argument from the level of re-education costs is moot. You can't argue for the benefits of whatever's built into an existing OS and on the same hand claim that users don't interact with those features (hint: there's a commercial reason for those features, it cuts out a developer).
So, for the sake of educating users, and giving them choice, there is a place for FOSS on commercial OS's, but it's never more than a stopgap solution.
It's amateur hour at Linuxworld. See the anonymous webmonkey create a spectacular narrow column, followed by the intrepid O'Gara's narrow range!
High farce or easy mark? Her incompetent report continues, in a vain effort to understand anything SCO is feeding her about the case. The one about IBM being on System 3 was very entertaining, but the copyright story was weaker, but as she was confused and couldn't remember much, perhaps that's the reason.
This article may fetch O'Gara a lot of PR yardage, but will not ultimately score a touchdown. Whatever she was on about.
sells these days. Oddly he appears to blame everyone else for a bug he didn't spot himself for three years. Users suddenly didn't turn into code monkeys just because they used the software. And you can't turn them into beta-testers against their will. It's a potential, not a given.
The kind of methodology he wants for OSS just isn't going to happen across the board. Just as in commercial software, the "best practice" style you learned in college gets thrown out once you actually have to DO something.
Large projects require similar methodology just to keep consistent, but small programs will never do so. This is the real world, not the classroom!
...is the idea that just because we don't think it'll work, MS won't try it. Based on past experience (and Cringley has more of that than most of you), it is the sort of thing MS would try because it's fighting the wrong battle. This is corporate psychology we're talking about, not reality!
I believe MS is trying to set up an indirect attack, probably two or more steps to it, to ensnare Linux adoption into a contradiction. They're very proud of their past sucessess in misdirecting market segments and pouncing. The thing about corporations, see, is that once it works, they like to do it again. And again.
SCO is one arm of their strategy, and Lord High Anti-Linux Dude Taylor is another. Attempts to coopt standards and hardware are nothing new, they've been tried before. As the more perceptive readers here have noticed, the cat isn't exactly in the bag any more.
They're fighting some of the smartest people on the plant, who for once aren't preferring the bottom line to all else. That's different. That's why it won't work. You might fool someone who's concerned with quarterly sales, not someone who enjoys logic as a way of life.
Another marketdroid Information Minister. As long as they're paying this fool, we have nothing to worry about. Clumsy attempts to differentiate between Novell and Red Hat. Bizarre statements about IBM. TCO pie in the sky. Regression testing my ass. Lame kernel jokes.
Keep this one, MS. We like him. Cute, clueless and cuddly.
Geez, I've seen a lot of tripe written in response to this article and not much substance.
If the value of Premium is only that you hear about a MS bug before getting a patch like everyone else, it's poor value. But coming from a company that believes that noone should warn customers of a bug in case the baddies hear about it, it's plain hilarious. You're paying for an earlier admission of a problem. Exactly what advantage do you think you're supposed to get? And does MS seriously think the information isn't going to get out this way?
Premium customers should be furiously demanding earlier patches for their money, or they'll spill the beans.
Wonderfully clever solution. Now tell me: which version of Microsoft Word was Lt. Col. Killian using before he died in 1984? You think maybe his signature was forged too? This has gotten beyond absurdity.
...is there a chance that Americans are seeing this
anywhere?
According to my TV guide it was pulled in 1996 due to sensitivities during that year's election. It's another side of W. people might want to pay attention to.
And how, pray, will binary diffs improve this situation? The download cost isn't the problem, it's a symptom. The rudimentary/non-existent mechanisms to evaluate packages before they're allowed distribution is the problem.
Hence the gcc-3.3 changelog problem continues to repeat itself - having the means to split a package up into component packages should carry with it the means to prevent this kind of persistent error.
Me, I'm glad they get around to updating KDE at all.
Glad that Alien got in (that's two for ripley), but if we're going to let in Star Wars sequels then James Cameron's Aliens should have been included, and not for nostalgia reasons.
Not only does it continue the themes mentioned by the list, but also one that often chimes in sf: corporate irresponsibility. It appears to be a Scott favourite too, taking into account Blade Runner. As an extension to the argument "if it can be done, it will be done", first the Company subverts an android to do its bidding, then when that fails, employs the snakiest brownnoser (I still can't watch a rerun of Mad about You without wishing for an alien to crash through the apartment and tear Paul Reiser to pieces).
As a sequel, it's up there with Empires. Never mind that the rest bombed like subsequent Star Wars sequels.
It was lazy journalism, quoting Wasabi Systems with a vested interest against the GPL. The short of it is that the GPL renders his business model obsolete, as manufacturers take the embedded linux road. Don't they teach research in America anymore?
We're talking about an open collaborative method vs. a closed, secretive one.
Witchcraft is a closer fit to magic, which IS secretive. Alchemy is a pseudoscience closer to true science, those like Newton, Boyd and Locke did, however secretly, confer and test each other's theories in a proto-scientific method.
Witchcraft/magic on the other hand totally depends on secrets for its effectiveness. Religion, which has always sought to take witchcraft's place is also secretive.
Consider the response of a scientist and a magician to a theory which has failed: the scientist goes back and gathers more data, tests the working hypothoesis of others and tries again. The magician simpy says "the didn't work, the time wasn't right, and the gods are angry with you".
Not a bad analogy between closed vs open source, is it?
Slashdot Mirror
They haven't got the x86 port right yet.
Rob, given the glacial POSIX process to standardize system/user administration or even shells, what do you want to see prioritized in this area?
The major vendors are using such interfaces as selling-points, while the open OS's can't agree on such apparently simple matters as the arguments to cat let alone generalized administration.
take the fun out of mugging, why don't you?
You guys just don't understand what it's like for an IT business analyst. There's all this stuff going on that you have to make sense of so you can sell what you've learnt. And there's all these other people trying to beat you to it so they get the money from the IT media and companies. If you don't say something different, noone will listen. And look at all the work Forrester got from M$ and SCO lately. It's not fair. Just because you said it looked like M$ wasn't going to make more billions this month than last month.
:)
And then a bright spark comes up with the great idea: claim that no-OS OR linux OS PC's are really just for pirating Windows. Looks like we won't have to close down the Cleveland office after all.Thanks, M$! We'll keep the good news coming
There's actually a LOT of FOSS software out there for other OS's, you're correct. And in many cases FOSS is supplying a need not met even by shareware on those platforms. From a user's perspective, that's pretty much it, right?
Well not from a developer's perspective. Every commercial OS requires you to pay to play; it protects their API and incidentally makes good money. A FOSS OS is better for developers because that barrier to entry is gone, and they benefit from FOSS sourcecode, which means the user SHOULD benefit from better applications, since the motivation for writing software is different.
And the argument from the level of re-education costs is moot. You can't argue for the benefits of whatever's built into an existing OS and on the same hand claim that users don't interact with those features (hint: there's a commercial reason for those features, it cuts out a developer).
So, for the sake of educating users, and giving them choice, there is a place for FOSS on commercial OS's, but it's never more than a stopgap solution.
because my bet is on the British government who were so obliging. I imagine Special Branch were leaping at the chance.
1. Get Sun to agree that OpenOffice users have no protection against patent infringment.
2. Make Office code widely available to governments.
3. Target Linux-based OpenOffice developers.
4. Game over, man.
It's amateur hour at Linuxworld. See the anonymous webmonkey create a spectacular narrow column, followed by the intrepid O'Gara's narrow range!
High farce or easy mark? Her incompetent report continues, in a vain effort to understand anything SCO is feeding her about the case. The one about IBM being on System 3 was very entertaining, but the copyright story was weaker, but as she was confused and couldn't remember much, perhaps that's the reason.
This article may fetch O'Gara a lot of PR yardage, but will not ultimately score a touchdown. Whatever she was on about.
sells these days. Oddly he appears to blame everyone else for a bug he didn't spot himself for three years. Users suddenly didn't turn into code monkeys just because they used the software. And you can't turn them into beta-testers against their will. It's a potential, not a given.
The kind of methodology he wants for OSS just isn't going to happen across the board. Just as in commercial software, the "best practice" style you learned in college gets thrown out once you actually have to DO something.
Large projects require similar methodology just to keep consistent, but small programs will never do so. This is the real world, not the classroom!
I believe MS is trying to set up an indirect attack, probably two or more steps to it, to ensnare Linux adoption into a contradiction. They're very proud of their past sucessess in misdirecting market segments and pouncing. The thing about corporations, see, is that once it works, they like to do it again. And again.
SCO is one arm of their strategy, and Lord High Anti-Linux Dude Taylor is another. Attempts to coopt standards and hardware are nothing new, they've been tried before. As the more perceptive readers here have noticed, the cat isn't exactly in the bag any more.
They're fighting some of the smartest people on the plant, who for once aren't preferring the bottom line to all else. That's different. That's why it won't work. You might fool someone who's concerned with quarterly sales, not someone who enjoys logic as a way of life.
Another marketdroid Information Minister. As long as they're paying this fool, we have nothing to worry about. Clumsy attempts to differentiate between Novell and Red Hat. Bizarre statements about IBM. TCO pie in the sky. Regression testing my ass. Lame kernel jokes.
Keep this one, MS. We like him. Cute, clueless and cuddly.
Geez, I've seen a lot of tripe written in response to this article and not much substance.
If the value of Premium is only that you hear about a MS bug before getting a patch like everyone else, it's poor value. But coming from a company that believes that noone should warn customers of a bug in case the baddies hear about it, it's plain hilarious. You're paying for an earlier admission of a problem. Exactly what advantage do you think you're supposed to get? And does MS seriously think the information isn't going to get out this way?
Premium customers should be furiously demanding earlier patches for their money, or they'll spill the beans.
...they'd like their hyperspatial bypass back.
Wonderfully clever solution. Now tell me: which version of Microsoft Word was Lt. Col. Killian using before he died in 1984? You think maybe his signature was forged too? This has gotten beyond absurdity.
According to my TV guide it was pulled in 1996 due to sensitivities during that year's election. It's another side of W. people might want to pay attention to.
...I was beginning to worry about the private health sector. I love neo-liberalism, the deserving always benefit!
And how, pray, will binary diffs improve this situation? The download cost isn't the problem, it's a symptom. The rudimentary/non-existent mechanisms to evaluate packages before they're allowed distribution is the problem.
Hence the gcc-3.3 changelog problem continues to repeat itself - having the means to split a package up into component packages should carry with it the means to prevent this kind of persistent error.
Me, I'm glad they get around to updating KDE at all.
plenty of people have screamed :)
Considering that most people believe that Howard is a habitual liar, we probably won't know the truth of this until the next election.
Glad that Alien got in (that's two for ripley), but if we're going to let in Star Wars sequels then James Cameron's Aliens should have been included, and not for nostalgia reasons.
Not only does it continue the themes mentioned by the list, but also one that often chimes in sf: corporate irresponsibility. It appears to be a Scott favourite too, taking into account Blade Runner. As an extension to the argument "if it can be done, it will be done", first the Company subverts an android to do its bidding, then when that fails, employs the snakiest brownnoser (I still can't watch a rerun of Mad about You without wishing for an alien to crash through the apartment and tear Paul Reiser to pieces).
As a sequel, it's up there with Empires. Never mind that the rest bombed like subsequent Star Wars sequels.
Wow, you have a narrow view of sf. Consider this quote from Arthur C. Clarke:
There is no sf that has the "right" logic. Now watch Odyssey 200 times as punishment.
Groklaw dealt with this last week.
It was lazy journalism, quoting Wasabi Systems with a vested interest against the GPL. The short of it is that the GPL renders his business model obsolete, as manufacturers take the embedded linux road. Don't they teach research in America anymore?
Australia does too
We're talking about an open collaborative method vs. a closed, secretive one.
Witchcraft is a closer fit to magic, which IS secretive. Alchemy is a pseudoscience closer to true science, those like Newton, Boyd and Locke did, however secretly, confer and test each other's theories in a proto-scientific method.
Witchcraft/magic on the other hand totally depends on secrets for its effectiveness. Religion, which has always sought to take witchcraft's place is also secretive.
Consider the response of a scientist and a magician to a theory which has failed: the scientist goes back and gathers more data, tests the working hypothoesis of others and tries again. The magician simpy says "the didn't work, the time wasn't right, and the gods are angry with you".
Not a bad analogy between closed vs open source, is it?