Seriously, though, if M$ thought they could profit from Linux they'd be using it in their products already and biting the GPL bullet. Or figuring out a strategy to get the GPL tossed out so they could use other strategies to be able to use the code.
They really wouldn't need to do that. If they were seriously interested in competing in the open source realm, they could go the BSD route, like Apple did.
Wouldn't it be fun to see a Microsoft OS based on Darwin?
And somebody please fill me in, but is the SCO hotshot lawyer who lost the Gore case against Florida and worked against Microsoft such a hotshot? It seems to me that he's more of a loser.
Indeed he is, and apparently he's having a few problems of his own these days.
One thing I dont believe is that you can run OSX on this box in any meaningful way (faster than on an apple), I have to bet that theres a contract between Apple & IBM about IBM not competing with Apple.. Maybe OSX won't be optimized for anything over 2 processors.
Actually, there's some interesting possibilities here. Apple has been developing new products such as the iPod, iTunes, and strengthening their application software offerings. Obviously, they're becoming less dependent on revenues from the Mac hardware itself. That being the case, they may be more amenable to licensing MacOS then they have in the past. IBM would be an exemplery licensee, since Apple and IBM don't sell into the same markets. OS X would be a gorgeous OS for high-end P-series workstations or workgroup servers. Since Apple doesn't really have access to corporate or technical markets, this doesn't represent a threat to them, and possibly even opens up new markets for them.
Obviously, this is just idle speculation on my part - I don't have any information indicating this will happen any time soon.;-)
Yes, that's interesting. Up until this point, Linux has competed mostly on price. Now it appears to have graduated to competing on value.
This should be a great incentive for ISV to start porting their desktop software over to Linux. The fact that they were willing to pay more a Linux solution than a Windows one is a signal there's actually a buck to be made selling software on the platform.
No longer is Linux merely the OS choice of cheapskates and freeloaders - some customers are willing to pay cash for their software!
Folks, these so-called "conservatives" really believe in nothing that is traditionally conservative. Oh, sure, Bush pops into a church during campaign time and says "Jesus" and the religious right just rolls over. But these guys aren't interested in conservin' much of anything.
You've got that right. Read this address by Rep. Ron Paul to the House or Representitives. Nice to see someone finally speaking up.
Now, let's hope somebody listens, sooner or later.
Bush has passed every Dem agenda that's come to him, from medicare health benefits to education spending increases. Every conservative I know is mad at Bush for pushing the liberal agendas. The NRA and even the nut job Jerry Falwell have threatened to pull support from him.
You are absolutely correct. I would advise every Conservative/Libertarian, hell, every American, read this address by Rep. Ron Paul to the House of Representatives.
States can augment federal law, but they can't contradict it (unless, I suppose, the law says they're allowed to).
In a way, they can. If the required number of states (2/3) ratified a constitutional amendment disolving the federal government, that would be the end of the federal government. The fed has no such reciprical power to disolve state governments.
While things haven't come to that point yet, ultimately, the states wear the pants in the family.
When MS stock was ascending in value, it was worth Gates' while to not pay a dividend, because he'd have to pay taxes on on any dividend he earned from it. He didn't have to pay taxes on the stock as long as he didn't sell it.
Now that the price is stable, if not dropping, he's better of paying the dividend, because even though he has to pay taxes on it, he gets money out of MS before his stock loses any more value.
SCO isn't a software company anymore. They have descended into purely a lawsuit driven enterprise.
I'm inclined to believe it. Notice you never see anyone posting here (or anywhere else) that claims to be a developer for SCO? Do they even have any developers on the payroll anymore?
It would be interesting to get a perspective on all of this from some SCO employees - if they have any employees left besides lawyers, that is.
His tech was better fidelity, less backing by popular artists, and less accepted by the public. The book "The Invisible Computer" really does a good job of telling Edison's story, I highly suggest you read it.
Well, that wasn't all there is to the story. Actually, the "phonograph wars" were in some way comparable to the PC vs Mac wars.
Edison == proprietary, Victor, Columbia, etc, == open standard.
It is true that Edison's Amberol cylinders and Diamond Disks had better sound quality than the competing flat discs produced by Victor, Columbia, etc.
Two problems; first, Edison's formats were proprietary, and as noted, Edison was vigorous in enforcing his patents. The only media available was from the Edison Co., and every recording they issued was subject to the personal approval of Edison himself, so consumers were limited to what was available by Edison's personal tastes,as opposed to the plethora of music available to owners of Victor, Columbia, Zonophone, etc. phonographs (technichly gramaphones - a phonograph is a cylinder machine). Also there were a number of 3rd party recording companies that produced records for the gramaphone format that weren't available for the Edison machines. Second, the cylinder format was inconvenient to use, and only allowed for one song to be recorded per record. The plaster core of the Amberol cylinders had a tendancy to swell, making them difficult to mount properly on the mandrel of the phonograph.
While the technical issues were addressed by the Diamond Disk format, by that time the flat disk (Berliner format) had become the standard, and also, the Diamond Disk was again a proprietary format, available only from Edison.
There was a reason Edison wasn't as well accepted by popular artists, too. He was a cheapskate. In those days, recording artists weren't paid by royalties, they were paid only for their performance for the recording session. After 1912, rather than pay the artists to record both a version for cylinders and Diamond Disks, Edison would pay the artist only for recording the Diamond Disk master, and then record the cylinder masters from the Diamond Disk. This also accounted for the reduction of quality in cylinder recordings after 1912.
before you dl next time check out the roadmap table near end of page to see the estimated dates for the next release.
Considering AOL and MS have smoked the peace pipe, I'm not any too certain that roadmap is going to be valid much longer. If AOL is going to be using IE as the basis of their userland software, goodbye funding for Mozilla.
Solaris is far more limiting to specific architectures than Linux is. In fact Solaris/Intel is a real dog, has always had limited hardware compatibility and Sun's Intel boxes are simply too expensive.
That was my experience with it as well. However, in the past, Solaris on Intel was mostly a convenience for Sun Sparc shops. Sun didn't put a lot of effort into optimizing Solaris for the Intel platform.
Now that Intel is apparently going to play a larger role in Sun's product portfolio, it will be interesting to see if Sun expends the resources to improve performance and hardware compatibility. My guess is that Solaris on x86 is going to be receiving a lot more attention from the R&D department going forward. Sun's future depends on it.
I've been advocating a hobbyist license for IBM OSes for use by individuals with Hercules for some time now. There's a white paper at http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html. Aside from a few curmudgeons, and aside from the folks at IBM who make the decisions, the reaction I've gotten to this paper has been uniformly positive. I believe that it would help slow the slide, at least.
That's a really great idea! It's unfortunate you haven't been able to get a response out of IBM yet.
They really don't have anything to lose. It's not like a you can take OS/390 and install it on a competitors machine. I don't think anyone like Amdahl is still in the business of building a IBM mainframe compatable machine.
Wonder why you're getting blown off? Have you gotten any explainations?
Were you to try to do ANYTHING with a mainframe (I'm thinking s/390 or z/OS here) armed with the knowledge you mentioned you would be so horribly lost it wouldn't even be funny.
Oh, I don't know. Most shops are multi-platform these days, so most mainframes at minimum have a set of basic TCP/IP utilities on them so they can talk to the other platforms. You can do some neat tricks that way.
I once had a security admin throw a shit-fit at me for initiating jobs by building JCL execution decks in files on an HP-UX system, and then submiting them directly to an internal reader by ftping them over to the mainframe.
Of course, that bypasses the RACF security exits that check the authority of the user to submit a specific class of job. You can get at anything that way.
I'd be interested in knowing that myself. I'm an ex MVS sys prog that jumped to Unix administration about 10 years ago because it was a lot more lucrative.
Dependending on what the money is these days, it may be a good time to jump back.
In 1992, mainframers were a dime a dozen, Unix admins were as rare as hen's teeth. Looks like that situation is quickly being reversed.
IBM, just go ahead and buy SCO, GPL everything they own, and let's put this silliness behind us.
Nice as that sounds, I don't think IBM has much use for SCO. I doubt they want to get stuck supporting SCO's base of Open Server and UnixWare customers.
Not only that, what with Linux and Windows superceding Unix for many purposes, the value of the Sys V intellectual property is deteriorating as well.
SCO would be a white elephant to IBM. I doubt IBM will buy them, except possibly as a last resort.
So, if I understand this correctly, they are sending out a letter, to Caldera's customers, telling them that they have are using a product that violates Caldera's intellectual property rights?
I doubt it will be just Caldera users. They'll probably hit users of other distros as well.
Then they'll probably have the crust to send out another one of those obnoxious letters suggesting they'll be able to avoid legal complications if they switch to SCO Unixware.
They tried something like that a few years ago. Didn't work then, either.
If there are two dollar bills are they a limited run, collectible currency thing like silver dollars? what do they look like? why have I never seen one?
I don't know it they're still printed, but they are real, and still in circulation. They just not commonly used.
As long as the world's population continues to grow, there's at least one.
Agriculture.
Not really. Technology affects agriculture as well. I don't have the figures in front of me, but the crop yeild per square acre has increased considerably over the last 50 years. There's actually less land being farmed in the U.S. now then there was then, and more food being produced from it.
New pesticides, growing techniques and GM crops allow less farmers to generate more crops from less acreage. Hence government subsidies to prevent the less efficient farmers from going out of business.
2) Economic - consumption taxes can just as easily increase, not decrease, the cost of goods. Check out the prices of alcohol in Iceland or cigarettes, or gasoline in the UK versus gasoline in the USA.
That isn't due so much to consumption taxes at the consumer level as it is to VAT taxes at the manufacturing level.
3) Fair for who? - why should a low-income person have to pay the same proportion of tax on an item as a high-income person? In effect, a consumption tax increases the relative tax burden on those least able to afford it.
Why shouldn't low income persons have to pay the same proportion of tax on an item as a high-income person? They live here just as much as the high-income people do. Arguably, they're the greatest beneficiaries of the public sector. Face it, Bill Gates doesn't need a municiple police department or a public library or Social Security, he can afford his own security and his own books, and fund his own retirement.
All progressive taxation accomplishes is encouraging low-income people to vote themselves a living out of the pockets of high-income people.
Anyone who is a beneficiary of public services should be expected to pay their fair share of the bill for them.
4) Legal - corporations are treated as 'people' under US law in almost every other aspect, why should they also not have to pay taxes like everyone else?
Fine in theory. In reality, the corporations just add the cost of the additional taxes to the prices of their goods and services. Ultimately, the consumer winds up paying the tax anyway.
5) A key reason jobs are being located abroad is the cost of employing those people is lower. Salaries will be a major determinant of that cost not corporate tax rates by themselves. Unless of course you are arguing for an across the board reduction in pay levels for all American programmers. Thought not.
Since programmers will have to lower their salary expectations to compete with their overseas competition, you can expect an across the board reduction in pay levels for all American programmers, anyway. Of course, there will be specialized functions where there are exceptions.
NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD.
That might actually be a good rationale for folding the space program back into the military. The military gets such a large chunk of the federal budget (49% IIRC, but don't quote me on it) they could easily triple the amount of money budgeted to NASA, and it would still come out of the petty cash drawer.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, though, if M$ thought they could profit from Linux they'd be using it in their products already and biting the GPL bullet. Or figuring out a strategy to get the GPL tossed out so they could use other strategies to be able to use the code.
They really wouldn't need to do that. If they were seriously interested in competing in the open source realm, they could go the BSD route, like Apple did.
Wouldn't it be fun to see a Microsoft OS based on Darwin?
Hey, it was just a thought. Nevermind.
And somebody please fill me in, but is the SCO hotshot lawyer who lost the Gore case against Florida and worked against Microsoft such a hotshot? It seems to me that he's more of a loser.
Indeed he is, and apparently he's having a few problems of his own these days.
One thing I dont believe is that you can run OSX on this box in any meaningful way (faster than on an apple), I have to bet that theres a contract between Apple & IBM about IBM not competing with Apple.. Maybe OSX won't be optimized for anything over 2 processors.
;-)
Actually, there's some interesting possibilities here. Apple has been developing new products such as the iPod, iTunes, and strengthening their application software offerings. Obviously, they're becoming less dependent on revenues from the Mac hardware itself. That being the case, they may be more amenable to licensing MacOS then they have in the past. IBM would be an exemplery licensee, since Apple and IBM don't sell into the same markets. OS X would be a gorgeous OS for high-end P-series workstations or workgroup servers. Since Apple doesn't really have access to corporate or technical markets, this doesn't represent a threat to them, and possibly even opens up new markets for them.
Obviously, this is just idle speculation on my part - I don't have any information indicating this will happen any time soon.
Yes, that's interesting. Up until this point, Linux has competed mostly on price. Now it appears to have graduated to competing on value.
This should be a great incentive for ISV to start porting their desktop software over to Linux. The fact that they were willing to pay more a Linux solution than a Windows one is a signal there's actually a buck to be made selling software on the platform.
No longer is Linux merely the OS choice of cheapskates and freeloaders - some customers are willing to pay cash for their software!
Folks, these so-called "conservatives" really believe in nothing that is traditionally conservative. Oh, sure, Bush pops into a church during campaign time and says "Jesus" and the religious right just rolls over. But these guys aren't interested in conservin' much of anything.
You've got that right. Read this address by Rep. Ron Paul to the House or Representitives. Nice to see someone finally speaking up.
Now, let's hope somebody listens, sooner or later.
"Neoconed"
Bush has passed every Dem agenda that's come to him, from medicare health benefits to education spending increases. Every conservative I know is mad at Bush for pushing the liberal agendas. The NRA and even the nut job Jerry Falwell have threatened to pull support from him.
You are absolutely correct. I would advise every Conservative/Libertarian, hell, every American, read this address by Rep. Ron Paul to the House of Representatives.
Something is certainly rotten in Denmark.
States can augment federal law, but they can't contradict it (unless, I suppose, the law says they're allowed to).
In a way, they can. If the required number of states (2/3) ratified a constitutional amendment disolving the federal government, that would be the end of the federal government. The fed has no such reciprical power to disolve state governments.
While things haven't come to that point yet, ultimately, the states wear the pants in the family.
Actually, it's probably both.
When MS stock was ascending in value, it was worth Gates' while to not pay a dividend, because he'd have to pay taxes on on any dividend he earned from it. He didn't have to pay taxes on the stock as long as he didn't sell it.
Now that the price is stable, if not dropping, he's better of paying the dividend, because even though he has to pay taxes on it, he gets money out of MS before his stock loses any more value.
SCO isn't a software company anymore. They have descended into purely a lawsuit driven enterprise.
I'm inclined to believe it. Notice you never see anyone posting here (or anywhere else) that claims to be a developer for SCO? Do they even have any developers on the payroll anymore?
It would be interesting to get a perspective on all of this from some SCO employees - if they have any employees left besides lawyers, that is.
I hate to say this, but who actually thought IBM would give in to this undersized bully?
All I can say about that is, I spent all day Saturday, June 14th installing AIX on all 8 LPAR's of our brand spanking new p670.
And I ain't taking it off on account of SCO!
His tech was better fidelity, less backing by popular artists, and less accepted by the public. The book "The Invisible Computer" really does a good job of telling Edison's story, I highly suggest you read it.
Well, that wasn't all there is to the story. Actually, the "phonograph wars" were in some way comparable to the PC vs Mac wars.
Edison == proprietary, Victor, Columbia, etc, == open standard.
It is true that Edison's Amberol cylinders and Diamond Disks had better sound quality than the competing flat discs produced by Victor, Columbia, etc.
Two problems; first, Edison's formats were proprietary, and as noted, Edison was vigorous in enforcing his patents. The only media available was from the Edison Co., and every recording they issued was subject to the personal approval of Edison himself, so consumers were limited to what was available by Edison's personal tastes,as opposed to the plethora of music available to owners of Victor, Columbia, Zonophone, etc. phonographs (technichly gramaphones - a phonograph is a cylinder machine). Also there were a number of 3rd party recording companies that produced records for the gramaphone format that weren't available for the Edison machines. Second, the cylinder format was inconvenient to use, and only allowed for one song to be recorded per record. The plaster core of the Amberol cylinders had a tendancy to swell, making them difficult to mount properly on the mandrel of the phonograph.
While the technical issues were addressed by the Diamond Disk format, by that time the flat disk (Berliner format) had become the standard, and also, the Diamond Disk was again a proprietary format, available only from Edison.
There was a reason Edison wasn't as well accepted by popular artists, too. He was a cheapskate. In those days, recording artists weren't paid by royalties, they were paid only for their performance for the recording session. After 1912, rather than pay the artists to record both a version for cylinders and Diamond Disks, Edison would pay the artist only for recording the Diamond Disk master, and then record the cylinder masters from the Diamond Disk. This also accounted for the reduction of quality in cylinder recordings after 1912.
before you dl next time check out the roadmap table near end of page to see the estimated dates for the next release.
Considering AOL and MS have smoked the peace pipe, I'm not any too certain that roadmap is going to be valid much longer. If AOL is going to be using IE as the basis of their userland software, goodbye funding for Mozilla.
MS has no reasons to *not* play nice, their antitrust battles are dying down one by one.
Well, I can think of one reason they may not play so nice with AOL.
Can you say "MSN"?
Solaris is far more limiting to specific architectures than Linux is. In fact Solaris/Intel is a real dog, has always had limited hardware compatibility and Sun's Intel boxes are simply too expensive.
That was my experience with it as well. However, in the past, Solaris on Intel was mostly a convenience for Sun Sparc shops. Sun didn't put a lot of effort into optimizing Solaris for the Intel platform.
Now that Intel is apparently going to play a larger role in Sun's product portfolio, it will be interesting to see if Sun expends the resources to improve performance and hardware compatibility. My guess is that Solaris on x86 is going to be receiving a lot more attention from the R&D department going forward. Sun's future depends on it.
Escher makes my brain hurt. It's so obvious something is wrong, but it's impossible to focus on it. Argh, this makes me want to gouge out my eyes.
Indeed. It reminds me of a few companies I've worked for.
I've been advocating a hobbyist license for IBM OSes for use by individuals with Hercules for some time now. There's a white paper at http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html. Aside from a few curmudgeons, and aside from the folks at IBM who make the decisions, the reaction I've gotten to this paper has been uniformly positive. I believe that it would help slow the slide, at least.
That's a really great idea! It's unfortunate you haven't been able to get a response out of IBM yet.
They really don't have anything to lose. It's not like a you can take OS/390 and install it on a competitors machine. I don't think anyone like Amdahl is still in the business of building a IBM mainframe compatable machine.
Wonder why you're getting blown off? Have you gotten any explainations?
Were you to try to do ANYTHING with a mainframe (I'm thinking s/390 or z/OS here) armed with the knowledge you mentioned you would be so horribly lost it wouldn't even be funny.
;-)
Oh, I don't know. Most shops are multi-platform these days, so most mainframes at minimum have a set of basic TCP/IP utilities on them so they can talk to the other platforms. You can do some neat tricks that way.
I once had a security admin throw a shit-fit at me for initiating jobs by building JCL execution decks in files on an HP-UX system, and then submiting them directly to an internal reader by ftping them over to the mainframe.
Of course, that bypasses the RACF security exits that check the authority of the user to submit a specific class of job. You can get at anything that way.
Boy, did they ever go ape-shit!
And is mainframe admin worth it financially?
I'd be interested in knowing that myself. I'm an ex MVS sys prog that jumped to Unix administration about 10 years ago because it was a lot more lucrative.
Dependending on what the money is these days, it may be a good time to jump back.
In 1992, mainframers were a dime a dozen, Unix admins were as rare as hen's teeth. Looks like that situation is quickly being reversed.
IBM, just go ahead and buy SCO, GPL everything they own, and let's put this silliness behind us.
Nice as that sounds, I don't think IBM has much use for SCO. I doubt they want to get stuck supporting SCO's base of Open Server and UnixWare customers.
Not only that, what with Linux and Windows superceding Unix for many purposes, the value of the Sys V intellectual property is deteriorating as well.
SCO would be a white elephant to IBM. I doubt IBM will buy them, except possibly as a last resort.
Ahem... OS X?
Not unless Apple ports OS X to x86. I don't think the world is going to swap out all of it's legacy hardware just to run OS X. But it's a fun thought.
So, if I understand this correctly, they are sending out a letter, to Caldera's customers, telling them that they have are using a product that violates Caldera's intellectual property rights?
I doubt it will be just Caldera users. They'll probably hit users of other distros as well.
Then they'll probably have the crust to send out another one of those obnoxious letters suggesting they'll be able to avoid legal complications if they switch to SCO Unixware.
They tried something like that a few years ago. Didn't work then, either.
If there are two dollar bills are they a limited run, collectible currency thing like silver dollars? what do they look like? why have I never seen one?
I don't know it they're still printed, but they are real, and still in circulation. They just not commonly used.
Here's a link to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The have a picture of Jefferson on them.
And here's a link to a funny story about someone who recently tried to spend one at a Taco Bell.
As long as the world's population continues to grow, there's at least one.
Agriculture.
Not really. Technology affects agriculture as well. I don't have the figures in front of me, but the crop yeild per square acre has increased considerably over the last 50 years. There's actually less land being farmed in the U.S. now then there was then, and more food being produced from it.
New pesticides, growing techniques and GM crops allow less farmers to generate more crops from less acreage. Hence government subsidies to prevent the less efficient farmers from going out of business.
2) Economic - consumption taxes can just as easily increase, not decrease, the cost of goods. Check out the prices of alcohol in Iceland or cigarettes, or gasoline in the UK versus gasoline in the USA.
That isn't due so much to consumption taxes at the consumer level as it is to VAT taxes at the manufacturing level.
3) Fair for who? - why should a low-income person have to pay the same proportion of tax on an item as a high-income person? In effect, a consumption tax increases the relative tax burden on those least able to afford it.
Why shouldn't low income persons have to pay the same proportion of tax on an item as a high-income person? They live here just as much as the high-income people do. Arguably, they're the greatest beneficiaries of the public sector. Face it, Bill Gates doesn't need a municiple police department or a public library or Social Security, he can afford his own security and his own books, and fund his own retirement.
All progressive taxation accomplishes is encouraging low-income people to vote themselves a living out of the pockets of high-income people.
Anyone who is a beneficiary of public services should be expected to pay their fair share of the bill for them.
4) Legal - corporations are treated as 'people' under US law in almost every other aspect, why should they also not have to pay taxes like everyone else?
Fine in theory. In reality, the corporations just add the cost of the additional taxes to the prices of their goods and services. Ultimately, the consumer winds up paying the tax anyway.
5) A key reason jobs are being located abroad is the cost of employing those people is lower. Salaries will be a major determinant of that cost not corporate tax rates by themselves. Unless of course you are arguing for an across the board reduction in pay levels for all American programmers. Thought not.
Since programmers will have to lower their salary expectations to compete with their overseas competition, you can expect an across the board reduction in pay levels for all American programmers, anyway. Of course, there will be specialized functions where there are exceptions.
NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD.
That might actually be a good rationale for folding the space program back into the military. The military gets such a large chunk of the federal budget (49% IIRC, but don't quote me on it) they could easily triple the amount of money budgeted to NASA, and it would still come out of the petty cash drawer.
What the military wants, the military gets.