The idea is, people who downloaded the Google toolbar are a prime audience for a Google browser, that removes the IE tie-in for Google and increases the percentage of standards compliant browser users out there.
is not true. I felt that the OP had drawn spurious conclusions.
Appendix B.1 of the HTML 4.01 specification suggests that a conformal browser should have a mechanism for flagging errors; this does not apear to be the case with FB (although there is a 'side-effect mechanism as it is possible to visit validator.w3.org).
The idea is, people who downloaded the Google toolbar are a prime audience for a Google browser, that removes the IE tie-in for Google and increases the percentage of standards compliant browser users out there.
Firebird isn't standards-compliant. For instance, there are many things wrong with slashdot but Firebird doesn't throw errors or warnings, it just renders the page (test system: Firebird 0.7 on Linux 2.4.20). If you wanted standards-compliance, you'd want Google-Amaya, and I doubt any sane person would use that:-).
Erk, I was thinking that if I wanted an affordable, open standards-based computer, I'd look for one of those instead! Oh wait, I already have three. Never mind. What you've done is to take an incidental point in the discussion way too seriously, as geeks are often wont to do. The thrust of my original post was this: intel proprietary, sparc not. Intel crummy hack to eight-bit washing machine controller, sparc not. Sparc win.
Then Linux users, who like me pride themselves on the openness of their software, should consider using open standards for their hardware. Such as SPARC, especially the scrummy 64-bit sparcv9. These things can scale up to a 64-CPU box; I'd like to see the Athlon manage that;-)
Microsoft aren't "investigating their competition"; much of their graphical software (including graphical versions of Word) started life on the Mac. The Macintosh Business Unit is a semi-autonomous division of Microsoft, comprising some incredibly competent Mac programmers. They pride themselves (and rightly, IMHO) on creating quality software for a quality platform; often the Mac version of Office will have a few features that haven't yet bled into the Wintel version; the MBU announced a few of these in the January Stevenote. Even Internet Explorer:Mac is a passable web browser.
The Ultra 5 is a 'modern' UltraSPARC-based system. Solaris still supports the platform; indeed even Solaris 10 will still support the U5 (and the Ultra 2, but not the Ultra 1. The UltraSPARCs used in the Ultra 1 had a comedy bug anyway, which meant that they shouldn't be used in 64 bit mode). Now, if they'd been talking about the SPARCstation 5, I would have been interested.
The SS5 had a HyperSPARC processor, just like the SPARCStation 2 over in the corner of this room (in a 'rack' consisting of a pair of Ultra 1s, the SS2 and some spacers made of plastic). This was a good old-fashioned rock-steady 32bit Sun machine, just like they used to make before they went all cheap (that's the build price, not the retail price!). The principle difference as far as I'm concerned between the SS5 and the SS2, and the reason I'd be interested to hear about the longevity of the SS5, is that the 5 can run NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP for SPARC platform whereas the 2 cannot.
An Ultra 5, on the other hand, is just Yet Another 64-bit Solaris Box like the two Ultra 1s behind me or the 4-way Enterprise server across the way.
Did you know that running Java apps with the -Xoptimize option can cause kernel panics sometimes?
No. Did you know that -Xoptimise hasn't been a part of Java since 1.2? Did you know that there have been two major versions of Java since then? Did you know that the codebase changes between major versions?
It's likely that bug was fixed when -Xoptimize was dropped. It's especially likely because Java was written by Sun!
Support? I agree, it's good! But again, you're paying big bucks for support in most cases.
Nothing new there. Fedora Linux: Free. Red Hat Enterprise: $2000.
Apple XServe without support: GBP2,204.94. Apple XServe with full AppleCare coverage (redundant HW, 3 years service support, 3 years software maintenance): GBP3,504.94.
You'd expect someone reviewing a computer to have at least a vague clue about that computer...unfortunately life doesn't always live up to expectations.
The SunPCI III is, I think, the primary selling point of the Blade 1500 -- it's what separates this workstation from the proprietary competition by essentially combining an UltraSPARC and an IA32 machine into one unit with full binary compatibility for both architectures.
Following on from...
The proprietary 64-bit workstation market is dominated by Sun Microsystems
All very nice. Except that the UltraSPARC is not a proprietary 64-bit system! The SPARC series of chips are developed by SPARC, in whom Sun have a relatively large stake. Such chips include the Leon2, the designs for which are available under the conditions of the Lesser GPL. This is not a proprietary architecture! Want to make your own SPARC chip? Download the SPARC definitions and get to it! No-one's going to stop you, this is after all an open system!
OK, so there's one thing in there that does make the Blade workstation proprietary, and that's the IA-32 compliant processor on the hardware PC emulator. That's a closed-license design, not nice and open and standards-compliant like the SPARCs are.
The great selling point of a Sun is that it seemes to maintain a "cool" factor much like Apple computers
Looking around at either the stack of Ultras and SPARCStations by my right foot, or the Enterprise server and SunRays over thattaway, it's clear to me that the Sun selling point is not 'coolness' or prestige. You buy a Sun to get a UNIX system that's:
Built like a tank
Got full hardware support (i.e., it breaks, next day there's a new one on your desk) for five years
Got full software support for five years
Running the most rock-steady UNIX system around
Did I mention the rather good support?
If all that is needed is a compute workstation on which some variety of free UNIX or Linux will run, then no the Sun workstation is not the most cost-effective option. However, you don't just buy a computer from Sun, you tend to get a full five-year support package as well. BTW on the subject of free UNIXen, interesting to note that for education, and possibly other purposes, the SOlaris source code is sometimes available:-).
Oh and Sun, FFS stop calling your workstations "blades" would you?
At least KDE did. I recall KDE 1.0. Its slogan was "Desktop for Linux" or some such.
Hmmm....KDE 1.0. How long ago was that current? I'm talking about KDE 3.2, as was the OP. KDE 3.2 is not Linux software.
I think everybody here is already aware that UNIX software works on nearly any UNIX platform. Did you just figure it out?
Anyway, my point is that KDE did come out specifically for Linux. That it worked on other UNIXs is testament to the compatibility between all UNIXs. But the initial target was Linux.
A few things spring to mind: firstly that you didn't understand my post. Secondly that you don't know the implementation differences between the UNIXen; for instance between SysV and BSD, or between Linux and Mac OS X. Thirdly that you're trying to troll. A decent troll would not explicitly assault the intelligence of the poster, unless the original post was inaccurate.
None of KDE, GNOME, Gimp, mplayer or OpenOffice come out for Linux. They just come out. They'll be available in BSD ports systems, for Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SCO UnixWare, and in the case of KDE, mplayer and Gimp, native Mac OS X. Yes, this software is available for Linux. But it's not Linux software. A "Linux PC", such as this one, contains a whole mishmash of software, which is running atop a Linux kernel. That could so easily be a FreeBSD kernel, a Darwin kernel, a SunOS 5 kernel, Windows running SFU, WIndows running Cygwin, whatever. The source is available and people will build it on their own platforms.
Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here
on
FreeBSD 5.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Indeederoony, FreeBSD 5 is perfectly stable for production systems here, too. We use versions based on the Mach Microkernel, for Intel and for PPC. They're available here:-).
Seriously, as far as FreeBSD-derivatives go, Darwin is very nice, if only for the Mach task scheduling, IOKit, SystemStarter, NetInfo, Apple/NeXT dynamic loader, fat binary support.... Show me another system on which you can build a single version of XFree86 that works with both PowerPC and Intel systems and doesn't even need an XF86Config file:-D
Aside from John Chamberlain's succint description of why the above argument is flawed, the phrase "percentage point" is redundant. A percent is a part in one hundred, there is no need to qualify it with "-age point". A percentage point is a point equal to a one hundredth part, i.e. it is identical to a percent.
The use of the phrase "percentage point" seems to have crept into the English language from American marketing representatives, who believe that by extending the length of a sentence and the words therein, its gravity or trustworthiness is somehow increased. This is not the case.
The great thing is that precious bytes aren't being wasted as it's dynamically generated (along with the rest of the/proc hierarchy) on demand. Have a look at proc(5) and hier(7) to learn more about the Linux filesystem hierarchy, and the/proc hierarchy in particular.
Umm...yes I have...
leeg@rayleigh:~>ls -l/etc/shadow
-r-------- 1 root sys 33530 Dec 11 02:13/etc/shadow
That's on a Slowlaris box but then this is on a Linux/x86 box:
leeg@heisenberg:~> ls -l/etc/shadow
-r-------- 1 root wheel 474 Nov 17 21:43/etc/shadow
Slashdot does need a 'full of shit' moderation.
Unfortunately it would just be used by people who think that one data point means that they are correct and the rest of the world is wrong. It would also be used by people who were themselves talking out of their arses.
I remember similar things on BSD
The BSDs I've used have either had the binary pwd database or have used NetInfo or LDAP - or in the case of a SunOS 4 box over in the corner of the room doesn't have shadowed passwords. Which BSD have you seen with an/etc/shadow file? There is/etc/master.passwd, but then:
newton:~ leeg$ ls -l/etc/master.passwd
-rw------- 1 root wheel 1259 12 Sep 21:41/etc/master.passwd
Hmmm...that doesn't have a shadow group either.
Oh, and a good reason not to use LDAP (and I speak from experience here) is that it leads to single points of failure.
If you only have one LDAP server then that would be the case I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
They also release updates.... ;-)
My point is that if
is true, then
is not true. I felt that the OP had drawn spurious conclusions.
Appendix B.1 of the HTML 4.01 specification suggests that a conformal browser should have a mechanism for flagging errors; this does not apear to be the case with FB (although there is a 'side-effect mechanism as it is possible to visit validator.w3.org).
Firebird isn't standards-compliant. For instance, there are many things wrong with slashdot but Firebird doesn't throw errors or warnings, it just renders the page (test system: Firebird 0.7 on Linux 2.4.20). If you wanted standards-compliance, you'd want Google-Amaya, and I doubt any sane person would use that :-).
As Mozilla Firebird already contains a Google searchbox, I doubt that this would count as 'innovation' either.
Erk, I was thinking that if I wanted an affordable, open standards-based computer, I'd look for one of those instead! Oh wait, I already have three. Never mind. What you've done is to take an incidental point in the discussion way too seriously, as geeks are often wont to do. The thrust of my original post was this: intel proprietary, sparc not. Intel crummy hack to eight-bit washing machine controller, sparc not. Sparc win.
Erk, I was looking at the UltraSPARC IIIi :-)
Then Linux users, who like me pride themselves on the openness of their software, should consider using open standards for their hardware. Such as SPARC, especially the scrummy 64-bit sparcv9. These things can scale up to a 64-CPU box; I'd like to see the Athlon manage that ;-)
Use Amaya and say that again.
Microsoft aren't "investigating their competition"; much of their graphical software (including graphical versions of Word) started life on the Mac. The Macintosh Business Unit is a semi-autonomous division of Microsoft, comprising some incredibly competent Mac programmers. They pride themselves (and rightly, IMHO) on creating quality software for a quality platform; often the Mac version of Office will have a few features that haven't yet bled into the Wintel version; the MBU announced a few of these in the January Stevenote. Even Internet Explorer:Mac is a passable web browser.
Yes I was. [certain parts of this statement may not be true, but we are sure that IBM will provide sufficient evidence to corroborate our claims]
Hey! You pinched that from me! you insensitive clod.
The Ultra 5 is a 'modern' UltraSPARC-based system. Solaris still supports the platform; indeed even Solaris 10 will still support the U5 (and the Ultra 2, but not the Ultra 1. The UltraSPARCs used in the Ultra 1 had a comedy bug anyway, which meant that they shouldn't be used in 64 bit mode). Now, if they'd been talking about the SPARCstation 5, I would have been interested.
The SS5 had a HyperSPARC processor, just like the SPARCStation 2 over in the corner of this room (in a 'rack' consisting of a pair of Ultra 1s, the SS2 and some spacers made of plastic). This was a good old-fashioned rock-steady 32bit Sun machine, just like they used to make before they went all cheap (that's the build price, not the retail price!). The principle difference as far as I'm concerned between the SS5 and the SS2, and the reason I'd be interested to hear about the longevity of the SS5, is that the 5 can run NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP for SPARC platform whereas the 2 cannot.
An Ultra 5, on the other hand, is just Yet Another 64-bit Solaris Box like the two Ultra 1s behind me or the 4-way Enterprise server across the way.
No. Did you know that -Xoptimise hasn't been a part of Java since 1.2? Did you know that there have been two major versions of Java since then? Did you know that the codebase changes between major versions?
It's likely that bug was fixed when -Xoptimize was dropped. It's especially likely because Java was written by Sun!
Nothing new there. Fedora Linux: Free. Red Hat Enterprise: $2000.
Apple XServe without support: GBP2,204.94. Apple XServe with full AppleCare coverage (redundant HW, 3 years service support, 3 years software maintenance): GBP3,504.94.
You'd expect someone reviewing a computer to have at least a vague clue about that computer...unfortunately life doesn't always live up to expectations.
Following on from...
All very nice. Except that the UltraSPARC is not a proprietary 64-bit system! The SPARC series of chips are developed by SPARC, in whom Sun have a relatively large stake. Such chips include the Leon2, the designs for which are available under the conditions of the Lesser GPL. This is not a proprietary architecture! Want to make your own SPARC chip? Download the SPARC definitions and get to it! No-one's going to stop you, this is after all an open system!
OK, so there's one thing in there that does make the Blade workstation proprietary, and that's the IA-32 compliant processor on the hardware PC emulator. That's a closed-license design, not nice and open and standards-compliant like the SPARCs are.
Looking around at either the stack of Ultras and SPARCStations by my right foot, or the Enterprise server and SunRays over thattaway, it's clear to me that the Sun selling point is not 'coolness' or prestige. You buy a Sun to get a UNIX system that's:
If all that is needed is a compute workstation on which some variety of free UNIX or Linux will run, then no the Sun workstation is not the most cost-effective option. However, you don't just buy a computer from Sun, you tend to get a full five-year support package as well. BTW on the subject of free UNIXen, interesting to note that for education, and possibly other purposes, the SOlaris source code is sometimes available :-).
Oh and Sun, FFS stop calling your workstations "blades" would you?
Hmmm....KDE 1.0. How long ago was that current? I'm talking about KDE 3.2, as was the OP. KDE 3.2 is not Linux software.
A few things spring to mind: firstly that you didn't understand my post. Secondly that you don't know the implementation differences between the UNIXen; for instance between SysV and BSD, or between Linux and Mac OS X. Thirdly that you're trying to troll. A decent troll would not explicitly assault the intelligence of the poster, unless the original post was inaccurate.
None of KDE, GNOME, Gimp, mplayer or OpenOffice come out for Linux. They just come out. They'll be available in BSD ports systems, for Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SCO UnixWare, and in the case of KDE, mplayer and Gimp, native Mac OS X. Yes, this software is available for Linux. But it's not Linux software. A "Linux PC", such as this one, contains a whole mishmash of software, which is running atop a Linux kernel. That could so easily be a FreeBSD kernel, a Darwin kernel, a SunOS 5 kernel, Windows running SFU, WIndows running Cygwin, whatever. The source is available and people will build it on their own platforms.
Nitzsche.
Indeederoony, FreeBSD 5 is perfectly stable for production systems here, too. We use versions based on the Mach Microkernel, for Intel and for PPC. They're available here :-).
Seriously, as far as FreeBSD-derivatives go, Darwin is very nice, if only for the Mach task scheduling, IOKit, SystemStarter, NetInfo, Apple/NeXT dynamic loader, fat binary support.... Show me another system on which you can build a single version of XFree86 that works with both PowerPC and Intel systems and doesn't even need an XF86Config file :-D
Aside from John Chamberlain's succint description of why the above argument is flawed, the phrase "percentage point" is redundant. A percent is a part in one hundred, there is no need to qualify it with "-age point". A percentage point is a point equal to a one hundredth part, i.e. it is identical to a percent.
The use of the phrase "percentage point" seems to have crept into the English language from American marketing representatives, who believe that by extending the length of a sentence and the words therein, its gravity or trustworthiness is somehow increased. This is not the case.
The great thing is that precious bytes aren't being wasted as it's dynamically generated (along with the rest of the /proc hierarchy) on demand. Have a look at proc(5) and hier(7) to learn more about the Linux filesystem hierarchy, and the /proc hierarchy in particular.
Or use /proc/config.gz from the 2.6.0 system, that might work too :-)
Umm...yes I have... /etc/shadow /etc/shadow /etc/shadow /etc/shadow
leeg@rayleigh:~>ls -l
-r-------- 1 root sys 33530 Dec 11 02:13
That's on a Slowlaris box but then this is on a Linux/x86 box:
leeg@heisenberg:~> ls -l
-r-------- 1 root wheel 474 Nov 17 21:43
Unfortunately it would just be used by people who think that one data point means that they are correct and the rest of the world is wrong. It would also be used by people who were themselves talking out of their arses.
The BSDs I've used have either had the binary pwd database or have used NetInfo or LDAP - or in the case of a SunOS 4 box over in the corner of the room doesn't have shadowed passwords. Which BSD have you seen with an /etc/shadow file? There is /etc/master.passwd, but then: /etc/master.passwd /etc/master.passwd
newton:~ leeg$ ls -l
-rw------- 1 root wheel 1259 12 Sep 21:41
Hmmm...that doesn't have a shadow group either.
If you only have one LDAP server then that would be the case I suppose.
Use the source, Luke! ;-)
pwd_mkdb.c, kindly furnished by those nice folks at OpenBSD.