Most benchmarks, if not all benchmarks, are flawed anyway. Whether someone optimized one thing or didn't optimize another, or something else.
The point here was not to put a bad spin on Linux, and its ability to do 3D graphics, but to try and sell their product. If they felt that using Corel Linux as the comparison was going to accomplish that, well, that's their choice. I think that they were mostly trying to show that they would be a better gaming and graphics machine than Windows, which they did.
Sure, the results from the Linux Games article reflected the differences between up to date Linux and Windows better, but what can you expect. Anyone who is going to the site to look at the results is more likely to compare Be to its competitors rather than its competitors to each other, there are other sites to do that.
Frankly, they were probably just testing out of the box installations anyway. Although most of the other distros of Linux have more up to date stuff than Corel, it is perfectly legitimet to use it over (pick your favorite distro).
I appologize if my comments about HP-UX offended you, but as I said I have not heard much about it. The little experience I have had with it is a relatively underpowered 7 year old machine that sits in the corner of the lab collecting dust. We stopped buying support for it when it became rediculously expensive. My primary experience with UNIX is TRU64 on XP1000s,Solaris 7 and 8 on Ultra 1's, 10's and an Ultra 60, and IRIX 6.5 on a Challenge 10000. You are correct that Linux has quite a long way before it can reach the power, robustness, and the many other great qualities of UNIX. Unfortunately one must look at what is happening right now in the industry. SGI is killing IRIX, and what are they moving to, Linux. Why, because there is money in that industry right now. Capital that they desparely need. I don't like the idea that IRIX is dieing, but it is the truth. SCO UNIXWare is faltering to Linux, it may not be the most popular UNIX but it is still better than Linux. Who's next? Is it Tru64? Compaq just made an alliance with TurboLinux, and from my experience with Tru64, Compaq seems to care less and less about it. They are releasing minor patch fixes, and minor updates in software. I would much rather Tru64 stay alive because that is where i do most of my physics symulations on. Linux has major problems with the software that we use for our symulations.
I was just speculating. Again, I appologize if it offended you.
I had not seen any of the articles mentioned that Microsoft had turned in their request for appeal. Thank you for clearing up the question that I had posted but had gotten lost in the shuffle. I thought it seemed somewhat strange that the Court of Appeals would do something like that, but with no proof otherwise (until now), I was relying on what I knew.
The fact that they did not jump the gun changes how I view the way the Court of Appeals is dealing with this case.
I agree that Microsoft has the right to a fair trial, but that does not mean that pushing this directly to the Supreme Court denies said right. The DOJ and Jackson seem to trying to bypass the Court of Appeals for distinct reasons, I am not in their head so I'm just speculating, perhaps they have lost faith in their ability to to rule on issues of this nature. Maybe the DOJ and Jackson are trying to save the tax payers money or allow the computer industry to know what the virdict is without dealing with 2-3 more years of trial. The Court of Appeals have sided with Microsoft in two other cases. Perhaps the DOJ and Judge Jackson think they are as biased towards Microsoft as Judge Jackson is biased against them. Perhaps by moving this directly to the Supreme Court both sides will finally have an impartial decision.
I am currently working with both XP1000s running Tru64 and Ultra 1's and Ultra 10's running Solaris 7 and Solaris 8. Although I agree that Tru64 is mature, stable and reliable, my experience with the two is that Solaris is better cared for by Sun than Tru64 is by Compaq. Perhaps you have had a different experience than I, but I have found that there are more programs are created for Solaris and then modified to work with Tru64 later, and in some cases almost as if it were just thrown together.
I don't want it to disappear anytime soon, it works fine for my high energy physics research, although not all of my collegues have the same luck. All of the software we run were created on Sun boxes and not all of them have been ported to Tru64, I'm just lucky that the ones that I need have been.
The reason that I think that this might be the beginning of the end of Tru64 is that with Compaq openly supporting Linux on the Alphas, Linux will take some of the would be Tru64 users away. That along with it competing directly against Solaris in quite a few markets may cause Compaq to think about whether or not keeping it is cost effective.
I don't think that Tru64 will be going out anytime soon, but this might be the first of many moves towards its death.
Although MS does not go to Judge Jackson to ask for an appeal they do need to file for appeal, which they did not do. What MS has filed was the stay on the final decision from Judge Jackson. They only submitted the stay to Judge Jackson and not to the Court Of Appeals, yet, nor have they submitted the request for the appeal.
From some of the other news sources that I have read, MS was currently working on said paper work but it had not been turned in yet. It seemed that they were hoping that Judge Jackson would grant a stay on the decision before they even asked for appeal, why, ask a lawyer. Judge Jackson remarked earlier today that he would hold his judgement on the stay until they had filed for appeal.
From what I can tell coyote-san is correct in saying that the Court of Appeals took on the appeal before it was filed. They knew that MS was going to appeal, but US law says that there must be good reason for appeal before an appeal can be granted. If MS did not file a motion for appeal then they could not have submitted a good reason for appeal, ergo no appeal should be granted. This move by the Court of Appeals seems to say that they believe that there is a reason for appeal, therefore their opinion is most likely biased at this point.
MS is moreso legally bound to act fairly in the market.
Just because Jackson didn't stay the sanctions, or at least hasn't given word on it yet last I heard, doesn't mean that they have to play fair, yet.
The appeals court can stay the sanctions just as easily as Judge Jackson can. Not only that but the sanctions do not come into effect until 90 days, or is it 60 days, after the trial.
Microsoft doesn't have to do anything right now if it doesn't want to. Luckly for us they probably don't want to do anything foolish, like do what they were doing before the trial, for it will only hurt them.
I just read on www.thestandard.com that Judge Jackson was going to hold out on the request for a stay on the "final judgement" until Microsoft had filed its notice of appeal.
Could someone clue me into what is going on here? One minute I am reading that the appeals court has taken the case then next I am hearing that Microsoft hasn't even submitted its notice for appeal!
Just to point out some history. The "Findings of the Facts" on anti-trust cases have never been overturned. This puts Microsoft at a significant disadvantage. Unfortunately they have shown to do better in the appeals courts.
Call me a pessimist but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
One major problem with space colonies is artificial gravity. Without gravity the human body deteriates, the bones reject calcium and become very brittle and muscles attriphy. Sure we can simulate gravity by creating angular velocity to cause the frame that one would be on to experience centrifugal and centripetal forces but right now that is quite the pipe dream.
Think not? Well look at the rate the ISS is going up, and the design of the thing. Not to mention its expected life span, if everything went up on time, is 5 years! Sure we have the technology, and the money but unfortunately the people are unwilling, uninformed, apathetic, or just stupid. Not to mention, at this point all of the money that is going towards a big space project is going towards the ISS.
I would love it if the government were to support more scientific research, and huge engineering projects like building space colonies. Unfortunately the government doesn't seem too interested in what could be created from that. They seem to have forgotten that Tang wasn't the only thing that came from the space program. Microprocessors and certain plastics are just two major advances that came from the Apollo program alone.
That and the fact that the people are too interested in scandels and eye candy issues to notice the importance of science, or they fear it. Don't forget that last year the Kansas school board banning the teaching of evolution as truth.
The US is a great country, but it has some fundamental flaws that need to be overcome before we can truely do what needs to be done.
By the way, Washington DC still has one of the highest, if not the highest, murder rates in the US. Funny thing though, unless you given specific permission by the government it is illegal to own or have a firearm in DC. Also, NY has a very high murder rate and they banned handguns and made it a pain in the *** to own a firearm..
Oh, a good place to look, and contribute if you really feel that space travel and colonization is as important as I think it is is the Mars Society. www.marssociety.org. At a recent speech of theirs that I went to they were discussing a private attempt to fund a manned trip to Mars. Cool stuff.
Well, there are more than two left in the struggle right now. Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and TRU64 are all the different flavors that I can think of off hand, unless we count Project Monterey.
My bet would be for HP-UX to continue until the PA-RISC chip is finally killed, which has already been scheduled.
TRU64 might be the next to go, do to the fact that I don't think Compaq is too thrilled to have it. I worked on several XP1000's in a physics lab that I was working in, and although they were still keeping it up, to the first approx, it seemed like it they weren't trying very hard to improve it. A good example is CDE, although Solaris still uses CDE they are constantly trying to improve it. CDE 1.4 in Solaris 8 is quite an improvement over 1.3 in Solaris 7 (I have to use both so trust me on this one). But even CDE 1.3 on Solaris 7 is better than the CDE on TRU64.
Also considering a comparison between features in TRU64 compared to Linux... I think that TRU64 is very close to getting the ax.
I think that the final two flavors that will battle it out in the end will be AIX and Solaris. Unlike when Sun started in them market and IBM ignored them, to the first approx, Sun is keeping close watch on Linux and is not just going to sit there and let it take their hard won market share.
I'm still curious about the splash that Project Monterey will make when it gets released.
First, that was more than a year ago, and I can guarentee you that Sun is not that close to a linux shift. They aquired a x86 UNIX company more than a year ago and have had them work on making x86 Solaris better.
One problem with Solaris is that it is definately not a home user OS in any sense of the word. That does not mean that for workstations and servers it isn't a marvelous choice.
Sparc Linux may be great but can it scale up to 64 processors? How about 1024 when the Ultra 3 processor comes out? Sun is not as close to a switch as you might think.
SCO may be doomed, but they aren't the first UNIX in the past year and a half to find that their OS is no longer a competative product. You mentioned SGI, who is slowly killing IRIX and porting its best features to Linux, who is giving up on the MIPS processor, and who sold Cray to a company that is now calling themselves Cray.
Although you may think that SGI is not doomed but they are turning themselves into another x86 vendor. They may have really nifty motherboards but the price that they have been charging is outragous.
I think that the next UNIX to fall will be either HP-UX, or TRU64. HP-UX still exists (last I checked), but I never hear anything about it. I do know that HP has set a time table for killing off their PA-RISC chip, it will be a while, but still.
Linux has started another *NIX war that is killing off the different flavors of *NIX that aren't fit for survival anymore. It happened in the early 90's but the fires of old have been rekindled by the newcomer. In the dieing thoughs of these companies they are trying to embrace to survive, and all that will do is make Linux stronger.
I see SCO embracing Linux as being a potentially great thing. Like SGI starting to give Linux XFS, I have a feeling that SCO will provide Linux with many great tools that will help it grow strong.
Anyway, we have yet to see what SCO/IBM's Project Monterey will bring for them. They might be doomed but there might be some life left in them yet.
(Quick question: Does anyone know if the Michaels are still running SCO?)
I am probably repeating some information here but here is a url to a news article on Eazel. It isn't exactly the most recent but it will give some of the people here an idea of who is working on this project.
Finally I can create that underwater kingdom that I have always wanted and still be able to connect to the net (well to the first approx. considering the last time I connected to anything with speeds that slow was ~9 years ago). Now I just need to figure out how to create the underwater kingdom part.
I agree with your summing up, but now that they have proposed it, Debian is almost required to accept the resolution. My reasons are as such:
If, in a government certain rights are given as fundamental. Then these rights are restricted for the greater good of the people until said time when the ability to exercise said rights becomes available it becomes the duty of said government to remove those restrictions. This is the same sort of deal that Debian is going through. The basis for the distro is for an entirely free distro, no strings attached. Although Debian needed a good portion of non-free utilities to be usable to a larger community at first, a number of free alternatives to these non-free components have arrisen (to the first approx.). Not all of these alternatives are completely stable, or even close to the non-free version, but they do exist. Therefore the removal of said packages must be exercised.
Perhaps they can reach a settlement of, if no free alternative exists then it stays, like JDK.
I personally am not happy with the idea of no non-free packages in the primary Debian distro, but I understand. One of the reasons I use Debian is the ability to go to one place to find all of the packages that I need. If this proposition is passed then I will need to go searching for other sites that have what I need. Oh well, I can deal with adding a couple more links in my sources file.
At this point MS has lost, plain and simple. Even if this is overturned, the earliest that could happen is at least a year from now, during which time footholds into the industry have already made by companies that MS either can't buy or can't flat out destroy. Now, I have seen MS turn out great products when they desparately need to, NT3.51 and Excel 95 are good examples, but right now their ship is sinking and from what I can tell there is nothing they can do about it.
My reasoning is as such.
Web appliences and laptops running linux are either out there or will be in short order. PalmOS has taken over the PDA market. Apple has started to retake what they lost and then some, while linux keeps draining the power users from Windows. We can now buy PC's without Windows on it.
The number one web server is Apache, and considering Sun released IPlanet free with your free copy of Solaris 8 (so long as you have >=16 processors). While linux has the number two position for lower-midsize servers, and the UNICES have the upper end. With linux and Solaris 8 both free, along with web server technology they just did to MS what MS did to Netscape with IE, drop the price of the product to zero. The same thing is happening with office products, StarOffice is free and when gOffice grows up it will be too. I already know one very large company that has decided that supporting all of the licences of MS Office takes too much money and is switching over to StarOffice.
Java programers are starting to pop up like weeds, and although MS just won an appeal in the Java case the number of MS friendly developers is on the decline. When Java has the support of Sun, IBM, Apple, and a whole host of other companies their ability to corrupt has dropped significantly, so long as those companies stay true to the write once run anywhere.
On top of this, MS keeps making enemies when it desparately needs friends. They don't want OEM's shipping full version of their OS, and are therefore telling them to create "repair" cds. The price for an office to licence MS Office continues to skyrocket. Even the student prices of their products are outragious. I see my fellow engineering and physics students abondoning MS at increasingly larger rates.
On top of all this while MS drags this thing through the appeals process they have one hand tied behind their backs because they know if they make more extremely aggressive moves they will only hurt their chances of winning.
Frankly, IMHO breaking them up is the best thing for MS. They will have a better chance of staying competative as separate companies.
Think of it as Judge Jackson's interpretation of M$'s marketing "Where do you want to go today?" Considering some of us take it to actually be "How do you want to crash today?"...
I am currently a physics undergrad at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Right now I am part of a HEP research group which is working with theoretical approaches to solving the the problems with the Standard Model, more specifically we are dealing with Supersymmetry.
I have two questions.
1) Do you believe that supersymmetry is the most likely answer to the problems with the Standard Model, and why?
2) Will you be at the NLC meeting in March? And do you think that the NLC will get funded?
For those who don't know, the Standard Model describes all the elementary particles and the forces between them. Unfortunately the model is flawed, there is the need for something called the Higgs field to allow for the particles to have mass, this introduces the Higgs boson which is where the problem is. Put simply, using the Standard Model the Higgs boson has infinite mass.
Although this is not an uncommon thought to have about natural selection and humans it is not true, just ask any biologist or evolutionary psychologist. In a basic biology class one learns that if a organism is "unfit" for its environment then it fails to reproduce before it dies thereby removing it from the gene-pool. Unfortunately the only context that are ever used are ones dealing with strength, speed, camoflauge (sp?), and other things that deal with a somewhat "natural" surrounding.
Humans are evolving, the important thing to understand is what our environment actually IS! We are not evolving to survive in the jungle, forrest, desert, or plains, instead we are adapting to an artifically created environment, but more importantly we are evolving to survive within our culture. You say that we have no method to weed out the "weak", but what classifies "weak" in our world?
There is a good book, which I haven't finished yet, called Children of Prometheus by Christopher Wills. He sites some very good research about the subject, and, from what I have read, does a very good job with analysis.
From my experience here at college, those who have access to Napster are more likely of buying CD's. Of course the CD's they are buying are generally gold colored on one side and anywhere from a yellowish-green to a blue-green color on the other side and come in packs of 100.
Actually, I do know a couple people who do use Napster to sample before they buy the actual CD. These are also generally the people who have REALLY expensive, very accurate sound systems who are music snobs. For the most part though, everyone makes their own, but we all know that.
>But it's ironic, eh? I see a bunch of people decidedly anti-MS, pro-AOL on this issue. 3 years aho, who woulda thought AOL'd be recieving/. support?;)
Three years ago, more like 6 months ago. I still fry every AOL CD in the microwave but the idea that I am rooting for them scares me when I realize what I am doing.
Funny what happens when one giant takes on another. Sadly, I believe that unless AOL releases their source I don't think they will win this one. MS will just remove AOL from the desktop, place their messenger on, and make it so you have to registry hack in order to remove the thing. By doing that, and keeping greater than 80% of the desktop market they will most likely win.
I hate pixmap fonts. It would be very nice if Apple let XFree86 use TrueType. Perhaps it is time to ask SGI to be so kind as to donate their vector based graphical technology and help Linux encorperate it and make it standard. Then we really wouldn't have to worry too much about fonts and scalability. Vector based fonts are much nicer than TrueType fonts.
Until then lets hope Apple decides to play well with others.
Funny, yes, but the Ultra III processor isn't TOO far away from release.:) I would like to see the G4 just TRY and compete with the Ultra III. I think it the speed difference would be funnier.
right now is the x86 but in a couple of years that could change drastically. I don't think PPC will be the main processor, but frankly if Linux continues to develop and change the market like it is I don't think that there will be a primary chipset for Linux in a couple of years.
Right now Linux is kind of like the Java of OS's. Where Java is supposed to work on any OS, Linux seems to work on any type of processor. I think this will continue to happen as people have different needs. In a couple of years it may become fairly standard to be able to walk into a store and have Intel, PPC, Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS all lined up with different types of Linux on them all ready for different workloads. Just a thought.
Sun's confidential files are postscript and SGML NOT doc's. In fact only people who need to do presentations or compatibility with networking are allowed to use MS products in the work place at Sun, even then they are severly restricted to what they can use. I would guess that Sun will be moving over to StarOffice soon though.
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Most benchmarks, if not all benchmarks, are flawed anyway. Whether someone optimized one thing or didn't optimize another, or something else.
The point here was not to put a bad spin on Linux, and its ability to do 3D graphics, but to try and sell their product. If they felt that using Corel Linux as the comparison was going to accomplish that, well, that's their choice. I think that they were mostly trying to show that they would be a better gaming and graphics machine than Windows, which they did.
Sure, the results from the Linux Games article reflected the differences between up to date Linux and Windows better, but what can you expect. Anyone who is going to the site to look at the results is more likely to compare Be to its competitors rather than its competitors to each other, there are other sites to do that.
Frankly, they were probably just testing out of the box installations anyway. Although most of the other distros of Linux have more up to date stuff than Corel, it is perfectly legitimet to use it over (pick your favorite distro).
Anyway, just my two cents.
I appologize if my comments about HP-UX offended you, but as I said I have not heard much about it. The little experience I have had with it is a relatively underpowered 7 year old machine that sits in the corner of the lab collecting dust. We stopped buying support for it when it became rediculously expensive. My primary experience with UNIX is TRU64 on XP1000s,Solaris 7 and 8 on Ultra 1's, 10's and an Ultra 60, and IRIX 6.5 on a Challenge 10000. You are correct that Linux has quite a long way before it can reach the power, robustness, and the many other great qualities of UNIX.
Unfortunately one must look at what is happening right now in the industry. SGI is killing IRIX, and what are they moving to, Linux. Why, because there is money in that industry right now. Capital that they desparely need. I don't like the idea that IRIX is dieing, but it is the truth. SCO UNIXWare is faltering to Linux, it may not be the most popular UNIX but it is still better than Linux. Who's next? Is it Tru64? Compaq just made an alliance with TurboLinux, and from my experience with Tru64, Compaq seems to care less and less about it. They are releasing minor patch fixes, and minor updates in software. I would much rather Tru64 stay alive because that is where i do most of my physics symulations on. Linux has major problems with the software that we use for our symulations.
I was just speculating. Again, I appologize if it offended you.
I had not seen any of the articles mentioned that Microsoft had turned in their request for appeal. Thank you for clearing up the question that I had posted but had gotten lost in the shuffle. I thought it seemed somewhat strange that the Court of Appeals would do something like that, but with no proof otherwise (until now), I was relying on what I knew.
The fact that they did not jump the gun changes how I view the way the Court of Appeals is dealing with this case.
I agree that Microsoft has the right to a fair trial, but that does not mean that pushing this directly to the Supreme Court denies said right. The DOJ and Jackson seem to trying to bypass the Court of Appeals for distinct reasons, I am not in their head so I'm just speculating, perhaps they have lost faith in their ability to to rule on issues of this nature. Maybe the DOJ and Jackson are trying to save the tax payers money or allow the computer industry to know what the virdict is without dealing with 2-3 more years of trial.
The Court of Appeals have sided with Microsoft in two other cases. Perhaps the DOJ and Judge Jackson think they are as biased towards Microsoft as Judge Jackson is biased against them. Perhaps by moving this directly to the Supreme Court both sides will finally have an impartial decision.
Only time will tell on this one.
I am currently working with both XP1000s running Tru64 and Ultra 1's and Ultra 10's running Solaris 7 and Solaris 8. Although I agree that Tru64 is mature, stable and reliable, my experience with the two is that Solaris is better cared for by Sun than Tru64 is by Compaq. Perhaps you have had a different experience than I, but I have found that there are more programs are created for Solaris and then modified to work with Tru64 later, and in some cases almost as if it were just thrown together.
I don't want it to disappear anytime soon, it works fine for my high energy physics research, although not all of my collegues have the same luck. All of the software we run were created on Sun boxes and not all of them have been ported to Tru64, I'm just lucky that the ones that I need have been.
The reason that I think that this might be the beginning of the end of Tru64 is that with Compaq openly supporting Linux on the Alphas, Linux will take some of the would be Tru64 users away. That along with it competing directly against Solaris in quite a few markets may cause Compaq to think about whether or not keeping it is cost effective.
I don't think that Tru64 will be going out anytime soon, but this might be the first of many moves towards its death.
Although MS does not go to Judge Jackson to ask for an appeal they do need to file for appeal, which they did not do. What MS has filed was the stay on the final decision from Judge Jackson. They only submitted the stay to Judge Jackson and not to the Court Of Appeals, yet, nor have they submitted the request for the appeal.
From some of the other news sources that I have read, MS was currently working on said paper work but it had not been turned in yet. It seemed that they were hoping that Judge Jackson would grant a stay on the decision before they even asked for appeal, why, ask a lawyer. Judge Jackson remarked earlier today that he would hold his judgement on the stay until they had filed for appeal.
From what I can tell coyote-san is correct in saying that the Court of Appeals took on the appeal before it was filed. They knew that MS was going to appeal, but US law says that there must be good reason for appeal before an appeal can be granted. If MS did not file a motion for appeal then they could not have submitted a good reason for appeal, ergo no appeal should be granted. This move by the Court of Appeals seems to say that they believe that there is a reason for appeal, therefore their opinion is most likely biased at this point.
MS is moreso legally bound to act fairly in the market.
Just because Jackson didn't stay the sanctions, or at least hasn't given word on it yet last I heard, doesn't mean that they have to play fair, yet.
The appeals court can stay the sanctions just as easily as Judge Jackson can. Not only that but the sanctions do not come into effect until 90 days, or is it 60 days, after the trial.
Microsoft doesn't have to do anything right now if it doesn't want to. Luckly for us they probably don't want to do anything foolish, like do what they were doing before the trial, for it will only hurt them.
I just read on www.thestandard.com that Judge Jackson was going to hold out on the request for a stay on the "final judgement" until Microsoft had filed its notice of appeal.
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Could someone clue me into what is going on here? One minute I am reading that the appeals court has taken the case then next I am hearing that Microsoft hasn't even submitted its notice for appeal!
Just to point out some history. The "Findings of the Facts" on anti-trust cases have never been overturned. This puts Microsoft at a significant disadvantage. Unfortunately they have shown to do better in the appeals courts.
Call me a pessimist but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
One major problem with space colonies is artificial gravity. Without gravity the human body deteriates, the bones reject calcium and become very brittle and muscles attriphy. Sure we can simulate gravity by creating angular velocity to cause the frame that one would be on to experience centrifugal and centripetal forces but right now that is quite the pipe dream.
Think not? Well look at the rate the ISS is going up, and the design of the thing. Not to mention its expected life span, if everything went up on time, is 5 years! Sure we have the technology, and the money but unfortunately the people are unwilling, uninformed, apathetic, or just stupid. Not to mention, at this point all of the money that is going towards a big space project is going towards the ISS.
I would love it if the government were to support more scientific research, and huge engineering projects like building space colonies. Unfortunately the government doesn't seem too interested in what could be created from that. They seem to have forgotten that Tang wasn't the only thing that came from the space program. Microprocessors and certain plastics are just two major advances that came from the Apollo program alone.
That and the fact that the people are too interested in scandels and eye candy issues to notice the importance of science, or they fear it. Don't forget that last year the Kansas school board banning the teaching of evolution as truth.
The US is a great country, but it has some fundamental flaws that need to be overcome before we can truely do what needs to be done.
By the way, Washington DC still has one of the highest, if not the highest, murder rates in the US. Funny thing though, unless you given specific permission by the government it is illegal to own or have a firearm in DC. Also, NY has a very high murder rate and they banned handguns and made it a pain in the *** to own a firearm..
Oh, a good place to look, and contribute if you really feel that space travel and colonization is as important as I think it is is the Mars Society. www.marssociety.org. At a recent speech of theirs that I went to they were discussing a private attempt to fund a manned trip to Mars. Cool stuff.
Well, there are more than two left in the struggle right now.
Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and TRU64 are all the different flavors that I can think of off hand, unless we count Project Monterey.
My bet would be for HP-UX to continue until the PA-RISC chip is finally killed, which has already been scheduled.
TRU64 might be the next to go, do to the fact that I don't think Compaq is too thrilled to have it. I worked on several XP1000's in a physics lab that I was working in, and although they were still keeping it up, to the first approx, it seemed like it they weren't trying very hard to improve it. A good example is CDE, although Solaris still uses CDE they are constantly trying to improve it. CDE 1.4 in Solaris 8 is quite an improvement over 1.3 in Solaris 7 (I have to use both so trust me on this one). But even CDE 1.3 on Solaris 7 is better than the CDE on TRU64.
Also considering a comparison between features in TRU64 compared to Linux... I think that TRU64 is very close to getting the ax.
I think that the final two flavors that will battle it out in the end will be AIX and Solaris. Unlike when Sun started in them market and IBM ignored them, to the first approx, Sun is keeping close watch on Linux and is not just going to sit there and let it take their hard won market share.
I'm still curious about the splash that Project Monterey will make when it gets released.
First, that was more than a year ago, and I can guarentee you that Sun is not that close to a linux shift. They aquired a x86 UNIX company more than a year ago and have had them work on making x86 Solaris better.
One problem with Solaris is that it is definately not a home user OS in any sense of the word. That does not mean that for workstations and servers it isn't a marvelous choice.
Sparc Linux may be great but can it scale up to 64 processors? How about 1024 when the Ultra 3 processor comes out? Sun is not as close to a switch as you might think.
SCO may be doomed, but they aren't the first UNIX in the past year and a half to find that their OS is no longer a competative product. You mentioned SGI, who is slowly killing IRIX and porting its best features to Linux, who is giving up on the MIPS processor, and who sold Cray to a company that is now calling themselves Cray.
Although you may think that SGI is not doomed but they are turning themselves into another x86 vendor. They may have really nifty motherboards but the price that they have been charging is outragous.
I think that the next UNIX to fall will be either HP-UX, or TRU64. HP-UX still exists (last I checked), but I never hear anything about it. I do know that HP has set a time table for killing off their PA-RISC chip, it will be a while, but still.
Linux has started another *NIX war that is killing off the different flavors of *NIX that aren't fit for survival anymore. It happened in the early 90's but the fires of old have been rekindled by the newcomer. In the dieing thoughs of these companies they are trying to embrace to survive, and all that will do is make Linux stronger.
I see SCO embracing Linux as being a potentially great thing. Like SGI starting to give Linux XFS, I have a feeling that SCO will provide Linux with many great tools that will help it grow strong.
Anyway, we have yet to see what SCO/IBM's Project Monterey will bring for them. They might be doomed but there might be some life left in them yet.
(Quick question: Does anyone know if the Michaels are still running SCO?)
I am probably repeating some information here but here is a url to a news article on Eazel. It isn't exactly the most recent but it will give some of the people here an idea of who is working on this project.
http://www.upside.com/Ebiz/393844ba0_yahoo.html
Finally I can create that underwater kingdom that I have always wanted and still be able to connect to the net (well to the first approx. considering the last time I connected to anything with speeds that slow was ~9 years ago). Now I just need to figure out how to create the underwater kingdom part.
I agree with your summing up, but now that they have proposed it, Debian is almost required to accept the resolution. My reasons are as such:
If, in a government certain rights are given as fundamental. Then these rights are restricted for the greater good of the people until said time when the ability to exercise said rights becomes available it becomes the duty of said government to remove those restrictions. This is the same sort of deal that Debian is going through. The basis for the distro is for an entirely free distro, no strings attached. Although Debian needed a good portion of non-free utilities to be usable to a larger community at first, a number of free alternatives to these non-free components have arrisen (to the first approx.). Not all of these alternatives are completely stable, or even close to the non-free version, but they do exist. Therefore the removal of said packages must be exercised.
Perhaps they can reach a settlement of, if no free alternative exists then it stays, like JDK.
I personally am not happy with the idea of no non-free packages in the primary Debian distro, but I understand. One of the reasons I use Debian is the ability to go to one place to find all of the packages that I need. If this proposition is passed then I will need to go searching for other sites that have what I need. Oh well, I can deal with adding a couple more links in my sources file.
At this point MS has lost, plain and simple. Even if this is overturned, the earliest that could happen is at least a year from now, during which time footholds into the industry have already made by companies that MS either can't buy or can't flat out destroy. Now, I have seen MS turn out great products when they desparately need to, NT3.51 and Excel 95 are good examples, but right now their ship is sinking and from what I can tell there is nothing they can do about it.
My reasoning is as such.
Web appliences and laptops running linux are either out there or will be in short order. PalmOS has taken over the PDA market. Apple has started to retake what they lost and then some, while linux keeps draining the power users from Windows. We can now buy PC's without Windows on it.
The number one web server is Apache, and considering Sun released IPlanet free with your free copy of Solaris 8 (so long as you have >=16 processors). While linux has the number two position for lower-midsize servers, and the UNICES have the upper end. With linux and Solaris 8 both free, along with web server technology they just did to MS what MS did to Netscape with IE, drop the price of the product to zero. The same thing is happening with office products, StarOffice is free and when gOffice grows up it will be too. I already know one very large company that has decided that supporting all of the licences of MS Office takes too much money and is switching over to StarOffice.
Java programers are starting to pop up like weeds, and although MS just won an appeal in the Java case the number of MS friendly developers is on the decline. When Java has the support of Sun, IBM, Apple, and a whole host of other companies their ability to corrupt has dropped significantly, so long as those companies stay true to the write once run anywhere.
On top of this, MS keeps making enemies when it desparately needs friends. They don't want OEM's shipping full version of their OS, and are therefore telling them to create "repair" cds. The price for an office to licence MS Office continues to skyrocket. Even the student prices of their products are outragious. I see my fellow engineering and physics students abondoning MS at increasingly larger rates.
On top of all this while MS drags this thing through the appeals process they have one hand tied behind their backs because they know if they make more extremely aggressive moves they will only hurt their chances of winning.
Frankly, IMHO breaking them up is the best thing for MS. They will have a better chance of staying competative as separate companies.
Think of it as Judge Jackson's interpretation of M$'s marketing "Where do you want to go today?" Considering some of us take it to actually be "How do you want to crash today?" ...
I am currently a physics undergrad at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Right now I am part of a HEP research group which is working with theoretical approaches to solving the the problems with the Standard Model, more specifically we are dealing with Supersymmetry.
I have two questions.
1) Do you believe that supersymmetry is the most likely answer to the problems with the Standard Model, and why?
2) Will you be at the NLC meeting in March? And do you think that the NLC will get funded?
For those who don't know, the Standard Model describes all the elementary particles and the forces between them. Unfortunately the model is flawed, there is the need for something called the Higgs field to allow for the particles to have mass, this introduces the Higgs boson which is where the problem is. Put simply, using the Standard Model the Higgs boson has infinite mass.
Thank you for your time
Although this is not an uncommon thought to have about natural selection and humans it is not true, just ask any biologist or evolutionary psychologist. In a basic biology class one learns that if a organism is "unfit" for its environment then it fails to reproduce before it dies thereby removing it from the gene-pool. Unfortunately the only context that are ever used are ones dealing with strength, speed, camoflauge (sp?), and other things that deal with a somewhat "natural" surrounding.
Humans are evolving, the important thing to understand is what our environment actually IS! We are not evolving to survive in the jungle, forrest, desert, or plains, instead we are adapting to an artifically created environment, but more importantly we are evolving to survive within our culture. You say that we have no method to weed out the "weak", but what classifies "weak" in our world?
There is a good book, which I haven't finished yet, called Children of Prometheus by Christopher Wills. He sites some very good research about the subject, and, from what I have read, does a very good job with analysis.
From my experience here at college, those who have access to Napster are more likely of buying CD's. Of course the CD's they are buying are generally gold colored on one side and anywhere from a yellowish-green to a blue-green color on the other side and come in packs of 100.
Actually, I do know a couple people who do use Napster to sample before they buy the actual CD. These are also generally the people who have REALLY expensive, very accurate sound systems who are music snobs. For the most part though, everyone makes their own, but we all know that.
>But it's ironic, eh? I see a bunch of people decidedly anti-MS, pro-AOL on this issue. 3 years aho, who woulda thought AOL'd be recieving /. support? ;)
Three years ago, more like 6 months ago. I still fry every AOL CD in the microwave but the idea that I am rooting for them scares me when I realize what I am doing.
Funny what happens when one giant takes on another. Sadly, I believe that unless AOL releases their source I don't think they will win this one. MS will just remove AOL from the desktop, place their messenger on, and make it so you have to registry hack in order to remove the thing. By doing that, and keeping greater than 80% of the desktop market they will most likely win.
I hate pixmap fonts. It would be very nice if Apple let XFree86 use TrueType.
Perhaps it is time to ask SGI to be so kind as to donate their vector based graphical technology and help Linux encorperate it and make it standard. Then we really wouldn't have to worry too much about fonts and scalability. Vector based fonts are much nicer than TrueType fonts.
Until then lets hope Apple decides to play well with others.
Funny, yes, but the Ultra III processor isn't TOO far away from release. :)
I would like to see the G4 just TRY and compete with the Ultra III. I think it the speed difference would be funnier.
right now is the x86 but in a couple of years that could change drastically. I don't think PPC will be the main processor, but frankly if Linux continues to develop and change the market like it is I don't think that there will be a primary chipset for Linux in a couple of years.
Right now Linux is kind of like the Java of OS's. Where Java is supposed to work on any OS, Linux seems to work on any type of processor. I think this will continue to happen as people have different needs. In a couple of years it may become fairly standard to be able to walk into a store and have Intel, PPC, Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS all lined up with different types of Linux on them all ready for different workloads.
Just a thought.
Sun's confidential files are postscript and SGML NOT doc's. In fact only people who need to do presentations or compatibility with networking are allowed to use MS products in the work place at Sun, even then they are severly restricted to what they can use.
I would guess that Sun will be moving over to StarOffice soon though.