Well hooray for all the "computer-dummie-desktop" people who need "certain hi-end rendering applications" and better performance on their Whirlpool, Tiger and Hasty Pudding Cryptographic hases/ciphers. (European translation: replace "hooray" with "bully".)
Okay, I thought I'd try Friendster as long as it was free, but apparently the only way to get friends is to email them through Friendster. I remembered someone linking to their F ID and tried to invite you as a friend, but I couldn't even figure out how to do that (it won't let me look at your profile because we're not friends). If I already know the emails of my friends, why the hell would I want to drag them onto Friendster?
no single minor event should be able to shut off electricity for 50 million people for 2 days across several juristictions.
And how do you know it was a minor event? Perhaps if they hadn't shut down then the generators would've been damaged enough to cause weeks or months of downtime for tens of millions of people.
I find it odd that they're still apparently bickering about it, though. I would've thought they knew what happened by now.
From the Article: Why would any company have port 135 open to the Internet?
Okay, that's stupid. I'm in a large company that has that blocked off 135 (and 80, and the ports for SQL Slammer and Spida, etc), but the worms still get in. Employees bring disks, CDs and memory sticks in and out of work. They remotely connect. They read Hotmail from work. There are many ways for this worm to get inside a big company. Closing port 135 doesn't help! It wouldn't surprise me to find out that most of the worms are let in by stupid techs who bypass the safties yet don't protect their own systems well enough.
This may be off-topic for the story, but hey, it was in the article! I expect a guy knowledgable enough to construct the above quoted sentence to know that shutting the port down at the firewall doesn't sovle the worm issue.
the variety of Apple computers kept where I work cause proportionally far more trouble than other platforms.
What other platforms, and what vintage Apple? Are the problems due to interoperability like using a Mac to sign into NDS/AD/LDAP/whatever or users having issues doing their work? Just curious, I'm all MS & Novell where I work.
Take a look at small offices that don't have or can't afford an IT department and you'll see they normally use Macs.
<Lumberg>Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there.</Lumberg> I was a field tech for several years and some of the equipment I supported was in smaller shops. I don't recall ever seeing a Mac in any of them.
I would say these small shops buy PC because that's what they have at home, that's what all their friends have and they feel it'll be easier to find support (as in "ask someone for free") for it if necessary.
Then again I think the Mac factor is regional. I've noticed Apple seems to be more commonplace in say, Albuquerque than in Dallas.
Why didn't they just let the worm eat the domain? What's the difference, really?
If I understand correctly, the difference is that there won't be massive SYN floods from all over the internet because there will be no target. (I haven't RTFA; I don't know what the worm will do if it can't resolve the domain.)
I was figuring on the internet coming to a screeching halt for a while Saturday, but this action may prevent that from happening.
Okay, I thought maybe you were on crack, but another poster linked to this which looks like what you described. My questions still stand, but I actually believe you now.
Um, if the crankshaft and pistons were removed, how was air drawn into the combustion chamber? And did the exhaust valves still work, and if so then how did that affect performance?
And if "it ran like a normal engine" then how was the air compressed for an explosion?
Definitionally, what differentiates a pulse-jet engine from a rocket?
As the grandparent post says (and you even quote it), a rocket carries its own oxidizer. A jet uses atmospheric air for its oxygen supply. Illustration: Rockets can potentially work in space or underwater whereas jets can't.
Perhaps you were thinking about turbine engine fan propulsion versus exhaust gas only propulsion? In that case pulse-jet and rockets are similar.
FreeBSD is a rock solid general purpose OS. It is most notably the core of Apple's OS-X.
Okay, I was going to say OS X is not FreeBSD based, but from Apple's mouth:
The stability of Mac OS X begins with Darwin, an Open Source, UNIX-based foundation. Darwin is a complete BSD UNIX implementation, derived from the original 4.4BSD-Lite2 Open Source distribution. Darwin uses a monolithic kernel based on FreeBSD 4.4 and the OSF/mk Mach 3, combining BSD's POSIX support with the fine-grained multithreading and real-time performance of Mach.
I'm confused. I didn't think "monolithic kernel" and "Mach" could be in the same system at the same time.
So OS X's kernel is based on 4.4BSD-Lite2, FreeBSD 4.4 and OSF/mk Mach 3. Um, yeah.
But at any rate I'm not sure you can call FreeBSD the core of OS X.
Misbehaving NLMs can still lock up the console in NW6. Even if I spawn a new one it frequently is useless, too. I expect using Linux as the kernel will greatly improve that situation.
On the one hand I think it would make a lot of sense to replace the console, but I'm thinking they don't want to leave their NetWare admins in the dark; that might tempt the Linux-savvy ones to just use Linux instead of Linux-backed NetWare and tempt the non-Linux savvy ones to stay on their current version rather than continue to pay for new versions and new feature support.
I'm fairly sure Novell doesn't want NetWare to be Yet Another Linux Distro. That just wouldn't make business sense. They're probably looking at Apple OS X and thinking along the same lines: put their proprietary apps & modules on top of an OSS Unix base.
I expect them to offer client software that will run on 'normal' Linux distros, though, or perhaps even distribute a whole Linux NetWare client with OS, apps and all. But I think the server itself will look and feel like NetWare for a while longer, but hopefully with better robustness from the console screens.
Forking to another subject, I'm also wondering about future platforms. I'm not so sure that PowerPC won't become the dominant low-end server architechture in the next 10 years, and these moves by Novell would let them easily migrate if needed. I don't really have anything to back that up; it's just a feeling that IBM can make that happen. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part because PPC seems like a much cooler arch. (Think virtualization.)
. . . everyone at Novell was worried that the purchase spelled the end of Netware. The management held meetings to assure everyone that this was *not* the case.
From what I understand, NetWare 7 will be able to use the Linux kenel or the old kernel. The product will still be NetWare.
I fully expect that the Linux-based NetWare will support older NLMs (presuming x86 hardware).
I'm running NetWare 6 at work. The included httpd is Apache. Tomcat is also included as part of NetWare. Presumably their NW7 with Linux kernel will run existing NLMs, so the transition to any traditional Unix userland--if that's the direction they're going--should be fairly smooth and painless.
I would guess that the server console interface will remain much the same rather than going to the usual Linux VT & bash to make it easy for NetWare admins that don't know Linux to keep upgrading and paying Novell money.
I suspect they will provide much more support for Linux clients, and that's what the recent purchases and announcements are about, but they probably won't try challenge MS on the desktop head-on.
SCO is dyeing [sic]. Netcraft confirms it....nah, that doesn't work.
Darl McBride, deat at 52. Nah, that neither.
Damn, I have the perfect idea, but I can't make it work. The idea is the goatsex guy, uh, revealing the Slashdot topic icon for SCO (the old Caldera logo). First it didn't come out well as ascii art, and second the lameness filter rejected it. But you can assemble the image in your head. Thank you.
For those who are lost, look here and try the song at the bottom of the page, although it doesn't seem to work for me (but I may not have Real installed). Lyrics here.
I tried to find an album on Amazon with a song preview, but gave up after looking at a few. Here's the list of albums with this song if you want to keep trying.
Oops. I meant to say something in the spirit of "Windows is far from blameless itself" since I know Windows makes life difficult on successful Windows software vendors when trying to take over their innovations. I didn't know the details but was pretty sure Windows was hostile to Novell clients. Instead I goofed up the statement and made it sound like I was promoting MS. I feel ill now.
Okay, my Java GUI comment was stupid, too. It's just one of those things that popped in my head while typing, and Novell seems to really like Java. Of course that would be stupid in every aspect; besides if they wanted to go that direction they could've done it already with a Java VM on a PC or a Java PC.
And I also only see the console GUI when a particular app requires it for install. I've always thought it's idiotic to have a GUI on a server class machine. Put the GUI on the client tools; that's why they call it a server.
Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies.
I'd say their strategy is to sell add-ons to NetWare, of which DirXML is only one example. And, of course, they license per-seat/per-client and offer incentives to pay for support contracts.
My read is that Novell would rather control the client. In my view their Windows (& DOS) clients have always tried to "take over" the client machine and duke it out with Windows rather than peacefully coexist with it. That's my personal bias from years of Novell clients on Win boxen, though. (Windows is far from blame itself.)
So I think--from their point of view--it makes perfect sense to create yet another Linux distro. If they do it right, other vendors will be able to incorporate the NetWare-friendliness into their distros, too, and Novell can make sure its client just works will with NetWare and Zenworks and all the other NetWare add-ons. And, of course, since a lot of their business is support contracts, it's easier to support a Linux distro you compiled yourself.
I just had an odd thought. You've seen the available Java GUI on the NetWare console, right? I wonder if they'll try to make that the Linux client desktop? . . . Nahhh, they aren't that crazy.
Linux/open source isn't about consensus, even though we talk about it that way sometimes.
Gnome does have UI standards, and I think KDE does, too. The CLI has--as far as I know--an unwritten standard. command --help or command -[options] [file][file]...
Linux will never be as usable (GUI wise) as MacOS or Windows until. ..
Linux is as usable now. But it is not standardized in any way, so my Mom can't call me and say "hey son, I just installed Linux. How do I read my email?" and have me give a straight answer. With WinXP I could safely assume OE. Mac and Windows are not intuitive; I've seen new users try both. The trick is every Windows is the same and every Mac is the same so peer support is readily available. I'm not sure that's a usability issue myself.
Where I see Linux shining in the next few years is on the corporate desktop. For desktop management Novell has ZENworks and MS has the MS Installer; both have their problems, and one core problem with Windows apps is that many are written to require the user has admin access to the PC which causes a LOT of my admin headaches to be sure. Linux/Unix apps are generally if not always usable from a user account, and there are nice app package systems that will scale well. I imagine a corporate standard desktop with a corporate-wide window manager, browser, email reader and office tools. I'm thinking apt sources pointing to a distributed filesystem for updates, and sshd running on desktops. That will be nicely managable, and since the whole company is standardized you have your peer user training available. And if user Bob changes his desktop theme and keyboard mapping and has 10 custom apps running to remind him of ESPN updates, weather changes, traffic conditions and instant messaging it won't affect the next user who logs in because he isn't root (or any equivalent of MS' Power User) and can't affect their settings; they'll get their familiar corporate desktop back.
I don't think UI will be a challenge there. I think the challenges will be making the PHBs lose thier vendor salesman pampering and converting the Excel power users (VBScript newbs especially) to an OSS spreadsheet app.
Slashdot Mirror
+5 Funny? I don't get it.
Well hooray for all the "computer-dummie-desktop" people who need "certain hi-end rendering applications" and better performance on their Whirlpool, Tiger and Hasty Pudding Cryptographic hases/ciphers. (European translation: replace "hooray" with "bully".)
and I've been waiting for my hand to produce coconuts for 34 years now.
Don't wait, just masturbate more vigorously.
Okay, I thought I'd try Friendster as long as it was free, but apparently the only way to get friends is to email them through Friendster. I remembered someone linking to their F ID and tried to invite you as a friend, but I couldn't even figure out how to do that (it won't let me look at your profile because we're not friends). If I already know the emails of my friends, why the hell would I want to drag them onto Friendster?
;-)
Or am I missing something? (besides friends
</rant>
no single minor event should be able to shut off electricity for 50 million people for 2 days across several juristictions.
And how do you know it was a minor event? Perhaps if they hadn't shut down then the generators would've been damaged enough to cause weeks or months of downtime for tens of millions of people.
I find it odd that they're still apparently bickering about it, though. I would've thought they knew what happened by now.
From the Article: Why would any company have port 135 open to the Internet?
Okay, that's stupid. I'm in a large company that has that blocked off 135 (and 80, and the ports for SQL Slammer and Spida, etc), but the worms still get in. Employees bring disks, CDs and memory sticks in and out of work. They remotely connect. They read Hotmail from work. There are many ways for this worm to get inside a big company. Closing port 135 doesn't help! It wouldn't surprise me to find out that most of the worms are let in by stupid techs who bypass the safties yet don't protect their own systems well enough.
This may be off-topic for the story, but hey, it was in the article! I expect a guy knowledgable enough to construct the above quoted sentence to know that shutting the port down at the firewall doesn't sovle the worm issue.
</rant>
the variety of Apple computers kept where I work cause proportionally far more trouble than other platforms.
What other platforms, and what vintage Apple? Are the problems due to interoperability like using a Mac to sign into NDS/AD/LDAP/whatever or users having issues doing their work? Just curious, I'm all MS & Novell where I work.
Take a look at small offices that don't have or can't afford an IT department and you'll see they normally use Macs.
<Lumberg>Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there.</Lumberg> I was a field tech for several years and some of the equipment I supported was in smaller shops. I don't recall ever seeing a Mac in any of them.
I would say these small shops buy PC because that's what they have at home, that's what all their friends have and they feel it'll be easier to find support (as in "ask someone for free") for it if necessary.
Then again I think the Mac factor is regional. I've noticed Apple seems to be more commonplace in say, Albuquerque than in Dallas.
Oh, you mean this?
Excuse me, but I have a short attention span and couldn't read farther than that. Could you please email a point with more brevity?
It's just that some people....hey, pretty lights!...brb
Why didn't they just let the worm eat the domain? What's the difference, really?
If I understand correctly, the difference is that there won't be massive SYN floods from all over the internet because there will be no target. (I haven't RTFA; I don't know what the worm will do if it can't resolve the domain.)
I was figuring on the internet coming to a screeching halt for a while Saturday, but this action may prevent that from happening.
<Nelson voice>Ha ha!</Nelson voice>
Okay, I thought maybe you were on crack, but another poster linked to this which looks like what you described. My questions still stand, but I actually believe you now.
Um, if the crankshaft and pistons were removed, how was air drawn into the combustion chamber? And did the exhaust valves still work, and if so then how did that affect performance?
And if "it ran like a normal engine" then how was the air compressed for an explosion?
Definitionally, what differentiates a pulse-jet engine from a rocket?
As the grandparent post says (and you even quote it), a rocket carries its own oxidizer. A jet uses atmospheric air for its oxygen supply. Illustration: Rockets can potentially work in space or underwater whereas jets can't.
Perhaps you were thinking about turbine engine fan propulsion versus exhaust gas only propulsion? In that case pulse-jet and rockets are similar.
Okay, I was going to say OS X is not FreeBSD based, but from Apple's mouth:
I'm confused. I didn't think "monolithic kernel" and "Mach" could be in the same system at the same time.
So OS X's kernel is based on 4.4BSD-Lite2, FreeBSD 4.4 and OSF/mk Mach 3. Um, yeah.
But at any rate I'm not sure you can call FreeBSD the core of OS X.
Typical troll; you abandon one story when it quits working and then use a slightly more plausible story.
Misbehaving NLMs can still lock up the console in NW6. Even if I spawn a new one it frequently is useless, too. I expect using Linux as the kernel will greatly improve that situation.
On the one hand I think it would make a lot of sense to replace the console, but I'm thinking they don't want to leave their NetWare admins in the dark; that might tempt the Linux-savvy ones to just use Linux instead of Linux-backed NetWare and tempt the non-Linux savvy ones to stay on their current version rather than continue to pay for new versions and new feature support.
I'm fairly sure Novell doesn't want NetWare to be Yet Another Linux Distro. That just wouldn't make business sense. They're probably looking at Apple OS X and thinking along the same lines: put their proprietary apps & modules on top of an OSS Unix base.
I expect them to offer client software that will run on 'normal' Linux distros, though, or perhaps even distribute a whole Linux NetWare client with OS, apps and all. But I think the server itself will look and feel like NetWare for a while longer, but hopefully with better robustness from the console screens.
Forking to another subject, I'm also wondering about future platforms. I'm not so sure that PowerPC won't become the dominant low-end server architechture in the next 10 years, and these moves by Novell would let them easily migrate if needed. I don't really have anything to back that up; it's just a feeling that IBM can make that happen. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part because PPC seems like a much cooler arch. (Think virtualization.)
I expect Novell kept rights to use UnixWare IP in their products when they sold the stuff to SCO, so I imagine they're untouchable.
Then again, I imagine that of IBM and SCO is suing them anyway.
. . . everyone at Novell was worried that the purchase spelled the end of Netware. The management held meetings to assure everyone that this was *not* the case.
From what I understand, NetWare 7 will be able to use the Linux kenel or the old kernel. The product will still be NetWare.
I fully expect that the Linux-based NetWare will support older NLMs (presuming x86 hardware).
I'm running NetWare 6 at work. The included httpd is Apache. Tomcat is also included as part of NetWare. Presumably their NW7 with Linux kernel will run existing NLMs, so the transition to any traditional Unix userland--if that's the direction they're going--should be fairly smooth and painless.
I would guess that the server console interface will remain much the same rather than going to the usual Linux VT & bash to make it easy for NetWare admins that don't know Linux to keep upgrading and paying Novell money.
I suspect they will provide much more support for Linux clients, and that's what the recent purchases and announcements are about, but they probably won't try challenge MS on the desktop head-on.
"Hey remember that whole SCO thing? How do you know it won't happen again but next time with a valid claim?"
Why does anyone think this is less likely to happen with proprietary software? MS itself has been sued more than once over IP in their software.
SCO is dyeing [sic]. Netcraft confirms it....nah, that doesn't work.
Darl McBride, deat at 52. Nah, that neither.
Damn, I have the perfect idea, but I can't make it work. The idea is the goatsex guy, uh, revealing the Slashdot topic icon for SCO (the old Caldera logo). First it didn't come out well as ascii art, and second the lameness filter rejected it. But you can assemble the image in your head. Thank you.
Off to delete that sick crap off my PC now...
For those who are lost, look here and try the song at the bottom of the page, although it doesn't seem to work for me (but I may not have Real installed). Lyrics here.
I tried to find an album on Amazon with a song preview, but gave up after looking at a few. Here's the list of albums with this song if you want to keep trying.
Oops. I meant to say something in the spirit of "Windows is far from blameless itself" since I know Windows makes life difficult on successful Windows software vendors when trying to take over their innovations. I didn't know the details but was pretty sure Windows was hostile to Novell clients. Instead I goofed up the statement and made it sound like I was promoting MS. I feel ill now.
Okay, my Java GUI comment was stupid, too. It's just one of those things that popped in my head while typing, and Novell seems to really like Java. Of course that would be stupid in every aspect; besides if they wanted to go that direction they could've done it already with a Java VM on a PC or a Java PC.
And I also only see the console GUI when a particular app requires it for install. I've always thought it's idiotic to have a GUI on a server class machine. Put the GUI on the client tools; that's why they call it a server.
Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies.
I'd say their strategy is to sell add-ons to NetWare, of which DirXML is only one example. And, of course, they license per-seat/per-client and offer incentives to pay for support contracts.
My read is that Novell would rather control the client. In my view their Windows (& DOS) clients have always tried to "take over" the client machine and duke it out with Windows rather than peacefully coexist with it. That's my personal bias from years of Novell clients on Win boxen, though. (Windows is far from blame itself.)
So I think--from their point of view--it makes perfect sense to create yet another Linux distro. If they do it right, other vendors will be able to incorporate the NetWare-friendliness into their distros, too, and Novell can make sure its client just works will with NetWare and Zenworks and all the other NetWare add-ons. And, of course, since a lot of their business is support contracts, it's easier to support a Linux distro you compiled yourself.
I just had an odd thought. You've seen the available Java GUI on the NetWare console, right? I wonder if they'll try to make that the Linux client desktop? . . . Nahhh, they aren't that crazy.
PHB's still love to pay for software, let them pay for Novell Linux
Knowing Novell, they'll probably call it LinuxWare.
Linux/open source isn't about consensus, even though we talk about it that way sometimes.
.
Gnome does have UI standards, and I think KDE does, too. The CLI has--as far as I know--an unwritten standard. command --help or command -[options] [file][file]...
Linux will never be as usable (GUI wise) as MacOS or Windows until. .
Linux is as usable now. But it is not standardized in any way, so my Mom can't call me and say "hey son, I just installed Linux. How do I read my email?" and have me give a straight answer. With WinXP I could safely assume OE. Mac and Windows are not intuitive; I've seen new users try both. The trick is every Windows is the same and every Mac is the same so peer support is readily available. I'm not sure that's a usability issue myself.
Where I see Linux shining in the next few years is on the corporate desktop. For desktop management Novell has ZENworks and MS has the MS Installer; both have their problems, and one core problem with Windows apps is that many are written to require the user has admin access to the PC which causes a LOT of my admin headaches to be sure. Linux/Unix apps are generally if not always usable from a user account, and there are nice app package systems that will scale well. I imagine a corporate standard desktop with a corporate-wide window manager, browser, email reader and office tools. I'm thinking apt sources pointing to a distributed filesystem for updates, and sshd running on desktops. That will be nicely managable, and since the whole company is standardized you have your peer user training available. And if user Bob changes his desktop theme and keyboard mapping and has 10 custom apps running to remind him of ESPN updates, weather changes, traffic conditions and instant messaging it won't affect the next user who logs in because he isn't root (or any equivalent of MS' Power User) and can't affect their settings; they'll get their familiar corporate desktop back.
I don't think UI will be a challenge there. I think the challenges will be making the PHBs lose thier vendor salesman pampering and converting the Excel power users (VBScript newbs especially) to an OSS spreadsheet app.