Someone else made the comment that Linux was ugly. Compared to what, Windows?
MacOS might be one thing, but calling Windows pretty is another and is downright sad, IMO. The default XP theme (nicknamed "the Fisher Price desktop") looks like it belongs in a kindergarden classroom. 9x looks like crap and Win2K is 95% the same crap as 9x.
Everyone has different tastes, but I can't see how anyone could find Windows "attractive". But I guess I'm just a Linux-Geek-Without-A-Clue.
The biggest problem is plug and play integration. Hardware, software off the net, etc. It can be intimidating for a company to support Linux if there are many things to support.
For instance, say you want to write a Linux IM client for your large online service company (not necessarily ISP). You're doing this from scratch. Do you want to support GTK and QT, OSS and ALSA, Gnome applet/status tray icon and KDE panel? Gnome's applications menu and KDE's? CUPS, XPrint and KDE's print manager? Other Window managers? Do you want to integrate it with web browsers? File browsers? Help systems? Do you want man pages or info pages or neither?
There are a lot of options and that is farking great! Bring them on! More power for folks like me who want all those options. But someone really needs to settle down and come up with a united front so we can say, "Support Standard X and your software will work with 90% of all popular distributions." Windows doesn't have this limitation since there's only one act on stage; Linux will have to work around this. I honestly think it's possible.
Bad taste to reply to ones self, but I'll give two applications which, in my mind, accomplish this goal better than others: galeon and gaim. The old version of galeon (1.2.x) and the current gaim show too many options, IMO, for the 'normal user', but have great defaults for newbies and have lots of options for more advanced users. Normal users still aren't bad off as the options are well organized and logical -- there aren't many highly advanced options nor are there many "nit picking" options to tweak tiny behaviors.
I agree, but would like to point out that there is a true alternate meaning to dumbed-down: inflexible.
The perfect application works how novice1 thinks, how novice2 thinks and how novice3 thinks by default, but has options to tweak it to heck and back -- including an "experience" option to determine what/how many options to give to the user.
A given person should be able to find a path to accomplishing a task that is reasonably similar to how they think about doing it outside of a computer world. Different people think differently, so a few basic ways of accomplishing a task should be available. But this does not mean that other flexibility, options and features should be left out (a la Epiphany). This just means that you have to have good defaults and plenty of options which may or may not be shown by default.
Newbies will use the defaults, so give them good ones. Normal users will configure the basics. Somewhat advanced users will tweak a little more. Expert users will tweak the ever loving hell out of an application to bow to their every whim.
This is the way of things -- how things should be. Applications need not be dumbed down (Epiphany) nor throw tons at you (xcdroast, Opera)... there is a middle ground that can suit almost every type of user.
I can't say I'm familiar with Windows 2003 Server or future plans for XP, thanks for the informative post. And again, sorry for my inflammatory post -- mis/uninformed nay-sayers get my goat.
It'll be very interesting to see how well Microsoft actually tweaks their products. Security, bloat ("let's turn on everything!"), look and feel, stability, organization (ref: DLL hell), lock-in, etc., have always been notoriously bad in products from Microsoft. Microsoft is really trying to improve on many of these fronts and they're doing a fair job on a few of them.
Bad taste to reply to ones self, but... Reading your post and mine again, please forgive me, my reply isn't exactly aimed at you but, as is common on Slashdot, aimed at all the trolls who take what you say and mix it with FUD. My goal is not to paint you as a troll and refute what you're saying, but I dislike posts which take it to the next level, claiming that there is no security advantage to using Linux systems.
Eh... Ok, what you've said is true, but you have to put it in perspective.
First off, most Linux folks aren't off bleating "Linux is always more secure than Windows," most of us are pointing out that a typical Linux installation is more secure by default than a Windows box. Windows loves to turn on everything, whether you need it or not -- Linux takes the opposite approach. Generally, Linux is more secure initially.
Secondly, most Linux services are open and well documented. "Hidden features" are rare and configuration isn't obscured. Windows is often the polar opposite. Generally, Linux is easier to secure.
Finally, and most importantly, you just can not say that coding practices have no impact. Everyone knows that almost no software (read: server) is uncrackable, everyone knows that the admin is the biggest factor in system security. That said, not only are you limited by available patches and problem-awareness in a closed source environment, open source does tend to have higher quality code, lending to the thinking that less potential bugs exist -- this means that short of hacking code, an admin has better odds with better software.
This is common sense to most folks, and I know some of you trolls like to think that "The Slashdot Establishment" is made up of a bunch of dumb hippies, it's the popular opinion so how could it possibly be right, but I'll tell you, there are a lot of good points made here. Stop blindly rejecting this stuff and saying "All OSes Are Equal" and look around you.
That's a good thing. Thanks for caring -- apathy is why socialism and capitalism both fail. Nobody cares enough to take the reigns of their government, nobody cares enough to watch where they put their dollar. BOTH are methods of regulating civilization, but they won't regulate themselves.
To make myself clear, I wasn't saying "shaddup and eat your broccoli," I was getting at the point that there are more productive ways to go about this.
I'm not trying to imply that you are, but complaining about corporation X's actions aren't going to help anyone. Vote with your ballet and your dollar, speak your mind casually and get others to do the same.
Buy Linux. Show it to your friends (don't TALK a whole lot about it, just show them -- that seems to work better than anything else). Mention to your Windows buddies that they can block popups, use tabs, keep password securely, etc. with Mozilla/Firebird. There are things you can do to help without calling company X evil and going back to your business.
No... it's just that these folks don't want to suffer themselves.
As folks have plainly pointed out, if pop-ups no longer make any money, ad companies move to more intrusive ads. This forces everyone else to adapt.
It's business and that's the way things are -- adapt or die. In this case, folks don't really have anything to complain about, that's how things work... but in general, the whole 'embrace and extend' thing is downright lowly.
Using your marketshare to embrace Java and then break the standard and effectively hijack someone else's work -- whether "business as usual" or not -- is just plain wrong. Look up every doctorine of capitalism, they'll tell you the goal is to get products to compete, not to backstab eachother. May the best man win the race by being fastest, not by stabbing all the other runners in the neck.
I hate socialists and anti-corporate whiners as much as the next guy, but that said, although little whining can be done in this case, folks have a very valid reason to fear MS.
"Most young and teenage programmers have neither the experience nor the focus to create the kind of boring, reliable code that makes up the core of Open Source. Instead they're appealed to by more glamorous fringe projects, and the idea of shareware."
Which is how many of the great projects out there get started: either the kids mature or draw in more mature developers. Freshmeat.net anyone?
OSS developers each have their own interest. They drive the community, thus products are invented for what hackers want. Most of these hackers are doing things for more serious purposes, but we still have enough to keep the interesting projects going. It's a good mix guided by the will of the hacker community.
Windows comes from a box. Linux (or OSS/FS in general) comes from a community.
I'll agree that many programs don't understand any kind of cut&paste besides text, however I think you'll find that their drag and drop support is often quite good in this regard.
--- Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work.
Ever look at the number of versions of Window DLLs? Ever try to do Windows programming that supports NT 4 to XP? Take into account the complexity of something like Install Shield and then compare it to Linux. If you want to cover the vast majority of Linux users, handle RPMs and.deb packages. I really don't see this point stacking up.
--- Games: Linux would make an ideal game platform IF games were released for it.
Nobody can really argue this point, but I think it's worth noting that there are a lot more games out there with Linux support than most think. Quake 3, UT2003, Castle Wolfenstein, Neverwinter Nights, Savage (great game), etc.
If Enterprise uses Linux, folks will start writing more software for Linux, more drivers for Linux, etc.
Then Linux is desktop ready.
The rest of Linux is pretty much already there. A little more integration and smoothing has to be done, and administration needs to be made easier for the non-geek, but past that, Linux itself is ready.
The CEO is right. His way (pushing 100% enterprise) might not be the best choice for everyone, but it's probably the best choice for Red Hat and a workable solution overall.
I'm not generally fond of falling for "alternate explainations", but it would be interesting if some of the SCO folks were doing this to help Linux/OSS?
Think about it. One one front, SCO claims the GPL is invalid. On the other, they distribute GPL'ed code under a more restrictive licence. They're either violaiting the GPL or copyright law, one or the other.
SCO sues IBM for three billion dollars. IBM.
No remotely sane individual, no matter what their legal ammo, could ever hope to win this. SCO puts itself up against a 900,000 lbs gorilla and then begins sawing off its own legs.
Pump and dump seems most likely, but I wonder if any of the SCO (formerly Caldera Linux) employees are doing this to help Linux/OSS? A highly visible example case to prove the GPL and OSS is what we need most right now. This is a godsend, folks -- the court room is the place OSS is most vulnerable.
It appears that Microsoft is trying to threaten Google with "If you don't merge with us, we'll make MSN search built into Longhorn..."
How is this different from now? Open IE, go to a bogus web address. Or, click search at the top. Or hit the start menu, search, and try to find a webpage.
IE is an unfortunate requirement for part of my work. I almost fell out of my chair laughing/crying when I mistyped a web address, hit an MSN search complete with a pop-up add.
It's also very lucky that the lawyers intend to pass on every cent of the lawsuit settlements directly to the deserving RIAA, and are not in any way interested in bulking out their own wallets at the expense of those who actually create the lawsuit potential.
"The idea of a super pipe with more powerful communications between seems intriguing, something using say XML-RPC between the parts instead of just a byte stream."
"A subtle but important property of pipes and the other classic Unix IPC (Interprocess Communication) is that they require communication between programs to be held down to a level of simplicity that encourages separation of function. Conversely, the result of having no equivalent of the pipe is that programs can only be designed to cooperate by building in full knowledge of each others' internals (p 81, Chapter 3)"
It's a pretty nice guarantee that you can combine two given tools that know nothing of each other, even tools which are not related in the slightest way. The power goes to the user. It isn't limited to the functionality the tool's developer thought of. The logic is similar to the reasons behind using a CLI over a GUI.
You can pry my simple IPC from my cold, dead fingers.:)
Re:Much of this could be done in linux...
on
Microsoft's new CLI
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· Score: 1
"I love perl, but trying to compare it's *syntax* favourably to sh seems a bit daft; it may be powerful and adapatable, but i wouldn't say it's particularly readable much of the time."
Perl is like English. You can make a mess in no time, but you can write poetry in minutes. It all depends on the author.
"They may have come a long way, but they have a long way to go. And remember, this is just playing catchup."
Roughly 30 years of it.
Sorry fellas, it's much easier to make a complex tool easy to use than to make a simple tool highly functional.
Microsoft will really have to pull a rabit out of their hat if they want to remain a majority player. Cost, security issues, quality and Microsoft control are all pushing folks away. Quality is on the rise, and they've been working on security for quite a while though not to much avail. Cost and control, however, are things they are still hoping to hold on to, and if they try for much longer, it might be too late.
Microsoft will probably always be a major player (think IBM, AT&T, the baby Bells) -- giants who fall are still big.
But if MS doesn't get its act together, they might not be a majority player anymore. Proprietary lock-in and mindshare can only negate a finite amount of cost and control -- MS is already over that limit.
First they ignore us. Then they laugh at us. Then they fight us. Then we win.
"What you forgot to ask is usage. Are these 600 linux pc's going 5% used while the winxp are 95% used?"
Most unis don't bother buying 600 machines for one OS unless they're getting *very* heavy usage of that OS. I'm not so worried about this as I am the idea that the admins might be spending 80% of their time hand-holding the tards who will only use Windows and know next to nothing about it.
That said, *nix is much easier to lock down from security problems and user problems as well. The admins might cost more (IF you can't find a happy hacker student willing to do it cheap), but you'll need less due to less user/security problems and when issues DO come up, they'll be much more competent (read: fast) at fixing them. A herd of MCSEs is just that: a herd. There are awesome Windows admins out there too, but I think it's safe to say that they've got a little more on their plate.
This isn't limited to IT folks, but often IT is the last line of defense. If you get an issue, you typically can't fork it off to anyone else. Everyone is looking at you to reallocate more disk space, clean up viruses, patch security holes, fix their phones, keep the servers running. This goes for software developers and software maintainers (what I do for a living).
Often IT is the ass-end of the corporate environment: expected to do too much in too little time without any excuses. IT can be an easy, popular target for folks who don't know any better. Sometimes it's like being trapped in a dark (server) room fending off vampires with a foam bat.
Though I have not been in the field for more than few years, my best advice for novice IT folks (though not limited to IT) is this:
1) If priority conflicts come up, let your manager or the folks requesting work prioritize your issues. They treat you (read: see you) as a tool; don't let them blame YOU when their work isn't done first. Let them box it out among themselves.
2) As much of a geek as you want to be, do NOT give management (read: anyone above you) details unless specifically asked for. "It's fixed" is a perfectly good answer. This isn't aimed at being dishonest, I say it because managers typically don't care and/or can't understand the details. It's being as much of a "yes man" as I'm willing to be. You'll be viewed as a much more reliable person if you just say "it's fixed" as opposed to looking like a geek. Don't distance yourself from the manager.
3) As much of a geek as you want to be, have good working relationships with anyone you deal with, don't limit yourself to the corner. This means promotion and, just as importantly, more say in how things are done. Don't be uptight around your bosses or peers and be a little outgoing and things will flow.
4) Don't do other people's jobs for them. There is a difference between being proactive, helpful and going out of your way, and doing someone else's job. If you start doing other people's job for them, laziness will ensue. You can bet your paycheck that you'll become known as "the guy who does X" when it isn't your job. Eventually management finds out and guess what? Overnight your job description is now broader while the other schmuck got a raise for accomplishing their (lessened) workload so fast. And you come out looking like the unorganized slacker in the end.
Hopefully this helps anyone coming out of school. Anyone feel free to jump in if you think I've made a mistake.
Linux doesn't go where some company or private body wants it to go. Why do people write OSS? Certainly not for profit or fortune. Hackers just want good software, know how to write it themselves and enjoy doing so.
Thus, Linux, in a very practical fashion, is taken where it needs to go to fulfill a certain task in a hacker's life. And, to a lesser degree, it goes where it's fun to go, driven by college students, research and happy hackers who enjoy banging out new, out-there ideas into code.
Linux can also be influenced by corporations and entities which donate to projects to get some particular task done. A number of projects or project hackers will take donations and in turn bang out some new functionality.
Linux can be directly influenced by corporations as well, adding another, more broad-scale realistic approach, targeting more than individual hackers who know their stuff. Red Hat writes OSS to make Linux usable at both the desktop and server levels, in home and enterprise settings.
The difference is that the Linux community can accept or deny Red Hat's contributions. In the same way that it can ignore bad code, useless code, corporate donations/payments for work, etc,
Linux is a force molded by a group of people using it for many different purposes. There is no roadmap for Linux just as there is no roadmap for a governmental election. The people are in control.
1) OSS, by it's nature, will have more bugs reported. It's in OSS's interest (the whole philosophy behind it, folks) to report bugs so they can be fixed. It's no surprise that RH has more bugs listed.
2) Microsoft, on the other hand, has everything to gain from keeping these things under wraps, at least with its current mentality. They prefer to keep things quiet rather than fix them, and this will be part of their undoing. Fewer bug reports aren't surprising.
3) Red Hat, as a distribution, includes about every piece of software and utility most folks will ever need. Advanced office software, faxing, graphics editing, remote/automated/multi-computer admin tools and so on. The bug repository will contain bugs for all of these bits of software.
4) Windows, as a box of software, is, for the most part, a bare system which must then be populated with other programs or better programs (since MS will bundle their own software instead of what might be the best for the job).
Throw these all together along with some other things that I'm sure I haven't thought of off the top of my head and it's pretty plain what side has any right to boast.
I'm sure there's probably some way to do this on a vanilla Windows install, but it might be worth mentioning that this is pretty trivial on a *NIX box. Put some remote administration commands in a shell, wrap that up in a list of hosts and patch what you can during the day, then shove the rest (possibly the majority) in cron and go home, taking your pager with you.
Remote administration and automation is really something *NIX really has down pat.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
Someone else made the comment that Linux was ugly. Compared to what, Windows?
MacOS might be one thing, but calling Windows pretty is another and is downright sad, IMO.
The default XP theme (nicknamed "the Fisher Price desktop") looks like it belongs in a kindergarden classroom. 9x looks like crap and Win2K is 95% the same crap as 9x.
Everyone has different tastes, but I can't see how anyone could find Windows "attractive". But I guess I'm just a Linux-Geek-Without-A-Clue.
The biggest problem is plug and play integration. Hardware, software off the net, etc. It can be intimidating for a company to support Linux if there are many things to support.
For instance, say you want to write a Linux IM client for your large online service company (not necessarily ISP). You're doing this from scratch. Do you want to support GTK and QT, OSS and ALSA, Gnome applet/status tray icon and KDE panel? Gnome's applications menu and KDE's? CUPS, XPrint and KDE's print manager? Other Window managers? Do you want to integrate it with web browsers? File browsers? Help systems? Do you want man pages or info pages or neither?
There are a lot of options and that is farking great! Bring them on! More power for folks like me who want all those options. But someone really needs to settle down and come up with a united front so we can say, "Support Standard X and your software will work with 90% of all popular distributions." Windows doesn't have this limitation since there's only one act on stage; Linux will have to work around this. I honestly think it's possible.
Thanks Bruce, you're a good one for this job.
Bad taste to reply to ones self, but I'll give two applications which, in my mind, accomplish this goal better than others:
galeon and gaim.
The old version of galeon (1.2.x) and the current gaim show too many options, IMO, for the 'normal user', but have great defaults for newbies and have lots of options for more advanced users. Normal users still aren't bad off as the options are well organized and logical -- there aren't many highly advanced options nor are there many "nit picking" options to tweak tiny behaviors.
Other examples would be welcome.
I agree, but would like to point out that there is a true alternate meaning to dumbed-down: inflexible.
The perfect application works how novice1 thinks, how novice2 thinks and how novice3 thinks by default, but has options to tweak it to heck and back -- including an "experience" option to determine what/how many options to give to the user.
A given person should be able to find a path to accomplishing a task that is reasonably similar to how they think about doing it outside of a computer world. Different people think differently, so a few basic ways of accomplishing a task should be available. But this does not mean that other flexibility, options and features should be left out (a la Epiphany). This just means that you have to have good defaults and plenty of options which may or may not be shown by default.
Newbies will use the defaults, so give them good ones.
Normal users will configure the basics.
Somewhat advanced users will tweak a little more.
Expert users will tweak the ever loving hell out of an application to bow to their every whim.
This is the way of things -- how things should be. Applications need not be dumbed down (Epiphany) nor throw tons at you (xcdroast, Opera)... there is a middle ground that can suit almost every type of user.
I can't say I'm familiar with Windows 2003 Server or future plans for XP, thanks for the informative post. And again, sorry for my inflammatory post -- mis/uninformed nay-sayers get my goat.
It'll be very interesting to see how well Microsoft actually tweaks their products. Security, bloat ("let's turn on everything!"), look and feel, stability, organization (ref: DLL hell), lock-in, etc., have always been notoriously bad in products from Microsoft. Microsoft is really trying to improve on many of these fronts and they're doing a fair job on a few of them.
Cheers
Bad taste to reply to ones self, but...
Reading your post and mine again, please forgive me, my reply isn't exactly aimed at you but, as is common on Slashdot, aimed at all the trolls who take what you say and mix it with FUD. My goal is not to paint you as a troll and refute what you're saying, but I dislike posts which take it to the next level, claiming that there is no security advantage to using Linux systems.
My apologies.
Eh...
Ok, what you've said is true, but you have to put it in perspective.
First off, most Linux folks aren't off bleating "Linux is always more secure than Windows," most of us are pointing out that a typical Linux installation is more secure by default than a Windows box. Windows loves to turn on everything, whether you need it or not -- Linux takes the opposite approach. Generally, Linux is more secure initially.
Secondly, most Linux services are open and well documented. "Hidden features" are rare and configuration isn't obscured. Windows is often the polar opposite. Generally, Linux is easier to secure.
Finally, and most importantly, you just can not say that coding practices have no impact. Everyone knows that almost no software (read: server) is uncrackable, everyone knows that the admin is the biggest factor in system security. That said, not only are you limited by available patches and problem-awareness in a closed source environment, open source does tend to have higher quality code, lending to the thinking that less potential bugs exist -- this means that short of hacking code, an admin has better odds with better software.
This is common sense to most folks, and I know some of you trolls like to think that "The Slashdot Establishment" is made up of a bunch of dumb hippies, it's the popular opinion so how could it possibly be right, but I'll tell you, there are a lot of good points made here. Stop blindly rejecting this stuff and saying "All OSes Are Equal" and look around you.
Cheers
That's a good thing. Thanks for caring -- apathy is why socialism and capitalism both fail. Nobody cares enough to take the reigns of their government, nobody cares enough to watch where they put their dollar. BOTH are methods of regulating civilization, but they won't regulate themselves.
To make myself clear, I wasn't saying "shaddup and eat your broccoli," I was getting at the point that there are more productive ways to go about this.
I'm not trying to imply that you are, but complaining about corporation X's actions aren't going to help anyone. Vote with your ballet and your dollar, speak your mind casually and get others to do the same.
Buy Linux. Show it to your friends (don't TALK a whole lot about it, just show them -- that seems to work better than anything else). Mention to your Windows buddies that they can block popups, use tabs, keep password securely, etc. with Mozilla/Firebird. There are things you can do to help without calling company X evil and going back to your business.
Well, when it comes down to it, every minute of my Friday work day goes to the government.
Glad I could help.
(Not trying to flame, I don't know how actively you're looking for a job or not).
Of course. Give a human being a paycheck and hide him behind about a dozen curtains of bureaucracy and see how hard he works.
:)
Nobody cares about what their government does.
Only slightly more attention is paid to what companies people give their money to.
Socialism and capitalism are both great and wonderful ideals; unfortunately, people are just too )*#()($& lazy to make use of either.
I guess the only logical solution is to exploit the system and buy a private island.
Cheers
No... it's just that these folks don't want to suffer themselves.
As folks have plainly pointed out, if pop-ups no longer make any money, ad companies move to more intrusive ads. This forces everyone else to adapt.
It's business and that's the way things are -- adapt or die. In this case, folks don't really have anything to complain about, that's how things work... but in general, the whole 'embrace and extend' thing is downright lowly.
Using your marketshare to embrace Java and then break the standard and effectively hijack someone else's work -- whether "business as usual" or not -- is just plain wrong. Look up every doctorine of capitalism, they'll tell you the goal is to get products to compete, not to backstab eachother. May the best man win the race by being fastest, not by stabbing all the other runners in the neck.
I hate socialists and anti-corporate whiners as much as the next guy, but that said, although little whining can be done in this case, folks have a very valid reason to fear MS.
Cheers
"Most young and teenage programmers have neither the experience nor the focus to create the kind of boring, reliable code that makes up the core of Open Source. Instead they're appealed to by more glamorous fringe projects, and the idea of shareware."
Which is how many of the great projects out there get started: either the kids mature or draw in more mature developers. Freshmeat.net anyone?
OSS developers each have their own interest. They drive the community, thus products are invented for what hackers want. Most of these hackers are doing things for more serious purposes, but we still have enough to keep the interesting projects going. It's a good mix guided by the will of the hacker community.
Windows comes from a box. Linux (or OSS/FS in general) comes from a community.
Lack of good clipboard support in X
.deb packages.
I'll agree that many programs don't understand any kind of cut&paste besides text, however I think you'll find that their drag and drop support is often quite good in this regard.
---
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work.
Ever look at the number of versions of Window DLLs? Ever try to do Windows programming that supports NT 4 to XP?
Take into account the complexity of something like Install Shield and then compare it to Linux. If you want to cover the vast majority of Linux users, handle RPMs and
I really don't see this point stacking up.
---
Games: Linux would make an ideal game platform IF games were released for it.
Nobody can really argue this point, but I think it's worth noting that there are a lot more games out there with Linux support than most think. Quake 3, UT2003, Castle Wolfenstein, Neverwinter Nights, Savage (great game), etc.
How does anything else become popular at home?
If Enterprise uses Linux, folks will start writing more software for Linux, more drivers for Linux, etc.
Then Linux is desktop ready.
The rest of Linux is pretty much already there. A little more integration and smoothing has to be done, and administration needs to be made easier for the non-geek, but past that, Linux itself is ready.
The CEO is right. His way (pushing 100% enterprise) might not be the best choice for everyone, but it's probably the best choice for Red Hat and a workable solution overall.
I'm not generally fond of falling for "alternate explainations", but it would be interesting if some of the SCO folks were doing this to help Linux/OSS?
Think about it. One one front, SCO claims the GPL is invalid. On the other, they distribute GPL'ed code under a more restrictive licence.
They're either violaiting the GPL or copyright law, one or the other.
SCO sues IBM for three billion dollars. IBM.
No remotely sane individual, no matter what their legal ammo, could ever hope to win this. SCO puts itself up against a 900,000 lbs gorilla and then begins sawing off its own legs.
Pump and dump seems most likely, but I wonder if any of the SCO (formerly Caldera Linux) employees are doing this to help Linux/OSS? A highly visible example case to prove the GPL and OSS is what we need most right now. This is a godsend, folks -- the court room is the place OSS is most vulnerable.
It appears that Microsoft is trying to threaten Google with "If you don't merge with us, we'll make MSN search built into Longhorn..."
How is this different from now? Open IE, go to a bogus web address. Or, click search at the top. Or hit the start menu, search, and try to find a webpage.
IE is an unfortunate requirement for part of my work. I almost fell out of my chair laughing/crying when I mistyped a web address, hit an MSN search complete with a pop-up add.
It's also very lucky that the lawyers intend to pass on every cent of the lawsuit settlements directly to the deserving RIAA, and are not in any way interested in bulking out their own wallets at the expense of those who actually create the lawsuit potential.
;)
I think we all know who the real enemy is.
"The idea of a super pipe with more powerful communications between seems intriguing, something using say XML-RPC between the parts instead of just a byte stream."
:)
I disagree.
From the Slashdot book review of ESRs The Art of Unix Programming , I quote ESR:
"A subtle but important property of pipes and the other classic Unix IPC (Interprocess Communication) is that they require communication between programs to be held down to a level of simplicity that encourages separation of function. Conversely, the result of having no equivalent of the pipe is that programs can only be designed to cooperate by building in full knowledge of each others' internals (p 81, Chapter 3)"
It's a pretty nice guarantee that you can combine two given tools that know nothing of each other, even tools which are not related in the slightest way. The power goes to the user. It isn't limited to the functionality the tool's developer thought of. The logic is similar to the reasons behind using a CLI over a GUI.
You can pry my simple IPC from my cold, dead fingers.
"I love perl, but trying to compare it's *syntax* favourably to sh seems a bit daft; it may be powerful and adapatable, but i wouldn't say it's particularly readable much of the time."
Perl is like English. You can make a mess in no time, but you can write poetry in minutes. It all depends on the author.
"They may have come a long way, but they have a long way to go. And remember, this is just playing catchup."
Roughly 30 years of it.
Sorry fellas, it's much easier to make a complex tool easy to use than to make a simple tool highly functional.
Microsoft will really have to pull a rabit out of their hat if they want to remain a majority player. Cost, security issues, quality and Microsoft control are all pushing folks away. Quality is on the rise, and they've been working on security for quite a while though not to much avail. Cost and control, however, are things they are still hoping to hold on to, and if they try for much longer, it might be too late.
Microsoft will probably always be a major player (think IBM, AT&T, the baby Bells) -- giants who fall are still big.
But if MS doesn't get its act together, they might not be a majority player anymore. Proprietary lock-in and mindshare can only negate a finite amount of cost and control -- MS is already over that limit.
First they ignore us. Then they laugh at us. Then they fight us. Then we win.
"What you forgot to ask is usage. Are these 600 linux pc's going 5% used while the winxp are 95% used?"
Most unis don't bother buying 600 machines for one OS unless they're getting *very* heavy usage of that OS. I'm not so worried about this as I am the idea that the admins might be spending 80% of their time hand-holding the tards who will only use Windows and know next to nothing about it.
That said, *nix is much easier to lock down from security problems and user problems as well. The admins might cost more (IF you can't find a happy hacker student willing to do it cheap), but you'll need less due to less user/security problems and when issues DO come up, they'll be much more competent (read: fast) at fixing them. A herd of MCSEs is just that: a herd. There are awesome Windows admins out there too, but I think it's safe to say that they've got a little more on their plate.
Very true.
This isn't limited to IT folks, but often IT is the last line of defense. If you get an issue, you typically can't fork it off to anyone else. Everyone is looking at you to reallocate more disk space, clean up viruses, patch security holes, fix their phones, keep the servers running. This goes for software developers and software maintainers (what I do for a living).
Often IT is the ass-end of the corporate environment: expected to do too much in too little time without any excuses. IT can be an easy, popular target for folks who don't know any better. Sometimes it's like being trapped in a dark (server) room fending off vampires with a foam bat.
Though I have not been in the field for more than few years, my best advice for novice IT folks (though not limited to IT) is this:
1) If priority conflicts come up, let your manager or the folks requesting work prioritize your issues. They treat you (read: see you) as a tool; don't let them blame YOU when their work isn't done first. Let them box it out among themselves.
2) As much of a geek as you want to be, do NOT give management (read: anyone above you) details unless specifically asked for. "It's fixed" is a perfectly good answer. This isn't aimed at being dishonest, I say it because managers typically don't care and/or can't understand the details. It's being as much of a "yes man" as I'm willing to be. You'll be viewed as a much more reliable person if you just say "it's fixed" as opposed to looking like a geek. Don't distance yourself from the manager.
3) As much of a geek as you want to be, have good working relationships with anyone you deal with, don't limit yourself to the corner. This means promotion and, just as importantly, more say in how things are done. Don't be uptight around your bosses or peers and be a little outgoing and things will flow.
4) Don't do other people's jobs for them. There is a difference between being proactive, helpful and going out of your way, and doing someone else's job. If you start doing other people's job for them, laziness will ensue. You can bet your paycheck that you'll become known as "the guy who does X" when it isn't your job. Eventually management finds out and guess what? Overnight your job description is now broader while the other schmuck got a raise for accomplishing their (lessened) workload so fast. And you come out looking like the unorganized slacker in the end.
Hopefully this helps anyone coming out of school. Anyone feel free to jump in if you think I've made a mistake.
Cheers
Linux doesn't go where some company or private body wants it to go. Why do people write OSS? Certainly not for profit or fortune. Hackers just want good software, know how to write it themselves and enjoy doing so.
Thus, Linux, in a very practical fashion, is taken where it needs to go to fulfill a certain task in a hacker's life. And, to a lesser degree, it goes where it's fun to go, driven by college students, research and happy hackers who enjoy banging out new, out-there ideas into code.
Linux can also be influenced by corporations and entities which donate to projects to get some particular task done. A number of projects or project hackers will take donations and in turn bang out some new functionality.
Linux can be directly influenced by corporations as well, adding another, more broad-scale realistic approach, targeting more than individual hackers who know their stuff. Red Hat writes OSS to make Linux usable at both the desktop and server levels, in home and enterprise settings.
The difference is that the Linux community can accept or deny Red Hat's contributions. In the same way that it can ignore bad code, useless code, corporate donations/payments for work, etc,
Linux is a force molded by a group of people using it for many different purposes. There is no roadmap for Linux just as there is no roadmap for a governmental election. The people are in control.
That man is a master of spin.
Let's apply a little thinking here.
1) OSS, by it's nature, will have more bugs reported. It's in OSS's interest (the whole philosophy behind it, folks) to report bugs so they can be fixed. It's no surprise that RH has more bugs listed.
2) Microsoft, on the other hand, has everything to gain from keeping these things under wraps, at least with its current mentality. They prefer to keep things quiet rather than fix them, and this will be part of their undoing. Fewer bug reports aren't surprising.
3) Red Hat, as a distribution, includes about every piece of software and utility most folks will ever need. Advanced office software, faxing, graphics editing, remote/automated/multi-computer admin tools and so on. The bug repository will contain bugs for all of these bits of software.
4) Windows, as a box of software, is, for the most part, a bare system which must then be populated with other programs or better programs (since MS will bundle their own software instead of what might be the best for the job).
Throw these all together along with some other things that I'm sure I haven't thought of off the top of my head and it's pretty plain what side has any right to boast.
Cheers
I'm sure there's probably some way to do this on a vanilla Windows install, but it might be worth mentioning that this is pretty trivial on a *NIX box. Put some remote administration commands in a shell, wrap that up in a list of hosts and patch what you can during the day, then shove the rest (possibly the majority) in cron and go home, taking your pager with you.
Remote administration and automation is really something *NIX really has down pat.