It's true. After Gator/GAIN, Bonzi Buddy, Wild Tangent and all the other addons install themselves all PCs operate just as slow, anyway.
On a slightly less sarcastic note, an OSS OS will fly on the hardware people throw out these days as long as you don't enable every last bit of animation while running every enterprise-level service in the background. (This from a guy who is migrating his address book to OpenLDAP because he doesn't want to sync between two PCs.)
Wow, what a tapdance. And I think I was right in the parent post. Or maybe it's just two different worlds: he lives in the pantent-license side of the IT planet and doesn't quite realize OSS says that model is broken. Now off to read the other comments and realize that I'm either redundant or stupid. (Or both.)
The first two sentences are already setting off my bullshit alarm.
I will file close to 20 patents this year for companies in many spaces, including homeland security, anti-terrorism,
He's trying to build himself up and throw in sympathetic issues. But he's doing it the wrong way to the wrong audience I think.
(I'm not saying he didn't do those things, but when somebody starts like that they're usually about to feed you some bullshit.)
Anyway, off to read the rest...
Stupid Question That Google Could Probably Answer
on
Linus on Linux in 1994
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
FreeBSD celebrated its 10th anniversary this past november.
Cool, I have occasionally wondered how old the free BSD's were, because I first learned of Linux when trying to learn Unix to help my chances of getting a particular job back in 1994. (I got it, by the way.) I had a couple of "UNIX emulators" which were really just simulators to learn the commands. Linux was the only free real-life Unix I found. At the time I thought BSD was for pay only. I didn't expect much when I downloaded Linux, but after trying it I thought it was the most awesome thing because it let me learn IT concepts at very low levels, and it was fully 32-bit.
Frequently I ready FreeBSD'ers talk about how they've been around longer than Linux, but that puzzled me since I was in on Linux before I heard of FreeBSD. So, did I just not read the right places, or did Linux take off faster than the free BSD's? I keep wondering if I'm not a FreeBSD user by luck or because Linux was available first.
(My first Linux was Slackware downloaded to floppies. It was Slackware 2.something; I remember Slackware 3.0 was called Slackware95:)
Keep an eye on PowerPC. If Windows ever takes a significant market share hit I think PPC could become the dominant desktop architecture in a relatively short time. (A few years, maybe.)
Is it possible to make a native plugin that IE would use to render PNGs instead of its native code? Then again, those who would probably would rather use an OSS browser for many reasons.
For some reason my company has a woody for MS right now. We have several web apps that require IE due to a combination of activeX stuff and IE's unique object model. I tried to get OSS browsers to work, but apparently nobody's implemented IE's proprietary object model for javascript objects, if I remember correctly. (I have no influence on the developers of these apps so I can't fix it at the source.) And IIRC there are 3 object models: an IE one, a Netscape one and the standards-based one. OSS can handle the latter two. So all my users use IE and spyware/adware is becomming epidemic.
Oh, and we're now migrating to ADS even though we have mature NDS and LDAP in place.:p (Mature meaning we've had it installed, stable and working for years.)
What really cracks me up is that they started this MS push right after Code Red hit. Whaaa?
And I'll post a troll. I think "ROT-13?" is becomming one now. Or I could go for classic *BSD is dyeing [sic], Stephen King or a gross pic link. Or perhaps I'll put offensive words in the subject.
the XP "Classic" interface, which is what everyone I know uses
Really? All of my users that know the difference want the candy interface. But we set it to "classic" to not confuse the computer illiterates since we're mixed Win2k/WinXP. I hate the new interface, and I hate those $@#!@#&@# bubbles! I hate that--unlike Win2k--clicking them does not dismiss them. Well, I'll spare you the rest of the rant...it goes on and on. I guess I could just learn how to disable the damn baloons since I'm this leet network dude and quit bitching about it.
Is there a way now to run an Apache/Linux box and have it authenticate web users against an Active Directory?
I'm not sure, but take a look at how Samba can use ADS; it uses Kerberos and LDAP and PAM (winbind). I think there are PAM modules for Apache. But it's currently a couple of steps outside of my knowledge domain to put it all together to do what you want, but it sounds possible. By the way, I tried using setting up my Linux web server at work to allow ADS authentication for login and file sharing. I think I almost had it working (kinit worked), but winbind pegged the processor while flooding my domain controller and I suddenly realized I was toying around with a production DC and haven't been brave enough to try it again and haven't taken the time to set up a lab ADS environment to try against. (I deduce that winbind was trying to copy the entire company's user list, but I'm not sure.)
Is there an open-standard directory service that can replace AD, but windows machines can still connect to?
OpenLDAP is the "duh" answer to the open directory service part. I've heard Windows boxes can authenticate to it using Kerberos. I haven't tried it myself but plan to for home fileserver use. Google for openldap windows authentication and look around. I don't see anything definitive offhand, but it's worth browsing. Oh, and check TLDP for Kerberos and Openldap HOWTOs.
This is how I hear it from my nephew, the hardcore gamer anyway.
And we all know hardcore gamers wouldn't be fanboys for their platform. <rolleyes>
I don't have a console, but I was thinking about getting one a few months ago. I couldn't decide between XBox or PS2; each has its merits. I was going to decide based on who I would most likely share games with, but my peers are split XBox/PS2. I wound up deciding not to spend the money. But it's really hard to find objective opinions among the diehard brand fans.
Good question. I haven't tried it yet, but I've run into several sites that Google indexes but the site refuses me entry until I register (which I don't). Some of them are clever enough to put Javascript (or something) in to prevent you from looking at Google's cache of that page. Yeah, I could get around that, but usually by then I figure I don't care what that site has to say.
I've noticed some ?parameter=value URLs from Google, usually for Slashdot, so I'm guessing they enable that for certain sites by hand.
However, you can modify Apache and/or PHP to use URL/URI names for dynamic pages. You could remap your example query to http://domain/showpost/1244/ and the engines will probably index it. I'm not sure why more message board software doesn't do this. (Okay, probably because it requires httpd & server-side processing coordination.)
For going through the trouble of reading the subject and/or body of this post, I hereby grant you license to IP I own in Linux.
Heh heh, now I can submit a press release claiming I sold Linux licenses to hundreds or thousands of Slashdot readers. Muahahahah!
(I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that this is satire and as far as I know I currently don't own any IP in Linux and therefore can't grant you any license. Geez, that's a joke kill.)
Any commoditization of computer software in the last, say 10 years, is surely coming on too fast to be compared with "historical context" that spans tens or hundreds of generations of humans.
But look at how much things have changed in the past three or four generations. The industrial age has increased production of food and materials for much of the world. Travel became much easier and common among all classes of people....
Whoops, I meant to back up a bit further and mention Gutenberg's press first. It enabled mass communication in ways not previously possible.
Okay, back to our recent ancestors: Trains, planes and automobiles. Telegraphs, phones, motion pictures, TV, the internet. We can now have live audio-visual conversations with people on the other side of the planet or even in orbit around our planet.
Pop Quiz: Ronald McDonald, Chernobyl, Neil Armstrong. What percentage of the world's population do you think doesn't know what each of the three of those refers to? These are all from the past 50 years. Okay, 50 years allows for a lot of old-fashioned news telling. How long did it take for most of the world to know about 9/11 or the Northeastern blackouts?
The point being that I believe it to be obvious that todays rapid communications must have an affect on the commoditization process. I don't know how long software commoditization will take, but I don't think we can put it in historical context.
I used to believe that many technologies like TV, computers and phones would merge into one multifunction device eventually. Now I believe that computer technology will evolve into discrete single purpose devices with simple interfaces. And they will eventually be intuitive or at least simple to use like a microwave or phone or car. (Windows users may run into troubles operating Macintosh computers, but Chevy drivers can operate a BMW with no extra training.)
But I also believe that we are in a chaotic[1] time in IT. I suspect vendors are milking as much money out of stepwise "improvements" as possible, and I exect OS and app design to continue evolving for a while. I *think* my career as a network administrator is secure for the next 30 years or so, but I'm not entirely sure. Some time after that I expect what we use PCs for today will be simple to use devices that don't need ongoing supervision and maintenance.
[1] Chaotic Evil vendors and Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil software projects, for you D&D types.
No no, it's a mock or protest web site...I would expect it to be against or opposite the original. My first thought was a picture of a...well nevermind, a high pitched fart sound was much more agreeable and much funnier. To me, anyway.
Damn, I missed the Preview button and hit Submit. Sorry.
This article is interesting, but rather than the commodification of software, it's more the commodification of data that's really being discussed. His examples and ideas really concern data format standardization and that standards are what allow data to become commodities.
He does mention data formats, but he talks about APIs, too, and makes a decent point that the UNIX API will be the commodity API.
And maybe I just read this into his article because it's what I think, but software should be a commodity because it's widely useful. Most businesses larger than a couple of people really benefit from accounting software. Email and HTTP user agents are nearly commodity now, and chat and VoIP may be getting there. These are all very useful but there's no reason for consumers to allow one vendor to corner the market in the long run, yet for the moment Microsoft has leverage in the web browser and mail agent markets; then again if you look they are really giving the user agents away and/or bundling them to promote their server and OS products.
I think eventually consumers (business and personal) will get tired of the MS bullying and demand real commodity user agents and data formats. At least I hope so.
By the way, I love to bash Microsoft but it's not like they're the only one trying to tip the balance in their favor. They just happen to be on top right now. Netscape wasn't exactly Glinda the Good Fairy, either. And IBM is fuzzy and huggable nowadays but they could be scary long term.
Then again maybe IBM is buying the commodity software angle because they stand to reap the benefits making a large portion of the hardware the commodity software runs on. Which processor API do you think is a more commoditizable spec to write to: PPC or x86? Hmmmmm....
Slashdot Mirror
"It doesn't matter."
It's true. After Gator/GAIN, Bonzi Buddy, Wild Tangent and all the other addons install themselves all PCs operate just as slow, anyway.
On a slightly less sarcastic note, an OSS OS will fly on the hardware people throw out these days as long as you don't enable every last bit of animation while running every enterprise-level service in the background. (This from a guy who is migrating his address book to OpenLDAP because he doesn't want to sync between two PCs.)
Wow, what a tapdance. And I think I was right in the parent post. Or maybe it's just two different worlds: he lives in the pantent-license side of the IT planet and doesn't quite realize OSS says that model is broken. Now off to read the other comments and realize that I'm either redundant or stupid. (Or both.)
The first two sentences are already setting off my bullshit alarm.
I will file close to 20 patents this year for companies in many spaces, including homeland security, anti-terrorism,
He's trying to build himself up and throw in sympathetic issues. But he's doing it the wrong way to the wrong audience I think.
(I'm not saying he didn't do those things, but when somebody starts like that they're usually about to feed you some bullshit.)
Anyway, off to read the rest...
FreeBSD celebrated its 10th anniversary this past november .
:)
Cool, I have occasionally wondered how old the free BSD's were, because I first learned of Linux when trying to learn Unix to help my chances of getting a particular job back in 1994. (I got it, by the way.) I had a couple of "UNIX emulators" which were really just simulators to learn the commands. Linux was the only free real-life Unix I found. At the time I thought BSD was for pay only. I didn't expect much when I downloaded Linux, but after trying it I thought it was the most awesome thing because it let me learn IT concepts at very low levels, and it was fully 32-bit.
Frequently I ready FreeBSD'ers talk about how they've been around longer than Linux, but that puzzled me since I was in on Linux before I heard of FreeBSD. So, did I just not read the right places, or did Linux take off faster than the free BSD's? I keep wondering if I'm not a FreeBSD user by luck or because Linux was available first.
(My first Linux was Slackware downloaded to floppies. It was Slackware 2.something; I remember Slackware 3.0 was called Slackware95
Keep an eye on PowerPC. If Windows ever takes a significant market share hit I think PPC could become the dominant desktop architecture in a relatively short time. (A few years, maybe.)
But I'm not putting any money on this.
That reminds me: Do you--like me--feel naughty when editing the profanity filter for a bulletin board?
Crap! Now those sobriety tests will be extra hard to remember!
Is it possible to make a native plugin that IE would use to render PNGs instead of its native code? Then again, those who would probably would rather use an OSS browser for many reasons.
So just un-tick the 'Send Referrer' box on the prefbar.
I would think open source developers would prefer you send reefer.
s/stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level/Mozilla/
(Or Opera or Konqueror, if that's your thing. Or even Dillo.)
For some reason my company has a woody for MS right now. We have several web apps that require IE due to a combination of activeX stuff and IE's unique object model. I tried to get OSS browsers to work, but apparently nobody's implemented IE's proprietary object model for javascript objects, if I remember correctly. (I have no influence on the developers of these apps so I can't fix it at the source.) And IIRC there are 3 object models: an IE one, a Netscape one and the standards-based one. OSS can handle the latter two. So all my users use IE and spyware/adware is becomming epidemic.
:p (Mature meaning we've had it installed, stable and working for years.)
Oh, and we're now migrating to ADS even though we have mature NDS and LDAP in place.
What really cracks me up is that they started this MS push right after Code Red hit. Whaaa?
Tell that to this guy and his moderators. :p
Oh shit, now I'm paranoid!
And I'll post a troll. I think "ROT-13?" is becomming one now. Or I could go for classic *BSD is dyeing [sic], Stephen King or a gross pic link. Or perhaps I'll put offensive words in the subject.
the XP "Classic" interface, which is what everyone I know uses
Really? All of my users that know the difference want the candy interface. But we set it to "classic" to not confuse the computer illiterates since we're mixed Win2k/WinXP. I hate the new interface, and I hate those $@#!@#&@# bubbles! I hate that--unlike Win2k--clicking them does not dismiss them. Well, I'll spare you the rest of the rant...it goes on and on. I guess I could just learn how to disable the damn baloons since I'm this leet network dude and quit bitching about it.
Is there a way now to run an Apache/Linux box and have it authenticate web users against an Active Directory?
I'm not sure, but take a look at how Samba can use ADS; it uses Kerberos and LDAP and PAM (winbind). I think there are PAM modules for Apache. But it's currently a couple of steps outside of my knowledge domain to put it all together to do what you want, but it sounds possible. By the way, I tried using setting up my Linux web server at work to allow ADS authentication for login and file sharing. I think I almost had it working (kinit worked), but winbind pegged the processor while flooding my domain controller and I suddenly realized I was toying around with a production DC and haven't been brave enough to try it again and haven't taken the time to set up a lab ADS environment to try against. (I deduce that winbind was trying to copy the entire company's user list, but I'm not sure.)
Is there an open-standard directory service that can replace AD, but windows machines can still connect to?
OpenLDAP is the "duh" answer to the open directory service part. I've heard Windows boxes can authenticate to it using Kerberos. I haven't tried it myself but plan to for home fileserver use. Google for openldap windows authentication and look around. I don't see anything definitive offhand, but it's worth browsing. Oh, and check TLDP for Kerberos and Openldap HOWTOs.
Damn, that so simple and makes so much sense that I never thought of it. And it's the cheapest. Can't beat that.
This is how I hear it from my nephew, the hardcore gamer anyway.
And we all know hardcore gamers wouldn't be fanboys for their platform. <rolleyes>
I don't have a console, but I was thinking about getting one a few months ago. I couldn't decide between XBox or PS2; each has its merits. I was going to decide based on who I would most likely share games with, but my peers are split XBox/PS2. I wound up deciding not to spend the money. But it's really hard to find objective opinions among the diehard brand fans.
Good question. I haven't tried it yet, but I've run into several sites that Google indexes but the site refuses me entry until I register (which I don't). Some of them are clever enough to put Javascript (or something) in to prevent you from looking at Google's cache of that page. Yeah, I could get around that, but usually by then I figure I don't care what that site has to say.
I've noticed some ?parameter=value URLs from Google, usually for Slashdot, so I'm guessing they enable that for certain sites by hand.
However, you can modify Apache and/or PHP to use URL/URI names for dynamic pages. You could remap your example query to http://domain/showpost/1244/ and the engines will probably index it. I'm not sure why more message board software doesn't do this. (Okay, probably because it requires httpd & server-side processing coordination.)
For going through the trouble of reading the subject and/or body of this post, I hereby grant you license to IP I own in Linux.
Heh heh, now I can submit a press release claiming I sold Linux licenses to hundreds or thousands of Slashdot readers. Muahahahah!
(I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that this is satire and as far as I know I currently don't own any IP in Linux and therefore can't grant you any license. Geez, that's a joke kill.)
Instructions here.
(Don't remember where I got that...probably Slashdot.)
Any commoditization of computer software in the last, say 10 years, is surely coming on too fast to be compared with "historical context" that spans tens or hundreds of generations of humans.
...
But look at how much things have changed in the past three or four generations. The industrial age has increased production of food and materials for much of the world. Travel became much easier and common among all classes of people.
Whoops, I meant to back up a bit further and mention Gutenberg's press first. It enabled mass communication in ways not previously possible.
Okay, back to our recent ancestors: Trains, planes and automobiles. Telegraphs, phones, motion pictures, TV, the internet. We can now have live audio-visual conversations with people on the other side of the planet or even in orbit around our planet.
Pop Quiz: Ronald McDonald, Chernobyl, Neil Armstrong. What percentage of the world's population do you think doesn't know what each of the three of those refers to? These are all from the past 50 years. Okay, 50 years allows for a lot of old-fashioned news telling. How long did it take for most of the world to know about 9/11 or the Northeastern blackouts?
The point being that I believe it to be obvious that todays rapid communications must have an affect on the commoditization process. I don't know how long software commoditization will take, but I don't think we can put it in historical context.
I used to believe that many technologies like TV, computers and phones would merge into one multifunction device eventually. Now I believe that computer technology will evolve into discrete single purpose devices with simple interfaces. And they will eventually be intuitive or at least simple to use like a microwave or phone or car. (Windows users may run into troubles operating Macintosh computers, but Chevy drivers can operate a BMW with no extra training.)
But I also believe that we are in a chaotic[1] time in IT. I suspect vendors are milking as much money out of stepwise "improvements" as possible, and I exect OS and app design to continue evolving for a while. I *think* my career as a network administrator is secure for the next 30 years or so, but I'm not entirely sure. Some time after that I expect what we use PCs for today will be simple to use devices that don't need ongoing supervision and maintenance.
[1] Chaotic Evil vendors and Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil software projects, for you D&D types.
No no, it's a mock or protest web site...I would expect it to be against or opposite the original. My first thought was a picture of a ...well nevermind, a high pitched fart sound was much more agreeable and much funnier. To me, anyway.
Damn, I missed the Preview button and hit Submit. Sorry.
This article is interesting, but rather than the commodification of software, it's more the commodification of data that's really being discussed. His examples and ideas really concern data format standardization and that standards are what allow data to become commodities.
He does mention data formats, but he talks about APIs, too, and makes a decent point that the UNIX API will be the commodity API.
And maybe I just read this into his article because it's what I think, but software should be a commodity because it's widely useful. Most businesses larger than a couple of people really benefit from accounting software. Email and HTTP user agents are nearly commodity now, and chat and VoIP may be getting there. These are all very useful but there's no reason for consumers to allow one vendor to corner the market in the long run, yet for the moment Microsoft has leverage in the web browser and mail agent markets; then again if you look they are really giving the user agents away and/or bundling them to promote their server and OS products.
I think eventually consumers (business and personal) will get tired of the MS bullying and demand real commodity user agents and data formats. At least I hope so.
By the way, I love to bash Microsoft but it's not like they're the only one trying to tip the balance in their favor. They just happen to be on top right now. Netscape wasn't exactly Glinda the Good Fairy, either. And IBM is fuzzy and huggable nowadays but they could be scary long term.
Then again maybe IBM is buying the commodity software angle because they stand to reap the benefits making a large portion of the hardware the commodity software runs on. Which processor API do you think is a more commoditizable spec to write to: PPC or x86? Hmmmmm....