DOS didn`t revolutionise anything, it was just a cheap copy of what had come before.. and only achieved success because it came bundled with IBM`s hardware, and it was IBM compatibility that everyone wanted.
The computer history museum website has a "Hall of fellows section" Which is described as:
For over a decade, the Computer History Museum has been publicly recognizing individuals of outstanding merit who have contributed to the development of computing. Chosen on the basis of accomplishment--formal education is not a factor--are nominated by a panel composed of Museum staff, industry peers, and former Fellows.
At least 10 years must have elapsed between a specific contribution and an individual's nomination in order to properly assess the historical importance of his/her achievements. The contribution must thus be of a foundational nature, one that has strongly influenced the intellectual, disciplinary, or industrial underpinnings of computing.
Bill gates is not on this list, because he has stifled development more than contributing to it... I imagine part of the terms for this donation will be that he gets listed..
Because not every computer in the world is networked at all times? Because some kinds of data are illegal to be transmitted over the internet (think restricted government data) Because many networks have restrictive policies about what can be transmitted in/out? Because many networks are too slow to transfer huge files?
Many of the open replacements have plugins for outlook to connect to them.. Users won`t notice the difference and you can always phase outlook out slowly.. Many of the users using outlook have moved between outlook, old exchange "inbox", lotus notes or whatever else as they move between companies, and should quite quickly adapt to a new mail program since 90% of the mail programs are very similar... People don`t complain when they join a new company that already has systems they`re not familiar with, so why should they complain if the company they`re at already changes over? On the other hand, you can always give new users a new program and keep the old ones on what they already have.. Do the same with new hardware too, users will always want the new and shiny things and will expect them to be slightly different.
As for drop-in replacements for server products, virtually any linux distribution is suitable for that... And it truly is drop in, whereas with microsoft you need to install the os and then the additional server products seperately. The "Set it and forget it" idea doesn`t work well with exchange, every exchange deployment i`ve seen required constant maintenence and had stupid requirements like every user needed to log out before the system could be backed up..
As for upgrading exchange, that`s also very problematic, i`ve seen upgrades between versions which went badly wrong.
But the difference is: Things are perceived as more difficult in linux, but only by people who are used to windows..
Many people can`t adapt to change...
Consider this, my car has an automatic gearbox, but most cars in europe have manual boxes.. Most people would agree that an automatic is easier to drive overall.. However, i let a friend of mine have a drive recently, she`s driven a manual box for 20 years and never driven an automatic, the first mistake she made was going for the clutch... She put her left foot down hard on the left pedal, which happened to be the brake... Result, car screeched to a halt.
Now it`s not that she`s a bad driver, or that automatics are harder to drive than manuals, but she`s conditioned to driving with a manual gearbox and isn`t used to the auto box.
To put it another way round, try giving a manual car to someone who`s only ever driven an automatic...
But to someone who has never driven a car before, it`s quicker to learn in an automatic. That`s why, in the UK atleast, we have a seperate automatic driving license.
Linux is just the same, if your used to windows you`l find linux different and alien.. And it works the other way round too... Someone who`s been running unix machines for the past 15 years will have major trouble using windows for the first time. The only mitigating factor, is that unix has traditionally been used by more technically minded people who are less averse to change and can more easily pick up windows.
As a test, why not find some people who have never used a computer before, and teach some of them windows and some linux, and then once they`re proficient switch them over and see what happens.
Big Iron has already been available in 64 processor configurations for many years, the sun E10000 is quite old now, and i`m sure there were similar sized machines much earlier.
But having seperate -dev packages is also a HUGE pain in the ass if you regularly build fresh machines and compile things from source, and it`s also very unintuitive for newbies.. It`s a lot of hassle having to try and find all the -dev packages for all the libs you have installed, and newbies won`t realise they have to install seperate dev packages.. as far as they`re concerned they already installed "libblah" that is required by whatever they`re trying to install, and dont realise that "libblah-dev" is also needed.
Solaris also supported PPC once upon a time, and it`s predecessor SunOS had to support m68k.. It`s not like sun doesn`t have experience supporting multiple architectures.
What we also need, is gracefull handling of forcibly removed devices... If i rip a USB hard drive out of the system without unmounting it, i cant unmount it and any access to it hangs... There needs to be a way to force unmount it (and risk crashing any processes which accessed it) to be more in line with windows and macos.
The mac version of photoshop is a collection of seperate windows too, it`s massively superior to the windows version, which opens one huge blank window obscuring everything else your doing, and then floats the toolbars over the top. Mind you, it has to do with target OS and the usual way they're used.. windows aims for you to concentrate 100% on a single app at once, whereas macos and unix are designed around you having multiple apps on the screen at once
What reason could they possibly have other than to discredit netscape? It`s not as if there was already a large amount of poorly formed html floating around.. Because no browser at the time would render poorly formed html, people never deployed anything like that... If a browser maker released a browser today which was intentionally tollerable of bad html then you could claim it was doing so for convenience so it would display the thousands of badly formed sites out there, but back when microsoft made the decision to make IE tollerable of html errors, there simply weren't any sites out there that needed it.. But by producing a browser that tollerated poor html, microsoft ensured a greater chance of such sites being created.. Microsoft correctly assumed that the majority of end users would see a site display in ie and not in netscape, and assume that netscape was broken/inferior... And a lot of end users creating such sites, would simply not bother making it work in the "broken" netscape browser..
Rendering poor html had nothing to do with good intentions, it was purely an easier way of making netscape look bad than actually creating a better browser.. If no browsers rendered broken html, then no websites would be using broken html... Noone creates a website without testing it in atleast one browser before putting it online, and if none of the available browsers would tollerate errors then the quality of html code out there would be that much higher.
The result of IE rendering bad html coupled with it's popularity has been very bad for the web... If none of the most popular browsers rendered broken html, then web designers would have no choice but to put out working html.. The MySpace example is a good one.. If html all follows standards, then it's relatively easy to filter out anything malicious, but when your filter has to cater for every non standard behaviour it becomes very difficult.. Not to mention the fact that most of these behaviours are not documented.. What it boils down to, is microsoft intentionally rendering poor html, and also putting out tools to create bad html (frontpage) with the intent of making sites that didn't render in netscape.. Then they could point and say "look how crap those sites look in netscape, they render fine in ie" and 99% of people wouldn`t realise what was truly happening.
IE will also render html if it's mime type is TEXT/PLAIN, you might assume that you could return any data in a text/plain page and the browser wouldn't try to interpret it, so you're safe from cross site scripting.. But your not, not if your users run IE.
The dell copies do work on other systems, the only difficulty is that most of the default drivers have been shipped out (only drivers for hardware present in dell systems is supplied) so you just need to hunt around manufacturers sites looking for drivers like you would anyway.
If every browser adheres to the standards then it benefits web developers and end users..
It becomes much easier to develop a website, you can develop a single site according to standards and it will display in any browser, if a browser cannot display a standards compliant page then the browser is broken and a responsible browser vendor would fix it.. It is not the responsibility of web designers to modify their page to be compatible with buggy browsers..
End users have a choice as to what browser they use, you can choose from many different browsers depending on your individual requirements (small, fast, fully featured, screen reading support, customiseability etc) rather than being forced to use a browser which may not be your first choice.
New platforms (set top boxes, mobile devices etc) which aren`t supported by mainstream browsers, can more easily implement a browser themselves and be safe in the knowlege that it will be able to display content from the web by adhering to standards.
Competition, it`s not about microsoft winning or losing.. If there are standards and microsoft are forced to produce a superior product in order to win back market share, then that only benefits people in the end.. Providing that they stick to standards, and people are still free to use other browsers. This is exactly what microsoft don`t do, and why a lot of people hate them, they improved IE until netscape was no longer a threat, and then let IE completely stagnate... Improvements completely stopped for a couple of years once the competition was eliminated, and now that they face competition from mozilla improvements are coming again. Also a lot of people use IE because they have to in order to display non standards-compliant pages, not because they`ve tried a multitude of browsers and chosen the one that best suits their needs.
Think of all the waste going into landfill sites as a result of this? Watch a dvd once and throw it in the trash? not very environmentally friendly at all!
Even so, a service like this used internally to a company would make sense.. All the employees logging in to a single server (or load balanced several machines for redundancy) wether they`re in the office or at home, and writing/storing their documents all in one place where they can be backed up easily.
Not to mention the difference that correct gcc flags makes on sparc.. Sparv7 (the oldest sparc still supported by linux) lacks some long division instructions which are present on sparcv8 and sparcv7.. Things like OpenSSL make heavy use of these instructions.. Distributions like debian and redhat come precompiled for sparcv7, so they run very poorly on sparcv8/v9 machines, a lowend sparcv8 can take a matter of minutes to accept an ssh connection... There was a talk on osnews about the huge difference building for sparcv8 over sparcv7 can make.
"Historically more stable and secure" - because the user chooses, and those who use gentoo are power users who know how to keep their machines secure and stable.
Well, the less reliable database software you use the more likely the chance of corruption... High end databases like Oracle will try to repair any corruption they find, and often do a pretty good job.. If you run a buggy database that corrupts it`s own data, and then can`t handle being fed corrupt data without crashing.. Well, you made a poor choice.
But having additional copies of software running on additional machines introduces a greater maintenence headache.. Also the mechanic tells you to change the oil because if he lies and tells you not to change the oil in the hope that he`l get the work of repairing the car when it inevitably blows up, another mechanic could put him straight and take your custom. Software vendors on the other hand, are too complacent and arrogant.. They don`t believe anyone will expose what they`re doing and take their customers away.
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DOS didn`t revolutionise anything, it was just a cheap copy of what had come before.. and only achieved success because it came bundled with IBM`s hardware, and it was IBM compatibility that everyone wanted.
The computer history museum website has a "Hall of fellows section" Which is described as:
For over a decade, the Computer History Museum has been publicly recognizing individuals of outstanding merit who have contributed to the development of computing. Chosen on the basis of accomplishment--formal education is not a factor--are nominated by a panel composed of Museum staff, industry peers, and former Fellows.
At least 10 years must have elapsed between a specific contribution and an individual's nomination in order to properly assess the historical importance of his/her achievements. The contribution must thus be of a foundational nature, one that has strongly influenced the intellectual, disciplinary, or industrial underpinnings of computing.
Bill gates is not on this list, because he has stifled development more than contributing to it... I imagine part of the terms for this donation will be that he gets listed..
Because not every computer in the world is networked at all times?
Because some kinds of data are illegal to be transmitted over the internet (think restricted government data)
Because many networks have restrictive policies about what can be transmitted in/out?
Because many networks are too slow to transfer huge files?
Many of the open replacements have plugins for outlook to connect to them.. Users won`t notice the difference and you can always phase outlook out slowly..
Many of the users using outlook have moved between outlook, old exchange "inbox", lotus notes or whatever else as they move between companies, and should quite quickly adapt to a new mail program since 90% of the mail programs are very similar... People don`t complain when they join a new company that already has systems they`re not familiar with, so why should they complain if the company they`re at already changes over?
On the other hand, you can always give new users a new program and keep the old ones on what they already have.. Do the same with new hardware too, users will always want the new and shiny things and will expect them to be slightly different.
As for drop-in replacements for server products, virtually any linux distribution is suitable for that... And it truly is drop in, whereas with microsoft you need to install the os and then the additional server products seperately.
The "Set it and forget it" idea doesn`t work well with exchange, every exchange deployment i`ve seen required constant maintenence and had stupid requirements like every user needed to log out before the system could be backed up..
As for upgrading exchange, that`s also very problematic, i`ve seen upgrades between versions which went badly wrong.
But the difference is:
Things are perceived as more difficult in linux, but only by people who are used to windows..
Many people can`t adapt to change...
Consider this, my car has an automatic gearbox, but most cars in europe have manual boxes.. Most people would agree that an automatic is easier to drive overall..
However, i let a friend of mine have a drive recently, she`s driven a manual box for 20 years and never driven an automatic, the first mistake she made was going for the clutch... She put her left foot down hard on the left pedal, which happened to be the brake... Result, car screeched to a halt.
Now it`s not that she`s a bad driver, or that automatics are harder to drive than manuals, but she`s conditioned to driving with a manual gearbox and isn`t used to the auto box.
To put it another way round, try giving a manual car to someone who`s only ever driven an automatic...
But to someone who has never driven a car before, it`s quicker to learn in an automatic. That`s why, in the UK atleast, we have a seperate automatic driving license.
Linux is just the same, if your used to windows you`l find linux different and alien.. And it works the other way round too... Someone who`s been running unix machines for the past 15 years will have major trouble using windows for the first time. The only mitigating factor, is that unix has traditionally been used by more technically minded people who are less averse to change and can more easily pick up windows.
As a test, why not find some people who have never used a computer before, and teach some of them windows and some linux, and then once they`re proficient switch them over and see what happens.
Big Iron has already been available in 64 processor configurations for many years, the sun E10000 is quite old now, and i`m sure there were similar sized machines much earlier.
But having seperate -dev packages is also a HUGE pain in the ass if you regularly build fresh machines and compile things from source, and it`s also very unintuitive for newbies..
It`s a lot of hassle having to try and find all the -dev packages for all the libs you have installed, and newbies won`t realise they have to install seperate dev packages.. as far as they`re concerned they already installed "libblah" that is required by whatever they`re trying to install, and dont realise that "libblah-dev" is also needed.
Solaris also supported PPC once upon a time, and it`s predecessor SunOS had to support m68k.. It`s not like sun doesn`t have experience supporting multiple architectures.
What we also need, is gracefull handling of forcibly removed devices... If i rip a USB hard drive out of the system without unmounting it, i cant unmount it and any access to it hangs... There needs to be a way to force unmount it (and risk crashing any processes which accessed it) to be more in line with windows and macos.
The mac version of photoshop is a collection of seperate windows too, it`s massively superior to the windows version, which opens one huge blank window obscuring everything else your doing, and then floats the toolbars over the top.
Mind you, it has to do with target OS and the usual way they're used..
windows aims for you to concentrate 100% on a single app at once, whereas macos and unix are designed around you having multiple apps on the screen at once
What reason could they possibly have other than to discredit netscape?
It`s not as if there was already a large amount of poorly formed html floating around.. Because no browser at the time would render poorly formed html, people never deployed anything like that...
If a browser maker released a browser today which was intentionally tollerable of bad html then you could claim it was doing so for convenience so it would display the thousands of badly formed sites out there, but back when microsoft made the decision to make IE tollerable of html errors, there simply weren't any sites out there that needed it..
But by producing a browser that tollerated poor html, microsoft ensured a greater chance of such sites being created..
Microsoft correctly assumed that the majority of end users would see a site display in ie and not in netscape, and assume that netscape was broken/inferior... And a lot of end users creating such sites, would simply not bother making it work in the "broken" netscape browser..
Rendering poor html had nothing to do with good intentions, it was purely an easier way of making netscape look bad than actually creating a better browser..
If no browsers rendered broken html, then no websites would be using broken html... Noone creates a website without testing it in atleast one browser before putting it online, and if none of the available browsers would tollerate errors then the quality of html code out there would be that much higher.
The result of IE rendering bad html coupled with it's popularity has been very bad for the web... If none of the most popular browsers rendered broken html, then web designers would have no choice but to put out working html..
The MySpace example is a good one.. If html all follows standards, then it's relatively easy to filter out anything malicious, but when your filter has to cater for every non standard behaviour it becomes very difficult.. Not to mention the fact that most of these behaviours are not documented..
What it boils down to, is microsoft intentionally rendering poor html, and also putting out tools to create bad html (frontpage) with the intent of making sites that didn't render in netscape.. Then they could point and say "look how crap those sites look in netscape, they render fine in ie" and 99% of people wouldn`t realise what was truly happening.
IE will also render html if it's mime type is TEXT/PLAIN, you might assume that you could return any data in a text/plain page and the browser wouldn't try to interpret it, so you're safe from cross site scripting.. But your not, not if your users run IE.
The dell copies do work on other systems, the only difficulty is that most of the default drivers have been shipped out (only drivers for hardware present in dell systems is supplied) so you just need to hunt around manufacturers sites looking for drivers like you would anyway.
Strange, doesn`t do this for me... I`ve had it running on my machine for nearly a month now.
If every browser adheres to the standards then it benefits web developers and end users..
It becomes much easier to develop a website, you can develop a single site according to standards and it will display in any browser, if a browser cannot display a standards compliant page then the browser is broken and a responsible browser vendor would fix it.. It is not the responsibility of web designers to modify their page to be compatible with buggy browsers..
End users have a choice as to what browser they use, you can choose from many different browsers depending on your individual requirements (small, fast, fully featured, screen reading support, customiseability etc) rather than being forced to use a browser which may not be your first choice.
New platforms (set top boxes, mobile devices etc) which aren`t supported by mainstream browsers, can more easily implement a browser themselves and be safe in the knowlege that it will be able to display content from the web by adhering to standards.
Competition, it`s not about microsoft winning or losing.. If there are standards and microsoft are forced to produce a superior product in order to win back market share, then that only benefits people in the end.. Providing that they stick to standards, and people are still free to use other browsers.
This is exactly what microsoft don`t do, and why a lot of people hate them, they improved IE until netscape was no longer a threat, and then let IE completely stagnate... Improvements completely stopped for a couple of years once the competition was eliminated, and now that they face competition from mozilla improvements are coming again. Also a lot of people use IE because they have to in order to display non standards-compliant pages, not because they`ve tried a multitude of browsers and chosen the one that best suits their needs.
Can`t you just remove the plugin from firefox?
It seems to work fine on a system where there is no flash plugin atall too.
Think of all the waste going into landfill sites as a result of this? Watch a dvd once and throw it in the trash? not very environmentally friendly at all!
Even so, a service like this used internally to a company would make sense.. All the employees logging in to a single server (or load balanced several machines for redundancy) wether they`re in the office or at home, and writing/storing their documents all in one place where they can be backed up easily.
Not to mention the difference that correct gcc flags makes on sparc..
Sparv7 (the oldest sparc still supported by linux) lacks some long division instructions which are present on sparcv8 and sparcv7.. Things like OpenSSL make heavy use of these instructions..
Distributions like debian and redhat come precompiled for sparcv7, so they run very poorly on sparcv8/v9 machines, a lowend sparcv8 can take a matter of minutes to accept an ssh connection... There was a talk on osnews about the huge difference building for sparcv8 over sparcv7 can make.
"Historically more stable and secure" - because the user chooses, and those who use gentoo are power users who know how to keep their machines secure and stable.
Well, the less reliable database software you use the more likely the chance of corruption... High end databases like Oracle will try to repair any corruption they find, and often do a pretty good job..
If you run a buggy database that corrupts it`s own data, and then can`t handle being fed corrupt data without crashing.. Well, you made a poor choice.
But having additional copies of software running on additional machines introduces a greater maintenence headache..
Also the mechanic tells you to change the oil because if he lies and tells you not to change the oil in the hope that he`l get the work of repairing the car when it inevitably blows up, another mechanic could put him straight and take your custom. Software vendors on the other hand, are too complacent and arrogant.. They don`t believe anyone will expose what they`re doing and take their customers away.
Well, the point was that other OS`s got the C2 certification while being networked and having removeable media attached, whereas NT did not.