This is interesting. I just used fish:// in Konqueror and it works great. I see that it uses SSH, but in practical terms how does this differ from using sftp:// in Konqueror?
Does it really have to be web-based? If you set up an SSH server your users could access it via SFTP. There are plenty of SFTP clients out there, including WinSCP for Windows, CyberDuck for OS X and Konqueror or Nautilus on GNU/Linux. WinSCP can be made to look like Windows Explorer, simplifying the experience for your Windows users.
A few other posts above have mentioned FTP, but this would be a step backward in time. FTP should die, and now. In fact it should have died years ago, aside from its use in its anonymous form, like on download sites. SSH is free and more secure than FTP, and works better through firewalls because you don't have to worry about passive mode as you do with FTP. And you'll have the option of securely offering it outside your firewall (if you have one), since the protocol is entirely encrypted.
I have an idea: if you see something on Slashdot but realize that you already know about it, you could post a comment to tell other Slashdot readers that you already know about what's in TFA. That way you could still avoid doing actual work.
You could also blow off your job by posting comments that give other Slashdotters useful advice, like I do.
Wow, suddenly the narration from a Star Wars story book and record from around 1980 has popped into my head:
This is the story of Droid World. You can read along with me in your book. You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear Artoo-Deetoo beep like this - bep-beep (whistle). Let's begin now...
To understand why, open the System properties box and look at the version numbers of 2000 and XP. They are 5.0 and 5.1 respectively. These operating systems are very close in funtionality and maturity.
XP does some digital signing and encrypting of secure data, boots faster and has a few GUI bells and whistles (which, apart from very nice anti-aliased screen text, is mostly just a memory hog). I guess they also created brand new icons, but sadly they didn't update all of them to the new theme. Perhaps they should have recruited some of the icon developers at kde-look.org, who for $0 can make a better and more complete icon set in their sleep than the 6-figure MS devlopers could in the couple years between 2000 and XP.
Point is, there is very little compelling reason to upgrade, especially if you have a lot of systems to manage. The original IE 6 can't be upgraded, but it can easily be replaced by Firefox. The only major worry is a future lack of security updates, but that's years off.
More people would have upgraded to XP if MS had built a new command line shell, made the GUI work faster even when it is in Luna-mode, and made some other real improvements. These are scheduled for Longhorn... wait a minute, I just received word that they are all cancelled. Perhaps Longhorn will be version 5.2?
Thanks for politely informing me that I don't have a clue, though I should warn you that the giver of that advice is usually the clueless one.
I work in an environment where I do not supply the machines, so each is slightly different and has different needs / hardware / partitioning / domain membership / etc. I am well aware of installer scripts, but they wouldn't do me much good. Heck, if I had a regular build I'd just image my machines, and not use the installer at all.
Wrong. Way, way wrong. I regularly install Linux, Windows and Mac OS X on machines at work. Trust me, Windows is by far the worst OS to install.
Windows XP installer asks for a grand total for 3 inputs.
Yes, and it asks them at random intervals during the installation process, rather than just at the beginning or just at the end. So I can't walk away from the install and leave it running because at some point it will stop to ask me what sort of network I want, so I have to keep visiting the computer to see if it's wasting time waiting for me to answer some question. It's a tremendous waste of time.
Not to mention that the Windows installer has the worst hardware detection of any modern installer. It asks you to press F6 to supply a driver disk, but gives no acknowledgement when you press the button - you just have to wait to find out if it heard you.
Occasionally in the early parts of the install process Microsoft has created "dead ends" in the process where the installer basically tells you that you have one option: press F3 to reboot. No "go back and make another choice." Nothing. It's like the programming team had never heard of a menu before. So every time you make a mistake you get the pleasure of starting the installer all over again, and watching the drivers load one by one. And they load slowly.
The recovery console stinks. It will show you the various installations you can log into to perform diagnostics, and if there is only one you might assume (since you have seen good UI design before) that pressing Enter will get you this windows installation because it is the default. No. There is no default. What actually happens when you press Enter is you get kicked out of the recovery console and the machine reboots. Great. Thanks. Wow, look at all the drivers loading.
In the recovery console you can't recursively copy directories with the copy command. The option is in Windows with the regular copy command, but is absent from the recovery console. This can lead to major problems if you want to do any data recovery but don't feel like copying each of your ten thousand files independently. (Of course now I just use Knoppix for Windows recovery, and I can drag and drop, so this isn't as much of an issue.)
Once Windows is installed you will find that it has no idea what kind of chipset, sound card, video card or network card you use. This varies from machine to machine, but pray it ain't network.
The installer is a major pet peeve for a lot of admins. If Microsoft changes nothing else in Longhorn (and it's looking like that might be the case) I hope they at least change - no, replace - the abyssmal installer. Give it better hardware detection. Make it ask all the questions upfront, followed by a single burst of installation with a nice GUI thermometer to tell you how much time you have to make a sandwitch. And they might as well ditch the recovery console and just distribute Knoppix.
Yes, the overwhelming stream of innovations we've been seeing in MS Paint in the past few years will soon come to an end. MS might also stop its heavy development of the feature-rich Notepad.exe, so you can forget about all the extra word wrap options you had been hoping for. They got those programs almost perfect, then abandoned them. I'm losing faith...
The standard Slashdot reply I've been reading is that this will not affect Linux. And in the short term I agree. Apple is indeed only releasing OS X for their own Intel Macs, not Intel machines in general, and Linux will still appeal to the people it appeals to now. Add to the above items a factor that rarely gets attention: that the rest of the world is more likely to embrace Linux than OS X. It is gaining traction, especially in developing countries and countries that do not like paying MS. In many such places Apple hardware is unavailable.
However, Apple should be taken seriously. Most of the things they have done since Steve Jobs came back have been successful, the cube notwithstanding. While Apple has publicly stated that they will not release their OS for any old x86 machine, they now hold this card in their hand, and can pull it out at any time. This is a big deal. Don't disregard it.
Apple may not see any benefit in switching from a hardware focus to a software focus at the moment, but this could change. If their market share goes up in the next few years OS X will get more credibility as a Windows-equivalent, which could make a general OS release more likely. By the time this happens Apple will have x86 apps galore. If their market share goes down, they could release OS X for x86 as an act of desperation.
Many people have wisely pointed out that Apple wouldn't want to support a ton of different hardware configurations, and this is true. But Apple has the option of ditching Darwin and FreeBSD and instead building their APIs and GUI on the Linux kernel instead. If they went this route the advantages of a non-Apple Linux distro would largely disappear, and only cost and freedom would remain to separate Apple from non-Apple. The kernel and uilities would be free, but the GUI, packaging system and APIs wouldn't be. For most purchasers these negative factors would be outweighed by the availability of apps and the pretty GUI.
We've read about nifty GUI improvements for Linux for a long time, and every time someone puts a new bell or whistle on Xorg or a desktop environment we all ooh and aah it... but few of us actualy install it because it always runs like crap if you don't have 2 GM of RAM and no other programs running. Let's start pressuring distributions to start implementing and improving these changes. This is it: crunch time. Linux can outdo Apple... but it's time to ditch the same-old UI and package management and move on. Quick.
Dvorak's conclusions in this article make no sense. As has been pointed out in previous comments, Linux can't be "killed" by this change because it is not owned by anyone. It could be "hurt" by a major industry change, but not killed.
Of course it won't even be hurt. Apple won't be releasing OS X for non-Mac machines, so the situation will be relatively unchanged. Buy a Mac, get OS X. OS X users will have some new advantages, and PowerPC Linux users could see their platform lose mindshare, but otherwise I don't think things will change as Dvorak suggests. Linux will still appeal to the same people it appeals to now, and more dstros will run on the Mac.
These are the real thought-provoking changes, as I see them:
Mac sales will steadily drop until the Intel Macs come out. No one will want an old Mac now that the platform is condemned. It looks like Apple has their act together (with Rosetta and the like) to prevent a major decline by reassuring compatibility, but still, this will cut sales at least a bit.
Mac users will be able to run Windows programs easily. First, Microsoft will likely release a new Virtual PC that can run Windows without hardware emulation. But expect many equivalent programs to be available, some of them open source. Not to mention that the influx of Mac users could be a big incentive for WINE to improve. CodeWeavers will probably release a Crossover Office for Mac. It could get popular, which would be bad for Windows.
Apple will be able to compete with Microsoft directly, but will choose not to... for now. They don't want to be killed by the Redmond giant, so they'll stick with their "only on the Mac" policy for OS X. But with Intel/AMD-compatible apps coming out for the Mac, the option will always be there. Eventually they may do it, especially if their market share continues to increase.
Terrasoft will have problems. Big problems. To whom will they market their products? Fedora and Red Hat now have PowerPC builds, so the only thing TerraSoft have to differentiate themselves is the fact that they sell Macs preloaded with YDL. With Intel Macs, this advantage will vanish. If they switch from PowerPC to Intel, what will be the point?
And I should mention - OpenOffice.org is far from "UNIX-like" and requires no UNIX commands. I'm not sure what parallel universe he was in when he used it. Contrary to what he says, OpenOffice.org is bad news for MS Office. Office 2003 Standard costs over $350, and Pro costs over $450. I'd rather put that kind of money into another half gig of RAM and stick with OOo for word processing. Frankly I think a lot of other people will make similar decisions in the coming years.
I'm sure they've considered this, but in all likelihood this move will kill their short-term hardware sales. Not to mention sales of software like MS Office 2004. After all, who wants to buy hardware or software on a condemned platform? Any software you have today won't run on a new machine two years from now, and you can bet software manufacturers won't be able to resist upping the version number for their simple recompile.
Wait a minute, is this the room for Apple on Intel rants? Whoa... sorry, wrong room. I didn't realize there were still other stories running today.
I'm sure Apple has considered this, but this will kill their short-term hardware sales. After all, who wants to buy Apple hardware on a condemned platform? Any Apple PPC software you have today won't run on a new Mac in two years. Sure, someone can port it, or build a fat binary version of it, but that will require access to the source code. Proprietary software won't be as readily upgradeable, and will almost certainly require purchasing an upgrade. Software manufacturers won't be able to resist upping the version number for their recompile.
Of course most people who use proprietary software would buy new software in two years anyway, but going forward I think you'll see fewer and fewer people buying Apple computers. Most people will sit back and wait until the next architecture to make their purchases.
I think this is very likely true. I was a loyal Red Hat / Fedora user for a long time, and even hold an RHCE certification. But Ubuntu really impressed me, and I'm using it as my desktop at both home and work. It has quick access to a repository of thousands of packages (including Microsoft fonts, Win32 codecs and more). There is no equivalent on Fedora. I'm sure you can configure it with APT and other goodies, but Ubuntu makes it extremely easy - which is why I recommend it for newbies. It is also the first distro I've ever had detect and configure a wireless card out of the box. And all this comes on one CD, not four. Fedora can do the same, but I think they need to re-imagine their distro.
Clearly "Health and Human Services" is directly at odds with the concept of a country that stands for "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Wealth" (as the DoI was originally before "wealth" was changed to "happiness" by the liberal elite.)
No, that's flamebait all right. Nothing against the Libertarian point of view, but the so-called "liberal elite" can't edit a 200-year-old document:
And if by "the liberal elite" he meant liberal-minded people in 1776, I'm not sure why they shouldn't have had as much input into the contents of the document as anyone else. This was a document that had input and contributions from many people, not just Jefferson. But of course the authors were all liberal, in a sense, because in 1776 the very idea of such a declaration was far from conservative. The meanings of "liberal" and "conservative" change over time - in the 18th Century the conservative thing to do would have been to not have a revolution at all.
Do enlighten us if happiness is a specifically liberal concept. It would explain why Dick Cheney smiles so infrequently.
Yawn. This is a great idea, but not anything new. Microsoft should have done this years ago, as there is an obvious benefit to their customers and innovation is obviously moving to open formats. They would have done it earlier if they didn't need so depserately competition to spur them into action. IE7, XML Office... what's next? Bash at the Windows DOS prompt?
This should not be surprising at all, for two reasons:
.NET is a relatively new, high level language. It won't be used to do things like OS design for quite a while, if ever.
Windows is Windows, is Windows. With every upcoming release of the OS, Microsoft and its fanboys tout it as the greatest, most sparkling, and super-fantastic OS ever. It never is, because Microsoft is not motivated to really innovate in its OS design.
The latter point is the more important of the two. I remember awaiting Windows 95 with great anticipation. It was supposed to change everything about the OS, but on closer inspection the OS still ran on DOS, had the usual AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in the root directory, and so forth. It was Windows 3.1 with a better UI and new, buggy multi-tasking. And it came on CD - woo-hoo!
Microsoft should create the sort of OS they're hyping - an entirely new system with a better UI, better security and so forth. By default it should only run new.NET applications, and there should be a Win32 feature for running old, legacy apps. This feature should be turned off by default. But they've never had the motivation to do this sort of thing.
Just wait: next year Longhorn will come out and have tons of bells and whistles, but dissapointingly it will still be the same old Windows, now on version 6. No big surprise.
This is obviously a direct attempt to head off competition from Novell. Novell stands to become a powerful player in the Linux services biz if it plays its cards right, but this new directory (if it's stable and easy to use) could make people take a second look at Red Hat's offerings. Because let's face it, NIS stinks and doesn't do the sorts of things large enterprises want. A good directory is Linux's weak spot right now. I'm eager to try RHDS - I actually decided months ago to put off my OpenLDAP work until I can test RHDS.
Anyone who has ever tried to setup and configure OpenLDAP knows that its not worth it and will send you to a mental hospital fairly quickly.
Absolutely. I spent a long time fiddling with schema that seem to change between releases and running buggy scripts to get my passwd data into LDIF. And in the end I'd spent a terrible amount of time on it and it barely worked - unfortunately it crashed under heavy loads (or a single lookup from an Outlook client - no kidding). Funny thing is, I work at a mental hospital, which is where I have been setting it up. So yes, it sent me here pretty quickly.:)
I can't help but wonder if this is directly related to IBM's decision to sell their PC business to Lenovo. IBM has watched counless Linux geeks mod the XBox and install their OS of choice. If it were to take off like wildfire, this kind of modding would be potentially dangerous to the traditional OEM PC market, because it would mean that cheap (like $199) machines that can be made to run a powerful OS and do things like MythTV and the like could subvert the normal PC market. Sure, the market for modded Xboxen is small, and confined to hobbyists, but if the architecture were open and you didn't have to mod it, a lot more people would do it.
Of course if you aren't an OEM, this looks much less terrifying. In fact, it starts looking more and more like an opportunity. So a company like IBM can sell its money-losing OEM business and get into the game system market with no worries about what happens to x86 if the new consoles start to hurt the PC.
Maybe they weren't thinking "Let's get rid of this money-losing PC business." Maybe they were thinking "Let's kill x86 by building a cheaper PC market on another architecture, staring with a console, but expanding into other appliances. We'll open it up so that people get interested, Linux will be running on it in no time, new Linksys and Netgear routers will use it, and then on to other appliances we haven't even imagined yet. It'll find its way into PCs, and PCs will suddenly be as cheap as a console. Come to think of it, before we do any of this, let's schedule a meeting with Lenovo... suckers."
Trademarks work the way they do for a reason: because people want protection of their business and product names, but are not allowed to enforce the way the public uses language. A trademark holder gets a monopoly on a term that is not commonly in use for the purpose to which they have applied it. If the term does happen to go into common useage, they lose it. Trademarks should never be used to enforce how we use words.
This is why Bayer was forced to give up its trademarks on the words "aspirin" and "heroin." It's why Kodak ended up trying really hard to prevent their trademark from being used as a generic term for photographs after years of pushing their product that way. It's why Microsoft shouldn't have a trademark on the term "windows" when applied to a window-based GUI, and why Hormel should give up and either rename their product or accept that they have no case.
Of course this main "generic term" point is tangential. A case like this shouldn't even come to proving that spam is a generic term because the technology-related use of the word is in a diffierent industry from Hormel's anyway. If DSPAM were to go into the food business (ha, ha - I called SPAM "food"), then Hormel would have a case against them. But even as a "product" name, DSPAM should be in the clear because the term is applied to a different industry entirely.
Surely both points together mean that if DSPAM's lawyers cost the same as Hormel's, DSPAM would win.
This must be what the president meant when he said that he would be a uniter, not a divider. The usual message: don't pay attention to what I'm saying because it's really just fluff for the media. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next Democrat-controlled administration. Will the tactics be the same, or will we really get a uniter?
Well, looks like we'll get conservative telecom representation for the time being. Whatever that means.
This is all funny to me because I've been using free and open source softare for a few years and I have a powerful GUI, tons of utilities, and can launch dozens of applications at the same time. Ubuntu with Kubuntu took a great deal less time to install than Windows does, and is a lot more fun. So in this case something free (in my opinion, anyway) is better than something merely cheap.
But the even more funny irony of this starter edition is that it actually required extra work to cripple it. It's not a product that required less work, it required the opposite (more). Think about that for a moment. No other industry could possibly work this way. To create this "cheaper" version Microsoft had to devote extra time and money to crippling it, packaging it and marketing it. To use the obligatory car-industry-versus-computer-industry analogy, it's a bit like building a complete Humvee, chopping off bits of it and selling it for the price of a used Yugo. It required all of the work of building the Humvee, plus extra time and money for a Yugo-equivalent crippling, and now sells for the Yugo price. I'll stick with my Sherman tank, and recommend Brazil does the same.
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This is interesting. I just used fish:// in Konqueror and it works great. I see that it uses SSH, but in practical terms how does this differ from using sftp:// in Konqueror?
Does it really have to be web-based? If you set up an SSH server your users could access it via SFTP. There are plenty of SFTP clients out there, including WinSCP for Windows, CyberDuck for OS X and Konqueror or Nautilus on GNU/Linux. WinSCP can be made to look like Windows Explorer, simplifying the experience for your Windows users.
A few other posts above have mentioned FTP, but this would be a step backward in time. FTP should die, and now. In fact it should have died years ago, aside from its use in its anonymous form, like on download sites. SSH is free and more secure than FTP, and works better through firewalls because you don't have to worry about passive mode as you do with FTP. And you'll have the option of securely offering it outside your firewall (if you have one), since the protocol is entirely encrypted.
I have an idea: if you see something on Slashdot but realize that you already know about it, you could post a comment to tell other Slashdot readers that you already know about what's in TFA. That way you could still avoid doing actual work.
You could also blow off your job by posting comments that give other Slashdotters useful advice, like I do.
Wow, suddenly the narration from a Star Wars story book and record from around 1980 has popped into my head:
This is the story of Droid World. You can read along with me in your book. You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear Artoo-Deetoo beep like this - bep-beep (whistle). Let's begin now ...
To understand why, open the System properties box and look at the version numbers of 2000 and XP. They are 5.0 and 5.1 respectively. These operating systems are very close in funtionality and maturity.
XP does some digital signing and encrypting of secure data, boots faster and has a few GUI bells and whistles (which, apart from very nice anti-aliased screen text, is mostly just a memory hog). I guess they also created brand new icons, but sadly they didn't update all of them to the new theme. Perhaps they should have recruited some of the icon developers at kde-look.org, who for $0 can make a better and more complete icon set in their sleep than the 6-figure MS devlopers could in the couple years between 2000 and XP.
Point is, there is very little compelling reason to upgrade, especially if you have a lot of systems to manage. The original IE 6 can't be upgraded, but it can easily be replaced by Firefox. The only major worry is a future lack of security updates, but that's years off.
More people would have upgraded to XP if MS had built a new command line shell, made the GUI work faster even when it is in Luna-mode, and made some other real improvements. These are scheduled for Longhorn ... wait a minute, I just received word that they are all cancelled. Perhaps Longhorn will be version 5.2?
Thanks for politely informing me that I don't have a clue, though I should warn you that the giver of that advice is usually the clueless one.
I work in an environment where I do not supply the machines, so each is slightly different and has different needs / hardware / partitioning / domain membership / etc. I am well aware of installer scripts, but they wouldn't do me much good. Heck, if I had a regular build I'd just image my machines, and not use the installer at all.
Wrong. Way, way wrong. I regularly install Linux, Windows and Mac OS X on machines at work. Trust me, Windows is by far the worst OS to install.
Yes, and it asks them at random intervals during the installation process, rather than just at the beginning or just at the end. So I can't walk away from the install and leave it running because at some point it will stop to ask me what sort of network I want, so I have to keep visiting the computer to see if it's wasting time waiting for me to answer some question. It's a tremendous waste of time.
Not to mention that the Windows installer has the worst hardware detection of any modern installer. It asks you to press F6 to supply a driver disk, but gives no acknowledgement when you press the button - you just have to wait to find out if it heard you.
Occasionally in the early parts of the install process Microsoft has created "dead ends" in the process where the installer basically tells you that you have one option: press F3 to reboot. No "go back and make another choice." Nothing. It's like the programming team had never heard of a menu before. So every time you make a mistake you get the pleasure of starting the installer all over again, and watching the drivers load one by one. And they load slowly.
The recovery console stinks. It will show you the various installations you can log into to perform diagnostics, and if there is only one you might assume (since you have seen good UI design before) that pressing Enter will get you this windows installation because it is the default. No. There is no default. What actually happens when you press Enter is you get kicked out of the recovery console and the machine reboots. Great. Thanks. Wow, look at all the drivers loading.
In the recovery console you can't recursively copy directories with the copy command. The option is in Windows with the regular copy command, but is absent from the recovery console. This can lead to major problems if you want to do any data recovery but don't feel like copying each of your ten thousand files independently. (Of course now I just use Knoppix for Windows recovery, and I can drag and drop, so this isn't as much of an issue.)
Once Windows is installed you will find that it has no idea what kind of chipset, sound card, video card or network card you use. This varies from machine to machine, but pray it ain't network.
The installer is a major pet peeve for a lot of admins. If Microsoft changes nothing else in Longhorn (and it's looking like that might be the case) I hope they at least change - no, replace - the abyssmal installer. Give it better hardware detection. Make it ask all the questions upfront, followed by a single burst of installation with a nice GUI thermometer to tell you how much time you have to make a sandwitch. And they might as well ditch the recovery console and just distribute Knoppix.
Yes, the overwhelming stream of innovations we've been seeing in MS Paint in the past few years will soon come to an end. MS might also stop its heavy development of the feature-rich Notepad.exe, so you can forget about all the extra word wrap options you had been hoping for. They got those programs almost perfect, then abandoned them. I'm losing faith ...
The standard Slashdot reply I've been reading is that this will not affect Linux. And in the short term I agree. Apple is indeed only releasing OS X for their own Intel Macs, not Intel machines in general, and Linux will still appeal to the people it appeals to now. Add to the above items a factor that rarely gets attention: that the rest of the world is more likely to embrace Linux than OS X. It is gaining traction, especially in developing countries and countries that do not like paying MS. In many such places Apple hardware is unavailable.
However, Apple should be taken seriously. Most of the things they have done since Steve Jobs came back have been successful, the cube notwithstanding. While Apple has publicly stated that they will not release their OS for any old x86 machine, they now hold this card in their hand, and can pull it out at any time. This is a big deal. Don't disregard it.
Apple may not see any benefit in switching from a hardware focus to a software focus at the moment, but this could change. If their market share goes up in the next few years OS X will get more credibility as a Windows-equivalent, which could make a general OS release more likely. By the time this happens Apple will have x86 apps galore. If their market share goes down, they could release OS X for x86 as an act of desperation.
Many people have wisely pointed out that Apple wouldn't want to support a ton of different hardware configurations, and this is true. But Apple has the option of ditching Darwin and FreeBSD and instead building their APIs and GUI on the Linux kernel instead. If they went this route the advantages of a non-Apple Linux distro would largely disappear, and only cost and freedom would remain to separate Apple from non-Apple. The kernel and uilities would be free, but the GUI, packaging system and APIs wouldn't be. For most purchasers these negative factors would be outweighed by the availability of apps and the pretty GUI.
We've read about nifty GUI improvements for Linux for a long time, and every time someone puts a new bell or whistle on Xorg or a desktop environment we all ooh and aah it ... but few of us actualy install it because it always runs like crap if you don't have 2 GM of RAM and no other programs running. Let's start pressuring distributions to start implementing and improving these changes. This is it: crunch time. Linux can outdo Apple ... but it's time to ditch the same-old UI and package management and move on. Quick.
Dvorak's conclusions in this article make no sense. As has been pointed out in previous comments, Linux can't be "killed" by this change because it is not owned by anyone. It could be "hurt" by a major industry change, but not killed.
Of course it won't even be hurt. Apple won't be releasing OS X for non-Mac machines, so the situation will be relatively unchanged. Buy a Mac, get OS X. OS X users will have some new advantages, and PowerPC Linux users could see their platform lose mindshare, but otherwise I don't think things will change as Dvorak suggests. Linux will still appeal to the same people it appeals to now, and more dstros will run on the Mac.
These are the real thought-provoking changes, as I see them:
And I should mention - OpenOffice.org is far from "UNIX-like" and requires no UNIX commands. I'm not sure what parallel universe he was in when he used it. Contrary to what he says, OpenOffice.org is bad news for MS Office. Office 2003 Standard costs over $350, and Pro costs over $450. I'd rather put that kind of money into another half gig of RAM and stick with OOo for word processing. Frankly I think a lot of other people will make similar decisions in the coming years.
I'm sure they've considered this, but in all likelihood this move will kill their short-term hardware sales. Not to mention sales of software like MS Office 2004. After all, who wants to buy hardware or software on a condemned platform? Any software you have today won't run on a new machine two years from now, and you can bet software manufacturers won't be able to resist upping the version number for their simple recompile.
Wait a minute, is this the room for Apple on Intel rants? Whoa ... sorry, wrong room. I didn't realize there were still other stories running today.
I'm sure Apple has considered this, but this will kill their short-term hardware sales. After all, who wants to buy Apple hardware on a condemned platform? Any Apple PPC software you have today won't run on a new Mac in two years. Sure, someone can port it, or build a fat binary version of it, but that will require access to the source code. Proprietary software won't be as readily upgradeable, and will almost certainly require purchasing an upgrade. Software manufacturers won't be able to resist upping the version number for their recompile.
Of course most people who use proprietary software would buy new software in two years anyway, but going forward I think you'll see fewer and fewer people buying Apple computers. Most people will sit back and wait until the next architecture to make their purchases.
I think this is very likely true. I was a loyal Red Hat / Fedora user for a long time, and even hold an RHCE certification. But Ubuntu really impressed me, and I'm using it as my desktop at both home and work. It has quick access to a repository of thousands of packages (including Microsoft fonts, Win32 codecs and more). There is no equivalent on Fedora. I'm sure you can configure it with APT and other goodies, but Ubuntu makes it extremely easy - which is why I recommend it for newbies. It is also the first distro I've ever had detect and configure a wireless card out of the box. And all this comes on one CD, not four. Fedora can do the same, but I think they need to re-imagine their distro.
No, that's flamebait all right. Nothing against the Libertarian point of view, but the so-called "liberal elite" can't edit a 200-year-old document:
http://ddl.dyc.edu/~kappadelta/Declaration%20of%20 Independence.gif
And if by "the liberal elite" he meant liberal-minded people in 1776, I'm not sure why they shouldn't have had as much input into the contents of the document as anyone else. This was a document that had input and contributions from many people, not just Jefferson. But of course the authors were all liberal, in a sense, because in 1776 the very idea of such a declaration was far from conservative. The meanings of "liberal" and "conservative" change over time - in the 18th Century the conservative thing to do would have been to not have a revolution at all.
Do enlighten us if happiness is a specifically liberal concept. It would explain why Dick Cheney smiles so infrequently.
I've been doing this for a while:
Yawn. This is a great idea, but not anything new. Microsoft should have done this years ago, as there is an obvious benefit to their customers and innovation is obviously moving to open formats. They would have done it earlier if they didn't need so depserately competition to spur them into action. IE7, XML Office ... what's next? Bash at the Windows DOS prompt?
Look - Satan's down there playing Duke Nukem Forever!
This should not be surprising at all, for two reasons:
The latter point is the more important of the two. I remember awaiting Windows 95 with great anticipation. It was supposed to change everything about the OS, but on closer inspection the OS still ran on DOS, had the usual AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in the root directory, and so forth. It was Windows 3.1 with a better UI and new, buggy multi-tasking. And it came on CD - woo-hoo!
Microsoft should create the sort of OS they're hyping - an entirely new system with a better UI, better security and so forth. By default it should only run new .NET applications, and there should be a Win32 feature for running old, legacy apps. This feature should be turned off by default. But they've never had the motivation to do this sort of thing.
Just wait: next year Longhorn will come out and have tons of bells and whistles, but dissapointingly it will still be the same old Windows, now on version 6. No big surprise.
I read that Alexis de Toqueville Institute study as well.
This is obviously a direct attempt to head off competition from Novell. Novell stands to become a powerful player in the Linux services biz if it plays its cards right, but this new directory (if it's stable and easy to use) could make people take a second look at Red Hat's offerings. Because let's face it, NIS stinks and doesn't do the sorts of things large enterprises want. A good directory is Linux's weak spot right now. I'm eager to try RHDS - I actually decided months ago to put off my OpenLDAP work until I can test RHDS.
Absolutely. I spent a long time fiddling with schema that seem to change between releases and running buggy scripts to get my passwd data into LDIF. And in the end I'd spent a terrible amount of time on it and it barely worked - unfortunately it crashed under heavy loads (or a single lookup from an Outlook client - no kidding). Funny thing is, I work at a mental hospital, which is where I have been setting it up. So yes, it sent me here pretty quickly. :)
I can't help but wonder if this is directly related to IBM's decision to sell their PC business to Lenovo. IBM has watched counless Linux geeks mod the XBox and install their OS of choice. If it were to take off like wildfire, this kind of modding would be potentially dangerous to the traditional OEM PC market, because it would mean that cheap (like $199) machines that can be made to run a powerful OS and do things like MythTV and the like could subvert the normal PC market. Sure, the market for modded Xboxen is small, and confined to hobbyists, but if the architecture were open and you didn't have to mod it, a lot more people would do it.
Of course if you aren't an OEM, this looks much less terrifying. In fact, it starts looking more and more like an opportunity. So a company like IBM can sell its money-losing OEM business and get into the game system market with no worries about what happens to x86 if the new consoles start to hurt the PC.
Maybe they weren't thinking "Let's get rid of this money-losing PC business." Maybe they were thinking "Let's kill x86 by building a cheaper PC market on another architecture, staring with a console, but expanding into other appliances. We'll open it up so that people get interested, Linux will be running on it in no time, new Linksys and Netgear routers will use it, and then on to other appliances we haven't even imagined yet. It'll find its way into PCs, and PCs will suddenly be as cheap as a console. Come to think of it, before we do any of this, let's schedule a meeting with Lenovo ... suckers."
Trademarks work the way they do for a reason: because people want protection of their business and product names, but are not allowed to enforce the way the public uses language. A trademark holder gets a monopoly on a term that is not commonly in use for the purpose to which they have applied it. If the term does happen to go into common useage, they lose it. Trademarks should never be used to enforce how we use words.
This is why Bayer was forced to give up its trademarks on the words "aspirin" and "heroin." It's why Kodak ended up trying really hard to prevent their trademark from being used as a generic term for photographs after years of pushing their product that way. It's why Microsoft shouldn't have a trademark on the term "windows" when applied to a window-based GUI, and why Hormel should give up and either rename their product or accept that they have no case.
Of course this main "generic term" point is tangential. A case like this shouldn't even come to proving that spam is a generic term because the technology-related use of the word is in a diffierent industry from Hormel's anyway. If DSPAM were to go into the food business (ha, ha - I called SPAM "food"), then Hormel would have a case against them. But even as a "product" name, DSPAM should be in the clear because the term is applied to a different industry entirely.
Surely both points together mean that if DSPAM's lawyers cost the same as Hormel's, DSPAM would win.
This must be what the president meant when he said that he would be a uniter, not a divider. The usual message: don't pay attention to what I'm saying because it's really just fluff for the media. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next Democrat-controlled administration. Will the tactics be the same, or will we really get a uniter?
Well, looks like we'll get conservative telecom representation for the time being. Whatever that means.
This is all funny to me because I've been using free and open source softare for a few years and I have a powerful GUI, tons of utilities, and can launch dozens of applications at the same time. Ubuntu with Kubuntu took a great deal less time to install than Windows does, and is a lot more fun. So in this case something free (in my opinion, anyway) is better than something merely cheap.
But the even more funny irony of this starter edition is that it actually required extra work to cripple it. It's not a product that required less work, it required the opposite (more). Think about that for a moment. No other industry could possibly work this way. To create this "cheaper" version Microsoft had to devote extra time and money to crippling it, packaging it and marketing it. To use the obligatory car-industry-versus-computer-industry analogy, it's a bit like building a complete Humvee, chopping off bits of it and selling it for the price of a used Yugo. It required all of the work of building the Humvee, plus extra time and money for a Yugo-equivalent crippling, and now sells for the Yugo price. I'll stick with my Sherman tank, and recommend Brazil does the same.
And I also just noticed that the Target where I shop has a Target logo painted on the top of it. I didn't know they did this with their buildings:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.400682,-71.07596 4&spn=0.018368,0.025663&t=k&hl=en