I live in West Chester, PA; south west of Philadelphia. I am about 20 minutes from Delaware so I usually head there for big equipment. This saves me the drive. I don't understand why he doesn't go all year. Granted, PA would lose a lot of money from the lost taxes. I think that it would gain more, though. Getting people to buy their computers in PA rather then "down south" will help the economy in the Philadelphia area. You can't imagine how many Philadelphians head to little D for big ticket items. Making it eaiser and less expensive for people to get computers is a good thing. Sometimes we/.ers forget that the Internet population is a VERY tiny percent of the US population, let alone the world. Heck, lots of people do not have cable, let alone Internet access. Technology shouldn't be for the haves and not the have nots; it should be for everyone. Isn't that what Open Source is all about? There is no reason that we do not have a $50 computer. I used to have a 386 that did everything I needed: games, programming, office apps, internet (such as it was at the time). These days, people might pay you $50 to haul a bunch of those systems as scrap. There are uses for these systems. Properly set up with good code, you can do a lot with these machines. So if a 386 can do that much, think about what $50.00 of computing power should be! And you thought that those $500 PCs where cheap...
All I can say is thank you to the computer gods that it has not wormed its putrid way into any system that I have to use. I am getting ready to buy a new system...now there are two things I have to ask NOT be put on my system: Windows and Pheonix! There is another solution...I could turn off my monitor or even just close my eyes until I hear the hard drives thrashing the lovely tune of the Penguin waking. Only then, when Linux is starting, can I open my eyes and know that everything will be all right.
This may be in there but there doesn't seem to be too many details on what it really does (besides be your ISP and give you a pretty start up screen). Any idea what else it does? It does seem to connect to the internet before you boot. Why don't they just throw in a web browser, e-mail, news group reader, irc, and AIM? Now THAT would be an Internet-BIOS!
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug. All this leaves us back under the hot Pheonix sun.
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug. All this leaves back under the hot Pheonix sun.
Intel may be mad about being mooned but Phoenix is the king of the BIOS world and has been working with Intel (and Microsoft) for years. Through APM to ACPI, lots of BIOS changes had to be made. In fact, without a proper ACPI compliant BIOS, Win2k will either not work or have problems with some of the power managment features. New systems can not be certified by MS without a fully ACPI BIOS. Intel needs Win2k to be a success to help build momentum for the coming Itanium push into the server scene. Besides chips and what not, Intel makes complete systems. They had one of those systems at the MS PlugFest for Win2k/Millenium (I tested my company's fibre channel board with them) and they had several problems with their hardware that they needed their Pheonix buddies to create a work around for. Intel needs Pheonix, just like the whole PC market does.
Your link didn't work but I have used QuickTime for linux. I agree that this has some hope. The only problem is that QuickTime seems pretty far behind the pack in getting content providers to use their system. Those that control content or content providers will pick the format. MS will push for their own system. The real question is what will AOL-Time push for. AOL has used MS technology (IE over netscape, even though they own netscape) but the merger may make them strong enough and brave enough to go their own way. Using MS's format puts the provider in MS's hands. They have to rely on MS to provide a high quality (or at least competitive) player and server that can reach the provider's target market. Right now MS has that so no one worries about putting all their eggs in MicroSoft Basket 2000. AOL may not want to use MS just so that they have some more control. They want all the eggs in AOL Everywhere 5. Plus, AOL and MS have cracked heads ever since MS started MSN, through the netscape purchase, and all the way to the Instant Message war. The ball is in AOL's court and we are all waiting to see if Steve Case can indeed jump and slam dunk his competition.
I think that this is one instance where the hype woke the sleeping giants. They are now focused on boradband technologies, including streaming video. MS and AOL-Time are positioned the best. With MS's deal with AT&T and AOL-Time's deep reach, both companies have control over content and delivery. Your cable box will either be Windows Powered or AOL Everywhere. There is so much money involved and so many media giants alerted to the coming of digital, portable media that the OpenSource world has a major uphill climb to break through. IMHO, there are only two solutions:
Make better technology. Better compression, better transfer rate, better servers, more interactive features. We need interactive TV but through a stream on any device.
Make other's technology work for us. Wine, VMWare to run the other's programs. Get enough Linux popularity/hype to get some big names involved.
Each of these has their difficulties. The free world has lots of brilliant people but...it is unfocused. To create a true interactive, streamming real-time audio/video experience is going to require some major work. Focused billiance. Linux may manage to start getting to the level of Mac (at its highest) where most companies had to make a verions for it. Linux is getting closer but it still needs some muscle behind it. RH and the rest of the Linux IPO gang could be that muscle but they havn't doen anything yet. Those companies are the key to getting the big coroporations to do the dirty work for us. The same group holds the key to projects like Wine. They fight a battle with a closed stanard. After writing and maintaining device drivers for Win2k ever since it was called NT5, I can tell you that writing to a moving target is TOUGH. Some big money LinuxIPO companies could help these causes
I do not think that the testers were biased. I just think that they were bad testers. They didn't understand Linux and thus rated it lower. They seemed to ignore Linux's typical strengths and gave too much credit for "prettiness". This isn't a MS FUD campaign, though. It is just a bunch of unknowledgeable testers.
You have a point there. MS has 600 billion ways to win. The could buy all of their competition so that even if they lose, they win. They already have a piece of Apple. Of course, that is part of what the anti-trust case is all about: MS is too big and has used its massive amount of power in an illegal manner. Imagine if there were no anti-trust laws. MS would own it all. Even our beloved slashDot. Now there is a scary thought!
I don't know about that one. Steve Case and Bill Gates have no love for each other. Then again, money can do great things to solve that problem. The way MS would do it is if they feel they can not win with MSN/MSNBC and all the MS owned web sites. There seems to be a lot of overlap, which WallStreet hates. MS would never do anything to jeopardize their stock. I don't think is one is going to happen but then again, I have been wrong before.
"The record companies take control until a long haired music lover finds a Rio and realizes that all music should be free." The only question is: Will this end the same way?
AOL has been a rival of MS ever since MSN first opened its virtual doors. MS pointed to AOL buying Netscape as proof of a real threat to their dominance. Now they can point to the largest merger in history and the largest merger in the history of the music business (#4 and #5 merger to become #1). Don't forget MCI-WorldCom (#2) trying to merge with Sprint (#3) to become a bigger #2 to compete with still super big #1, AT&T. Side note: How in the world (no pun intended) did WorldCom go from a dinky little business long distance provider to owning over half of the physical Internet in a few short years? Even without Sprint their reach is BIG. As Ma Bell calls all her children back under one happy home, Standard Oil is becoming the standard again. Big drug companies are eyeing each other. It will not be long before a mjor computer company makes a big purchase. With all of this craziness of the big getting bigger...does MS matter? I think so but will the government? I think the US government has been too quick to rubber stamp these deals. Usually it is Europe that holds these deals up and it is usually Europe that forces companies to give up bits that would otherwise lead to too much power in certain sectors of the economy. If it takes the government this long to handle one giant (Microsoft) how will it handle AOL-TimeWarner, the new MCI (I believe that is the name for MCI-WorldCom-Sprint), etc. ? I don't think they can, at least not in the short term. That means more mergers and more centralized power. Someone wrote in asking if this was like communism. More accurately, it is more like greedy, dirty, communism where the only concern of the central power is gaining more power and money. (Of course, have we ever seen another form of communsim?) The idea that this is a form communsim is a stretch, though. It really is pure, uncontrolled capitalism at its best. A merger allows for greater efficiency and higher profit margins. Capitalism's one and true goal is more profit and at higher rates of growth. Luckily, if history holds out this could all just be a cycle and the pendulum of power could swing the other way again. Who knows?
Yes, other things matter but HD performance, or should I say storage performance (hard disk plus controller) is one of the biggest issues that effect the "speed" of a computer right there with processor speed, amount of memory (RAM, L1 and L2 cache), and memory speed. All programs load from perm. storage. All files are stored there. All memory paging (or swaping) occurs there. As operating systems grow and commonly used data files grow (full length dvd quality movies) storage needs to be faster. Drive loudness can vary with the design. EIDE has caught up but for awhile SCSI drives spun much faster. Also, the case and position of the drive can effect the noise. Open a box and you will hear how load EIDEs can be. Storage performance becomes really important with database, application, and web servers. 100 Mb lan can push some systems storage such that storage performance becomes the bottleneck. Multi-processor, high Mhz machines push the storage. This stuff really effects totaly computer performance for all systems from baby pcs to super data centers.
That is just plain immpossible. Comparing Apples to Apples (non-raid to non-raid, raid to raid) Fibre beats SCSI and blows away IDE. Totally. Completely. Always. The card I work on pushes over 30,000 I/Os per second without a problem. 300 MB/s? No problem. No IDE system is doing that.
EIDE will eventually hit limits as even desktop computers become more demanding. As that time arrives SCSI will take over. On the server front, fibre channel is looking like the future over SCSI. It may be even more expensive but it is faster, has a crazy 10 km or so distance limit, supports more devices on one loop, and supports multiple HBA's connected to one set of devices. This allows multiple systems to talk directly to the storage rather than through a network to a computer that talks to the storage. SANs are going to really need fibre channel. SCSI may seem to be "too much" for the average user but in that as the old MTV logo used to say..."Too much is never enough!" This held true for music television and it holds true for computers. I remember getting time on a 386 SX 25 Mhz with 4MB RAM and 80 MB hard disk. This was a $10,000+ system at the time. Now it's a paper weight for all but a few geeks (like me) who love to find uses for old hardware. I have a few IDE paper weights...I will have a few more before they are done.
I can't stand media pundits trying to raise things to mythic proportions or squish things like a bug. The same guys who said "What's a Linux?" are the same ones jumping on the band wagon. Linus at Transmeta... he just works there! Linux is named after him but somehow the head of a distributer is more important. Huh? Was CompUSA more important to Windows than Microsoft? I don't get that line of thought. Also, since when did an infinite supply of money, power, and a huge userbase not matter? I just went to Microsoft's latest PlugFest for hardware vendors. The place was packed with companies scrambiling to support Windows 2000 and Windows Millenium. MS still owns the leading software product (Office), the leading OS (Windows), the leading WedMail provider (HotMail), the leading internet tv system (WebTV)...the list goes on. IBM lost the throne but didn't disappear. MS could just as easily go the same way. Who knows? Trying to predict anything in the software industry is crazy. No one thought that MS would win so big. No one thought that IBM would lose. Some pundits predicted that they would die off completely. Not so; they still are a computing powerhouse making everything form harddrives to super computers. Who would have guessed it that VaLinux's IPO would set a world's record? Not any these "I told you so!" pundits. I don't need predictions, I just want news. That's all. No editorials, no predictions, no personal ego inflated rants. Joe Friday said it best: "Just the facts!"
Linux may not be for everyone yet...but it is getting there. I consider the biggest advantage of using Linux to be its stability. I currently use RedHat 6.1 on a lowly Pentium 200 (no MMX) with only 32 MB of RAM. I have only crashed once in five years. To contrast, my Win95 boot path on the same system crashes several times a month and NT can barely run on my system. On my bigger, better system at work, NT does better but still has crashed about 15 to 20 times over the last year. Cable modems work really well under Linux. Most just use an enternet connection from the cable box to a 10Mb ethernet card. Linux handles most ethernet cards, including popular cards from 3Com and Intel. I am not sure about ADSL...I do not know how they set it up in homes. Business DSL usually uses a DSL router and then ethernet to the computers. Perhaps home DSL works like a cable modem. If so the the answer is yes, Linux supports ADSL. Everyday Linux is getting easier to use. There are lots of applications with some of your Windows favorites ported and looking very similar. Windows friends include Netscape Communicator, RealPlayer, WorkPerfect, and WinAmp (renamed x11amp in the Linux world). There various emulation applications for applications that have not been ported. At some point all Windows applications will run under Linux. You have all the things you are used to in Windows: Icons, Start Menus, TaskBars, and lots applications. The big difference for Linux is that most of the applications are free. Another Linux offers far and above any other OS is choice and control. Everything can be custimize. This is why Linux is so hard to explain: it is many different things to many different people. This may make it confusing at first but I really appreciate being able to tweak things just the way I like it. It makes me more productive and a happier computer user. There are a few areas where Linux does lag behind:
Standardization and Interoperability: With out a companies control, most applications do not "talk" to each other. Applications can look and feel very different from one another. This is being slowly resolved but the issue still remains.
No Plug 'N Play: Adding devices to Linux, especially without reinstalling can be a pain. On the upside, there is lots of help on the net and this is also getting better. Driver support is expanding and many companies are starting to support Linux.
Games: If gaming is the main thing you use your computer for then Linux may not be for you. It still lags behind Windows and Mac for availability. We do have Doom and Quake, though! This is also an area that is starting to get better.
That's about it. Also, remember that there ways to set up Linux so that you do not have to give up Win9x/NT yet. Both sides support multiple boot paths allowing you to have several operating systems installed at once. There is even software for running them at the same time! Good luck!
I really hope so. Democracy hasn't worked out so well in Russia. There has been too much corruption and too many mistakes made. Although I am American, many of my relatives only two or three generations back come from Russia and Romania. I hope a time comes when Russia can become a prosperous, democratic, free nation. That is a New Year's wish we can all appreciate.
I don't think so. The only ways I can think of to make a living and use only Open Source code is to work either as a sysadmin/network admin, to produce internal use only software (even that can be tricky) or to work for an Open Source company. These are just the ones that I can think of. Anyone that knows of more please feel free to tell me. I like to work on things that will be used on a large scale. I am currently writing device drivers. In order for my company to pay me they must sell the hardware. In order to sell the hardware it must do things better than its competitors. It must do things that its competitors can't. In order to do that the driver must be written to exploit these features. In order to prevent every other company from copying the features that make it better than the competiton the source to this driver must be closed, at least in the start. This is how I get paid. If the drivers were released the product would be copied, not sell as well, and my group would be sent packing. How are people who want to write software for a living suppose to earn a living? While I find administration fascinating, I do not want to do it for a living. I want to create products that many people can use not just Joe Pharmaceutical Comp.'s employees. Working for an Open Source company would be very neat but I there are not too many in my area and I like where I live. I don't think that I am alone in these sentiments. I often wonder how many/.ers do not need to work? Are they in college and have someone else paying the bills? Must be nice... I had to program my way through college and although my company at the time used some open source software I spent a lot of time writing financial software for the platforms that traders and accountants use. This meant writing Excel and Access Addins, Windows Stand Alone Apps, and a little Solaris work. Was I wrong? Perhaps some have jobs they hate during the day and do what they love at night. That doesn't sound healthy and I know that I couldn't do it. Maybe they have one of the jobs mentioned. What about the rest of us that don't want to or can't do those things for a living? Finally, what is wrong with being paid for a service or product? If I spent hours building something no one would see anything wrong with me selling it. How come if I spend hours writing code to build a software product, there is something wrong with me for selling it? I am not against Open Source. To the contrary, I think that it is pretty amazing what people have done for free. It is admirable. On the other hand, I think that there is nothing wrong with working hard and getting paid for it. If you have the resources, go write and use only Open Source. That is fine. But if you do not have those resources...do not feel any shame in writing closed source and making a living doing what you love. Heck, you can still write Open Source in your free time!
The real problem with the Linux IPO madness is the same problem with the Internet IPO madness. The people investing in these companies at such outrageous pricess are not doing so because they feel the company is a good buy but because everyone else thinks they are a good buy. This type of mentality is the worst kind if you want a stable economy. It is what keeps Allen Greenspan up at nights. It is the same kind of mentality that leads to bank runs, y2k panics, and the Great Depression. I am not that worried about Jake and Jane work at home day trader. The direct effect they have on the economy is insignificant. I am worried about the indirect effects. I worry about professional fund managers saying things like (from CNBC): Fund Manager:(In response to why these companies are sky rockecting) I don't know. It's crazy. There is no sound financial reason to pay prices this high for a share of these companies. CNBC: Yes, but did you get in on these IPOs? Fund Manager: Well...I couldn't afford not to.
How comforting it is to know that the guy who is managing my retirement is just picking the same thing as everyone else. Gracias for the hard work you did in researching these companies...if you did you do anything at all. It seems no one really believes that these firms are good companies but everyone believes that everyone else is dumb enough to think they are. These companies current stock prices are part of a self fulfilling prophecy if I ever saw one. All the market needs is the smallest sign of weakness and the stocks could come tumbling down. What is worse is that one companies weakness (like LinuxOne) could bring down the more legitimate companies (RedHat, at least have revenue and big time backers). Guilt by association. How could this hurt the Free Software world? Stability is very important to the business world. They need solutions that will last as long as their company will. Big IPOs may get Free Software into many boardrooms but fantastic failures may just as well lock them out. LinuxOne is the next big IPO and they seem very suspicious. If this one falls flat on its face look for the snowballs to start rolling down the mountin bringing the prices of every Linux company with it. This instabilty will cause big business to shy away from it and go to companies that have so much money they could never go out of business (like Microsoft). On the home market people go with brand name recognition and with follow the herd trends. People buy what other people buy and people buy what they have at work. Lastly, young people may buy what they had in school. The big oems will run from free software as fast as they came to it. People might not like Windows but if their company uses it they will use it at home. The result of all this ranting is that I feel that Linux IPO madness could be very bad for Free Software and possibly bad for the whole economy.
Point taken. RH's stock has had incredible performance. It is a bit strange when you look at their financials but I guess the value is based on believed future earnings. At least they make a small profit. Amazon continues to lose money every quater and their stock keeps going up. Strange indeed! MS still makes ton's of money. They closed at 91 1/8, off from their one year high 100 3/4 but way up from their one year low of 59 5/16. Their stock has not really gone down since the findings of fact. They are still showing no change in their business practices that are bringing tons of money. My point is that MS is not even hurting until their stock or bottom line starts to show it.
Sorry for the typo. Obviously anyone that can not spell or sometimes hits the wrong key has no clue about anything in the world and should be ignored completly. I happen to have used the same Operating Systems book for my OS class in college that Linus used to help write Linux. If I had not been so lazy I would have looked up the correct spelling.
I have had to use Visual Basic at work since the version 3 days. Although it has come a long way, I do not feel that it is a truely reliable language. If it is so good, then how come MS does not use it for its own applications? VB is really built on C/C++ active-x controls anyway. Why not just use Visual C++? Basic would probably be dead if it was not for MS pushing it. Since they control it they have no competition in making compilers for it. Other languages, like C, C++, COBOL, Algol, Pascal, LISP, Java, etc. have competition. Their are choices and this forces the manufactures to imporove their systems to compete better. MS doesn't have to do that with VB. The basic language does not support many things that programmers need. The implementations of many of their types are hidden from the vb programmer. A good programmer needs to know these things in order to write efficient code. For example, variants and arrays are totally hidden from the vb write. I have worked with passing VB types to C DLLs and have seen how these types are implemented. It is pretty ugly. One line of basic code can turn into many lines of C code and even more lines of assembly. Finally VB forces the developer to rely on vast array of active-x components that are also hidden from developers. Only by trial and error can a developer guess how a control is implemented. If there is a problem a developer has two choices: write their own control or work around it. Either choice takes a considerable amuont of time. VB represents everything that is bad in Microsoft. All flashy and pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside.
Linux is based on Minux. Minux was written in part to give students a version of Unix simple enough to study completely. In that sense Linux was "reverse engineered" in that it was based on Minux and Minux implemented many of the features of Unix. This is similar to how Compaq reverse engineered IBM's PC bios. They studied what the code did, not the code. Then they tried to write code that did the same thing. Linux falls into this catagory.
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I live in West Chester, PA; south west of Philadelphia. I am about 20 minutes from Delaware so I usually head there for big equipment. This saves me the drive. /.ers forget that the Internet population is a VERY tiny percent of the US population, let alone the world. Heck, lots of people do not have cable, let alone Internet access. Technology shouldn't be for the haves and not the have nots; it should be for everyone. Isn't that what Open Source is all about?
I don't understand why he doesn't go all year. Granted, PA would lose a lot of money from the lost taxes. I think that it would gain more, though.
Getting people to buy their computers in PA rather then "down south" will help the economy in the Philadelphia area. You can't imagine how many Philadelphians head to little D for big ticket items.
Making it eaiser and less expensive for people to get computers is a good thing. Sometimes we
There is no reason that we do not have a $50 computer. I used to have a 386 that did everything I needed: games, programming, office apps, internet (such as it was at the time). These days, people might pay you $50 to haul a bunch of those systems as scrap. There are uses for these systems. Properly set up with good code, you can do a lot with these machines. So if a 386 can do that much, think about what $50.00 of computing power should be! And you thought that those $500 PCs where cheap...
All I can say is thank you to the computer gods that it has not wormed its putrid way into any system that I have to use. I am getting ready to buy a new system...now there are two things I have to ask NOT be put on my system: Windows and Pheonix!
There is another solution...I could turn off my monitor or even just close my eyes until I hear the hard drives thrashing the lovely tune of the Penguin waking. Only then, when Linux is starting, can I open my eyes and know that everything will be all right.
This may be in there but there doesn't seem to be too many details on what it really does (besides be your ISP and give you a pretty start up screen). Any idea what else it does?
It does seem to connect to the internet before you boot. Why don't they just throw in a web browser, e-mail, news group reader, irc, and AIM? Now THAT would be an Internet-BIOS!
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug.
All this leaves us back under the hot Pheonix sun.
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug.
All this leaves back under the hot Pheonix sun.
Intel may be mad about being mooned but Phoenix is the king of the BIOS world and has been working with Intel (and Microsoft) for years. Through APM to ACPI, lots of BIOS changes had to be made. In fact, without a proper ACPI compliant BIOS, Win2k will either not work or have problems with some of the power managment features. New systems can not be certified by MS without a fully ACPI BIOS. Intel needs Win2k to be a success to help build momentum for the coming Itanium push into the server scene.
Besides chips and what not, Intel makes complete systems. They had one of those systems at the MS PlugFest for Win2k/Millenium (I tested my company's fibre channel board with them) and they had several problems with their hardware that they needed their Pheonix buddies to create a work around for. Intel needs Pheonix, just like the whole PC market does.
Your link didn't work but I have used QuickTime for linux. I agree that this has some hope. The only problem is that QuickTime seems pretty far behind the pack in getting content providers to use their system. Those that control content or content providers will pick the format. MS will push for their own system. The real question is what will AOL-Time push for. AOL has used MS technology (IE over netscape, even though they own netscape) but the merger may make them strong enough and brave enough to go their own way. Using MS's format puts the provider in MS's hands. They have to rely on MS to provide a high quality (or at least competitive) player and server that can reach the provider's target market. Right now MS has that so no one worries about putting all their eggs in MicroSoft Basket 2000. AOL may not want to use MS just so that they have some more control. They want all the eggs in AOL Everywhere 5. Plus, AOL and MS have cracked heads ever since MS started MSN, through the netscape purchase, and all the way to the Instant Message war.
The ball is in AOL's court and we are all waiting to see if Steve Case can indeed jump and slam dunk his competition.
IMHO, there are only two solutions:
Each of these has their difficulties.
The free world has lots of brilliant people but...it is unfocused. To create a true interactive, streamming real-time audio/video experience is going to require some major work. Focused billiance.
Linux may manage to start getting to the level of Mac (at its highest) where most companies had to make a verions for it. Linux is getting closer but it still needs some muscle behind it. RH and the rest of the Linux IPO gang could be that muscle but they havn't doen anything yet. Those companies are the key to getting the big coroporations to do the dirty work for us. The same group holds the key to projects like Wine. They fight a battle with a closed stanard. After writing and maintaining device drivers for Win2k ever since it was called NT5, I can tell you that writing to a moving target is TOUGH. Some big money LinuxIPO companies could help these causes
I do not think that the testers were biased. I just think that they were bad testers. They didn't understand Linux and thus rated it lower. They seemed to ignore Linux's typical strengths and gave too much credit for "prettiness". This isn't a MS FUD campaign, though. It is just a bunch of unknowledgeable testers.
You have a point there. MS has 600 billion ways to win. The could buy all of their competition so that even if they lose, they win. They already have a piece of Apple. Of course, that is part of what the anti-trust case is all about: MS is too big and has used its massive amount of power in an illegal manner. Imagine if there were no anti-trust laws. MS would own it all. Even our beloved slashDot. Now there is a scary thought!
I don't know about that one. Steve Case and Bill Gates have no love for each other. Then again, money can do great things to solve that problem. The way MS would do it is if they feel they can not win with MSN/MSNBC and all the MS owned web sites. There seems to be a lot of overlap, which WallStreet hates. MS would never do anything to jeopardize their stock. I don't think is one is going to happen but then again, I have been wrong before.
"The record companies take control until a long haired music lover finds a Rio and realizes that all music should be free."
The only question is: Will this end the same way?
AOL has been a rival of MS ever since MSN first opened its virtual doors. MS pointed to AOL buying Netscape as proof of a real threat to their dominance. Now they can point to the largest merger in history and the largest merger in the history of the music business (#4 and #5 merger to become #1). Don't forget MCI-WorldCom (#2) trying to merge with Sprint (#3) to become a bigger #2 to compete with still super big #1, AT&T. Side note: How in the world (no pun intended) did WorldCom go from a dinky little business long distance provider to owning over half of the physical Internet in a few short years? Even without Sprint their reach is BIG. As Ma Bell calls all her children back under one happy home, Standard Oil is becoming the standard again. Big drug companies are eyeing each other. It will not be long before a mjor computer company makes a big purchase.
With all of this craziness of the big getting bigger...does MS matter? I think so but will the government? I think the US government has been too quick to rubber stamp these deals. Usually it is Europe that holds these deals up and it is usually Europe that forces companies to give up bits that would otherwise lead to too much power in certain sectors of the economy. If it takes the government this long to handle one giant (Microsoft) how will it handle AOL-TimeWarner, the new MCI (I believe that is the name for MCI-WorldCom-Sprint), etc. ? I don't think they can, at least not in the short term. That means more mergers and more centralized power.
Someone wrote in asking if this was like communism. More accurately, it is more like greedy, dirty, communism where the only concern of the central power is gaining more power and money. (Of course, have we ever seen another form of communsim?)
The idea that this is a form communsim is a stretch, though. It really is pure, uncontrolled capitalism at its best. A merger allows for greater efficiency and higher profit margins. Capitalism's one and true goal is more profit and at higher rates of growth.
Luckily, if history holds out this could all just be a cycle and the pendulum of power could swing the other way again. Who knows?
Yes, other things matter but HD performance, or should I say storage performance (hard disk plus controller) is one of the biggest issues that effect the "speed" of a computer right there with processor speed, amount of memory (RAM, L1 and L2 cache), and memory speed. All programs load from perm. storage. All files are stored there. All memory paging (or swaping) occurs there. As operating systems grow and commonly used data files grow (full length dvd quality movies) storage needs to be faster.
Drive loudness can vary with the design. EIDE has caught up but for awhile SCSI drives spun much faster. Also, the case and position of the drive can effect the noise. Open a box and you will hear how load EIDEs can be.
Storage performance becomes really important with database, application, and web servers. 100 Mb lan can push some systems storage such that storage performance becomes the bottleneck. Multi-processor, high Mhz machines push the storage.
This stuff really effects totaly computer performance for all systems from baby pcs to super data centers.
That is just plain immpossible. Comparing Apples to Apples (non-raid to non-raid, raid to raid) Fibre beats SCSI and blows away IDE. Totally. Completely. Always. The card I work on pushes over 30,000 I/Os per second without a problem. 300 MB/s? No problem. No IDE system is doing that.
EIDE will eventually hit limits as even desktop computers become more demanding. As that time arrives SCSI will take over. On the server front, fibre channel is looking like the future over SCSI. It may be even more expensive but it is faster, has a crazy 10 km or so distance limit, supports more devices on one loop, and supports multiple HBA's connected to one set of devices. This allows multiple systems to talk directly to the storage rather than through a network to a computer that talks to the storage. SANs are going to really need fibre channel.
SCSI may seem to be "too much" for the average user but in that as the old MTV logo used to say..."Too much is never enough!" This held true for music television and it holds true for computers. I remember getting time on a 386 SX 25 Mhz with 4MB RAM and 80 MB hard disk. This was a $10,000+ system at the time. Now it's a paper weight for all but a few geeks (like me) who love to find uses for old hardware. I have a few IDE paper weights...I will have a few more before they are done.
I can't stand media pundits trying to raise things to mythic proportions or squish things like a bug. The same guys who said "What's a Linux?" are the same ones jumping on the band wagon. Linus at Transmeta... he just works there! Linux is named after him but somehow the head of a distributer is more important. Huh? Was CompUSA more important to Windows than Microsoft? I don't get that line of thought. Also, since when did an infinite supply of money, power, and a huge userbase not matter? I just went to Microsoft's latest PlugFest for hardware vendors. The place was packed with companies scrambiling to support Windows 2000 and Windows Millenium. MS still owns the leading software product (Office), the leading OS (Windows), the leading WedMail provider (HotMail), the leading internet tv system (WebTV)...the list goes on. IBM lost the throne but didn't disappear. MS could just as easily go the same way. Who knows? Trying to predict anything in the software industry is crazy. No one thought that MS would win so big. No one thought that IBM would lose. Some pundits predicted that they would die off completely. Not so; they still are a computing powerhouse making everything form harddrives to super computers. Who would have guessed it that VaLinux's IPO would set a world's record? Not any these "I told you so!" pundits.
I don't need predictions, I just want news. That's all. No editorials, no predictions, no personal ego inflated rants.
Joe Friday said it best:
"Just the facts!"
Cable modems work really well under Linux. Most just use an enternet connection from the cable box to a 10Mb ethernet card. Linux handles most ethernet cards, including popular cards from 3Com and Intel.
I am not sure about ADSL...I do not know how they set it up in homes. Business DSL usually uses a DSL router and then ethernet to the computers. Perhaps home DSL works like a cable modem. If so the the answer is yes, Linux supports ADSL.
Everyday Linux is getting easier to use. There are lots of applications with some of your Windows favorites ported and looking very similar. Windows friends include Netscape Communicator, RealPlayer, WorkPerfect, and WinAmp (renamed x11amp in the Linux world). There various emulation applications for applications that have not been ported. At some point all Windows applications will run under Linux. You have all the things you are used to in Windows: Icons, Start Menus, TaskBars, and lots applications. The big difference for Linux is that most of the applications are free.
Another Linux offers far and above any other OS is choice and control. Everything can be custimize. This is why Linux is so hard to explain: it is many different things to many different people. This may make it confusing at first but I really appreciate being able to tweak things just the way I like it. It makes me more productive and a happier computer user.
There are a few areas where Linux does lag behind:
With out a companies control, most applications do not "talk" to each other. Applications can look and feel very different from one another. This is being slowly resolved but the issue still remains.
Adding devices to Linux, especially without reinstalling can be a pain. On the upside, there is lots of help on the net and this is also getting better. Driver support is expanding and many companies are starting to support Linux.
If gaming is the main thing you use your computer for then Linux may not be for you. It still lags behind Windows and Mac for availability. We do have Doom and Quake, though! This is also an area that is starting to get better.
That's about it. Also, remember that there ways to set up Linux so that you do not have to give up Win9x/NT yet. Both sides support multiple boot paths allowing you to have several operating systems installed at once. There is even software for running them at the same time! Good luck!
I really hope so. Democracy hasn't worked out so well in Russia. There has been too much corruption and too many mistakes made. Although I am American, many of my relatives only two or three generations back come from Russia and Romania. I hope a time comes when Russia can become a prosperous, democratic, free nation. That is a New Year's wish we can all appreciate.
I don't think so. The only ways I can think of to make a living and use only Open Source code is to work either as a sysadmin/network admin, to produce internal use only software (even that can be tricky) or to work for an Open Source company. These are just the ones that I can think of. Anyone that knows of more please feel free to tell me. /.ers do not need to work? Are they in college and have someone else paying the bills? Must be nice... I had to program my way through college and although my company at the time used some open source software I spent a lot of time writing financial software for the platforms that traders and accountants use. This meant writing Excel and Access Addins, Windows Stand Alone Apps, and a little Solaris work. Was I wrong? Perhaps some have jobs they hate during the day and do what they love at night. That doesn't sound healthy and I know that I couldn't do it. Maybe they have one of the jobs mentioned. What about the rest of us that don't want to or can't do those things for a living?
I like to work on things that will be used on a large scale. I am currently writing device drivers. In order for my company to pay me they must sell the hardware. In order to sell the hardware it must do things better than its competitors. It must do things that its competitors can't. In order to do that the driver must be written to exploit these features. In order to prevent every other company from copying the features that make it better than the competiton the source to this driver must be closed, at least in the start. This is how I get paid. If the drivers were released the product would be copied, not sell as well, and my group would be sent packing.
How are people who want to write software for a living suppose to earn a living? While I find administration fascinating, I do not want to do it for a living. I want to create products that many people can use not just Joe Pharmaceutical Comp.'s employees. Working for an Open Source company would be very neat but I there are not too many in my area and I like where I live. I don't think that I am alone in these sentiments. I often wonder how many
Finally, what is wrong with being paid for a service or product? If I spent hours building something no one would see anything wrong with me selling it. How come if I spend hours writing code to build a software product, there is something wrong with me for selling it?
I am not against Open Source. To the contrary, I think that it is pretty amazing what people have done for free. It is admirable. On the other hand, I think that there is nothing wrong with working hard and getting paid for it. If you have the resources, go write and use only Open Source. That is fine. But if you do not have those resources...do not feel any shame in writing closed source and making a living doing what you love. Heck, you can still write Open Source in your free time!
The real problem with the Linux IPO madness is the same problem with the Internet IPO madness. The people investing in these companies at such outrageous pricess are not doing so because they feel the company is a good buy but because everyone else thinks they are a good buy. This type of mentality is the worst kind if you want a stable economy. It is what keeps Allen Greenspan up at nights. It is the same kind of mentality that leads to bank runs, y2k panics, and the Great Depression.
I am not that worried about Jake and Jane work at home day trader. The direct effect they have on the economy is insignificant. I am worried about the indirect effects. I worry about professional fund managers saying things like (from CNBC):
Fund Manager:(In response to why these companies are sky rockecting) I don't know. It's crazy. There is no sound financial reason to pay prices this high for a share of these companies.
CNBC: Yes, but did you get in on these IPOs?
Fund Manager: Well...I couldn't afford not to.
How comforting it is to know that the guy who is managing my retirement is just picking the same thing as everyone else. Gracias for the hard work you did in researching these companies...if you did you do anything at all.
It seems no one really believes that these firms are good companies but everyone believes that everyone else is dumb enough to think they are. These companies current stock prices are part of a self fulfilling prophecy if I ever saw one.
All the market needs is the smallest sign of weakness and the stocks could come tumbling down. What is worse is that one companies weakness (like LinuxOne) could bring down the more legitimate companies (RedHat, at least have revenue and big time backers). Guilt by association.
How could this hurt the Free Software world? Stability is very important to the business world. They need solutions that will last as long as their company will. Big IPOs may get Free Software into many boardrooms but fantastic failures may just as well lock them out. LinuxOne is the next big IPO and they seem very suspicious. If this one falls flat on its face look for the snowballs to start rolling down the mountin bringing the prices of every Linux company with it. This instabilty will cause big business to shy away from it and go to companies that have so much money they could never go out of business (like Microsoft).
On the home market people go with brand name recognition and with follow the herd trends. People buy what other people buy and people buy what they have at work. Lastly, young people may buy what they had in school. The big oems will run from free software as fast as they came to it. People might not like Windows but if their company uses it they will use it at home.
The result of all this ranting is that I feel that Linux IPO madness could be very bad for Free Software and possibly bad for the whole economy.
Point taken. RH's stock has had incredible performance. It is a bit strange when you look at their financials but I guess the value is based on believed future earnings. At least they make a small profit. Amazon continues to lose money every quater and their stock keeps going up. Strange indeed!
MS still makes ton's of money. They closed at 91 1/8, off from their one year high 100 3/4 but way up from their one year low of 59 5/16. Their stock has not really gone down since the findings of fact. They are still showing no change in their business practices that are bringing tons of money.
My point is that MS is not even hurting until their stock or bottom line starts to show it.
Sorry for the typo. Obviously anyone that can not spell or sometimes hits the wrong key has no clue about anything in the world and should be ignored completly.
I happen to have used the same Operating Systems book for my OS class in college that Linus used to help write Linux. If I had not been so lazy I would have looked up the correct spelling.
I have had to use Visual Basic at work since the version 3 days. Although it has come a long way, I do not feel that it is a truely reliable language. If it is so good, then how come MS does not use it for its own applications? VB is really built on C/C++ active-x controls anyway. Why not just use Visual C++?
Basic would probably be dead if it was not for MS pushing it. Since they control it they have no competition in making compilers for it. Other languages, like C, C++, COBOL, Algol, Pascal, LISP, Java, etc. have competition. Their are choices and this forces the manufactures to imporove their systems to compete better. MS doesn't have to do that with VB.
The basic language does not support many things that programmers need. The implementations of many of their types are hidden from the vb programmer. A good programmer needs to know these things in order to write efficient code. For example, variants and arrays are totally hidden from the vb write. I have worked with passing VB types to C DLLs and have seen how these types are implemented. It is pretty ugly. One line of basic code can turn into many lines of C code and even more lines of assembly.
Finally VB forces the developer to rely on vast array of active-x components that are also hidden from developers. Only by trial and error can a developer guess how a control is implemented. If there is a problem a developer has two choices: write their own control or work around it. Either choice takes a considerable amuont of time.
VB represents everything that is bad in Microsoft. All flashy and pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside.
Linux is based on Minux. Minux was written in part to give students a version of Unix simple enough to study completely. In that sense Linux was "reverse engineered" in that it was based on Minux and Minux implemented many of the features of Unix. This is similar to how Compaq reverse engineered IBM's PC bios. They studied what the code did, not the code. Then they tried to write code that did the same thing. Linux falls into this catagory.