At the Jaguar engineering center in coventry, the car park outside must contain less than 5% Jaguar cars, the rest are the usual mix of makes you'd see on britain's roads... Since Jaguar is owned by Ford, you'd expect the same rules to apply, but there were a lot of cars from citroen, peugeot, vauxhall etc.
That's why you need to seperate the role of OS developers and distributors...
On unix OS's, you can get updates for all your apps and drivers from one place, and the distributor will make the newest versions available for you. Windows however is very messy and disjointed, you can get updates for the core OS from windowsupdate, but even many microsoft products have to be updated seperately, and forget about any third party apps/drivers you might have installed. You end up with an update service running for every program you have installed, or having to manually check for, download and install updates which becomes a HUGE pain in the ass when you have lots of apps installed. MacOS isn't quite as bad, since the software update feature will update all your apple-branded apps as well as the OS, but your still screwed when it comes to third party apps. Contrast this with a modern linux distro, where 99% of the apps your ever likely to need will come with the distro and be supported/updated by them... And for the remaining 1%, you can usually add additional package sources to your system package manager so you can still update everything in a central and consistent manner.
I do exactly the same using asterisk... The only problem nowadays, is that the phonebooks built in to most cellphones don't let you store and auto use an extension number properly.
With an open file format such as OpenDocument, it would be much harder to hide malicious code and/or exploits in a document...
You could easily parse the file at your gateway, and validate the xml content against the published schema (rejecting it if it fails), although this wouldn't be foolproof (an exploit could still exist within well formed xml, but is less likely) it would cut out a significant portion of vulnerabilities.
Users shouldn't need to worry about stupid shit like this. End users should be able to open data files (data, not executeable files) without fear of being owned. Data files should not have the ability to contain code (with the exception perhaps of rudimentary macros which can only interact with the host program and are sandboxed, like java applets or javascript)
Gentoo, and to a lesser extent debian, are very good at letting you run them for years and keep them up to date as you go along... The only trick with gentoo, is to update regularly rather than all in one large chunk. You also don't have the typical problems that occur with binary updates being linked to particular versions of libraries and thus needing to install those libraries too.
For instance, anything compiled against glibc 2.4.x will depend on that version of glibc, but the same programs will still compile when using much older versions. A binary distro would require you to upgrade glibc too.
The fact that the flash plugin is proprietary, and the format is semi open in that, you can use the spec to write programs which *make* flash files, but you can't write a player. The end result, is that only platforms officially blessed by macromedia can watch flash files, this excludes 64bit platforms right now and is the most often cited reason for people not using a pure 64bit linux system.
Also, the most common use of flash is for noisy flashing adverts, which are highly irritating and distract from the site your trying to read.
Who runs a pure environment? We all should, 32bit is the past and should be abandoned, just as 16 and 8 bit have been. It is slow proprietary vendors like macromedia that are holding back progress. The less people become dependant on the older technologies, the more easily hardware vendors can abandon backwards compatibility and concentrate on developing new innovative technologies. Once a technology becomes sufficiently obsolete, backwards compatibility in hardware is completely unnecessary, since emulation becomes faster than any real hardware of the era anyway.
Well said... If forced to compete, they wouldn't be able to keep gouging people on prices, and they'd have to invest more money into development to improve their products to make them competitive. In other words, they'd be just like any other business, having to compete against competitors and give good value for money. They'd no longer have billions to prop up loss-making ventures for years until they captured the market.
If someone wishes to use my code it wouldn't be a problem... They can create a library from some GPL code and link to it at runtime... The problem comes when you want to modify the code and not contribute the code back.
Microsoft would very much like to take opensource products, and make closed-source versions of them using proprietary file formats and protocols.
Not necessarily support full CSS2 etc, but at least support a subset of it, and NOT support any nonstandard undocumented functions. And also allow their browser to be fully removed and replaced, and preferably not even be installed by default.
The OS should be minimalist, and then distributors/OEMs should be free to install additional packages.
People who write GPL software, don't want some company taking their software, rebranding it and then selling it back to them. You can guarantee that if popular products were BSD licensed, microsoft would take them, rebrand them, modify the file formats to be binary and proprietary, and then sell them at extortionate prices.
That's completely the wrong approach... Your forced to use windows because you have to interact with a proprietary server protocol and with files stored in proprietary formats. Microsoft take away your choice, and you have to use their products wether you want to or not.
Wouldn't it be better for the protocols and formats to be open, so that you could choose what clients you use? (and conversely, you could easily replace the backend systems too depending on your needs and budget)
Open source already operates according to open standards... All microsoft need to do, is implement and support the same open standards. This "war" they talk about having a truce in, is because their products are using proprietary formats and/or protocols, which force people to use their products.
People like choice, whereas microsoft try to take away your freedom of choice because that's easier for them than offering a better choice in a free market.
If they would make sure all their products complied with published standards (or help create such standards, where non already exist, and in an open way involving any interested parties), then opensource would have less of a need to compete and fight against them.
All i want, and i`m sure many people agree, is freedom to choose. I absoloutely despise the idea of being forced to use any particular product, i want to be able to choose whatever suits my individual needs best.
Currently i won't use microsoft products, because they seek to remove my freedom of choice... If they implement open standards and provide me this freedom i would consider using them based on the merits of each individual product.
Does it also need a hard disk in every machine? Imagine all the extra heat produced by 500 superfluous hard drives. All the clusters i've built have been diskless, and booted from the network (or from a floppy, i did produce such a ghetto-cluster from old hardware once as an example)
Well that depends... Will they force you to have IE and outlook express installed on every node without the ability to remove them? If there is a browser installed, then it will be used to browse at some point just because it's convenient to do it from the console rather than walking back to a proper workstation.
Also, does this support serial consoles? Imagine the hassle of having to hook up screens to every node for maintenence...
Openmosix doesn't even require much in the way of program compatibility... Any program that support multiple threads (ie, multiple cpus) will work with it.
And last i heard, microsoft's effort requires a 64bit cpu, so you have two choices: Buy a whole heap of new 64bit systems, and then buy microsoft licenses for them. Use a whole heap of old 32bit systems, and use a free install of linux on all of them.
Doing it microsoft's way requires significant up-front investment, while linux clusters can be constructed out of a collection of old/spare machines at no cost... I build a cluster at work a few months ago, it was built using recently-obsoleted desktop systems that were otherwise sitting idle in a store room
Have you never tried NT3.51? that would run for years without problems... And most of the issues which did occur, were related to the "windows" side of things rather than the "nt" side... If you ran it as a server it would just keep rolling.
But you wouldn't have those desktop environments on the older os's anyway... There's no reason you can't use a new kernel and an old or lightweight window manager.
However i do see a large number of ancient linux machines, 99% of them servers which have been reliably serving a single task for years and there's no reason to replace them.
The difference is in the users... OS/2 users are predominantly technically literate people who use OS/2 because of it's superiority to windows... Win9x users are predominantly technically illiterate people who are unable to upgrade (due to cost etc) or are unwilling to (why change something that is doing what they need)
There is no reason to be running a 7 year old linux distribution, since it's free and trivial to update it... On the other hand, you can still be running the base of a 7 year old distro and update all the necessary packages on it for the latest version of firefox to work correctly.
Windows suffers from being far less modular, and having changed fundamentally between 9x/nt (completely new kernel etc)
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At the Jaguar engineering center in coventry, the car park outside must contain less than 5% Jaguar cars, the rest are the usual mix of makes you'd see on britain's roads...
Since Jaguar is owned by Ford, you'd expect the same rules to apply, but there were a lot of cars from citroen, peugeot, vauxhall etc.
That's why you need to seperate the role of OS developers and distributors...
On unix OS's, you can get updates for all your apps and drivers from one place, and the distributor will make the newest versions available for you.
Windows however is very messy and disjointed, you can get updates for the core OS from windowsupdate, but even many microsoft products have to be updated seperately, and forget about any third party apps/drivers you might have installed.
You end up with an update service running for every program you have installed, or having to manually check for, download and install updates which becomes a HUGE pain in the ass when you have lots of apps installed.
MacOS isn't quite as bad, since the software update feature will update all your apple-branded apps as well as the OS, but your still screwed when it comes to third party apps.
Contrast this with a modern linux distro, where 99% of the apps your ever likely to need will come with the distro and be supported/updated by them... And for the remaining 1%, you can usually add additional package sources to your system package manager so you can still update everything in a central and consistent manner.
I do exactly the same using asterisk...
The only problem nowadays, is that the phonebooks built in to most cellphones don't let you store and auto use an extension number properly.
With an open file format such as OpenDocument, it would be much harder to hide malicious code and/or exploits in a document...
You could easily parse the file at your gateway, and validate the xml content against the published schema (rejecting it if it fails), although this wouldn't be foolproof (an exploit could still exist within well formed xml, but is less likely) it would cut out a significant portion of vulnerabilities.
Users shouldn't need to worry about stupid shit like this.
End users should be able to open data files (data, not executeable files) without fear of being owned. Data files should not have the ability to contain code (with the exception perhaps of rudimentary macros which can only interact with the host program and are sandboxed, like java applets or javascript)
Gentoo, and to a lesser extent debian, are very good at letting you run them for years and keep them up to date as you go along...
The only trick with gentoo, is to update regularly rather than all in one large chunk. You also don't have the typical problems that occur with binary updates being linked to particular versions of libraries and thus needing to install those libraries too.
For instance, anything compiled against glibc 2.4.x will depend on that version of glibc, but the same programs will still compile when using much older versions. A binary distro would require you to upgrade glibc too.
The free versions of IE (Mac, Solaris, HPUX) are no more... Now you can only get the version that's included in the price of windows.
The fact that the flash plugin is proprietary, and the format is semi open in that, you can use the spec to write programs which *make* flash files, but you can't write a player. The end result, is that only platforms officially blessed by macromedia can watch flash files, this excludes 64bit platforms right now and is the most often cited reason for people not using a pure 64bit linux system.
Also, the most common use of flash is for noisy flashing adverts, which are highly irritating and distract from the site your trying to read.
Who runs a pure environment? We all should, 32bit is the past and should be abandoned, just as 16 and 8 bit have been. It is slow proprietary vendors like macromedia that are holding back progress.
The less people become dependant on the older technologies, the more easily hardware vendors can abandon backwards compatibility and concentrate on developing new innovative technologies.
Once a technology becomes sufficiently obsolete, backwards compatibility in hardware is completely unnecessary, since emulation becomes faster than any real hardware of the era anyway.
Well said...
If forced to compete, they wouldn't be able to keep gouging people on prices, and they'd have to invest more money into development to improve their products to make them competitive.
In other words, they'd be just like any other business, having to compete against competitors and give good value for money. They'd no longer have billions to prop up loss-making ventures for years until they captured the market.
If someone wishes to use my code it wouldn't be a problem... They can create a library from some GPL code and link to it at runtime... The problem comes when you want to modify the code and not contribute the code back.
Microsoft would very much like to take opensource products, and make closed-source versions of them using proprietary file formats and protocols.
Not necessarily support full CSS2 etc, but at least support a subset of it, and NOT support any nonstandard undocumented functions. And also allow their browser to be fully removed and replaced, and preferably not even be installed by default.
The OS should be minimalist, and then distributors/OEMs should be free to install additional packages.
People who write GPL software, don't want some company taking their software, rebranding it and then selling it back to them.
You can guarantee that if popular products were BSD licensed, microsoft would take them, rebrand them, modify the file formats to be binary and proprietary, and then sell them at extortionate prices.
That's completely the wrong approach...
Your forced to use windows because you have to interact with a proprietary server protocol and with files stored in proprietary formats. Microsoft take away your choice, and you have to use their products wether you want to or not.
Wouldn't it be better for the protocols and formats to be open, so that you could choose what clients you use? (and conversely, you could easily replace the backend systems too depending on your needs and budget)
More like when they open their formats, or better yet embrace the existing opendocument standard.
Open source already operates according to open standards...
All microsoft need to do, is implement and support the same open standards. This "war" they talk about having a truce in, is because their products are using proprietary formats and/or protocols, which force people to use their products.
People like choice, whereas microsoft try to take away your freedom of choice because that's easier for them than offering a better choice in a free market.
If they would make sure all their products complied with published standards (or help create such standards, where non already exist, and in an open way involving any interested parties), then opensource would have less of a need to compete and fight against them.
All i want, and i`m sure many people agree, is freedom to choose. I absoloutely despise the idea of being forced to use any particular product, i want to be able to choose whatever suits my individual needs best.
Currently i won't use microsoft products, because they seek to remove my freedom of choice... If they implement open standards and provide me this freedom i would consider using them based on the merits of each individual product.
Does it also need a hard disk in every machine? Imagine all the extra heat produced by 500 superfluous hard drives. All the clusters i've built have been diskless, and booted from the network (or from a floppy, i did produce such a ghetto-cluster from old hardware once as an example)
Well that depends...
Will they force you to have IE and outlook express installed on every node without the ability to remove them? If there is a browser installed, then it will be used to browse at some point just because it's convenient to do it from the console rather than walking back to a proper workstation.
Also, does this support serial consoles? Imagine the hassle of having to hook up screens to every node for maintenence...
Openmosix doesn't even require much in the way of program compatibility... Any program that support multiple threads (ie, multiple cpus) will work with it.
And last i heard, microsoft's effort requires a 64bit cpu, so you have two choices:
Buy a whole heap of new 64bit systems, and then buy microsoft licenses for them.
Use a whole heap of old 32bit systems, and use a free install of linux on all of them.
Doing it microsoft's way requires significant up-front investment, while linux clusters can be constructed out of a collection of old/spare machines at no cost...
I build a cluster at work a few months ago, it was built using recently-obsoleted desktop systems that were otherwise sitting idle in a store room
Have you never tried NT3.51? that would run for years without problems... And most of the issues which did occur, were related to the "windows" side of things rather than the "nt" side... If you ran it as a server it would just keep rolling.
Not stable, but far less likely to be exploited remotely because it doesn't expose all the services to the network that win2k+ do.
But you wouldn't have those desktop environments on the older os's anyway...
There's no reason you can't use a new kernel and an old or lightweight window manager.
However i do see a large number of ancient linux machines, 99% of them servers which have been reliably serving a single task for years and there's no reason to replace them.
The difference is in the users...
OS/2 users are predominantly technically literate people who use OS/2 because of it's superiority to windows...
Win9x users are predominantly technically illiterate people who are unable to upgrade (due to cost etc) or are unwilling to (why change something that is doing what they need)
There is no reason to be running a 7 year old linux distribution, since it's free and trivial to update it...
On the other hand, you can still be running the base of a 7 year old distro and update all the necessary packages on it for the latest version of firefox to work correctly.
Windows suffers from being far less modular, and having changed fundamentally between 9x/nt (completely new kernel etc)