What this means for nerds...
on
The Expert Mind
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· Score: 2, Insightful
it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field.
For nerds in Computing and IT, this means a lot. Which programming languages to learn? Which editor to use? Which IDE to get addicted to? All the answers would slant in the direction of Open Source and Free tools. It makes absolutely no sense for an intellectual, one whose primary assets are cervaux, to go in for expertise and proficiency in proprietary stuff.
This will be the reason why "Developers, Developers and more Developers" will simply abandon proprietary IDEs and languages, despite loud calls and offers of money from... you know who...
It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."
After MS-DOS, Microsoft has stopped publishing any meaningful literature on it's products. Hell, it looks like it doesn't want to document it's protocols and interfaces either.
This also explains why Sun atleast makes more noises about going Open Source.... they don't want to be eclipsed into obscurity, a decade from now.
With devleopers moving away in hordes, it would be an uphill task for even a behemoth like Microsoft to survive a decade, let alone stay relevant and contemporary.
and mine will be titled: CHAIR-MAN's Flying CHAIRS... fasten your CHAIR-Belts, 'coz this is gonna' CRASH!! It'll be like Tetris, only instead of bricks, there'll be chairs of different shapes and sizes.
Who's paying these legal fees? Right, the members of the RIAA. When they have to pay defendants' legal fees more often, they will find it is no longer close to profitable to chase individuals.
At that point, these frivolous lawsuits disappear.
Which world are you in? The members of the RIAA are rich enough to pay the legal fees for all the 18,000 defendants, even if they lose each and every one of them. Several times over, in fact. This is only going to enrich a few lawyers, not diminish the wealth of the RIAA significantly.
the problem is that no court has ruled that the primary lawsuits they've been using as threats for people to settle are frivolous.
Exactly! All the ACLU, the EFF and other assorted vultures are saying is "Please award fees to the defendant". They aren't even asking the court to direct that all other cases be withdrawn. And hence my post.
1.At first, Novell had a product that worked quite well with DOS, and MS-DOS.
2.When Micorosft stopped supporting DOS, surprisingly, Novell did the same with their Netware product line.
3.Novell's only reason for existence seems to have been... to position itself as a bad competitor to Microsoft.
4.With DOS virtually dead, and the Linux platform emerging as a credible alternative to Microsoft's Windows workstations and srvers, WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE AND INVOLVEMENT... Novell acquired a Linux firm.
5.Despite it's enormous presence in corporate segments with Netware, Novell is a small player in the corporate Linux market, way behind RedHat and even Debian.
6.In between, Novell had some alliance with SCO and The SCO Group... no one knows what Novell intends to do with all it's so-called Unix IP.
Novell is thus, the very definition of an unstable company, and it has no right to judge the stability of other company or product.
1. The **AA has filed suit against more than 18,000 individuals for copyright violation. 2. The amicus curae is only for award of legal fees to one of the defendants, who was declared not guilty. 3. A lot of lawyers are going to get rich, since a big proportion of the 18,000+ will win. 4. The legal system allows a single rich entiry, the **AA to go after thousands of individuals... many of whom often settle despite being not guilty, because of the costs involved. 5. It is illegal for a large group of individuals to join together and engage in disruptive activities. 6. This brief does nothing to set right points 4 and 5. 7. And so, while lots of lawyers might probably get rich, nothing else significant is likely to happen.
Don't you find it odd that the conductor is alive and kicking, while hundreds of passengers died? I thought this scenario exists only in the software world, where the vendor escapes scot-free after defective software crashes his cutomers' systems...
Soon, Ballmer might introduce the Active TV platform, integrated with Craptive Directrory, and allow TV viewers to download Service Packs! Clippy will make an appearance as well: "It appears you'we watching porn.. Should I do an autobackup? Email it to your MSN a/c? Tell your Daddy? Invite your boyfriend?...
The last thing MS would like to do is to annoy home users, who haven't heard of them.. yet, in a negative way. Who else will they target with Vista? Corporate don't install until Service Pack 2.
It also characterises Free Software as a fringe element, and a bitter one at that.
I think it is important to understand the enormous Money and Muscle power that Closed source giants enjoy. Mere Free Software is useless if the hardware will not tolerate freedom - TiVO devices, and branded PCs from Dell, printers from HP, video cards from NVidia etc. being examples. Or if no one develops on top of Free Software (the Sun Java trap). Unless a few Big Name firms (and their dubious philosophies and business practices) are destroyed, what use is Free Software?
Probably explains why Stallman has not stopped after merely drafting GPL3, he's actively protesting against oppression as well.
While I'd not want to take *anything* away from the contributions of RMS, I don't think he deserves sainthood.
So many entities on either side of the Free / Closed philosophy... and that includes Microsoft and Linus Torvalds, have changed their stance / approach / press-releases / licensing models etc. Over the past 15 years and more, Stallman has been expounding his thoughts with consistency and prescience.
Considering he is a mere individual, this indeed seems REMARKABLE and certainly worthy of sainthood.
" This is a battle for freedom, not against oppression.....Victory is Free Software as the norm, not the killing of other companies . That's a hollow goal."
Hmmm.. very nice point, and very-well articulated as well. Thanks for re-orienting my perspectives a bit.
However, in the interim period before the goal of Free Software norm is achieved, don't you think the battle against oppression is a much more potent and tangible motivating force? Sayings like "The kite rises higher AGAINST the wind" and something like "In the run-up to the big victory in the Great War, some symbolic wins in smaller and lesser battles are important" come to mind.
The companies I mentioned in my original post have been tenacious in their efforts to practise and spread the gospel of the Closed Source world. Worse, they have deliberately abused their financial and market powers to denigrate the Free Software philosophy.
While the destruction of these entities, and their insidious philosophies would admittedly be a short-sighted and a hollow goal, it would indeed constitue a milestone in the larger goal of a Free Software world. Thoughts?
From TFA: Many of you CEOs and top engineers out there are no doubt wondering - am I willing to be made out of wood? Well, you might not have any choice should Mike Mosher, Julie Newdoll, Jim Pallas and Mario Wolczko hear of your accomplishments.
Given Mr. Ballmer's accomplishments as a CEO and now Acting Chair-man, he's sure to be nominated for the honour. It would be a waste of good wood however, one feels, given his bulk. Would a Wooden Chair be a good enough substitute?
"It shows that Linux and open source software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace. SCO . . . is dead."
I think the victory is bigger than just the downfall of SCO. This shows that any number of Closed Source companies, working in concert / collusion / tandem... have lost to one single man - Richard Stallman, and his GPL. It is the GPL which has tightened the noose around SCO, completely puncturing the SCO case, since they themselves were offering the 'infringing code' under the GPL. Linux and Linus Torvalds are merely incidental, given the magnitude of the victory we are seeing now... in fact, Linus was hardly involved in the case at all.
This is not just IBM vs SCO. Let's remember even IBM is not entirely behind Open Source, they have patents and interests in the Closed Source arena as well. In the ordinary world, if IBM wins vs SCO, they would control the entire Linux market, but because of the GPL, the entire Open Source community wins! In fact, this squarely places the spotlight on IBM now, specially since Lenovo is pre-loading Linux. Will IBM abandon their entire Closed Source strategy, and become the Google of the Services segment, in a truly Open Source way? Time will tell...
Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Sun, Oracle etc. are losing. Try hard they may, but they have failed to negatively affect the marketshare and mindshare of Open Source products and the philosophy behind it. The day is not far off when Apple and MS are quoted below $1. On that day, the victory will be complete.
If Pro is the opposite of Con.... what'd Congress mean?
Just playing around with some silly words... do we need to analyse what Congressmen speak, to understand their intent or motivations? Following the money would be a better option.. and we'll find a Very High Attention Span for words like money, dollars and Big Bucks..
I've never had NTFS lose a file either, and haven't seen that error message since my Win98 days (now long behind me, thankfully). Anyone who is still using Win98, well, they get what they deserve if you ask me.
Not NTFS, but I've lost settings in the Registry on countless ocassions, with Win2K Home as well as XP Pro. Very often, it was a piece of malware that did strange things to the registry, corrupted the modem driver, installed a dialler, and shutdown the system...
I moved over to broadband on Linux, and no problems ever since.
It appears CEO Jobs was a possible beneficiary of a cancelled transaction, that's being admitted by Apple:
Apple said in June that one of the stock option grants was to chief executive Steve Jobs, but it was subsequently canceled and resulted in no financial gain to Jobs.
So this is an issue for the CFO AND the CEO as well.
Last I heard, there's gonna be Six Different Options to license a single release of their OS - namely, Windows Vista. And everyone from Dvorak to Thurrott has predicted lots of Options Troubles with Vista:-)
Oh, wait!.. you meant Stock options?... [hides under table]
I've got Karma to burn, so here goes.... my true assessment of home-computing. A few of my relatives have home PCs - all running pirated versions of Windows. The ads come in the error messages:
* Program performed illegal operation
Sends the hapless home user scurrying to get a licensed copy of the OS.
* Windows did not shut down properly. Files may be corrupted or lost
And the poor chap goes out and buys a UPS. Never a chance to even imagine that ext3 rarely loses files even during a power shutdown.
* Photoshop Elements may not work well with this Service Pack
So the user pays Adobe for the privilege of being lazy enough not to explore better options.
* Windows encountered an error in lsass.exe and must shutdown
The user buys an upgrade since there's no support for the old OS any more.
And so on, Windows has been a huge advertising platform for anti-virus software, UPSs, Backup-software-that-actually-works-but-is-suppose d-to-be-part-of-Windows, anti-spyware, external firewalls, broadband (modem drivers are clunkier in recent OSes), Flash, Support services etc.
The fact that despite being an antiquated junkpiece several years behind in technology, Windows has succeeded as a platform, proves a coupla' things:
1. User apathy and lethargy is a very potent force. A user would rather patch a buggy junk, rather than learn something better, simpler and advanced.. like Linux, Opera, Firefox, Open Office, Gnumeric etc.
2. It's not possible to release Newer OSes forever, that's still prone to viruses and malware... remember You Can't Fool All The People All The Time...
and so, it appears
Microsoft has patented Web-Service-OSes that can be metered like Electricity and Gas. It's about time, one would've thought. Suddenly, all these lower-life-forms like anti-virus and backup s/w firms who depended on MS for their living.. would become redundant! There'll be hell to pay, since these guys don't die overnight.
Symantec, Trend Micro, Citrix or Veritas wouldn't take such initiatives lying down. Interesting times ahead!
What do you think "Directory Services Restore Mode" is for? You boot into it to restore AD backups, which you can make with included products such as Windows Backup or even Veritas.
I rarely want to restore the Entire Directory Services. Common problems encountered are:
1. Accidental deleting of users... the backup does not offer a method to restore a single user, or a group of named users. 2. Installation of additional member servers / other servers during backup: If there happened to be a few test servers when the AD backup was taken, I can't bring up the DC after a Restore.
What use is a Closed Source solution with an encrypted, disorganised mess that I can't use the way I want to?
All you have to do is back up a domain controller, or two. It backs up Active Directory at the same time. I've done it several times in the lab, to get back to a known good state for the next test.
And you have stated the problem right there, in your own post! Why should I backup the Domain Controller? I only need MY active directory, not the entire system state! What are the problems faced in active Directory?
a. User data gets corrupted, or lost: Accidental user deletion. Now, how does one go about restoring a particular user's data from the entire system state mess? No point in backup.
b. Hardware failure: For this eventuality, my MCSE tells me, I need redundant servrs, and it has to be a very careful process of restore, and untried. From your referenced site,
Performing an Authoritative Restore of Entire Directory
Authoritative restore of the entire directory is a major operation. Perform an authoritative restore of the entire directory only after consultation with a Microsoft Support professional. Do not perform an authoritative restore of the entire directory if only one domain controller exists in the domain.
This situation does not exist with any other Directory Service, only with Craptive Directory. Hence my labelling of this as junk.
As soon as you create a, let's say, projectplan in HTML, and send it to anyone, they will complain about it (it cannot be printed, looks funny, etc).
DotProject is a web-based project mgmnt. tool, and it's meant only for the developers and managers, who anyway have access to the repository. No need to email a project plan, for opening, mutilating and editing. The concerned entities... managers, developers, testers etc. get all the functionality they need, right off the browser.
Also, when you get documents from others in DOC format, what do you do?
First, we convert it to a html format, with a free tool. It's actually very rare that we get docs from outside. PDFs and JPGs are more frequent.
At least your solution looks very unprofessional to anyone outside of your company.
No one outside of our company gets to look at anything except our webserver, isn't it? So why should we care? And secondly, every user in our office loves what they see, and are able to directly relate and orient themselves with the tool. Functionality is more important than Deceptive Eye Candy, don't you agree?
This actually proves the case for ONLY open source drivers on Linux, and integrated with the kernel. If the h/w vendor wants to support established protocols and differentiate on price and quality, fine. Else, Linux is better off without such dubious vendors spoiling the brand.
And BTW, there ought to be a simple method to avoid Loadable Kernel Modules, and stick with statically linked and built ones, for reasons of security.
Linux rather be Not Yet Ready for the desktop, rather than joining the Desktop bandwagon, and becoming yet another Patch --> Update --> Service Pack --> Antivirus --> Unstable kind of a desktop OS.
1. The ls, find, grep, | and other useful commands. 3. ps (no simple way to list running processes... user-wise, and ip-address-wise) 4. kill -9 5. chmod 6. cp, ln and mv
You don't know what you're talking about. All these programs are available for Windows, and they all work just fine.
Refer my detailed reply above... no point repeating it all over again. Short summary: They work, but they don't work. They're useless for all practical purposes. And kill -9 is available only with the ps-tools from SysInternals. Not from Microsoft.
2. useradd (if I try to add a user in Windows AD using "net add" I get "Pre-Windows 2000 user", so that doesn't count)
Well done, this one doesn't exist for Windows AFAIK. It's not like using the GUI to do it is exactly difficult, though. How often do you actually add users to your desktop computer, anyway? I can't do this on my server computer as well, and I need to manage my server users often... several times a day in fact.
Only if you use crap software. Use a decent browser/mail combo (like Firefox+Thunderbird), and your browser settings, emails, and everything else are in "Documents and Settings\Username", and the only difference from the Unix model is that "Documents and Settings" takes longer to type than "home". Oh, wait, no it doesn't, since every modern shell (including Windows') supports some kind of tab completion.
So you admit Outlook and Outlook Express being Crapware? Likewise, Windows XP, Craptive Directory etc. Secondly, settings in registry are useless to backup, since they can't be meaningfully restored without expensive 3rd party tools.
So... in fact, not one of your complaints is at all valid. Sorry, you lose. Okay, you win! For spelling 'lose' right....
chmod - Windows could use something similar to this, but the security model would hardly allow for simple "775" format security settings.
And yet, everyone agrees the Linux is more secure than Windows! Complexity and Obscurity does not imply Security.
ls - see dir.
How do you list files which have been 'modified' after a particular time? How do you list files of a particular extension, whose size is greater than x? DIR is not even 1% of the simple 'ls' command.. and MS has been working on it for decades!
find - dir can practically do this too, dir/s filename -- and I've never been able to actually USE find successfully
Actually, you need to be able to use something called a Brain.. something MS does not want any user to. It's a bit tough to learn a Unix command, but once is enough for a lifetime. In Windows, the icons and controls are in different places / hidden from version to version. In XP, my modem is listed under "Printers and Other Hardware" in the Control Panel!!!! No wonder people used to MS crap can't fathom simple Unix commands.
ps - the best I can come up with is netstat which will list all the open connections. Linux has got this one And ps is a process scheduler, listing running processes! netstat is something else, altogether!
kill -9 - Never even heard of this You know what? Bill Gates doesn't want you to hear anything about it as well.. else users would be able to list all running processes, including rootkits and simply kill them! Since the OS belongs to MS and you only get a license to run it, no wonder His Billness doesn't like you killing his precious IP!
cp - I'd say this one goes to the copy command Only, it takes a heroic effort to get the syntax right with loooong file paths.
mv - Can anyone say "move" and "rename" commands? You would get a "File In Use" error, even when logged in as Admin! And the paths are insane to try to navigate on a command prompt.
ln - NTFS supports symbolic linking, but until we have something like this to use it..... Last I heard, Vista's planning to include sym links... and looks like MS is scared about offering this decades-old functionality, as well.
And when was the last time you used Windows? Just about all software now is pretty good at storing files in the right place.
I've been using Windows for a decade now. File locations keep changing from release to release, and they're sometimes in System folders, some settings are in the Registry, and not portable between systems, etc. No simple, single directory for a particular user's data and settings.
Back up your user folder under Documents and Settings, and you've backed up well, all of your Documents and Setttings. What about Browser settings, Favourites, Mail client settings, Rules, etc.? Unless I get the same sysid on another system, the registry part of these settings is inaccessible and useless.
A lot of stuff gets lost with the registry, but considering your user registry is stored under Documents and Settings, you're probably good here too. I've tried to attach my system to a different Domain, and get back my mail settings.. no way! So much for Registry Lockup!
I ask again, when was the last time you used Windows? I ask you once, have you ever used Linux and Unix for a month? And BTW, how much do you get paid to spread misinformation?
if you think there isn't enough new things to try in general, you are not trying very hard !
I think the author of the piece thinks companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle invented th PC and that Standards are what these companies use in their Closed Source products.
Obviously, it's very hard for people to write software for Linux, which supports these crooks. And on the other hand, there are litrally dozens of very old and useful programs.. simple commands actually, that work on Linux and Unix, but not on Windows.. let's see:
1. The ls, find, grep, | and other useful commands. 2. useradd (if I try to add a user in Windows AD using "net add" I get "Pre-Windows 2000 user", so that doesn't count) 3. ps (no simple way to list running processes... user-wise, and ip-address-wise) 4. kill -9 5. chmod 6. cp, ln and mv : By storing files all over the place, MS has made sure no sane user would type 'cp c:\winnt\system32\profiles\Admin.000\admin\My/\ Docu~\ kind of crap. 7. Simple user-wise backup to a USB drive. In Linux, since all my files are under/home/jkrise, a simple command would transfer all my files, settings.. browsers, cookies etc. to a USB drive. In Windows, the mail profile is in the registry, the mails are in a pst, docs are on the Desktop, the browser settings are God-know-where... etc. Not even Microsoft can handle a simple thing like backing up a single user's data.
After 2 decades, even such simple software is not available for Windows!
Slashdot Mirror
it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field.
... you know who...
For nerds in Computing and IT, this means a lot. Which programming languages to learn? Which editor to use? Which IDE to get addicted to? All the answers would slant in the direction of Open Source and Free tools. It makes absolutely no sense for an intellectual, one whose primary assets are cervaux, to go in for expertise and proficiency in proprietary stuff.
This will be the reason why "Developers, Developers and more Developers" will simply abandon proprietary IDEs and languages, despite loud calls and offers of money from
It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."
After MS-DOS, Microsoft has stopped publishing any meaningful literature on it's products. Hell, it looks like it doesn't want to document it's protocols and interfaces either.
This also explains why Sun atleast makes more noises about going Open Source.... they don't want to be eclipsed into obscurity, a decade from now.
With devleopers moving away in hordes, it would be an uphill task for even a behemoth like Microsoft to survive a decade, let alone stay relevant and contemporary.
and mine will be titled: CHAIR-MAN's Flying CHAIRS ... fasten your CHAIR-Belts, 'coz this is gonna' CRASH!! It'll be like Tetris, only instead of bricks, there'll be chairs of different shapes and sizes.
Who's paying these legal fees? Right, the members of the RIAA. When they have to pay defendants' legal fees more often, they will find it is no longer close to profitable to chase individuals.
At that point, these frivolous lawsuits disappear.
Which world are you in? The members of the RIAA are rich enough to pay the legal fees for all the 18,000 defendants, even if they lose each and every one of them. Several times over, in fact. This is only going to enrich a few lawyers, not diminish the wealth of the RIAA significantly.
the problem is that no court has ruled that the primary lawsuits they've been using as threats for people to settle are frivolous.
Exactly! All the ACLU, the EFF and other assorted vultures are saying is "Please award fees to the defendant". They aren't even asking the court to direct that all other cases be withdrawn. And hence my post.
1.At first, Novell had a product that worked quite well with DOS, and MS-DOS.
2.When Micorosft stopped supporting DOS, surprisingly, Novell did the same with their Netware product line.
3.Novell's only reason for existence seems to have been... to position itself as a bad competitor to Microsoft.
4.With DOS virtually dead, and the Linux platform emerging as a credible alternative to Microsoft's Windows workstations and srvers, WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE AND INVOLVEMENT... Novell acquired a Linux firm.
5.Despite it's enormous presence in corporate segments with Netware, Novell is a small player in the corporate Linux market, way behind RedHat and even Debian.
6.In between, Novell had some alliance with SCO and The SCO Group... no one knows what Novell intends to do with all it's so-called Unix IP.
Novell is thus, the very definition of an unstable company, and it has no right to judge the stability of other company or product.
1. The **AA has filed suit against more than 18,000 individuals for copyright violation.
2. The amicus curae is only for award of legal fees to one of the defendants, who was declared not guilty.
3. A lot of lawyers are going to get rich, since a big proportion of the 18,000+ will win.
4. The legal system allows a single rich entiry, the **AA to go after thousands of individuals... many of whom often settle despite being not guilty, because of the costs involved.
5. It is illegal for a large group of individuals to join together and engage in disruptive activities.
6. This brief does nothing to set right points 4 and 5.
7. And so, while lots of lawyers might probably get rich, nothing else significant is likely to happen.
Don't you find it odd that the conductor is alive and kicking, while hundreds of passengers died? I thought this scenario exists only in the software world, where the vendor escapes scot-free after defective software crashes his cutomers' systems...
Tonight is full moon actually, so it should get stuck somewhere in the trees.
Surely NASA can arrange for some pictures in my garden?
Computer = active entertainment.
...
TV = Passive.
Soon, Ballmer might introduce the Active TV platform, integrated with Craptive Directrory, and allow TV viewers to download Service Packs! Clippy will make an appearance as well: "It appears you'we watching porn.. Should I do an autobackup? Email it to your MSN a/c? Tell your Daddy? Invite your boyfriend?
The last thing MS would like to do is to annoy home users, who haven't heard of them.. yet, in a negative way. Who else will they target with Vista? Corporate don't install until Service Pack 2.
It also characterises Free Software as a fringe element, and a bitter one at that.
I think it is important to understand the enormous Money and Muscle power that Closed source giants enjoy. Mere Free Software is useless if the hardware will not tolerate freedom - TiVO devices, and branded PCs from Dell, printers from HP, video cards from NVidia etc. being examples. Or if no one develops on top of Free Software (the Sun Java trap). Unless a few Big Name firms (and their dubious philosophies and business practices) are destroyed, what use is Free Software?
Probably explains why Stallman has not stopped after merely drafting GPL3, he's actively protesting against oppression as well.
While I'd not want to take *anything* away from the contributions of RMS, I don't think he deserves sainthood.
So many entities on either side of the Free / Closed philosophy... and that includes Microsoft and Linus Torvalds, have changed their stance / approach / press-releases / licensing models etc. Over the past 15 years and more, Stallman has been expounding his thoughts with consistency and prescience.
Considering he is a mere individual, this indeed seems REMARKABLE and certainly worthy of sainthood.
" This is a battle for freedom, not against oppression.....Victory is Free Software as the norm, not the killing of other companies . That's a hollow goal."
Hmmm.. very nice point, and very-well articulated as well. Thanks for re-orienting my perspectives a bit.
However, in the interim period before the goal of Free Software norm is achieved, don't you think the battle against oppression is a much more potent and tangible motivating force? Sayings like "The kite rises higher AGAINST the wind" and something like "In the run-up to the big victory in the Great War, some symbolic wins in smaller and lesser battles are important" come to mind.
The companies I mentioned in my original post have been tenacious in their efforts to practise and spread the gospel of the Closed Source world. Worse, they have deliberately abused their financial and market powers to denigrate the Free Software philosophy.
While the destruction of these entities, and their insidious philosophies would admittedly be a short-sighted and a hollow goal, it would indeed constitue a milestone in the larger goal of a Free Software world. Thoughts?
From TFA: Many of you CEOs and top engineers out there are no doubt wondering - am I willing to be made out of wood? Well, you might not have any choice should Mike Mosher, Julie Newdoll, Jim Pallas and Mario Wolczko hear of your accomplishments.
Given Mr. Ballmer's accomplishments as a CEO and now Acting Chair-man, he's sure to be nominated for the honour. It would be a waste of good wood however, one feels, given his bulk. Would a Wooden Chair be a good enough substitute?
"It shows that Linux and open source software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace. SCO . . . is dead."
I think the victory is bigger than just the downfall of SCO. This shows that any number of Closed Source companies, working in concert / collusion / tandem... have lost to one single man - Richard Stallman, and his GPL. It is the GPL which has tightened the noose around SCO, completely puncturing the SCO case, since they themselves were offering the 'infringing code' under the GPL. Linux and Linus Torvalds are merely incidental, given the magnitude of the victory we are seeing now... in fact, Linus was hardly involved in the case at all.
This is not just IBM vs SCO. Let's remember even IBM is not entirely behind Open Source, they have patents and interests in the Closed Source arena as well. In the ordinary world, if IBM wins vs SCO, they would control the entire Linux market, but because of the GPL, the entire Open Source community wins! In fact, this squarely places the spotlight on IBM now, specially since Lenovo is pre-loading Linux. Will IBM abandon their entire Closed Source strategy, and become the Google of the Services segment, in a truly Open Source way? Time will tell...
Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Sun, Oracle etc. are losing. Try hard they may, but they have failed to negatively affect the marketshare and mindshare of Open Source products and the philosophy behind it. The day is not far off when Apple and MS are quoted below $1. On that day, the victory will be complete.
If Pro is the opposite of Con.... what'd Congress mean?
Just playing around with some silly words... do we need to analyse what Congressmen speak, to understand their intent or motivations? Following the money would be a better option.. and we'll find a Very High Attention Span for words like money, dollars and Big Bucks..
I've never had NTFS lose a file either, and haven't seen that error message since my Win98 days (now long behind me, thankfully). Anyone who is still using Win98, well, they get what they deserve if you ask me.
Not NTFS, but I've lost settings in the Registry on countless ocassions, with Win2K Home as well as XP Pro. Very often, it was a piece of malware that did strange things to the registry, corrupted the modem driver, installed a dialler, and shutdown the system...
I moved over to broadband on Linux, and no problems ever since.
It appears CEO Jobs was a possible beneficiary of a cancelled transaction, that's being admitted by Apple:
Apple said in June that one of the stock option grants was to chief executive Steve Jobs, but it was subsequently canceled and resulted in no financial gain to Jobs.
So this is an issue for the CFO AND the CEO as well.
Last I heard, there's gonna be Six Different Options to license a single release of their OS - namely, Windows Vista. And everyone from Dvorak to Thurrott has predicted lots of Options Troubles with Vista :-)
... [hides under table]
Oh, wait!.. you meant Stock options?
I've got Karma to burn, so here goes.... my true assessment of home-computing. A few of my relatives have home PCs - all running pirated versions of Windows. The ads come in the error messages:
e d-to-be-part-of-Windows, anti-spyware, external firewalls, broadband (modem drivers are clunkier in recent OSes), Flash, Support services etc.
* Program performed illegal operation
Sends the hapless home user scurrying to get a licensed copy of the OS.
* Windows did not shut down properly. Files may be corrupted or lost
And the poor chap goes out and buys a UPS. Never a chance to even imagine that ext3 rarely loses files even during a power shutdown.
* Photoshop Elements may not work well with this Service Pack
So the user pays Adobe for the privilege of being lazy enough not to explore better options.
* Windows encountered an error in lsass.exe and must shutdown
The user buys an upgrade since there's no support for the old OS any more.
And so on, Windows has been a huge advertising platform for anti-virus software, UPSs, Backup-software-that-actually-works-but-is-suppos
The fact that despite being an antiquated junkpiece several years behind in technology, Windows has succeeded as a platform, proves a coupla' things:
1. User apathy and lethargy is a very potent force. A user would rather patch a buggy junk, rather than learn something better, simpler and advanced.. like Linux, Opera, Firefox, Open Office, Gnumeric etc.
2. It's not possible to release Newer OSes forever, that's still prone to viruses and malware... remember You Can't Fool All The People All The Time...
and so, it appears
Microsoft has patented Web-Service-OSes that can be metered like Electricity and Gas. It's about time, one would've thought. Suddenly, all these lower-life-forms like anti-virus and backup s/w firms who depended on MS for their living.. would become redundant! There'll be hell to pay, since these guys don't die overnight.
Symantec, Trend Micro, Citrix or Veritas wouldn't take such initiatives lying down. Interesting times ahead!
What do you think "Directory Services Restore Mode" is for? You boot into it to restore AD backups, which you can make with included products such as Windows Backup or even Veritas.
I rarely want to restore the Entire Directory Services. Common problems encountered are:
1. Accidental deleting of users... the backup does not offer a method to restore a single user, or a group of named users.
2. Installation of additional member servers / other servers during backup: If there happened to be a few test servers when the AD backup was taken, I can't bring up the DC after a Restore.
What use is a Closed Source solution with an encrypted, disorganised mess that I can't use the way I want to?
All you have to do is back up a domain controller, or two. It backs up Active Directory at the same time. I've done it several times in the lab, to get back to a known good state for the next test.
And you have stated the problem right there, in your own post! Why should I backup the Domain Controller? I only need MY active directory, not the entire system state! What are the problems faced in active Directory?
a. User data gets corrupted, or lost: Accidental user deletion. Now, how does one go about restoring a particular user's data from the entire system state mess? No point in backup.
b. Hardware failure: For this eventuality, my MCSE tells me, I need redundant servrs, and it has to be a very careful process of restore, and untried. From your referenced site,
Performing an Authoritative Restore of Entire Directory
Authoritative restore of the entire directory is a major operation. Perform an authoritative restore of the entire directory only after consultation with a Microsoft Support professional. Do not perform an authoritative restore of the entire directory if only one domain controller exists in the domain.
This situation does not exist with any other Directory Service, only with Craptive Directory. Hence my labelling of this as junk.
As soon as you create a, let's say, projectplan in HTML, and send it to anyone, they will complain about it (it cannot be printed, looks funny, etc).
DotProject is a web-based project mgmnt. tool, and it's meant only for the developers and managers, who anyway have access to the repository. No need to email a project plan, for opening, mutilating and editing. The concerned entities... managers, developers, testers etc. get all the functionality they need, right off the browser.
Also, when you get documents from others in DOC format, what do you do?
First, we convert it to a html format, with a free tool. It's actually very rare that we get docs from outside. PDFs and JPGs are more frequent.
At least your solution looks very unprofessional to anyone outside of your company.
No one outside of our company gets to look at anything except our webserver, isn't it? So why should we care? And secondly, every user in our office loves what they see, and are able to directly relate and orient themselves with the tool. Functionality is more important than Deceptive Eye Candy, don't you agree?
This actually proves the case for ONLY open source drivers on Linux, and integrated with the kernel. If the h/w vendor wants to support established protocols and differentiate on price and quality, fine. Else, Linux is better off without such dubious vendors spoiling the brand.
And BTW, there ought to be a simple method to avoid Loadable Kernel Modules, and stick with statically linked and built ones, for reasons of security.
Linux rather be Not Yet Ready for the desktop, rather than joining the Desktop bandwagon, and becoming yet another Patch --> Update --> Service Pack --> Antivirus --> Unstable kind of a desktop OS.
1. The ls, find, grep, | and other useful commands.
3. ps (no simple way to list running processes... user-wise, and ip-address-wise)
4. kill -9
5. chmod
6. cp, ln and mv
You don't know what you're talking about. All these programs are available for Windows, and they all work just fine.
Refer my detailed reply above... no point repeating it all over again. Short summary: They work, but they don't work. They're useless for all practical purposes. And kill -9 is available only with the ps-tools from SysInternals. Not from Microsoft.
2. useradd (if I try to add a user in Windows AD using "net add" I get "Pre-Windows 2000 user", so that doesn't count)
Well done, this one doesn't exist for Windows AFAIK. It's not like using the GUI to do it is exactly difficult, though. How often do you actually add users to your desktop computer, anyway?
I can't do this on my server computer as well, and I need to manage my server users often... several times a day in fact.
Only if you use crap software. Use a decent browser/mail combo (like Firefox+Thunderbird), and your browser settings, emails, and everything else are in "Documents and Settings\Username", and the only difference from the Unix model is that "Documents and Settings" takes longer to type than "home". Oh, wait, no it doesn't, since every modern shell (including Windows') supports some kind of tab completion.
So you admit Outlook and Outlook Express being Crapware? Likewise, Windows XP, Craptive Directory etc. Secondly, settings in registry are useless to backup, since they can't be meaningfully restored without expensive 3rd party tools.
So... in fact, not one of your complaints is at all valid. Sorry, you lose.
Okay, you win! For spelling 'lose' right....
chmod - Windows could use something similar to this, but the security model would hardly allow for simple "775" format security settings.
/s filename -- and I've never been able to actually USE find successfully
And yet, everyone agrees the Linux is more secure than Windows! Complexity and Obscurity does not imply Security.
ls - see dir.
How do you list files which have been 'modified' after a particular time? How do you list files of a particular extension, whose size is greater than x? DIR is not even 1% of the simple 'ls' command.. and MS has been working on it for decades!
find - dir can practically do this too, dir
Actually, you need to be able to use something called a Brain.. something MS does not want any user to. It's a bit tough to learn a Unix command, but once is enough for a lifetime. In Windows, the icons and controls are in different places / hidden from version to version. In XP, my modem is listed under "Printers and Other Hardware" in the Control Panel!!!! No wonder people used to MS crap can't fathom simple Unix commands.
ps - the best I can come up with is netstat which will list all the open connections. Linux has got this one
And ps is a process scheduler, listing running processes! netstat is something else, altogether!
kill -9 - Never even heard of this
You know what? Bill Gates doesn't want you to hear anything about it as well.. else users would be able to list all running processes, including rootkits and simply kill them! Since the OS belongs to MS and you only get a license to run it, no wonder His Billness doesn't like you killing his precious IP!
cp - I'd say this one goes to the copy command
Only, it takes a heroic effort to get the syntax right with loooong file paths.
mv - Can anyone say "move" and "rename" commands?
You would get a "File In Use" error, even when logged in as Admin! And the paths are insane to try to navigate on a command prompt.
ln - NTFS supports symbolic linking, but until we have something like this to use it.....
Last I heard, Vista's planning to include sym links... and looks like MS is scared about offering this decades-old functionality, as well.
And when was the last time you used Windows? Just about all software now is pretty good at storing files in the right place.
I've been using Windows for a decade now. File locations keep changing from release to release, and they're sometimes in System folders, some settings are in the Registry, and not portable between systems, etc. No simple, single directory for a particular user's data and settings.
Back up your user folder under Documents and Settings, and you've backed up well, all of your Documents and Setttings.
What about Browser settings, Favourites, Mail client settings, Rules, etc.? Unless I get the same sysid on another system, the registry part of these settings is inaccessible and useless.
A lot of stuff gets lost with the registry, but considering your user registry is stored under Documents and Settings, you're probably good here too.
I've tried to attach my system to a different Domain, and get back my mail settings.. no way! So much for Registry Lockup!
I ask again, when was the last time you used Windows?
I ask you once, have you ever used Linux and Unix for a month? And BTW, how much do you get paid to spread misinformation?
if you think there isn't enough new things to try in general, you are not trying very hard !
/\ Docu~\ kind of crap. /home/jkrise, a simple command would transfer all my files, settings.. browsers, cookies etc. to a USB drive. In Windows, the mail profile is in the registry, the mails are in a pst, docs are on the Desktop, the browser settings are God-know-where... etc. Not even Microsoft can handle a simple thing like backing up a single user's data.
I think the author of the piece thinks companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle invented th PC and that Standards are what these companies use in their Closed Source products.
Obviously, it's very hard for people to write software for Linux, which supports these crooks. And on the other hand, there are litrally dozens of very old and useful programs.. simple commands actually, that work on Linux and Unix, but not on Windows.. let's see:
1. The ls, find, grep, | and other useful commands.
2. useradd (if I try to add a user in Windows AD using "net add" I get "Pre-Windows 2000 user", so that doesn't count)
3. ps (no simple way to list running processes... user-wise, and ip-address-wise)
4. kill -9
5. chmod
6. cp, ln and mv : By storing files all over the place, MS has made sure no sane user would type 'cp c:\winnt\system32\profiles\Admin.000\admin\My
7. Simple user-wise backup to a USB drive. In Linux, since all my files are under
After 2 decades, even such simple software is not available for Windows!