>From my experience at 3 fortune 500 companies, Linux increased productivity for the admins with less work.
From someone else's experience that may be different. I'm just saying that's not 100% the case - if people ask you to recommend the best OS for their particular purpose, you always say "Linux!", then you've got a problem.
> Huh? Now you sound like an MS FUD master
Wow wow wow! Our company is entirely Linux-based, we don't have a single Windows server. But I do dislike generalization and unfair accusations. Yes, Microsoft deserves critique, but it's not totally bad.
> Sendmail is not meant for corporate communication with calendar, etc. There are plenty of products to replace MS Exchange like ones from Novell/SuSE and IBM.
So we're talking about commercial software now. Okay - Domino/Notes has a Windows version too - this is what I've been saying all along - there's no reason for companies to use Exchange - there are many choices (for example - Domino/Notes on Windows or Domino/Notes on Linux) which you obviously agree with.
> Where did I say people "screw Microsoft up and install their software for free"? Nothing like making up points when you don't have a vailid argument.
No you didn't say that, but short of that outrageous step, what other choice can they offer? You don't have to buy Windows - there's Solaris, there's Linux, their's OS X, etc.. Even if they do use Windows, they don't have to use Exchange.
> How about MS opening up the MS doc formats so customers can use MS Office or other office suites?
Well it's common sense that if you're #1 you don't want to open your formats. Once Linux catches up, they'll open their format. I understand Windows source is available to corporations (not only governments) and Office too has been open to governments that asked for it. Perhaps there's more than just that, I don't know. And the reason I don't know is that I don't really care - I'm using OpenOffice and it's fine (I don't consider myself choiceless).
A comment about Exchange - there is plenty (at least 5-10) of non-MS Exchange groupware servers that provide most of Exchange features (at least one of them is open source and almost all of them run on Linux - Stalker, Bynari, OpenExchange, etc.). And Evolution can connect to Exchange server so that the customers don't even have to use MS Outlook. Personally I don't use Microsoft's MUA (Outlook or Outlook Express) - I use a shareware MUA and I'm content with it. I don't think it's a big deal. I really don't understand why people complain about it so much - for Christ's sake, Microsoft is trying to compete and make money, that's their job. It's not like they are stealing oxygen - you don't really _have_ to use their products. When Apple doesn't want to license (not to mention open) their MP3 player (even when Real Networks wants to pay royalties), the Slashdot crowd applauds them. WTF?
The counter argument fails at the same exact point - if we assume that acutally happened (without knowing how), could you prove it happened?
VMotion (I think that's the name) is a utility that moves VMWare virtual machine from one hardware to another - I think they even migrate processes (if not, they will soon).
> You may be able to copy it, but a copy is not the original. It never has been, isn't, and never will be, by definition.
Yes, that is why it's called _copy_. On the other hand, you do know that a copy of digital information is 100% indistinguishable from its source? So it is a copy, but a verbatim one; it's impossible to tell the original and a copy apart.
Once it is possible to digitize brain signals, it will be possible to move mind around just like we do with virtual servers now. We will be able to tell it was copied, but it won't.
>> (That's free as in information, not free as in beer.)
>Actually, it's both.
Like anyone cares?
If I google around to find out date of birth of Albert Einstein, WTF do I care at what URL I find it? "Wooo! This is dot-com site, maybe they're lying!"
Bah! "Free"...
"Beer-free": I spend 4-5 hours on the Net every day and I have never paid for any info* - at worst, I had to register for free. I think the majority of people spend less time on the Net than me and have even less need for paid info.
As for the other free (the non-beer free) - I can't even state my objection to that statement since it's so ludicrous - it doesn't mean shit! And I don't believe that any of those authors has more altruistic motives than any author of commercial content. Total nonsense...
Here ya go: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emerg ent_p eople_fail_to_impress/
* I did pay for pr0n site membership and that was a great investment. And last time I checked, Wikipedia didn't do pr0n.
> True, because YOU will be dead. A copy of you might live on, but you will still be dead.
Can you define "you" (yourself)? Say, you get hacked - someone replaces your mind with a computer mind and relocates your living mind into that computer in hour head. You wake up and go about your duties as if nothing happened.
First, it's not only the price but also ease of debugging, optimization, etc. Developers' time is more valuable that couple of CPUs that you think you could scam out by going freeware.
Second, many commercial compilers allow redistribution of compiled code so you might have a single workstation with commercial compiler, get your binaries done there and then install the RPM on a 32 node cluster.
>You seem to be saying customers will abandon IBM for cheaper support. Well, that depends entirely on how good IBM's support is doesn't it?
Yes, and why would IBM's support be better than any person with Web browser and access to Google?
> A lot of companies see more than just the price, they're also looking at the quality of service, the reputation, the strength, and longevity of the company.
See, that's the whole point - we're talking about Linux, so these things (especially longevity or long-term viability of the vendor) are becoming irrelevant. Switchover cost of support vendor is nearly zero! And it isn't hard to match their support - they probably provide Level 1 support for Red Hat, so they're in the same bag like the next guy or some Red Hat reseller.
Just imagine the inconvenience of IBM going bust - who could replace the blue giant to take care of my Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Let's see: a) Red Hat b) Progeny c) HP d) Dell e) Novell (migration) f) The local reseller who actually maintains their application on that server g) A guy I met at a computer store h) A bunch of remote service providers
> Think about it: if price was the only thing that mattered, everybody would be using F/OS software now. Well they aren't.
I don't say customers chose F/OS S/W just because it's cheap(er) - Linux makes HP, Dell and IBM same and mutually replaceable. There is no differentiation - you want Oracle RAC on Linux - you can buy it from all three vendors in very similar configuration, with similar level of OS support. So what do you do? Maybe you buy from IBM for their reputation, but the next time you at least get a quote from Dell to get a discount from IBM. And finally you realize you can buy Dell because there's little difference between the two. It will be very hard for IBM to maintain service profitability with Linux OS. I'm pretty sure 80% of their service comes from their own proprietary platforms (zSeries, iSeries,,pSeries).
yes it does, and if you bothered to look at the few links they have on their home page, you would have seen you can set customized preferences which include font size setting
Sorry, pal, it's like this: 1. Slashdot is the official mountpiece of OSDN and must act as such 2. Since 50% of stories are crap, they can't allow moderation of stories because that would cause significant negative publicity
P.S. I can't believe this - I created "michael filter" not to see any of his bullshit trol/FUD postings and this one still got displayed.
All they've shown is that free software cuts licensing costs.
It isn't profitable by itself. Customers pay less to Microsoft and more to IBM (and a bit to SuSE and Red Hat) for extra services they render.
There's nothing to this - IBM replaces a generic packaged service (Microsoft's installable files) with more customized labor-intensive service (IBM's Linux services). I'm not saying Linux is same expensive or Windows is better, I'm just saying there's nothing sustainable to it.
Yeah, they are doing fine now migrating people to Linux; once they're done and people want to upgrade from kernel 2.4 to kernel 2.6, will they still need IBM? I would say 50% will do it on their own, 20% will choose other vendors (HP, local guys, etc.) and 30% will go back to IBM asking low-cost service. And they'll buy less WebSphere and DB2 licenses because Jonas/JBoss and mySQL are okay for 80% of their customers.
And what will happen when there is ONLY free software left? Will everyone make profit? I don't think so.
Well let's visit these URLs below and see who's right about the price?
1. RH EL 3.0 AS - 1,499 http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/rhel/as /? 2. Cluster Suite - 499 http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/rha/clust er/
That is the price of subscription, which means it's a yearly payment. And yes, I used an example for 4-way servers, which are common.
>Fine, With Red Hat and SuSE, you can buy it and never pay for support again and keep using it.
The same with Windows (last time I checked, it had no date of expiry).
> Or you can use other Linux versions, or roll-your-own, or etc, etc.
True, but if you run Oracle, there's nothing else you can use or else you'll void your support contract with Oracle.
> However, MS server software can _never_ have a lower TCO then Linux.
Hah! I maybe have said that Linux does not always have a lower TCO (i.e. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't). I believe that's correct and is definitively likely. Now you say Windows can _never_ have a lower TCO, which is highly improbable.
> If you really want to save money, a company can hire one or two Linux geeks and run tons of Linux software at not cost.
Yeah, like they can run 42 gazillion of sendmail instances! That's simply not the point - TCO makes sense if you can get the software do what it's supposed to do. If you run Linux just to save on TCO and lower productivity, what good does that do? For example, do you think that enterprises are stupid and use Exchange because they haven't heard of sendmail? Or they keep using it because 100-200K in licenses they paid for Exchange makes their employees more productive and pays back in 2-3 months?
Choice? You can buy Exchange, and you can use free Linux (Postfix, Exim, qmail, sendmail, etc.). That IS choice - everyone has that choice. Why do you assume Microsoft should give people a choice to either pay up for the software or to screw Microsoft up and install their software for free? Or what exactly would "choice" that Microsoft should offer their customers?
If a company has bought Exchange 5.5 five years ago, does it mean they have no choice? They can migrate to Linux tomorrow morning if they wanted to.
It's just standard geek speak - they talk a lot about "kernels" and tend to start sentences with the word "anyway" quite a bit.
So, what he also said was that if there's no differention, it's hard to have the customer comitted to a particular distribution. If switchover cost is zero, the customer chooses the cheapest distribution that does the job.
Read Sun's Paul Schwartz's blog - there's a link to Red Hat's CEO interview where he boasts how switchover cost from Red Hat Enterprise to other Linux is US$4m.
Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 has over 200 patches to the standard kernel; SuSE has something like 20. The closer Red Hat gets to the standard kernel, the easier it gets to switch to SuSE (or other Linux). And the closer they get to other Linux, the easier it gets to run Red Hat Enterprise-certified applications (such as Oracle) on Debian, which means Red Hat pays huge sums of money to Oracle for certification and, because distros are standardized, Debian and other distributions' users use that certification for free. Ultimately Red Hat can't make money and they go back to their heavily patched kernels.
Nothing to do with that - what they're saying is that IBM isn't going to be happy with Red Hat bundling (and supporting*, mind you!) J2EE application server when IBM hopes to sell WebSphere to their Linux customers.
http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/appserver/
The same for other open source packages - Red Hat _can_ decide to include them or to leave them out, all without asking IBM for their opinion.
I don't believe IBM likes the fact that Red Hat sells Jonas (well, they sell support, same shit) - if they do, then there's something wrong with them.
First, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS is $1,500 per year. Add the clustering add-on of $500/year, that's $2K a year. Over a period of four years (for example, Windows 2000 was released in 2000 so it's been around for four years and updates are free), that's $8,000. That can buy Windows 2000 Advanced Server, many CALs and a lot of non-Microsoft software for Windows (for example, one can run mySQL, Apache, PHP/Java, a 3rd party mail server, etc.)
Second, who says Windows 2003 Standard customers must use Windows clients?
> I wonder if a good part of this tendency to forgive the faults of something received for free is due to the fact that we can give it a trial run before we commit to it. We can stand before
What a nonsense! Microsoft Windows 2003 90 day trial download: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2 003/downloa ds/trialsoftware/default.mspx Now, tell me where I can download a trial version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0?
>Another reason to be more forgiving about a free solution is that the bugfix that resolves the problem isn't going to be packaged and sold as an upgrade
Sorry, pal, but commercial Linux distributions don't distribute updates (and upgrades) for free. And as a matter of fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Advanced Server with Cluster add-on will cost you $6,000 in three years (1,500 + 500 over a period of three years) - more than Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Microsoft Cluster Service. If you're talking about non-enterprise Linux, well, then I can point out to you that Windows XP updates (such as the latest SP2) are free.
When huge resources are wasted on corruption, poor investment choices, sustaining politically important investment projects, supporting failing state banks, etc. the economy can't bear that.
These things happen everywhere, but in developed democracies to a lesser extent - the more democratic a society is, the higher their efficiency.
You can tell by the way China looked before the 80's (before Deng Xiao Ping started reforming China). The growth didn't come just because people started working "harder".
>There is no redoubling of effort for no perceived gain.
Oh, well, it's not all that great. They wouldn't be that way if it all worked perfectly as you say. Many state-run businesses are the worst effort doublers (at least in the financial sense - they pour money in them) for continued negative gain (losses, that is) because they employ "the masses". Another category of effort doublers are small family owned businesses - they have nowhere to go - you just put in as many hours as you can, tighten your belt, and you can remain your own boss forever...
>As an additional caveat, they get to completely skip the industrial revolution, but get all the benefits
Well, yeah - many have no professional working attitude, little have clue about the service economy, appreciation of intellectual property is minimal, etc. They also missed out a lot.
Their approach is nothing new - Japan has done the same thing - a lot of perispiration followed by some inspiration. China is doing the same, but they're 10 times the size.
In the end, once they get developed to some reasonable extent, they're gonna hit the wall because the way their society is organized, it can't truly prosper. To make that final step, they'll need good democracy. Even Japan, where democracy doesn't work very well as far as government efficiency and handling of the recent crisis is concerned, hasn't passed that test yet!
> Has this been squashed, or can someone provide evidence to the contrary?
Who cares - if it's not significantly faster, then why even bother? For 5K one can get a 4 way x86 server that requires no maintenance contract and runs on h/w spare parts for which are available on eBay.
>random sample of the population (with IQ>110 and liberal)
At least you recognize that non-liberals constitute a part of population with IQ over 110.
Slashdot editors, on the contrary, seem to consider that to be an exclusively liberal group and that the readership can be fed leftist propaganda under the disguise of SF. The interview was created with similar purpose.
As someone said (the comment was modded Troll, of course) that article belongs to the new Slashdot topic, Politics.
"Singularity, The. The Techno-Rapture. A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it... There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity." http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/S ingularity/
There's no way a human can imagine what lies behind that horizon, so what can one expect from SF writers today?
Their leftist blather of the folks intervied is a proof they've got nothing new to tell us.
WTF is that - a conference of pro-Kerry SF writers? That s(h)ite should change their name to LocusT Magazine. A bunch of parazites. That guy Spinrad can hardly make a comment without stating his anarcho-communist views.. Poor bastard! Science fiction my ass, these guys are clueless. But hey, this is what Slashdot serves, so let's read it!
Some nonsensical statements from that pathetic interview:
> if Bush is re-elected, straight into the worst fascist shitter this country has ever experienced
Very eloquent, Norman! I might not like Bush and I might use four letter words but you don't do that in interviews, you miserable piece of shit.
>such as the comparison of copying to "theft" -- even though the former leaves a perfectly good original behind, while the latter deprives the owner of her property.
What's the fucking difference? With physical property, you use it to make money. With intellectual property, you license it. So if they don't pay, you don't make money. The same shit as if they've stolen your tractor.
>Offshore Chinese and non-resident Indians are the secret of India's and China's current booms
Wrong, it would have happened anyway. If that is the case, why did the Asian boom happen in the past 2-4 years? Because the technology makes it possible.
>The worldwide population explosion. 50-100 years from now population will have mostly stabilized at something,
Gezuz does that guy read? World population will peak sometime about 2040. Growth rates have already fallen faster than anyone was predicting five years ago. He should check some recent research on this.
>For one thing, the US is running out of troops.
Norman, Norman - I thought you are a SF writer? How about robots and shit? Gee, this guy is negating 10 years in military developments to push his views. Shameless punk.
As a person involved in selling enterprise Linux, support and consulting services, my feeling is that users who buy big quantities of enterprise Linux licenses for single (high performance computing) or few (ISPs) purposes stand to benefit most by chipping in some money to get User Linux certified for that one or two commercial apps they need. Government and research centers belong to these categories.
Say a customer with 400 cluster nodes that pays $100/node for enterprise Linux every year - $40K from one such customer could be enough to pay for User Linux certification (as it's not total cross-OS porting, it shouldn't be outrageously expensive) of that single app they use.
The last and most expensive to certify will be h/w and s/w in data center - Oracle, SAN storage, etc. so those I guess will probably be the last to worry about.
Not suprising; I hope the book's good
on
Dive Into Python
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
If writing a book like that could get me $60K a year kind of job, I'd write one for free too. (I hope the author makes enough money - I just want to point out a possible reason for doing that kind of thing).
From the article I noticed one interesting thing - his world didn't quite work out until that company chipped in some money for him to finish the thing. The same is with music and software - if it weren't for companies and/or sponsors....
Just in case the site crashes, you should be able to get the book via eMule( "diveintopython" the current version is 5.4.)
Slashdot Mirror
>From my experience at 3 fortune 500 companies, Linux increased productivity for the admins with less work.
From someone else's experience that may be different.
I'm just saying that's not 100% the case - if people ask you to recommend the best OS for their particular purpose, you always say "Linux!", then you've got a problem.
> Huh? Now you sound like an MS FUD master
Wow wow wow! Our company is entirely Linux-based, we don't have a single Windows server. But I do dislike generalization and unfair accusations. Yes, Microsoft deserves critique, but it's not totally bad.
> Sendmail is not meant for corporate communication with calendar, etc. There are plenty of products to replace MS Exchange like ones from Novell/SuSE and IBM.
So we're talking about commercial software now. Okay - Domino/Notes has a Windows version too - this is what I've been saying all along - there's no reason for companies to use Exchange - there are many choices (for example - Domino/Notes on Windows or Domino/Notes on Linux) which you obviously agree with.
> Where did I say people "screw Microsoft up and install their software for free"? Nothing like making up points when you don't have a vailid argument.
No you didn't say that, but short of that outrageous step, what other choice can they offer? You don't have to buy Windows - there's Solaris, there's Linux, their's OS X, etc.. Even if they do use Windows, they don't have to use Exchange.
> How about MS opening up the MS doc formats so customers can use MS Office or other office suites?
Well it's common sense that if you're #1 you don't want to open your formats. Once Linux catches up, they'll open their format. I understand Windows source is available to corporations (not only governments) and Office too has been open to governments that asked for it. Perhaps there's more than just that, I don't know. And the reason I don't know is that I don't really care - I'm using OpenOffice and it's fine (I don't consider myself choiceless).
A comment about Exchange - there is plenty (at least 5-10) of non-MS Exchange groupware servers that provide most of Exchange features (at least one of them is open source and almost all of them run on Linux - Stalker, Bynari, OpenExchange, etc.).
And Evolution can connect to Exchange server so that the customers don't even have to use MS Outlook.
Personally I don't use Microsoft's MUA (Outlook or Outlook Express) - I use a shareware MUA and I'm content with it.
I don't think it's a big deal. I really don't understand why people complain about it so much - for Christ's sake, Microsoft is trying to compete and make money, that's their job. It's not like they are stealing oxygen - you don't really _have_ to use their products.
When Apple doesn't want to license (not to mention open) their MP3 player (even when Real Networks wants to pay royalties), the Slashdot crowd applauds them. WTF?
The counter argument fails at the same exact point - if we assume that acutally happened (without knowing how), could you prove it happened?
VMotion (I think that's the name) is a utility that moves VMWare virtual machine from one hardware to another - I think they even migrate processes (if not, they will soon).
> You may be able to copy it, but a copy is not the original. It never has been, isn't, and never will be, by definition.
Yes, that is why it's called _copy_.
On the other hand, you do know that a copy of digital information is 100% indistinguishable from its source? So it is a copy, but a verbatim one; it's impossible to tell the original and a copy apart.
Once it is possible to digitize brain signals, it will be possible to move mind around just like we do with virtual servers now. We will be able to tell it was copied, but it won't.
>> (That's free as in information, not free as in beer.)
g ent_p eople_fail_to_impress/
>Actually, it's both.
Like anyone cares?
If I google around to find out date of birth of Albert Einstein, WTF do I care at what URL I find it?
"Wooo! This is dot-com site, maybe they're lying!"
Bah! "Free"...
"Beer-free": I spend 4-5 hours on the Net every day and I have never paid for any info* - at worst, I had to register for free. I think the majority of people spend less time on the Net than me and have even less need for paid info.
As for the other free (the non-beer free) - I can't even state my objection to that statement since it's so ludicrous - it doesn't mean shit!
And I don't believe that any of those authors has more altruistic motives than any author of commercial content. Total nonsense...
Here ya go:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emer
* I did pay for pr0n site membership and that was a great investment. And last time I checked, Wikipedia didn't do pr0n.
> True, because YOU will be dead. A copy of you might live on, but you will still be dead.
Can you define "you" (yourself)? Say, you get hacked - someone replaces your mind with a computer mind and relocates your living mind into that computer in hour head. You wake up and go about your duties as if nothing happened.
How do you know you are not you?
Nonsense!
First, it's not only the price but also ease of debugging, optimization, etc. Developers' time is more valuable that couple of CPUs that you think you could scam out by going freeware.
Second, many commercial compilers allow redistribution of compiled code so you might have a single workstation with commercial compiler, get your binaries done there and then install the RPM on a 32 node cluster.
>You're not making any sense.
,pSeries).
Not ANY sense at all? Ouch!
PARTS of what you say doesn't make sense.
>You seem to be saying customers will abandon IBM for cheaper support. Well, that depends entirely on how good IBM's support is doesn't it?
Yes, and why would IBM's support be better than any person with Web browser and access to Google?
> A lot of companies see more than just the price, they're also looking at the quality of service, the reputation, the strength, and longevity of the company.
See, that's the whole point - we're talking about Linux, so these things (especially longevity or long-term viability of the vendor) are becoming irrelevant. Switchover cost of support vendor is nearly zero! And it isn't hard to match their support - they probably provide Level 1 support for Red Hat, so they're in the same bag like the next guy or some Red Hat reseller.
Just imagine the inconvenience of IBM going bust - who could replace the blue giant to take care of my Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Let's see:
a) Red Hat
b) Progeny
c) HP
d) Dell
e) Novell (migration)
f) The local reseller who actually maintains their application on that server
g) A guy I met at a computer store
h) A bunch of remote service providers
> Think about it: if price was the only thing that mattered, everybody would be using F/OS software now. Well they aren't.
I don't say customers chose F/OS S/W just because it's cheap(er) - Linux makes HP, Dell and IBM same and mutually replaceable. There is no differentiation - you want Oracle RAC on Linux - you can buy it from all three vendors in very similar configuration, with similar level of OS support. So what do you do? Maybe you buy from IBM for their reputation, but the next time you at least get a quote from Dell to get a discount from IBM. And finally you realize you can buy Dell because there's little difference between the two.
It will be very hard for IBM to maintain service profitability with Linux OS. I'm pretty sure 80% of their service comes from their own proprietary platforms (zSeries, iSeries,
yes it does, and if you bothered to look at the few links they have on their home page, you would have seen you can set customized preferences which include font size setting
Oh, well...
Sorry, pal, it's like this:
1. Slashdot is the official mountpiece of OSDN and must act as such
2. Since 50% of stories are crap, they can't allow moderation of stories because that would cause significant negative publicity
P.S. I can't believe this - I created "michael filter" not to see any of his bullshit trol/FUD postings and this one still got displayed.
All they've shown is that free software cuts licensing costs.
It isn't profitable by itself. Customers pay less to Microsoft and more to IBM (and a bit to SuSE and Red Hat) for extra services they render.
There's nothing to this - IBM replaces a generic packaged service (Microsoft's installable files) with more customized labor-intensive service (IBM's Linux services). I'm not saying Linux is same expensive or Windows is better, I'm just saying there's nothing sustainable to it.
Yeah, they are doing fine now migrating people to Linux; once they're done and people want to upgrade from kernel 2.4 to kernel 2.6, will they still need IBM? I would say 50% will do it on their own, 20% will choose other vendors (HP, local guys, etc.) and 30% will go back to IBM asking low-cost service. And they'll buy less WebSphere and DB2 licenses because Jonas/JBoss and mySQL are okay for 80% of their customers.
And what will happen when there is ONLY free software left? Will everyone make profit? I don't think so.
Well let's visit these URLs below and see who's right about the price?
s /?t er/
1. RH EL 3.0 AS - 1,499
http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/rhel/a
2. Cluster Suite - 499
http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/rha/clus
That is the price of subscription, which means it's a yearly payment. And yes, I used an example for 4-way servers, which are common.
>Fine, With Red Hat and SuSE, you can buy it and never pay for support again and keep using it.
The same with Windows (last time I checked, it had no date of expiry).
> Or you can use other Linux versions, or roll-your-own, or etc, etc.
True, but if you run Oracle, there's nothing else you can use or else you'll void your support contract with Oracle.
> However, MS server software can _never_ have a lower TCO then Linux.
Hah! I maybe have said that Linux does not always have a lower TCO (i.e. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't). I believe that's correct and is definitively likely. Now you say Windows can _never_ have a lower TCO, which is highly improbable.
> If you really want to save money, a company can hire one or two Linux geeks and run tons of Linux software at not cost.
Yeah, like they can run 42 gazillion of sendmail instances!
That's simply not the point - TCO makes sense if you can get the software do what it's supposed to do. If you run Linux just to save on TCO and lower productivity, what good does that do?
For example, do you think that enterprises are stupid and use Exchange because they haven't heard of sendmail? Or they keep using it because 100-200K in licenses they paid for Exchange makes their employees more productive and pays back in 2-3 months?
Choice? You can buy Exchange, and you can use free Linux (Postfix, Exim, qmail, sendmail, etc.).
That IS choice - everyone has that choice. Why do you assume Microsoft should give people a choice to either pay up for the software or to screw Microsoft up and install their software for free?
Or what exactly would "choice" that Microsoft should offer their customers?
If a company has bought Exchange 5.5 five years ago, does it mean they have no choice? They can migrate to Linux tomorrow morning if they wanted to.
It's just standard geek speak - they talk a lot about "kernels" and tend to start sentences with the word "anyway" quite a bit.
So, what he also said was that if there's no differention, it's hard to have the customer comitted to a particular distribution. If switchover cost is zero, the customer chooses the cheapest distribution that does the job.
Read Sun's Paul Schwartz's blog - there's a link to Red Hat's CEO interview where he boasts how switchover cost from Red Hat Enterprise to other Linux is US$4m.
Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 has over 200 patches to the standard kernel; SuSE has something like 20.
The closer Red Hat gets to the standard kernel, the easier it gets to switch to SuSE (or other Linux). And the closer they get to other Linux, the easier it gets to run Red Hat Enterprise-certified applications (such as Oracle) on Debian, which means Red Hat pays huge sums of money to Oracle for certification and, because distros are standardized, Debian and other distributions' users use that certification for free. Ultimately Red Hat can't make money and they go back to their heavily patched kernels.
Nothing to do with that - what they're saying is that IBM isn't going to be happy with Red Hat bundling (and supporting*, mind you!) J2EE application server when IBM hopes to sell WebSphere to their Linux customers.
http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/appserver/
The same for other open source packages - Red Hat _can_ decide to include them or to leave them out, all without asking IBM for their opinion.
I don't believe IBM likes the fact that Red Hat sells Jonas (well, they sell support, same shit) - if they do, then there's something wrong with them.
Mr. Crackhead,
First, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS is $1,500 per year. Add the clustering add-on of $500/year, that's $2K a year. Over a period of four years (for example, Windows 2000 was released in 2000 so it's been around for four years and updates are free), that's $8,000. That can buy Windows 2000 Advanced Server, many CALs and a lot of non-Microsoft software for Windows (for example, one can run mySQL, Apache, PHP/Java, a 3rd party mail server, etc.)
Second, who says Windows 2003 Standard customers must use Windows clients?
Linux User
> I wonder if a good part of this tendency to forgive the faults of something received for free is due to the fact that we can give it a trial run before we commit to it. We can stand before
2 003/downloa ds/trialsoftware/default.mspx
What a nonsense!
Microsoft Windows 2003 90 day trial download:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver
Now, tell me where I can download a trial version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0?
>Another reason to be more forgiving about a free solution is that the bugfix that resolves the problem isn't going to be packaged and sold as an upgrade
Sorry, pal, but commercial Linux distributions don't distribute updates (and upgrades) for free.
And as a matter of fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Advanced Server with Cluster add-on will cost you $6,000 in three years (1,500 + 500 over a period of three years) - more than Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Microsoft Cluster Service.
If you're talking about non-enterprise Linux, well, then I can point out to you that Windows XP updates (such as the latest SP2) are free.
When huge resources are wasted on corruption, poor investment choices, sustaining politically important investment projects, supporting failing state banks, etc. the economy can't bear that.
These things happen everywhere, but in developed democracies to a lesser extent - the more democratic a society is, the higher their efficiency.
You can tell by the way China looked before the 80's (before Deng Xiao Ping started reforming China). The growth didn't come just because people started working "harder".
Just another in a line of Microsoft-bashing articles...
Why doesn't the post ask "What did Sun have in mind"? Is that because they haven't got one or because they're less Linux-hostile?
More of the same - the usual FUD strategy in OS wars, this time employed by Slashdot.
>There is no redoubling of effort for no perceived gain.
Oh, well, it's not all that great. They wouldn't be that way if it all worked perfectly as you say.
Many state-run businesses are the worst effort doublers (at least in the financial sense - they pour money in them) for continued negative gain (losses, that is) because they employ "the masses".
Another category of effort doublers are small family owned businesses - they have nowhere to go - you just put in as many hours as you can, tighten your belt, and you can remain your own boss forever...
>As an additional caveat, they get to completely skip the industrial revolution, but get all the benefits
Well, yeah - many have no professional working attitude, little have clue about the service economy, appreciation of intellectual property is minimal, etc. They also missed out a lot.
Their approach is nothing new - Japan has done the same thing - a lot of perispiration followed by some inspiration. China is doing the same, but they're 10 times the size.
In the end, once they get developed to some reasonable extent, they're gonna hit the wall because the way their society is organized, it can't truly prosper. To make that final step, they'll need good democracy. Even Japan, where democracy doesn't work very well as far as government efficiency and handling of the recent crisis is concerned, hasn't passed that test yet!
> Has this been squashed, or can someone provide evidence to the contrary?
Who cares - if it's not significantly faster, then why even bother?
For 5K one can get a 4 way x86 server that requires no maintenance contract and runs on h/w spare parts for which are available on eBay.
Yes, I've seen Wharton's comments.
>random sample of the population (with IQ>110 and liberal)
At least you recognize that non-liberals constitute a part of population with IQ over 110.
Slashdot editors, on the contrary, seem to consider that to be an exclusively liberal group and that the readership can be fed leftist propaganda under the disguise of SF. The interview was created with similar purpose.
As someone said (the comment was modded Troll, of course) that article belongs to the new Slashdot topic, Politics.
No, it's a known fact
S ingularity/
"Singularity, The. The Techno-Rapture. A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it... There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity."
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/
There's no way a human can imagine what lies behind that horizon, so what can one expect from SF writers today?
Their leftist blather of the folks intervied is a proof they've got nothing new to tell us.
WTF is that - a conference of pro-Kerry SF writers?
That s(h)ite should change their name to LocusT Magazine. A bunch of parazites.
That guy Spinrad can hardly make a comment without stating his anarcho-communist views.. Poor bastard! Science fiction my ass, these guys are clueless. But hey, this is what Slashdot serves, so let's read it!
Some nonsensical statements from that pathetic interview:
> if Bush is re-elected, straight into the worst fascist shitter this country has ever experienced
Very eloquent, Norman!
I might not like Bush and I might use four letter words but you don't do that in interviews, you miserable piece of shit.
>such as the comparison of copying to "theft" -- even though the former leaves a perfectly good original behind, while the latter deprives the owner of her property.
What's the fucking difference? With physical property, you use it to make money. With intellectual property, you license it.
So if they don't pay, you don't make money. The same shit as if they've stolen your tractor.
>Offshore Chinese and non-resident Indians are the secret of India's and China's current booms
Wrong, it would have happened anyway.
If that is the case, why did the Asian boom happen in the past 2-4 years? Because the technology makes it possible.
>The worldwide population explosion. 50-100 years from now population will have mostly stabilized at something,
Gezuz does that guy read? World population will peak sometime about 2040. Growth rates have already fallen faster than anyone was predicting five years ago. He should check some recent research on this.
>For one thing, the US is running out of troops.
Norman, Norman - I thought you are a SF writer? How about robots and shit? Gee, this guy is negating 10 years in military developments to push his views. Shameless punk.
>it is up to the people weather they want to watch it or something made by more mature people.
Indeed - I prefer to watch pr0n made by mature people (but not too mature - preferably between 20 and 30 years of age)!
As a person involved in selling enterprise Linux, support and consulting services, my feeling is that users who buy big quantities of enterprise Linux licenses for single (high performance computing) or few (ISPs) purposes stand to benefit most by chipping in some money to get User Linux certified for that one or two commercial apps they need.
Government and research centers belong to these categories.
Say a customer with 400 cluster nodes that pays $100/node for enterprise Linux every year - $40K from one such customer could be enough to pay for User Linux certification (as it's not total cross-OS porting, it shouldn't be outrageously expensive) of that single app they use.
The last and most expensive to certify will be h/w and s/w in data center - Oracle, SAN storage, etc. so those I guess will probably be the last to worry about.
If writing a book like that could get me $60K a year kind of job, I'd write one for free too.
(I hope the author makes enough money - I just want to point out a possible reason for doing that kind of thing).
From the article I noticed one interesting thing - his world didn't quite work out until that company chipped in some money for him to finish the thing.
The same is with music and software - if it weren't for companies and/or sponsors....
Just in case the site crashes, you should be able to get the book via eMule( "diveintopython" the current version is 5.4.)
Great news for HP - they must be laughing their asses off!
This is interesting news in relation to HP vs. Dell (Lexmark, that is) printer war.
Dell wants to screw up HP by selling directly cheap(er) printers that are supposedly as good as HP's. Well, that's obviously not entirely true.
HP laser printers aren't cheap, but they're good.
The question is can Dell find a supplier that can equal HP in quality and newest technology?