If you think the dissenting opinions on this thread are bad, read the Linux390 mailing list.
One thing just about everyone agrees with on the list is this. Do not buy a mainframe to run Linux. If you already have a mainframe that has some spare cpu time, look into consolidating simple services onto LiuxVMs.
Generally speaking linux on the mainframe relies on "well in this case" situations that make it cheaper. For instance you can use Samba on a LinuxVM to have a very reliable file-server, but DASD and Shark's are bloody effing expensive compared to pretty much any other system. However, if you already have a well enginered backup system and all the neccisary licensing, perhaps that tips the costs back in favor (or at least break even).
There are a great many who see Linux390 as half "geeks looking to do something nifty with linux" and half "IBM looking to show off its linux-commitment and get some free press about its mainframes". Because when you really learn about all the options, benefits, and limitations, there are suprisingly few situations where it's worth it.
You have three options for dealing with it:
1.) Drugs (holy shit they're effective... just scary to notice your very self change)
2.) Gimmicks. The comments are already full of dozens of them.
3.) Self-Dicipline. The hardest, but only true solution.
Personnaly I was on Dexidrine for a year, and as much as it was extremely effective, the whole thing kinda freaked me out. But then having been on it I've seen the advantages of being in control of myself better, and it has made it much easier now that I'm not on anything.
You might want to think of the drugs and gimmicks route as a way of easing yourself into better self control.
Today I just so happened to be testing out my new mod_log_sql setup on the small college website I run in part. In the 650,000 GET/POST requests we've gotten since friday morning, only about 2.5% were from anything with "Gecko", "Netscape6", "Netscape/7", "Firebird"Galeon", or "Camino" in the user agent string.
Interestingly enough, Netscape/4.7 came up with about 3.2% (3/4 of which were from on-campus).
fortunatly we're approaching 1-year of being xhtml & css devotees and its suprisingly easy to be xhtml1-strict compliant and use tableless or low-table layouts that work in 96+% of our 'human' traffic (which btw IE 6.0 is more than 65% of).
Anyway, sorry for the stats ramble, I just though it was really cool to have access to real numbers today, not just rumors and zealous flamewars.
...I have always taken it for granted that Linux is inherently more secure than Microsoft Windows. The truth is, I've never really paid much attention to Linux security...
Man if that doesnt sum up the joe slashdot attitude.
Yea! I totaly agree with the above poster. For instance, the first thing I do when I sit down to use a computer is take apart the keyboard with a screwdriver. You can never trust that someone hasn't installed a keylogger.
Every time I've bought a car I bring a socket wrench set with me and tear apart the engine right there on the dealership floor. If I didn't how could I know that Al Queda hasn't set me up to be a pawn!?! Not checking your equipment like this is tantamount to supporting terrorists.
Pretty thin article, but at least it doesnt contain the glaringly bad suggestions sitepoint is known for.
Recent gem article's from them include:
"image resizing in php" that is actually just a trick to use the height and width properties of the <img> tag to make the browser resize the image. "I don't feel like having 4,000 different thumbnails on my server for each product..."
And, "practical web design with tables" for people who think "CSS is too hard"
It seems that after a federal judge ruled in April that file-sharing services have legal uses and thus should not be shut down, the RIAA has found that it must go after individual users rather than the services that they use."
So only the people who partake in copyright violation are getting targeted?
Most providers have announced they will pass the cost of number portability onto their customers
And you want them to what? Pluck the money from trees? Steal change cups from homeless people? Where the hell do you think a company gets the money to augment its features and cover their ongoing costs from?
...the only issue with crushing KaZaA is the users. We as internet users ( yes; like parent, I also have illegally downloaded music/programs/movies from my peers, so sue me ) are far too used to getting these things for free; that we take its legality for granted.
If you ask the average person on the street who uses a computer if they download music and such from KaZaA, chances are, they will say yes. It is also likely that they either don't realize that it's illegal or don't care, as the mentality of "they'll never catch me" applies to most internet users.
If KaZaA is destroyed, some other service will take reign of the illegal file sharing business. It's going to be nearly impossible to stop the everything-is-free mentality of p2p users.
Part of the reason for this is the extremely difficult nature of controlling software distribution without inconvenioncing the users heavily. This is also why there are some perfectly valid uses of DRM software. If your OS/hardware only ran software that had a digital signature that validated this couldn't happen. Sure you'd have to have certificate authorities like with SSL, but the only problem becomes when MS says it is the only CA or won't let sourceforge be a CA or something. If there was an open industry standard for DRM that consumers forced vendor's to adhere to, a lot of good could come out of this.
Granted, a lot of us would be effed if we had to pay for windows/office/photoshop/powerdvd/nero-or-ezcd/etc... but if suddenly we all did, you'd see prices drop like crazy and/or open+free software get a major boon of interest/use.
A lot of people point to nicotine or alcohol when referencing how hypocritical marijuana laws are, but I have to say caffine is my favorite. Especially with the recent explosion of 'energy' drinks. It reallys strikes home to just about damn near everyone. Which of course does not make them change their mind... noooo... drugs are bad and used by terrorists.
Ask this question of the next coffe drinker you see: "Can you get by a day at work without using mind-altering chemicals? If not, howcome I can't relax in the afternoon with mine?"
The x-box is a "foot in the door" product. MS is trying to position itself as the home-entertainment center system, providing your on-demand TV, TiVO like abilities (though tightly DRM'd), being your DVD player, etc.
The x-box can loose money like crazy, as long as Windows XP/CE/Media Center gets a foot hold in that market.
It amazes me how universities/colleges, despite birthing the damn thing, fundamentally do not get the interenet.
I've seen loads of morally, legally, and contractually wrong network policies in higher ed over the years. How hard can it possibly be for one of them to go "hey wait a minute... aren't we just an ISP?"
Slashdot Mirror
If you think the dissenting opinions on this thread are bad, read the Linux390 mailing list. One thing just about everyone agrees with on the list is this. Do not buy a mainframe to run Linux. If you already have a mainframe that has some spare cpu time, look into consolidating simple services onto LiuxVMs. Generally speaking linux on the mainframe relies on "well in this case" situations that make it cheaper. For instance you can use Samba on a LinuxVM to have a very reliable file-server, but DASD and Shark's are bloody effing expensive compared to pretty much any other system. However, if you already have a well enginered backup system and all the neccisary licensing, perhaps that tips the costs back in favor (or at least break even). There are a great many who see Linux390 as half "geeks looking to do something nifty with linux" and half "IBM looking to show off its linux-commitment and get some free press about its mainframes". Because when you really learn about all the options, benefits, and limitations, there are suprisingly few situations where it's worth it.
www.apache.org
Am I missing something or is this most simple tenet of life beyond "fair trade" people.
now what were we talking about?
You have three options for dealing with it:
1.) Drugs (holy shit they're effective... just scary to notice your very self change)
2.) Gimmicks. The comments are already full of dozens of them.
3.) Self-Dicipline. The hardest, but only true solution.
Personnaly I was on Dexidrine for a year, and as much as it was extremely effective, the whole thing kinda freaked me out. But then having been on it I've seen the advantages of being in control of myself better, and it has made it much easier now that I'm not on anything.
You might want to think of the drugs and gimmicks route as a way of easing yourself into better self control.
So linux wins on customizability and price.
Interestingly enough, Netscape/4.7 came up with about 3.2% (3/4 of which were from on-campus).
fortunatly we're approaching 1-year of being xhtml & css devotees and its suprisingly easy to be xhtml1-strict compliant and use tableless or low-table layouts that work in 96+% of our 'human' traffic (which btw IE 6.0 is more than 65% of).
Anyway, sorry for the stats ramble, I just though it was really cool to have access to real numbers today, not just rumors and zealous flamewars.
Man if that doesnt sum up the joe slashdot attitude.
IBM's quiet. Too quiet.
most of RH's income is from support, training, and custom development.
less then 10% of RH's income is from the distro and they would drop it if they could
So they would be supporting, training for, and developing.... what exactly?
Guess you could say Red Hat is turning into a traditional Unix company.
Guess you could say when the lower tier customers don't want to pay a dime, its hard to make a money.
Funny thing is, most tech people know HTML about as well as AOLers know "the internet". AKA a sick, sad, nonstandard pathetic subset of the real deal.
Every time I've bought a car I bring a socket wrench set with me and tear apart the engine right there on the dealership floor. If I didn't how could I know that Al Queda hasn't set me up to be a pawn!?! Not checking your equipment like this is tantamount to supporting terrorists.
None of these are inovation. Refinement. Good stuff. Not inovations.
Recent gem article's from them include:
"image resizing in php" that is actually just a trick to use the height and width properties of the <img> tag to make the browser resize the image. "I don't feel like having 4,000 different thumbnails on my server for each product..."
And, "practical web design with tables" for people who think "CSS is too hard"
soo... CVS and a makefile?
Wasn't this whole e-business thing supposed to help us cut-out middle men?
So only the people who partake in copyright violation are getting targeted?
Whats the problem?
And you want them to what? Pluck the money from trees? Steal change cups from homeless people? Where the hell do you think a company gets the money to augment its features and cover their ongoing costs from?
If you ask the average person on the street who uses a computer if they download music and such from KaZaA, chances are, they will say yes. It is also likely that they either don't realize that it's illegal or don't care, as the mentality of "they'll never catch me" applies to most internet users.
If KaZaA is destroyed, some other service will take reign of the illegal file sharing business. It's going to be nearly impossible to stop the everything-is-free mentality of p2p users.
Part of the reason for this is the extremely difficult nature of controlling software distribution without inconvenioncing the users heavily. This is also why there are some perfectly valid uses of DRM software. If your OS/hardware only ran software that had a digital signature that validated this couldn't happen. Sure you'd have to have certificate authorities like with SSL, but the only problem becomes when MS says it is the only CA or won't let sourceforge be a CA or something. If there was an open industry standard for DRM that consumers forced vendor's to adhere to, a lot of good could come out of this.
Granted, a lot of us would be effed if we had to pay for windows/office/photoshop/powerdvd/nero-or-ezcd/etc ... but if suddenly we all did, you'd see prices drop like crazy and/or open+free software get a major boon of interest/use.
plus it'd put the kaibosh on virus's pretty hard
Exchange, Active Directory, and SQL Server.
Ximian, Samba, and Postgres just can't quite compete.
Plus the annoying thing is, once one or two of those guys are in, the third + IIS + etc become pretty easy to just plug in.
Ask this question of the next coffe drinker you see: "Can you get by a day at work without using mind-altering chemicals? If not, howcome I can't relax in the afternoon with mine?"
Are you somehow implying that he doesn't?
pretentious ass
The x-box is a "foot in the door" product. MS is trying to position itself as the home-entertainment center system, providing your on-demand TV, TiVO like abilities (though tightly DRM'd), being your DVD player, etc. The x-box can loose money like crazy, as long as Windows XP/CE/Media Center gets a foot hold in that market.
I've seen loads of morally, legally, and contractually wrong network policies in higher ed over the years. How hard can it possibly be for one of them to go "hey wait a minute... aren't we just an ISP?"