I think you make a valid point about the complexity of VMs, but isn't this always the standard modus operandi for Microsoft.
Microsoft will take an inferior product (IE 3.0, Word 5.0, Excel) and shoehorn it in to compete against the dominate program in the marketplace (Netscape, Wordperfect, Lotus) and then let their marketing department push it onto the desktop.
After time, they throw in everything including the kitchen sink and eventually have more features then the competition.
I found an interesting article
by a fellow who has worked on some
major open source oriented sites.
He does a quick comparison of
postgres and mysql here.
I cut my teeth at being a sys admin
at an ISP with BSDi servers. I must
say that BSDi 3.0 would setup with
all sorts of services that you would
never user, in much the same manner
as Redhat 6.2, but it seemed to require
minimal patching and I do not recall
the deadly exploits that script kiddies
employ against Redhat. Maybe the BSD
code is just of a higher quality, maybe
there is something to security through
obscurity (as BSDi does not have the numbers
Redhat has) nor is it code freely available.
Well, enough of my ramble. I just wanted
to mentione that there is a port of BSDs
ftp daemon to linux here.
I use to be of the same opinion.
The ISP where I worked was desperately
trying to get away from going through
the phone company. Even after the break
up of ATT so many years ago, the phone
companies still have virtual monopolies
in the zone they have control in. This
is because they still control the
infrastructure.
We found the fastest way to circumvent
the infrastructure was to go wireless.
However, in China there would still be
the need to have physical towers that
the government could pinpoint.
Take it the next step and have a wireless
satellite system. I still think they
could target the customer base. You have
to collect your fees in some manner and
I am sure it would be easier for the
government to track the financial transactions
then to go after wireless satellites.
Anyways, the situation now is definately
a tragedy and food for thought.
I just wanted to reply with my experiences with the K6-2. Back in those days not so long ago, the K6-2 was a phenomenal bargain. I think the fact there were several different motherboard manufacturers added real competition. Many of the first generation pacific rim boards did have some minor problems, but it was not soon after that new revisions came out. This is just my anecdotal evidence but back then, we could put together a good system that seemed to run just as well as the intel branded systems but would cost a few hundred dollars less. (I guess that much hasnt changed from today)
I remember years ago when I first started programming, we used Borland C++ 4 for windows. When writing a program it included a large foundation of classes called OWL for writing windows based programs. I never got into it very heavily, but years later I learned that Microsoft started to consider Borland a threat and so came out with MFC. What I wanted to ask the more technically adept out there is if MFC won out because it had better merit or was it just a case of Microsoft using its OS might to leverage MFC on the developer community?
Being someone who has setup some Redhat servers for various companies I would like to make a few comments in reply to your post.
Many times a company does not have a concept of System Administrator. For instance where I work now I am a programmer. The company wants something done such as mail services or DNS and they come to you and say we need this and this and this. And so you give them options and they say "Oh, but we dont want to spend any money" So you setup a linux box and you go back to what you are suppose to be doing (in my case programming).
In on of my previous incarnations I was a Internet Technician for an ISP. Most of my days were spent battling with Sprint and TW Telecom. Setting up routers and trying to setup reporting. I had to monitor updates and potential exploits for a vast array of operating systems and equipment. Keeping up with BSDi, Redhat Linux, Windows NT, FreeBSD, Cisco IOS... blah blah blah... ate away at my time. And the company saw it as unproductive time because in the end the upper management did not see anything different.
I would also like to point out some personal experience that may not apply to everyone or everything in the Internet universe. It felt to me like Redhat Linux constantly needed updating and patching. The BSD derivatives seemed to require less work. And NT's exploits seemed trivial in comparison to a root exploit. Of course, NT was pathetic on handling loads or multiple services and needed to be rebooted once every week.
I just wanted to provide a perspective from the other side of the fence so to speak.
"Diesel engine improvements far outweigh the efficiencies demanded by the solo car driver; a car in 1998 emitted 4% of the toxins that a car in 1978 did, while diesel has hardly budged."
Your post got me thinking back to my first IDE and grappling with windows code. At the time, it seemed as though everyone was using Borland C++ 4.5 to make their applications in windows. Borland used OWL. I never got into enough to know if it was done well. I have read that Microsoft felt threatened and came up with MFC and totally destroyed Borland. I was wondering if there were any old timers out there who could provide some insite into the capabilities of OWL. Was it better or worse than MFC?
I worked for an ISP that was acquired by an electric company. The IT department was filled with old school pro IBM staff. The guys in the suits wanted accountability and support. I often got the impression no one wanted to take the blame and they did not want to work very hard so they strived for support contracts and having someone else to blame. Enter the ISP... For the aforementioned reasons, the overseeing manager picked BSDi and their somewhat heafty support contract. I believe the contract was around $2500 a year. And since BSDi recommended servers from Telenet, the same manager went with Telenet servers.
A struggling startup ISP would have gone with FreeBSD and a put-together-yourself Intel Box and had similar performance for a lot less money. The BSDi contract was somewhat useless as you have to go through the usual ticket troubleshooting que or wait for an email response. It is just too difficult to troubleshoot problems through email.
Now having said that. I must say that the help staff at BSDi were very knowledgeable when you did get a hold of one of them. Also, the systems from Telenet were of good quality. And they were very responsive to RMA's and getting replacements shipped overnight. Back when we ordered systems from them, they also put pre-installed Linux and Windows NT on their boxes.
As already mentioned, cable modems are typically setup on a shared network. The cable companies usually have 500+ houses/connections hooked up to one node. These connections all share the same bandwidth. Different cable modems have different capabilities, but to keep users from hogging up bandwidth the cable companies use various technologies to control the bandwidth to each user on the system (packet shaping) You may just want to ask if you get purchase a higher quality of service. Having said that... I use to work at an ISP with multiple T1s. Through the life of the ISP, there were multiple ways we load balanced. One way is to use the OSPF and select equal preference for the different interfaces out (the cable modems) and it will round robin packets through them. I suppose you could try to setup OSPF on a linux box using Zebra. You could look into the packet shaping abilities of Linux. Search for packet shaper on freshmeat. Or you could buy a commercial product like the Packeteer.
I have been searching around for a small computer case without much luck. I am looking for something just large enough for a motherboard, cd-rom, and maybe a floppy drive. All I have been able to find is. Some of the mangled english on the contact and info pages is amusing. Anyone find anything similar.
One of the stories I have read about RMS is about how he had a piece of software that managed a printer he used and the software had a bug. He wanted to fix the bug but was unable to because the software was under a restrictive liscense. This was one of the motivations for making the GPL. Perhaps in the scenario portrayed by Francois-Rene Rideau , RMS is of the opinion that because the software is being used for internal use only, it will not affect the world's ability to use the software. As soon as the company attempts to use the software in the world market it comes under the terms of the GPL and it has to be released. What I am wondering is... Could a company make a liscense stating that you are joining an association by using their software? And that by agreeing to the liscence you are are agreeing to not release the software to the world? I am wondering if the definition of an association is a nebulous area.
I am wondering why a Beta Test has to be closed to only a few chosen applicants? Is the spirit of open source to allow everyone access to your code for peer review?
I tried to find the article I read. In a quick search of the web, it appears that global warming will cause more intense storms. It also appears that El Nino causes less hurricanes to form in the Atlantic. Here are some links.
I recall reading somewhere (and I could be mistaken) of a scientific study that showed more and more hurricanes are going to swing up and hit the east coast instead of swing under or over florida. I believe the culprit was global warming (which is caused by industrialization, which appears to be more concentrated in the northeast).
Many power companies run a fiber network along the top of their powerlines for inter communications with their substations. These main power lines do run by everyone's home though. The problem lies in the last mile to the customers home and the cost for the electronics that sit at the end of the fiber.
I work for an electric company that started offering dial up Internet service. I hold the position of managing the Internet services. One of the main problems facing our small operation is the ability to offer broadband. There are basically two main contenders in our area, cable modems and DSL. The problem with cable modems is it is owned by the cable company and so they have a lock on that infrastructure and market. The problem with DSL is it is controlled by the phone company and then resold through third parties. And dealing with the Phone Company is very difficult with just the dial up lines for modems that we use. They are slow and unresponsive and we take the heat for their mistakes. All of this would be solved if we could utilize our own infrastructure, i.e. the power lines. Adding a third competitor to broadband would seem to benefit consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
>> M$ don't care but they should.
I think you make a valid point about the complexity of VMs, but isn't this always the standard modus operandi for Microsoft.
Microsoft will take an inferior product (IE 3.0, Word 5.0, Excel) and shoehorn it in to compete against the dominate program in the marketplace (Netscape, Wordperfect, Lotus) and then let their marketing department push it onto the desktop.
After time, they throw in everything including the kitchen sink and eventually have more features then the competition.
Time will tell. May god have mercy on us.
I found an interesting article
by a fellow who has worked on some
major open source oriented sites.
He does a quick comparison of
postgres and mysql here.
I cut my teeth at being a sys admin
at an ISP with BSDi servers. I must
say that BSDi 3.0 would setup with
all sorts of services that you would
never user, in much the same manner
as Redhat 6.2, but it seemed to require
minimal patching and I do not recall
the deadly exploits that script kiddies
employ against Redhat. Maybe the BSD
code is just of a higher quality, maybe
there is something to security through
obscurity (as BSDi does not have the numbers
Redhat has) nor is it code freely available.
Well, enough of my ramble. I just wanted
to mentione that there is a port of BSDs
ftp daemon to linux here.
none of which is the same thing as having 2 mouse buttons
I use to be of the same opinion.
The ISP where I worked was desperately
trying to get away from going through
the phone company. Even after the break
up of ATT so many years ago, the phone
companies still have virtual monopolies
in the zone they have control in. This
is because they still control the
infrastructure.
We found the fastest way to circumvent
the infrastructure was to go wireless.
However, in China there would still be
the need to have physical towers that
the government could pinpoint.
Take it the next step and have a wireless
satellite system. I still think they
could target the customer base. You have
to collect your fees in some manner and
I am sure it would be easier for the
government to track the financial transactions
then to go after wireless satellites.
Anyways, the situation now is definately
a tragedy and food for thought.
I just wanted to reply with my experiences with the K6-2. Back in those days not so long ago, the K6-2 was a phenomenal bargain. I think the fact there were several different motherboard manufacturers added real competition. Many of the first generation pacific rim boards did have some minor problems, but it was not soon after that new revisions came out. This is just my anecdotal evidence but back then, we could put together a good system that seemed to run just as well as the intel branded systems but would cost a few hundred dollars less. (I guess that much hasnt changed from today)
You may want to look at Capsel for linux. I am not sure of its capabilities (no pun intended).
I remember years ago when I first started programming, we used Borland C++ 4 for windows. When writing a program it included a large foundation of classes called OWL for writing windows based programs. I never got into it very heavily, but years later I learned that Microsoft started to consider Borland a threat and so came out with MFC. What I wanted to ask the more technically adept out there is if MFC won out because it had better merit or was it just a case of Microsoft using its OS might to leverage MFC on the developer community?
Being someone who has setup some Redhat servers for various companies I would like to make a few comments in reply to your post.
Many times a company does not have a concept of System Administrator. For instance where I work now I am a programmer. The company wants something done such as mail services or DNS and they come to you and say we need this and this and this. And so you give them options and they say "Oh, but we dont want to spend any money" So you setup a linux box and you go back to what you are suppose to be doing (in my case programming).
In on of my previous incarnations I was a Internet Technician for an ISP. Most of my days were spent battling with Sprint and TW Telecom. Setting up routers and trying to setup reporting. I had to monitor updates and potential exploits for a vast array of operating systems and equipment. Keeping up with BSDi, Redhat Linux, Windows NT, FreeBSD, Cisco IOS... blah blah blah... ate away at my time. And the company saw it as unproductive time because in the end the upper management did not see anything different.
I would also like to point out some personal experience that may not apply to everyone or everything in the Internet universe. It felt to me like Redhat Linux constantly needed updating and patching. The BSD derivatives seemed to require less work. And NT's exploits seemed trivial in comparison to a root exploit. Of course, NT was pathetic on handling loads or multiple services and needed to be rebooted once every week.
I just wanted to provide a perspective from the other side of the fence so to speak.
"Diesel engine improvements far outweigh the efficiencies demanded by the solo car driver; a car in 1998 emitted 4% of the toxins that a car in 1978 did, while diesel has hardly budged."
You may want to check out this news item.
Natural Selection Creates Super-Engines
Your post got me thinking back to my first IDE and grappling with windows code. At the time, it seemed as though everyone was using Borland C++ 4.5 to make their applications in windows. Borland used OWL. I never got into enough to know if it was done well. I have read that Microsoft felt threatened and came up with MFC and totally destroyed Borland. I was wondering if there were any old timers out there who could provide some insite into the capabilities of OWL. Was it better or worse than MFC?
Hey you, you there...
have you ever kissed a girl in your life?
I worked for an ISP that was acquired by an electric company. The IT department was filled with old school pro IBM staff. The guys in the suits wanted accountability and support. I often got the impression no one wanted to take the blame and they did not want to work very hard so they strived for support contracts and having someone else to blame. Enter the ISP...
For the aforementioned reasons, the overseeing manager picked BSDi and their somewhat heafty support contract. I believe the contract was around $2500 a year. And since BSDi recommended servers from Telenet, the same manager went with Telenet servers.
A struggling startup ISP would have gone with FreeBSD and a put-together-yourself Intel Box and had similar performance for a lot less money. The BSDi contract was somewhat useless as you have to go through the usual ticket troubleshooting que or wait for an email response. It is just too difficult to troubleshoot problems through email.
Now having said that. I must say that the help staff at BSDi were very knowledgeable when you did get a hold of one of them. Also, the systems from Telenet were of good quality. And they were very responsive to RMA's and getting replacements shipped overnight. Back when we ordered systems from them, they also put pre-installed Linux and Windows NT on their boxes.
You may want to read some of this article.
It deals a little with the issues of windows treatment of TCHAR, WCHAR.
As already mentioned, cable modems are typically setup on a shared network. The cable companies usually have 500+ houses/connections hooked up to one node. These connections all share the same bandwidth. Different cable modems have different capabilities, but to keep users from hogging up bandwidth the cable companies use various technologies to control the bandwidth to each user on the system (packet shaping) You may just want to ask if you get purchase a higher quality of service. Having said that... I use to work at an ISP with multiple T1s. Through the life of the ISP, there were multiple ways we load balanced. One way is to use the OSPF and select equal preference for the different interfaces out (the cable modems) and it will round robin packets through them. I suppose you could try to setup OSPF on a linux box using Zebra. You could look into the packet shaping abilities of Linux. Search for packet shaper on freshmeat. Or you could buy a commercial product like the Packeteer.
I provide you with a clue Clue
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/easynow/index.html
I have been searching around for a small computer case without much luck. I am looking for something just large enough for a motherboard, cd-rom, and maybe a floppy drive. All I have been able to find is. Some of the mangled english on the contact and info pages is amusing. Anyone find anything similar.
http://www.hansan.com/cabinet/cabinet.htm
One of the stories I have read about RMS is about how he had a piece of software that managed a printer he used and the software had a bug. He wanted to fix the bug but was unable to because the software was under a restrictive liscense. This was one of the motivations for making the GPL. Perhaps in the scenario portrayed by Francois-Rene Rideau , RMS is of the opinion that because the software is being used for internal use only, it will not affect the world's ability to use the software. As soon as the company attempts to use the software in the world market it comes under the terms of the GPL and it has to be released.
What I am wondering is...
Could a company make a liscense stating that you are joining an association by using their software? And that by agreeing to the liscence you are are agreeing to not release the software to the world?
I am wondering if the definition of an association is a nebulous area.
I am wondering why a Beta Test has to be closed to only a few chosen applicants? Is the spirit of open source to allow everyone access to your code for peer review?
I tried to find the article I read. In a quick search of the web, it appears that global warming will cause more intense storms. It also appears that El Nino causes less hurricanes to form in the Atlantic. Here are some links.
9 6/hurr_apr96/node6.html a nina/ s .html
http://www.usc.edu/org/seagrant/elnino/
http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/19
http://www.disasterrelief.org/Disasters/980728l
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/1998/hurricane
Fascinating information. How we are changing the planet without having much control over what we are doing.
I recall reading somewhere (and I could be mistaken) of a scientific study that showed more and more hurricanes are going to swing up and hit the east coast instead of swing under or over florida. I believe the culprit was global warming (which is caused by industrialization, which appears to be more concentrated in the northeast).
Many power companies run a fiber network along the top of their powerlines for inter communications with their substations. These main power lines do run by everyone's home though. The problem lies in the last mile to the customers home and the cost for the electronics that sit at the end of the fiber.
I work for an electric company that started offering dial up Internet service. I hold the position of managing the Internet services. One of the main problems facing our small operation is the ability to offer broadband. There are basically two main contenders in our area, cable modems and DSL. The problem with cable modems is it is owned by the cable company and so they have a lock on that infrastructure and market. The problem with DSL is it is controlled by the phone company and then resold through third parties. And dealing with the Phone Company is very difficult with just the dial up lines for modems that we use. They are slow and unresponsive and we take the heat for their mistakes. All of this would be solved if we could utilize our own infrastructure, i.e. the power lines. Adding a third competitor to broadband would seem to benefit consumers.
"Sharing is good, stealing is evil, non-sharing is neither good nor evil since it is not an act."
What if you held the only antidote to a plague and you did not share it?