We were frantically patching our beloved systems for Y2K compatibility crap, faithfully taking backups and all - the most frequently asked qn. was: Will this work on Jan 1st 2000?
After a while, things got so paranoid, and my boss wondered innocently: Are you sure we'll be alive on Jan 1st? Our hearts and brains are Y2K OK?
Made us all laugh then.. but if these GPS pacemakers were around, we wouldn't have been laughing surely.
"IE got Microsoft the dominant position in the browser wars."
It also got them: Zero revenue. Hundreds of headaches and bugs. Negative media coverage in the anti-trust trial.
Not worth it, IMO.
"And WMP has allowed WMA to become the "standard" for DRM and encrypted audio. "
Music and content thru DRM and encrypted audio could be less than 1% of the total music market. Setting a standard in a niche segment doesn't count for much.
At the end of the msmobiles article: " Make no mistake: Microsoft is on track to enter cell phone industry big time, and these initial teething problems will be soon over. "
The style is reminescent of perpared speeches and a certain Al-Shaf. Interesting.
"Windows, Pocket PC, Tablet PC, etc. All of these products didn't really do well until version 3 rolled around."
Huh.. except Windows, I wouldn't say anything else in that list has done well. Unless you meant doing well as "Educating prospects about better alternatives". IE, WMP etc haven't done MS any good - and they're already at versions 6 and 9.
It even appears that MS partners are now treating them like MS used to, not so long ago. Kinda suggests the Windows success has proved very costly for MS, actually.
"people don't patch their systems by hand. " I've never seen anybody do that, I agree:->
"I can only imagine the outcry if M$ DIDN'T have a Windows Update. It would be an evil scheme or something."
Tell me something. Why is it that MS refuses to deal directly with it's own customers? Why should it sell thru OEMs etc. and support thru the web? Why can't MS offer support services directly thru their various offices and provide a CD that does the Update Services? A day's delay in couriering the CD? The CD media would cost about 20c. Even 50 CDs a year (we're talking MS here) would cost about $10 for the CDs and a maximum of $100 for postage.
MS support services cost much more than $150 per year, but still the customers are denied the convenience of a CD and no intrusion on their systems. Why?
Bugtraq hasn't trashed Microsoft Windows - just the Microsoft Windows Update.
"has a few concerns (to put it mildly) with the trustworthiness of Microsoft's Windows Update."
Good.
Re:SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collec
on
SCO To Show Copied Code
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
"MS can then say "see, I told you so! GPL caused SCO to lose their IP!!!!".
And MS would be making perfect asses of themselves, IMO. No self-respecting co. ought to license it's code under GPL and expect to retain control over IP. Numerous firms offer products and Services under GNU/Linux, but not under GPL.
"It would benefit us greatly as a community if no company makes this argument in defense."
Actually, I'm more concerned IBM isn't taking this stand. Who has benefitted us (the community) the most: SCO, IBM or the community? It's us, for ourselves. I don't think we should be too bothered about the logic, or lack of it, from arguments coming from MS. The success of GNU/Linux proves that we ignore (or rather take as falsehood) anything coming from MS.
If this argument helps IBM close this case faster, so be it.
The merits of this case aside, one thing will be clear before this case gets closed - Is IBM:
a. Loyal to GNU/Linux for ever. b. a mere hanger-on or passenger, if you will c. going to slowly pull the rug from under Linux
IBM's recent alliance with MS et al in the Trustworthy Computing Alliance, I feel, casts more than a shadow of doubt, regarding it's true intentions. While it is apparently politically risky to openly side with Open Source, especially for an entity such as IBM, I believe they have stuck their necks out long enuff to retract now.
OTOH, IBM could play a helpless victim, settle with SCO for let's say 10 million (peanuts for them) and then all hell breaks loose for all the other players.
The ambivalence of IBM is frightening, to say the least.
From the ref. article: ""We specifically excluded the BSD-derived code", Sontag said. "There is post-BSD UnixWare source code origined [sic] with SCO, and that is of issue."
You can see... they aren't going after their paymasters.
The other day, Slashdot had a database problem while running an aricle on an Oregon Bill that promoted Open Source. I thought I'd see the google cache and so: Went to news.google.com Searched for: Microsoft Slashdot Oregon
It returned a link: Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration - 18 Apr 2003.
Curiously, the link was wrongly pointing to a Mrach 6 article!! I reported this at Slashdot and got Offtopic-ed to hell, but just now, I tried again, and surprise! the mistake still exists:
Here's the link: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/06/18152 39.shtm l?tid=103
in response to: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=usa &q=Mi crosoft+Slashdot+Oregon&btnG=Search+News
"Let's hope anti-spam, anti-marketing guerrillas can keep their perspective and priorities in order."
When the spam and other ass-orted gorillas get their perspectives in order - then let's talk of anti-spam guerrillas.
"A scenario could be imagined where an attacker would do this to delay the arrival of an important letter, to wreak havoc on the postal system for political reasons, or even worse, to serve as a diversion for a terrorist act, such as the mailing of a contaminated letter,"
Pure FUD and crap. How many times has spam stopped important mail? How many times anti-spam filters have deleted the 'wrong' mails? Apparently spammers have exclusive abuse rights on the 'system' while lesser users don't! Intriguing.
"Better to let the innovation happen, and then consider whether the change caused by the innovation is so significant as to require new legislation by the legislature."
What about the innovations of monopolies? By the time the changes caused are considered and legislated, it may be too late.
The small number of memory makers forming a cartel, I guess, is a signal we might need an open design for RAM. After the Intel-Via settlement, looks like we might even need a free-design CPU as well. Hard disks, FDDs, CDROMs and CD writers are okay I guess. RAM and CPUs need to be fixed urgently.
Here's the strategy: 1. Every system will have a spare 2GB filesystem partition, where I copy all the files of the 'root' filesystem, after successful instln., drivers, personalised settings, blah blah. 2. Every day, during shutdown, users are prompted to 'copy' changed files to this 'backup OS partition'. A script handles this - only changed files are updated. 3. After the 1st instln. a copy of the installed version is put onto a CD. 4. On a server with 4*120GB IDE disks, I've got "data" (home dirs) of about 200 systems in the network - updated once a quarter.
Now, for self-repairing: 1. If user messes up with settings, kernel etc., boot tomsrtbt, run a script to recopy changed files back to root filesystem -> restart. (20 mins) 2. If disk drive crashes, install from CD of step 3, and restore data from server.(40 mins)
Foolproof system, so far - and yes, lots of foolish users around.
"I would rather see the price of LCD screens go down than their size."
Unfortunately, we may never get to see this.. ever. I guess we should count ourselves lucky (I'm talkin humanity here) that useful innovations such as the telephone, the CRT - TVs,the CD, the electric motor etc. happened WELL BEFORE the rank business opportunists have rushed in.
Else we should be paying $100 for a filament bulb, and it'd be promoted over the 20c version as being beneficial to nature, bio-degradable etc. Very little innovation these days seems to focus on lower prices for customers and concern for the environment.It's ironic Nature.com is sending in this submission!
"Recent discussions about disks vs. CPU's have ignored the massive decreases in the cost of RAM"
I don't recollect a disk vs CPU debate! RAM prices might have decreased, but implementing databases over RAM need proprietary architectures over and above RAM, which srives the price up. Let me explain. A commodity $200 PC can support 500GB of disk space (4 * 120GB + USB drives). OTOH a mobo supporting even 4GB of RAM could cost over $2000, and it's likely a proprietary design.
"For a very long time, the secret bottleneck in PC's.. was RAM"
Not true. I'd say software bloat is the chief culprit. 1MB-->4MB-->16MB-->64MB-->256MB is the route which DOS to Win3.1 to Win95 to Win2K to WinXP has taken. From the user point of view, from Win95 onwards, there's been nothing great to shout about. S/w is the bottleneck.
" Directly treat remote RAM as a local resource (RDMA) -- a whole new class of zero copy networking. This Is Cool, though there are security issues as internal system architectures get exposed to the rough and tumble world outside the box. "
In the ultimate analysis, a simple architecture works better than a complex one. Already Linux based systems do not have the overhead of checking for millions of viruses, bloatware, inefficient security mechanisms etc. unlike the Windows counterparts. I'd rather design a tightly-coupled cluster of Linux based systems than a high-tech Seti type system.
To sum up, disks are simpler, cheaper, less complicated, stable designs over longer durations and thus, much better. And from the SQL approach, disk-based systems provide protection from DRM.
I guess the issue with databases is not only speed and reliability, but a totally different ballgame called 'user-perception'. Even now, tape drives are used to archive databases; despite the fact that less than 1 in 1000 of the tape media get used for actually retrieving the data during a crash. NAS devices and the like have changed this, but the temptation remains to use tape.
I guess the RAM vs disk debate is on similar lines - but there are some vital differences: 1. Disks (esp. IDE) have become a commodity item and can be accessed by different system architectures easily. 2. IDE and SCSI standards have stood the test of time - 13 and 20 years respectively, unlike RAM wihch has evolved from Parity, non-EDO, EDO, DRAM, SDRAM, DDR-RAM, RAMBUS RAM etc., and suffers several patent and copyright encumberances. 3. Although RAM prices are driving down, the h/w to interface speciality RAM banks is proprietary and hence cost-prohibitive, and comes with attendant long-term supportability risks - think Palladium, or even Server mobos over the last 10 years. TCO for RAM based systems could thus be much higher than disk-based systems.
Overall, except for apps that need super-high speeds, and users that can risk proprietary stuff, disk-based databases shall remain.
My 0.02
Re:What good is this distro?
on
Libranet 2.8 Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"claiming that Libranet draws too much resources is simply ridiculous."
If you read the ref. article, you'll see that he calls it a low-end system. He's sort of implying the distro failed to install due to lack of resources. IMO, the review is neither professional, nor thorough.
"Be careful with your quoting as well."
Point taken... I'm still figuring out with Momzilla on RH7.3 - some problems if I post HTML formatting - it seems to ignore para breaks. Sorry.
Re:What good is this distro?
on
Libranet 2.8 Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The author of the referenced article himself claims that a Celeron 533 with 128MB RAM is a low-end system. Secondly, he doesn't appear to have the necessary skills to trouble-shoot the problem, yet his review is referenced here! (seems to me, something wrong with the mobo - probably would've failed an XP instln as well, who knows?)
My point is, do Slashdot folks need slick GUIs and features, or, a working distro that does good h/w detection and is more robust? I'd place my money on the latter criterion, however slick the 'Experience'. Hence my sharp comment.
I tried installing on an Intel Celeron 533MHz/128MB system... I was initially curious to see how well this release would run on a lower end system.(128MB - lower end for installing a distro?)
In plain English: It didn't.
If a distro needs anything faster than a 533 Celeron and/or more than 128MB RAM, it's got to be ranked as useless. From a Linux standpoint, though.
"The installation routine started fine.. but after...using ReiserFS and a swap file, it hung. I tried this several times using different varieties of partition layouts and file systems, but it was a no go. The installer kept hang at the point where it verifies that the system is bootable."
Slashdot Mirror
Can I get an XP worm?
There's no uninstall option for XP - I promise.
We were frantically patching our beloved systems for Y2K compatibility crap, faithfully taking backups and all - the most frequently asked qn. was:
Will this work on Jan 1st 2000?
After a while, things got so paranoid, and my boss wondered innocently:
Are you sure we'll be alive on Jan 1st? Our hearts and brains are Y2K OK?
Made us all laugh then.. but if these GPS pacemakers were around, we wouldn't have been laughing surely.
when the US may reduce non-military GPS accuracy?
0 24 7&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=103
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/19/034
The potential for abuse is more terrifying, really.
"IE got Microsoft the dominant position in the browser wars."
It also got them:
Zero revenue.
Hundreds of headaches and bugs.
Negative media coverage in the anti-trust trial.
Not worth it, IMO.
"And WMP has allowed WMA to become the "standard" for DRM and encrypted audio. "
Music and content thru DRM and encrypted audio could be less than 1% of the total music market. Setting a standard in a niche segment doesn't count for much.
At the end of the msmobiles article:
" Make no mistake: Microsoft is on track to enter cell phone industry big time, and these initial teething problems will be soon over. "
The style is reminescent of perpared speeches and a certain Al-Shaf. Interesting.
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/720.html
"Windows, Pocket PC, Tablet PC, etc. All of these products didn't really do well until version 3 rolled around."
Huh.. except Windows, I wouldn't say anything else in that list has done well. Unless you meant doing well as "Educating prospects about better alternatives". IE, WMP etc haven't done MS any good - and they're already at versions 6 and 9.
It even appears that MS partners are now treating them like MS used to, not so long ago. Kinda suggests the Windows success has proved very costly for MS, actually.
"people don't patch their systems by hand. " :->
I've never seen anybody do that, I agree
"I can only imagine the outcry if M$ DIDN'T have a Windows Update. It would be an evil scheme or something."
Tell me something. Why is it that MS refuses to deal directly with it's own customers? Why should it sell thru OEMs etc. and support thru the web? Why can't MS offer support services directly thru their various offices and provide a CD that does the Update Services? A day's delay in couriering the CD? The CD media would cost about 20c. Even 50
CDs a year (we're talking MS here) would cost about $10 for the CDs and a maximum of $100 for postage.
MS support services cost much more than $150 per year, but still the customers are denied the convenience of a CD and no intrusion on their systems. Why?
Bugtraq hasn't trashed Microsoft Windows - just the Microsoft Windows Update.
"has a few concerns (to put it mildly) with the trustworthiness of Microsoft's Windows Update."
Good.
"MS can then say "see, I told you so! GPL caused SCO to lose their IP!!!!".
And MS would be making perfect asses of themselves, IMO. No self-respecting co. ought to license it's code under GPL and expect to retain control over IP. Numerous firms offer products and Services under GNU/Linux, but not under GPL.
"It would benefit us greatly as a community if no company makes this argument in defense."
Actually, I'm more concerned IBM isn't taking this stand. Who has benefitted us (the community) the most: SCO, IBM or the community? It's us, for ourselves. I don't think we should be too bothered about the logic, or lack of it, from arguments coming from MS. The success of GNU/Linux proves that we ignore (or rather take as falsehood) anything coming from MS.
If this argument helps IBM close this case faster, so be it.
The merits of this case aside, one thing will be clear before this case gets closed - Is IBM:
a. Loyal to GNU/Linux for ever.
b. a mere hanger-on or passenger, if you will
c. going to slowly pull the rug from under Linux
IBM's recent alliance with MS et al in the Trustworthy Computing Alliance, I feel, casts more than a shadow of doubt, regarding it's true intentions. While it is apparently politically risky to openly side with Open Source, especially for an entity such as IBM, I believe they have stuck their necks out long enuff to retract now.
OTOH, IBM could play a helpless victim, settle with SCO for let's say 10 million (peanuts for them) and then all hell breaks loose for all the other players.
The ambivalence of IBM is frightening, to say the least.
From the ref. article:
""We specifically excluded the BSD-derived code", Sontag said. "There is post-BSD UnixWare source code origined [sic] with SCO, and that is of issue."
You can see... they aren't going after their paymasters.
I think I'll need to see it about 5 times and talk to lots of others, before I get a hang of it.. good thing is, I don't need to care about my karma.
/.ers supposed to enjoy them?
Frankly, the only part which made any sense in the ntire movie was the love scene - aren't good
The other day, Slashdot had a database problem while running an aricle on an Oregon Bill that promoted Open Source. I thought I'd see the google cache and so:
2 39.shtm l?tid=103
a &q=Mi crosoft+Slashdot+Oregon&btnG=Search+News
Went to news.google.com
Searched for: Microsoft Slashdot Oregon
It returned a link: Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration - 18 Apr 2003.
Curiously, the link was wrongly pointing to a Mrach 6 article!! I reported this at Slashdot and got Offtopic-ed to hell, but just now, I tried again, and surprise! the mistake still exists:
Here's the link:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/06/1815
in response to:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us
Very inriguing indeed.
"Let's hope anti-spam, anti-marketing guerrillas can keep their perspective and priorities in order."
When the spam and other ass-orted gorillas get their perspectives in order - then let's talk of anti-spam guerrillas.
"A scenario could be imagined where an attacker would do this to delay the arrival of an important letter, to wreak havoc on the postal system for political reasons, or even worse, to serve as a diversion for a terrorist act, such as the mailing of a contaminated letter,"
Pure FUD and crap. How many times has spam stopped important mail? How many times anti-spam filters have deleted the 'wrong' mails? Apparently spammers have exclusive abuse rights on the 'system' while lesser users don't! Intriguing.
"Better to let the innovation happen, and then consider whether the change caused by the innovation is so significant as to require new legislation by the legislature."
What about the innovations of monopolies? By the time the changes caused are considered and legislated, it may be too late.
The small number of memory makers forming a cartel, I guess, is a signal we might need an open design for RAM. After the Intel-Via settlement, looks like we might even need a free-design CPU as well. Hard disks, FDDs, CDROMs and CD writers are okay I guess. RAM and CPUs need to be fixed urgently.
Here's the strategy:
1. Every system will have a spare 2GB filesystem partition, where I copy all the files of the 'root' filesystem, after successful instln., drivers, personalised settings, blah blah.
2. Every day, during shutdown, users are prompted to 'copy' changed files to this 'backup OS partition'. A script handles this - only changed files are updated.
3. After the 1st instln. a copy of the installed version is put onto a CD.
4. On a server with 4*120GB IDE disks, I've got "data" (home dirs) of about 200 systems in the network - updated once a quarter.
Now, for self-repairing:
1. If user messes up with settings, kernel etc., boot tomsrtbt, run a script to recopy changed files back to root filesystem -> restart. (20 mins)
2. If disk drive crashes, install from CD of step 3, and restore data from server.(40 mins)
Foolproof system, so far - and yes, lots of foolish users around.
Micro-rebooting: Restart service.
Mini-rebooting: Restart Windows 98
Rebooting : Switch off/on power
Macro-rebooting: BSOD.
Mega-rebooting: BSOD--> System crash--> reload OS from Recovery CD--> Reinstall apps --> reinstall screen savers --> reinstall Service Packs --> Say your prayers --> Reboot ---> Curse --> Repeat.
"I would rather see the price of LCD screens go down than their size."
Unfortunately, we may never get to see this.. ever. I guess we should count ourselves lucky (I'm talkin humanity here) that useful innovations such as the telephone, the CRT - TVs,the CD, the electric motor etc. happened WELL BEFORE the rank business opportunists have rushed in.
Else we should be paying $100 for a filament bulb, and it'd be promoted over the 20c version as being beneficial to nature, bio-degradable etc. Very little innovation these days seems to focus on lower prices for customers and concern for the environment.It's ironic Nature.com is sending in this submission!
"Recent discussions about disks vs. CPU's have ignored the massive decreases in the cost of RAM"
.. was RAM"
I don't recollect a disk vs CPU debate!
RAM prices might have decreased, but implementing databases over RAM need proprietary architectures over and above RAM, which srives the price up. Let me explain. A commodity $200 PC can support 500GB of disk space (4 * 120GB + USB drives). OTOH a mobo supporting even 4GB of RAM could cost over $2000, and it's likely a proprietary design.
"For a very long time, the secret bottleneck in PC's
Not true. I'd say software bloat is the chief culprit. 1MB-->4MB-->16MB-->64MB-->256MB is the route which DOS to Win3.1 to Win95 to Win2K to WinXP has taken. From the user point of view, from Win95 onwards, there's been nothing great to shout about. S/w is the bottleneck.
" Directly treat remote RAM as a local resource (RDMA) -- a whole new class of zero copy networking. This Is Cool, though there are security issues as internal system architectures get exposed to the rough and tumble world outside the box. "
In the ultimate analysis, a simple architecture works better than a complex one. Already Linux based systems do not have the overhead of checking for millions of viruses, bloatware, inefficient security mechanisms etc. unlike the Windows counterparts. I'd rather design a tightly-coupled cluster of Linux based systems than a high-tech Seti type system.
To sum up, disks are simpler, cheaper, less complicated, stable designs over longer durations and thus, much better. And from the SQL approach, disk-based systems provide protection from DRM.
I guess the issue with databases is not only speed and reliability, but a totally different ballgame called 'user-perception'. Even now, tape drives are used to archive databases; despite the fact that less than 1 in 1000 of the tape media get used for actually retrieving the data during a crash. NAS devices and the like have changed this, but the temptation remains to use tape.
I guess the RAM vs disk debate is on similar lines - but there are some vital differences:
1. Disks (esp. IDE) have become a commodity item and can be accessed by different system architectures easily.
2. IDE and SCSI standards have stood the test of time - 13 and 20 years respectively, unlike RAM wihch has evolved from Parity, non-EDO, EDO, DRAM, SDRAM, DDR-RAM, RAMBUS RAM etc., and suffers several patent and copyright encumberances.
3. Although RAM prices are driving down, the h/w to interface speciality RAM banks is proprietary and hence cost-prohibitive, and comes with attendant long-term supportability risks - think Palladium, or even Server mobos over the last 10 years. TCO for RAM based systems could thus be much higher than disk-based systems.
Overall, except for apps that need super-high speeds, and users that can risk proprietary stuff, disk-based databases shall remain.
My 0.02
"claiming that Libranet draws too much resources is simply ridiculous."
If you read the ref. article, you'll see that he calls it a low-end system. He's sort of implying the distro failed to install due to lack of resources. IMO, the review is neither professional, nor thorough.
"Be careful with your quoting as well."
Point taken... I'm still figuring out with Momzilla on RH7.3 - some problems if I post HTML formatting - it seems to ignore para breaks. Sorry.
The author of the referenced article himself claims that a Celeron 533 with 128MB RAM is a low-end system. Secondly, he doesn't appear to have the necessary skills to trouble-shoot the problem, yet his review is referenced here! (seems to me, something wrong with the mobo - probably would've failed an XP instln as well, who knows?)
My point is, do Slashdot folks need slick GUIs and features, or, a working distro that does good h/w detection and is more robust? I'd place my money on the latter criterion, however slick the 'Experience'. Hence my sharp comment.
From the referenced review:
.. but after ...using ReiserFS and a swap file, it hung. I tried this several times using different varieties of partition layouts and file systems, but it was a no go. The installer kept hang at the point where it verifies that the system is bootable."
I tried installing on an Intel Celeron 533MHz/128MB system... I was initially curious to see how well this release would run on a lower end system.(128MB - lower end for installing a distro?)
In plain English: It didn't.
If a distro needs anything faster than a 533 Celeron and/or more than 128MB RAM, it's got to be ranked as useless. From a Linux standpoint, though.
"The installation routine started fine
In Plain English : A useless distro.
probably explains:
How Steve Ballmer claims Windows is cheaper than Linux - the RAW price may be higher, but the scaled and relative prices can be played around with!!
How Windows XP is faster than Windows 98 - the tests are not done on the same m/cs, but measured globally, I suppose, and graded accordingly.
How Gartner reports are prepared.
How Linux has more viruses than Windows.
How Slashdot moderation works, moderators and their methods!!
How votes are counted in US elections.
and so on... maybe it's time for me to take a SAT test myself