Sorry, but it IS impressive watching a video of a demo. It's impressive because these dudes have spent an exhorbitant amount of time and money and made sure that a really important piece of computing / geek history has been kept for prosterity for the future.
I'm not really into the demo scene at all, but I am mightily impressed with the effort these guys have gone to and out of nostalgia (I remember seeing demos in my 8 bit days) and curiousity, I'm probably gonna pick up a copy of this DVD
"From the first paragraph you agree that this guy stole trade secrets and that this is wrong and illegal. In the second case where you reverse engineer, haven't exactly the same trade secrets also been obtained? Why is it okay to reverse engineer to gain access to trade secrets but not to copy a document with those secrets written on it?"
Probably because he is using his own brain to create something which behaves in the same manner as the original 'thing' without actual knowledge of how the original 'thing' works.
That's a creative process and not copying.
Simple difference
But if that's how Mr. Serebryany felt, he should have been campaigning for freedom of information, not stealing something he had agreed not to publish. If he thought that this was an innovation that needed to be shared, then he shouldn't have signed an NDA and he should have reverse engineered it.
DirecTV is probably not the innovation the Internet is or the Ford Model T production line was. It is a re-invention of stuff we already have which has been wrapped up into a product that a company has invested in.
There is a fine line between your right to see what I have written and my right to privacy. Same as freedom of speech or being offensive, they are mutually exclusive.
Hopefully you have fed these requests back into the Chimera development team.
We frequently ask for graphic designers and documenters and testers for our OSS projects. Positive and constructive feedback such as otis' comments are just as useful because they help developers understand which parts of their app are useful and well received, and where there is room for impovement.
I'd have to agree with this. Having used one of the big names in load balancing and having dealt with their support, my experience is that they are not quick and they are not responsive and my project is slipping because they don't understand their product well enough.
The problem with support is that you assume because you are paying a lot of money to the company who created the product that whomever you contact in that organisation knows the product inside out and can answer your problem instaneously.
The truth of the matter is that they are unlikely to understand you environment, and are likely to waste the first 30 minutes going through a set of basic questions which you have already tried anyway. It is a fallacy that telephone support is quicker because you are dependant on the skill and experience of the person you are calling. More specifically you are dependant on their skill and experience with the particular product you are calling about (no one is an expert on everything) and you are then subsequently dependant on the knowledge of other team members in the same room or the quality of the knowledge base that the support engineer is typing your problem into.
If you ever had to ring up support for the worlds number one database vendor you would recognise this situation as they tell you they are typing your details into the system to see how other people with the same problem resolved it.
It won't give your manager the same warm feeling of comfort but OSS and Google is just quicker and easier to support. As long as you choose a well supported project.
Although you seem keen to move away from XP for a variety of reasons, I would just question your issues with the win98 games. Have you tried fiddling with compatibility mode under XP. It will let you fool an application into thinking it's running on a Win98 box and (in theory) increase the stability of your games.
It's not supposed to make an "intelligent, self-respecting woman" laugh, it's supposed to make a dumb man laugh
As long as he take a joke directed at him then it's ok. If the guy was saying something offensive and was being deadly serious then you have a valid reason to take issue with him.
Seeing as he was making a joke, cut him some slack and find it funny. I can obviously only speak for myself, but I'd rather live in a world where we can poke fun at each other than live in a place where people are too scared to speak for fear of causing offence.
I think that what is sad is people who think they are "old skool" or hardcore, and are thus superior to the noobies. It is true that there are many people who's Linux skill set falters at anything more than being able to install Mandrake. It is the techno-snobbery of those who look down on these people which grates with me.
Some people on here will look at picoGUI and think it is pretty and like it for that reason. Others will dig a little deeper and find the archticture and design of the system appealing and tryit out for that reason.
Surely that is the whole point of running Linux / UNIX. It's flexibility allows for so many different options. If all you are interested in is a desktop which looks glossy and different to everything else then you have that option. If you are interested in Kernel development and digging around in the guts of UNIX, you have that option too. Neither option is better than any other and that is why open systems are so cool. They give people choices and don't tie the user down to a strict set of rules imposed by someone who thinks they know better
It's a server room, a room for servers - not for people.
Aside from changing backup tapes, or power cycling servers, there is no reason for you to need to be in the server room.
We have 2 server rooms, one in a room 10 feet from us and another that is 30 miles away. We have to do 50% of our admin remotely and it isn't a problem.
Instead of altering the server room from it's original purpose, why don't you change your working practices and find a more appropriate location for your work.
MySQL is good at what it does but don't kid yourself into thinking that it is anywhere near as reliable as Oracle.
It's similar to MS SQL Server. If you are a developer and want to get a database up and running quickly then it's great. If you're a sysadmin and want to be able to tune your application to your OS, or to resolve performance issues then you are screwed.
I'm not saying Oracle is the be all and end all of databases - as with anything it's horses for courses. But just try debugging errors with MySQL. We are currently having issued with MySQL replication. The documentation doesn't give us an indication of what our error is caused by or how to resolve it.
And looking through the documentation there is no versioning. Is his function / parameter available in my version? I have frequently seen the suggested resolution to problem as "upgrade to this version". That may be practical on some systems but on applications developed by a third party, which may depend on some "feature" of the behaviour of a version of MySQL then it is not practical.
We use tomcat exclusively. We have tried a few others but we have settled on tomcat. First reason is that when the project was kicked off, tomcat was free and it allowed us to trial the technology. Tomcat proved usable in the development environment and did what the development / design team wanted. As it got nearer deployment time a decision was taken that we had timescales to work to and all of the testing had been done with the webapp running under tomcat. We have since been using it in a live environment for nearly 12 months and (currently) have no problems with it. We use both tomcat 3 and 4. We had a few teething trouble to start with but that was more down to our lack of experience in general with running a java web server.
One of the major beneifts I see in using tomcat specifically and open source stuff in general is support and product information. Although commerical companies give you a number to call if stuff goes wrong with their product, freely available information on the net is less prevalent. So you are dependant on the number of people available in their support department and the skill of the tech support you speak to. The likelyhood of you doing something brand new that has never been done before is remote. What is more likely is that you are trying to do something that isn't in the install docs but many other people do. And where open source works better is that you are much more likely to find help on the internet to boost your understanding and resolve your problem. This will make your able to respond to your businesses requirements quicker and more confidently.
The other thing that commercial products tend to offer is "pretty" GUI's for configuring software.
Aside from the support, this is the only thing that a commercial product will offer you that tomcat won't (same thing with apache vs. zeus). Now that is up to you really. Personally I think that as long you should get an understanding of how to configure tomcat then that isn't really a problem.
I would personally have no qualms about recommending tomcat to anyone.
Although you have an investment in oracle have you looked at MysqlFS . MySQL is perhaps not the most functional of RDBMS' but it's certainly very fast and may provide all of what you require without wasting your expensive oracle licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but it IS impressive watching a video of a demo. It's impressive because these dudes have spent an exhorbitant amount of time and money and made sure that a really important piece of computing / geek history has been kept for prosterity for the future.
I'm not really into the demo scene at all, but I am mightily impressed with the effort these guys have gone to and out of nostalgia (I remember seeing demos in my 8 bit days) and curiousity, I'm probably gonna pick up a copy of this DVD
"From the first paragraph you agree that this guy stole trade secrets and that this is wrong and illegal. In the second case where you reverse engineer, haven't exactly the same trade secrets also been obtained? Why is it okay to reverse engineer to gain access to trade secrets but not to copy a document with those secrets written on it?"
Probably because he is using his own brain to create something which behaves in the same manner as the original 'thing' without actual knowledge of how the original 'thing' works.
That's a creative process and not copying. Simple difference
Fair enough.
But if that's how Mr. Serebryany felt, he should have been campaigning for freedom of information, not stealing something he had agreed not to publish. If he thought that this was an innovation that needed to be shared, then he shouldn't have signed an NDA and he should have reverse engineered it.
DirecTV is probably not the innovation the Internet is or the Ford Model T production line was. It is a re-invention of stuff we already have which has been wrapped up into a product that a company has invested in.
There is a fine line between your right to see what I have written and my right to privacy. Same as freedom of speech or being offensive, they are mutually exclusive.
Hopefully you have fed these requests back into the Chimera development team.
We frequently ask for graphic designers and documenters and testers for our OSS projects. Positive and constructive feedback such as otis' comments are just as useful because they help developers understand which parts of their app are useful and well received, and where there is room for impovement.
http://www.xpde.com/
I'd have to agree with this. Having used one of the big names in load balancing and having dealt with their support, my experience is that they are not quick and they are not responsive and my project is slipping because they don't understand their product well enough.
The problem with support is that you assume because you are paying a lot of money to the company who created the product that whomever you contact in that organisation knows the product inside out and can answer your problem instaneously.
The truth of the matter is that they are unlikely to understand you environment, and are likely to waste the first 30 minutes going through a set of basic questions which you have already tried anyway. It is a fallacy that telephone support is quicker because you are dependant on the skill and experience of the person you are calling. More specifically you are dependant on their skill and experience with the particular product you are calling about (no one is an expert on everything) and you are then subsequently dependant on the knowledge of other team members in the same room or the quality of the knowledge base that the support engineer is typing your problem into.
If you ever had to ring up support for the worlds number one database vendor you would recognise this situation as they tell you they are typing your details into the system to see how other people with the same problem resolved it.
It won't give your manager the same warm feeling of comfort but OSS and Google is just quicker and easier to support. As long as you choose a well supported project.
Although you seem keen to move away from XP for a variety of reasons, I would just question your issues with the win98 games. Have you tried fiddling with compatibility mode under XP. It will let you fool an application into thinking it's running on a Win98 box and (in theory) increase the stability of your games.
YMMV of course
It's not supposed to make an "intelligent, self-respecting woman" laugh, it's supposed to make a dumb man laugh
As long as he take a joke directed at him then it's ok. If the guy was saying something offensive and was being deadly serious then you have a valid reason to take issue with him.
Seeing as he was making a joke, cut him some slack and find it funny. I can obviously only speak for myself, but I'd rather live in a world where we can poke fun at each other than live in a place where people are too scared to speak for fear of causing offence.
I think that what is sad is people who think they are "old skool" or hardcore, and are thus superior to the noobies. It is true that there are many people who's Linux skill set falters at anything more than being able to install Mandrake. It is the techno-snobbery of those who look down on these people which grates with me.
Some people on here will look at picoGUI and think it is pretty and like it for that reason. Others will dig a little deeper and find the archticture and design of the system appealing and tryit out for that reason.
Surely that is the whole point of running Linux / UNIX. It's flexibility allows for so many different options. If all you are interested in is a desktop which looks glossy and different to everything else then you have that option. If you are interested in Kernel development and digging around in the guts of UNIX, you have that option too. Neither option is better than any other and that is why open systems are so cool. They give people choices and don't tie the user down to a strict set of rules imposed by someone who thinks they know better
try going to news.com and you are redirected to news.com.com. Check your facts b4 posting dumbass
quoted from the chat room on wes.homelinux.com
squeezer is gay and was lying.. its not on this hub
One of your guys?
used to be
banned him cause he's ghey
rotflmao
But surely the people who are tech savvy enough to be able to find this "alpha" are the sort of people who will understand it's an alpha demo.
Why do you even need to be in the server room?
It's a server room, a room for servers - not for people.
Aside from changing backup tapes, or power cycling servers, there is no reason for you to need to be in the server room.
We have 2 server rooms, one in a room 10 feet from us and another that is 30 miles away. We have to do 50% of our admin remotely and it isn't a problem. Instead of altering the server room from it's original purpose, why don't you change your working practices and find a more appropriate location for your work.
Very Funny.
MySQL is good at what it does but don't kid yourself into thinking that it is anywhere near as reliable as Oracle.
It's similar to MS SQL Server. If you are a developer and want to get a database up and running quickly then it's great. If you're a sysadmin and want to be able to tune your application to your OS, or to resolve performance issues then you are screwed.
I'm not saying Oracle is the be all and end all of databases - as with anything it's horses for courses. But just try debugging errors with MySQL. We are currently having issued with MySQL replication. The documentation doesn't give us an indication of what our error is caused by or how to resolve it.
And looking through the documentation there is no versioning. Is his function / parameter available in my version? I have frequently seen the suggested resolution to problem as "upgrade to this version". That may be practical on some systems but on applications developed by a third party, which may depend on some "feature" of the behaviour of a version of MySQL then it is not practical.
We make use of tomcat through apache because of some the extra stuff that apache gives like mod_rewrite, mod_gzip and mod_expire
We use tomcat exclusively. We have tried a few others but we have settled on tomcat. First reason is that when the project was kicked off, tomcat was free and it allowed us to trial the technology. Tomcat proved usable in the development environment and did what the development / design team wanted. As it got nearer deployment time a decision was taken that we had timescales to work to and all of the testing had been done with the webapp running under tomcat. We have since been using it in a live environment for nearly 12 months and (currently) have no problems with it. We use both tomcat 3 and 4. We had a few teething trouble to start with but that was more down to our lack of experience in general with running a java web server. One of the major beneifts I see in using tomcat specifically and open source stuff in general is support and product information. Although commerical companies give you a number to call if stuff goes wrong with their product, freely available information on the net is less prevalent. So you are dependant on the number of people available in their support department and the skill of the tech support you speak to. The likelyhood of you doing something brand new that has never been done before is remote. What is more likely is that you are trying to do something that isn't in the install docs but many other people do. And where open source works better is that you are much more likely to find help on the internet to boost your understanding and resolve your problem. This will make your able to respond to your businesses requirements quicker and more confidently. The other thing that commercial products tend to offer is "pretty" GUI's for configuring software. Aside from the support, this is the only thing that a commercial product will offer you that tomcat won't (same thing with apache vs. zeus). Now that is up to you really. Personally I think that as long you should get an understanding of how to configure tomcat then that isn't really a problem. I would personally have no qualms about recommending tomcat to anyone.
In that case he might as well use Windows Framemaker under WINE
Although you have an investment in oracle have you looked at MysqlFS . MySQL is perhaps not the most functional of RDBMS' but it's certainly very fast and may provide all of what you require without wasting your expensive oracle licenses.
http://www.themes.org/resources/35/
Presumably you are running FreeBSD on an x86 box. How good will your binary compatibility be with IE for Solaris when you can only get it for sparc?