Since most of the packages are same accross all distributions, it's in no big distribution's interest (short-term interest) to be compatible with smaller distributions as that enables user mobility.
So if you're RH you don't want to see some good X program being directly installable on SuSE - if SuSE is slightly cheaper (or god forbid free), why would users of application X stay with RH (all other factors being equal)?
The pressure to standardize Linux to some meaningful extent will come from a) Smaller distributions (like Debian, Turbolinux, etc.) b) Software and hardware vendors trying to keep SuSE and RH in check (Oracle, Sun, etc.).
Novell has a range of non-OS software which can make money (like directory server, etc.) whereas RH's portfolio in my view is limited to their OS. Linux standardization will hurt RH the most as it will make distribution type almost irrelevant. My guess is that RH is there just for the sake of it. Here's the list of orgs behind LSB. http://www.freestandards.org/modules.php?nam e=Cont ent2&pa=showpage&pid=7
Long-term, standards will of course increase acceptance of Linux, but by then selling OS support will become commodity. Look how Sun's stuff got certified recently ("Open Standards") - they'll keep kicking that chair under Red Hat... http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/cert_pro dlist.tp l?CALLER=cert_prodlist.tpl&_ca_id=&crt=&trt=&S =R2
Both RH and SuSE support LSB, but I don't see them supporting other goals of this "coalition of the willing".
For example, supporting cross-distribution binaries (DEB or RPM) would ruin the investment in Oracle certification and such stuff, so I don't see RH and SuSE rushing in anytime soon..
> another annoyance: Sarge installer is still not ready for prime time, no matter what anyone else says.
Major, major annoynance: people comment on those god damned installers like they install their OS every day! What the hell is wrong with them?
For Christ's sake people! Use the minimum install (no GUI), wget and install apt-get or yum and then install whatever you want. What exactly is not to like about this simple procedure?
Bullshit. Like someone would switch to Solaris because it's open source? Switch from what? From Linux to Solaris because Solaris is open source?
Windows users won't switch. UNIX users (on proprietary CPU archs) won't switch either. This Solaris version is targeted at enterprise users who pay for support, service and updates - in other words, they don't give a damn if the OS is open or closed. Those customers buy Enterprise Linux (RH or SLES). And whatever Sun does in respect with openess, it won't matter to those folks.
You have that much disk space, true. But, 1) Not all the disks are full 2) Data on them is semi-useless (for example, you count terabytes of swap space and applications/OS) 3) Data on them is mostly useless for all practical purposes because it's unstructured and cannot be accessed at will (by data mining or other programs that you might have).
Why? Maybe they used 4b pages indexed on Google * 20K/page and times 10 (to be on the safe side) or something like that. Here (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/ho w-much-info-2003/internet.htm) is a linke someone provided in another post and you can see that the Web in 2002 was estimated to be about 167TB.
In any case, is that so important? So what if they made a mistake! It's a very informative article on data warehousing in retail.
Say there's a telco that uses Asterisk (or some similar software). And let's suppose they distribute their products/boxes with just an OS that downloads the (GPL-based) code from the telco's data center when the owner boots the box.
In this situation they do not (re)distribute the GPL-based code so they're not obliged to give you the source code. (Of course Asterisk may have a non-GPL license for commercial use but most other GPL apps don't.)
To get around GPL restrictions h/w manufacturers should make the critical part of the code downloadable from the Net during boot-up procedure.
Of course it was a matter of time - as it's a matter of time with any OS. Like there could be an OS which is absolutely secure and then we wouldn't have to read stupid articles like these.
MS bashers, here's a list of security updates in Q4 for RH EL 3.0 AS: (https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rhel3as-errata .html )
You're right. Shiit, I was trying to do five things at one time so I didn't read carefully.
I can imagine they made the rule that way because before it was _hard_ to transfer domain because workflow of the approval procedure was screwed up.
I had problems transfering my own domains because online forms and customer service made at the old registrar made it very difficult to allow transfer (as that allowed them to keep customers longer). Now that the default is Yes, it's much more customer-friendly, but if someone steals your identity (mobile phone, email account password, etc.), yes, you're definitively screwed.
Overall I think the new default is better. If the article highlighted the identity theft problem (not the new rule), I think I would have read it correctly:-)
> no more computerless vacations that last more than 4 days at a time
Not actually. a) Buy several years at once with automatic extension b) Use a goddamn calendar & reminder (Hotmail or Yahoo or both, just in case) to remind yourself your domain is about to expire
>EVERYTHING you can emerge is free as in speech? I think not.
You're right. But that's an advantage - you don't _have_ to use it but if you want then you can. That's freedom (of choice). As opposed to open source-only - where you can't choose non-open source even if you wanted (except by getting the packages from another source).
>Every piece of software Red Hat ships is free as in freedom, with the exception of their trademarks.
Some say that means it's not free.
>Gentoo simply isn't competing on that
They ship source (again, according to some, "the freeest" way of distribution), not packages, so you're right about that. Personally I don't care, but if you do care about that, you should give advantage to Gentoo, no?
>In reality, you have very little idea which of those packages you just emerged is really trustworthy, because they're from all sorts of different people.
Gentoo's source tarballs come with checksums so you can tell if they've been tampered with. Although I don't think you really check signatures of Red Hat RPMs you install - do you?
I'm not pro-Gentoo, I just wanted to note that there's nothing that makes Fedora 'per-se' distro of choice. Personally I have never been to their Web site because I don't like the idea of being RH's lab rat and upgrading my boxen every couple months. But I'm not anti-RH either - I use CentOS 3.1 (=up2date RH Enterprise Linux 3.0) with yum.
This kind of thing is totally useless since there's no suitable search method to find stuff inside those compressed AV files.
It's okay to archive video blogs, but on the Web just doesn't make sense yet. Unless you append each file with a bunch of keywords (which is idiotic by itself).
> I've said for years that a distro company would do well to have a group sit down and actually test each feature and app that they include on a distro but evidently few do.
Nah, they shouldn't - "the community" already did all that!;-)
>I can't post this with my real UID as it could jeapordize my job.
As you posted this in the afternoon (15:39), you probably did that from your office, which in turn means they can easily (and that's an understatement) find you in their proxy or firewall logs.
>Microsoft has their own virtual server product. They propably do not want competition, especially something that allows one to run Windows XP and Linux on the same machine at the same time.
What kind of crap is that? VMWare is not the only non-Microsoft company that "allows one to run Windows XP and Linux on the same machine at the same time".
>I would personally love to have access to a Windows system without having to dedicate entire machine for it
What the hell are yo talking about??? Buy a copy of VMWare Workstation for Linux, NeTraverse Win4Lin or some other virtualization software.
>Renting music, paying per view, locking the item to the device...
Renting music - what's wrong with that? Who wants to hoard GBs of MP3s (then you have to back them up, etc.) when you can get them played on-demand from any device (PDA, media center, mobile phone, etc.) any time you want.
More likely they'll soon have an all-you-can eat music service for US$14.90/month (like the new Napster service). Pay-per-view is reasonable for movies as long as it's not expensive, locking items is reasonable (if pay-per-view is not enforced) as well.
Linux more mature in the embedded market? Can you elaborate?
>> "So blue screen jokes aside, this is probably a good business decision for HP" >I disagree. What differentiates a HP media center from a gateway or joe blow media center then? he color of the case?
What differentiates them is that they sell this piece of shit at no profit and then, because they know that 50% of people who buy this box also buy a color printer, they will also sell them a printer and make money.
>HP was once a company that was innovative, creative and original. Now they've degenerated into yet another money-hungry company who're afraid to tread new grounds or create something from scratch.
Listen to yourself - "yet another money-hungry company" - it is a Slashdot-established truth that companies' exist to make money. Get over it. "Create something from scratch" - for something like 5 thousand boxes a month - how much should they charge for their "from scratch" Linux code? Let's see - 50 engineers * 10K (including overhead) a month = $500,000/month Spread over 5,000 boxes a month, that's US$500 per box for the software alone, compared to (I guess) US$80 for the Windows version. Good luck with that!
>Thanks to the eminent Carly, HP now does nothing more than rebrand and sell services.
That's actually untrue, but even if it wasn't, so what - that's what people like - cheap and mediocre shit - and that's what they can sell in volume. Look how Dell's growing by leaps and bounds - and they're not exactly a bastion of product innovation. What is HP supposed to do?
>I'm sure that if Hewlett and Packard were to see the company now, they'd cringe in sadness and shame.
No, I think they'd smile and say "Holy shit, man, times are tough now - we were lucky that we had the luxury of doing things the way we did! I don't know if we could pull that off today".
>Actually what I think is much more likely is the new generation of DRM products that will come out soon to lock in customers.
Lock into what? Paying for music?
>Embedded Linux is very mature nowadays, their is nothing that is more expensive when it comes to developing linux platform then windows
There's nothing more expensive when it comes to developing Linux platform then Windows? What exactly is that supposed to mean?
>There is no advatage of this device over a Laptop towards the high-end,
Yes there is, look at the h/w specs. You'd need $2K for a notebook with similar A-V h/w.
> Don't worry. It'll be a flop.
Only Linux zealots like you _worry_ about it - normal people will buy it if price and features are okay and if it's easy to use. The same goes for Linux-based media centers - WhoTF cares what's inside as long as the music's trashing.
Slashdot Mirror
>Whats up with that?
m e=Cont ent2&pa=showpage&pid=7
o dlist.tp l?CALLER=cert_prodlist.tpl&_ca_id=&crt=&trt=&S =R2
Since most of the packages are same accross all distributions, it's in no big distribution's interest (short-term interest) to be compatible with smaller distributions as that enables user mobility.
So if you're RH you don't want to see some good X program being directly installable on SuSE - if SuSE is slightly cheaper (or god forbid free), why would users of application X stay with RH (all other factors being equal)?
The pressure to standardize Linux to some meaningful extent will come from
a) Smaller distributions (like Debian, Turbolinux, etc.)
b) Software and hardware vendors trying to keep SuSE and RH in check (Oracle, Sun, etc.).
Novell has a range of non-OS software which can make money (like directory server, etc.) whereas RH's portfolio in my view is limited to their OS. Linux standardization will hurt RH the most as it will make distribution type almost irrelevant.
My guess is that RH is there just for the sake of it.
Here's the list of orgs behind LSB.
http://www.freestandards.org/modules.php?na
Long-term, standards will of course increase acceptance of Linux, but by then selling OS support will become commodity.
Look how Sun's stuff got certified recently ("Open Standards") - they'll keep kicking that chair under Red Hat...
http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/cert_pr
Both RH and SuSE support LSB, but I don't see them supporting other goals of this "coalition of the willing".
For example, supporting cross-distribution binaries (DEB or RPM) would ruin the investment in Oracle certification and such stuff, so I don't see RH and SuSE rushing in anytime soon..
WTF?
Your posting is named "Spam and Patents" and there's not a single thing about spam (except in the subject).
Your posting, Sir, is non-relevant and off-topic.
> another annoyance: Sarge installer is still not ready for prime time, no matter what anyone else says.
Major, major annoynance: people comment on those god damned installers like they install their OS every day! What the hell is wrong with them?
For Christ's sake people! Use the minimum install (no GUI), wget and install apt-get or yum and then install whatever you want. What exactly is not to like about this simple procedure?
Bullshit. Like someone would switch to Solaris because it's open source? Switch from what? From Linux to Solaris because Solaris is open source?
Windows users won't switch. UNIX users (on proprietary CPU archs) won't switch either.
This Solaris version is targeted at enterprise users who pay for support, service and updates - in other words, they don't give a damn if the OS is open or closed. Those customers buy Enterprise Linux (RH or SLES). And whatever Sun does in respect with openess, it won't matter to those folks.
You have that much disk space, true.
But,
1) Not all the disks are full
2) Data on them is semi-useless (for example, you count terabytes of swap space and applications/OS)
3) Data on them is mostly useless for all practical purposes because it's unstructured and cannot be accessed at will (by data mining or other programs that you might have).
>Oh yeah - it's bullshit
o w-much-info-2003/internet.htm) is a linke someone provided in another post and you can see that the Web in 2002 was estimated to be about 167TB.
Why? Maybe they used 4b pages indexed on Google * 20K/page and times 10 (to be on the safe side) or something like that.
Here (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/h
In any case, is that so important?
So what if they made a mistake! It's a very informative article on data warehousing in retail.
> claim to be to Oracle as Oracle is to MySQL.
;-)
I guess this leads us to the customary Slashdot question that makes me wanna puke - will Teradata open their source?
Say there's a telco that uses Asterisk (or some similar software).
And let's suppose they distribute their products/boxes with just an OS that downloads the (GPL-based) code from the telco's data center when the owner boots the box.
In this situation they do not (re)distribute the GPL-based code so they're not obliged to give you the source code. (Of course Asterisk may have a non-GPL license for commercial use but most other GPL apps don't.)
To get around GPL restrictions h/w manufacturers should make the critical part of the code downloadable from the Net during boot-up procedure.
>I am not special and nowhere near unique; there are millions of people who do this kind of stuff all the time ...
Yes, there are.
Out of 8 billions, there are millions like you (I would say 20-30m) which means that people like you are a tiny minority.
> Learned the lanuage and cultutre, went to Uni., etc.
It'd be interesting if you englightened us on how you paid for your Uni while in a foreign country. Maybe American Indians could follow your recipe!
Of course it was a matter of time - as it's a matter of time with any OS.
a .html )
Like there could be an OS which is absolutely secure and then we wouldn't have to read stupid articles like these.
MS bashers, here's a list of security updates in Q4 for RH EL 3.0 AS:
(https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rhel3as-errat
2004-11-12 RHSA-2004:562 Security Advisory Updated httpd packages fix a security issue and bugs
2004-11-12 RHSA-2004:609 Security Advisory Updated freeradius packages fix security flaws
2004-11-12 RHSA-2004:615 Security Advisory Updated libxml2 package fixes security vulnerabilities
2004-10-27 RHSA-2004:585 Security Advisory Updated xchat package fixes SOCKSv5 proxy security issue
2004-10-27 RHSA-2004:592 Security Advisory Updated xpdf package fixes security flaws
2004-10-27 RHSA-2004:611 Security Advisory Updated mysql-server package
2004-10-22 RHSA-2004:543 Security Advisory Updated CUPS packages fix security issues
2004-10-22 RHSA-2004:577 Security Advisory Updated libtiff packages
2004-10-20 RHSA-2004:480 Security Advisory Updated ImageMagick packages fix security vulnerability
2004-10-20 RHSA-2004:569 Security Advisory Updated mysql packages fix minor security issues and bugs
2004-10-20 RHSA-2004:591 Security Advisory Updated squid package fixes vulnerability
2004-10-20 RHSA-2004:604 Security Advisory Updated gaim package fixes security issues and bugs
2004-10-07 RHSA-2004:546 Security Advisory Updated cyrus-sasl packages fix security flaw
2004-10-05 RHSA-2004:412 Security Advisory Updated kdelibs and kdebase packages correct security issues
2004-10-04 RHSA-2004:478 Security Advisory Updated XFree86 packages fix security issues and bugs
>ummm, Where do I find it is SUSE?
/home/warez/vmware/windows-xp/
yea right. start that virtual OS
Of course.
But tell that to bozos who claim MS IE hurt Netscape, WMP hurt RealMedia, etc.
You're right. Shiit, I was trying to do five things at one time so I didn't read carefully.
:-)
I can imagine they made the rule that way because before it was _hard_ to transfer domain because workflow of the approval procedure was screwed up.
I had problems transfering my own domains because online forms and customer service made at the old registrar made it very difficult to allow transfer (as that allowed them to keep customers longer).
Now that the default is Yes, it's much more customer-friendly, but if someone steals your identity (mobile phone, email account password, etc.), yes, you're definitively screwed.
Overall I think the new default is better.
If the article highlighted the identity theft problem (not the new rule), I think I would have read it correctly
> no more computerless vacations that last more than 4 days at a time
Not actually.
a) Buy several years at once with automatic extension
b) Use a goddamn calendar & reminder (Hotmail or Yahoo or both, just in case) to remind yourself your domain is about to expire
>EVERYTHING you can emerge is free as in speech? I think not.
You're right. But that's an advantage - you don't _have_ to use it but if you want then you can. That's freedom (of choice). As opposed to open source-only - where you can't choose non-open source even if you wanted (except by getting the packages from another source).
>Every piece of software Red Hat ships is free as in freedom, with the exception of their trademarks.
Some say that means it's not free.
>Gentoo simply isn't competing on that
They ship source (again, according to some, "the freeest" way of distribution), not packages, so you're right about that. Personally I don't care, but if you do care about that, you should give advantage to Gentoo, no?
>In reality, you have very little idea which of those packages you just emerged is really trustworthy, because they're from all sorts of different people.
Gentoo's source tarballs come with checksums so you can tell if they've been tampered with.
Although I don't think you really check signatures of Red Hat RPMs you install - do you?
I'm not pro-Gentoo, I just wanted to note that there's nothing that makes Fedora 'per-se' distro of choice.
Personally I have never been to their Web site because I don't like the idea of being RH's lab rat and upgrading my boxen every couple months.
But I'm not anti-RH either - I use CentOS 3.1 (=up2date RH Enterprise Linux 3.0) with yum.
This kind of thing is totally useless since there's no suitable search method to find stuff inside those compressed AV files.
It's okay to archive video blogs, but on the Web just doesn't make sense yet. Unless you append each file with a bunch of keywords (which is idiotic by itself).
>- I get a free OS (beer & speech).
>- Updates from a source I can trust (Redhat)
You can get the same from Gentoo or similar distro
> I've said for years that a distro company would do well to have a group sit down and actually test each feature and app that they include on a distro but evidently few do.
;-)
Nah, they shouldn't - "the community" already did all that!
>I can't post this with my real UID as it could jeapordize my job.
As you posted this in the afternoon (15:39), you probably did that from your office, which in turn means they can easily (and that's an understatement) find you in their proxy or firewall logs.
Good luck anyway!
>Microsoft has their own virtual server product. They propably do not want competition, especially something that allows one to run Windows XP and Linux on the same machine at the same time.
What kind of crap is that?
VMWare is not the only non-Microsoft company that "allows one to run Windows XP and Linux on the same machine at the same time".
>I would personally love to have access to a Windows system without having to dedicate entire machine for it
What the hell are yo talking about??? Buy a copy of VMWare Workstation for Linux, NeTraverse Win4Lin or some other virtualization software.
>Renting music, paying per view, locking the item to the device...
e /DOMIS/ update/2004/10oct/1004mpumsf.htm
Renting music - what's wrong with that? Who wants to hoard GBs of MP3s (then you have to back them up, etc.) when you can get them played on-demand from any device (PDA, media center, mobile phone, etc.) any time you want.
More likely they'll soon have an all-you-can eat music service for US$14.90/month (like the new Napster service).
Pay-per-view is reasonable for movies as long as it's not expensive, locking items is reasonable (if pay-per-view is not enforced) as well.
Linux more mature in the embedded market?
Can you elaborate?
Interesting Link:
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sampl
>The joint started going downhill when Carly Fiorina took over.
/. way... Moron.
If things were going good, she'd never have taken over in the first place.
>>Seems like the joint's gone downhill ever since Perens left.
This (by the article author, not the parent post) is such a fucking dumb-ass comment... Spicing things up the
The grandparent post sez:
>> "So blue screen jokes aside, this is probably a good business decision for HP"
>I disagree. What differentiates a HP media center from a gateway or joe blow media center then? he color of the case?
What differentiates them is that they sell this piece of shit at no profit and then, because they know that 50% of people who buy this box also buy a color printer, they will also sell them a printer and make money.
>HP was once a company that was innovative, creative and original. Now they've degenerated into yet another money-hungry company who're afraid to tread new grounds or create something from scratch.
Listen to yourself - "yet another money-hungry company" - it is a Slashdot-established truth that companies' exist to make money. Get over it.
"Create something from scratch" - for something like 5 thousand boxes a month - how much should they charge for their "from scratch" Linux code?
Let's see - 50 engineers * 10K (including overhead) a month = $500,000/month
Spread over 5,000 boxes a month, that's US$500 per box for the software alone, compared to (I guess) US$80 for the Windows version.
Good luck with that!
>Thanks to the eminent Carly, HP now does nothing more than rebrand and sell services.
That's actually untrue, but even if it wasn't, so what - that's what people like - cheap and mediocre shit - and that's what they can sell in volume.
Look how Dell's growing by leaps and bounds - and they're not exactly a bastion of product innovation. What is HP supposed to do?
>I'm sure that if Hewlett and Packard were to see the company now, they'd cringe in sadness and shame.
No, I think they'd smile and say "Holy shit, man, times are tough now - we were lucky that we had the luxury of doing things the way we did! I don't know if we could pull that off today".
>Actually what I think is much more likely is the new generation of DRM products that will come out soon to lock in customers.
Lock into what?
Paying for music?
>Embedded Linux is very mature nowadays, their is nothing that is more expensive when it comes to developing linux platform then windows
There's nothing more expensive when it comes to developing Linux platform then Windows?
What exactly is that supposed to mean?
>There is no advatage of this device over a Laptop towards the high-end,
Yes there is, look at the h/w specs.
You'd need $2K for a notebook with similar A-V h/w.
> Don't worry. It'll be a flop.
Only Linux zealots like you _worry_ about it - normal people will buy it if price and features are okay and if it's easy to use.
The same goes for Linux-based media centers - WhoTF cares what's inside as long as the music's trashing.