I hope VA will consider supporting Alpha based systems (as Linux HW does). Rack mount Alpha's would be great for ISPs. Of course, I have no clue if they'd actually sell...
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Re: Big Linux x86 uptimes and jiffies overflows
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RedHat 6.0 is Out
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· Score: 1
There were concerns about that there may be code in the kernel or in device drivers that wouldn't survive the jiffy counter wrapping. My understanding is that several machines have survived the wrap with the only side effect being that uptime starts back at zero.
Of course, there may be subtle timing bugs, but I haven't heard of any...
World domination is a joke. Some people don't get the joke and are offended. Others don't get the joke and truly want Linux to dominate. But it's a joke, meant to poke fun at certain software companies and at ourselves as well.
Linux is completely open, no secret hooks, no proprietary APIs or formats. It may become dominant, but it can't dominate. Other OSes will always be free to compete, especially if they provide their users with freedom.
The "battery" premise also bothered me, but I still enjoyed the heck out of the movie (as you said, it was fun and visually stunning). Perhaps in the sequel (assuming there is one), they can discover the "real" reason for the farms. E.g. using the human brains to enhance their processing capability for some dastardly AI scheme. Just a thought.
Linux is not an appropriate environment for an embedded system.
Linux is fine for thin servers, just ask the folks at Cobalt. Regarding embedded systems, the requirements of the system determine which OSes are appropriate. For instance, Linux would be a reasonable choice for non-realtime applications that boot from a flash device.
So, do you have a problem with any of the following practices?
1. Per CPU licensing to make MS-DOS appear "free" to end customers (whereas DR-DOS cost extra). 2. Bogus error messages implying that Windows couldn't run on top of DR-DOS. 3. Publicly stating that OS/2 was the future of computing while privately planning to dump OS/2 in favor of Windows. (This really screwed over a lot of software developers, in case you're wondering) 4. Using undocumented APIs to improve the performance of Microsoft applications relative to competitors. 5. Preventing ISVs from placing competitors application's icons on the desktop. 6. Attempting to strike deals with competitors to split a market. 7. Hiring PR firms to simulate "grass roots" support. 8. Providing misleading evidence to a court of law.
The list is much longer than this, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head that's been extremely well documented. Microsoft dominance in the desktop market does give them a major advantage in the marketplace and it does make it virtually impossible to compete in with them (at least if you try to play by the same rules).
I have no interest in the government regulating the software industry, nor do I want them defining what an OS is or what belongs in it. But there is no way I would defend Microsoft's actions or pretend that they are somehow the only competent software company on the face of the planet.
What Bill meant to say is that Linux has no central marketing authority to make important technical decisions. Could you image what would happen if those technical decisions were made by software engineers?
I think you'd be more likely to end up with what the "Founding Fathers" of the US referred to as the tyranny of the majority. E.g., valid anti-Linux sentiments would be moderated, guaranteed. That may happen with Rob's plan, but moderators that do that will eventually lose their priveledges.
Personally, I have little use for "pure" democracy. I prefer representative democracy, although in the US today we have worst of both worlds (poll-based, knee-jerk, sound bite democracy).
Since CDE is the standard desktop of the Unix world, the "Security" thing is a shallow excuse.
Shallow? The whole issue is that Red Hat thinks the "standard" platform should come with source code that can be fixed.
If a security problem with CDE, companies like Sun, IBM, and HP...
There was a security problem and Red Hat was at the mercy of an unresponsive vendor to wait for a Linux fix.
Where's the hypocrasy? Remember, the issue Red Hat had was that the Qt 1.x license was not compatible with all the GPLd code used in KDE and that Qt 1.x did not allow the redistribution of fixes.
Red Hat pays people to write GPLd code, what a bunch of bastards...
Red Hat felt that QPL 1.x was incompatible with the GPL. KDE uses a lot of GPL code, therefore KDE w/ QPL 1.x was, in Red Hat's opinion, a legal can of worms.
BTW, it was at about the same time as the QPL 1.x white paper that Red Hat dropped CDE since they decided it is a basic technology and that they (Red Hat) were not allowed to fix security bug.
As far as any company that I know of goes, Red Hat has a true philosophy beyond making a buck. For that, I thank them.
Don't worry about the LSB, Red Hat is a participant and I'm sure they'll try to abide by it. Red Hat is actually one of the most FSSTND/FHS compliant distributions which is why they rebuild packages to install in what some people consider "the wrong place" (which in their opinion is anywhere other than where a package's make install shoves stuff). Basically, some people get pissed off whatever you do...
I think Linux really does "level the playing field" in the OS realm. I suspect that Caldera will do just fine.
All the DOJ needs to prove is that MS illegally leveraged their market position, not that they are the only OS in existence. I think the DOJ has proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
There is a "counter" in Linux that wraps after about 500 days. There was a kernel list discussion that this could be a problem since no one was sure how gracefully kernel components would survive the wrap. Linus decided it was more risky to fix it near the end of 2.2 development than to leave it. The reasoning is that this problem has existed since the 1.0 days and no one has complained. I believe there will be a fix in the 2.3 kernel.
Two points. 1) 500 days is a year and a half of continuous run time. Linux can run that long, but usually in that time someone upgrades the kernel or monkeys with the hardware. 2) I've heard reports of several 2.0 machines crossing the 500 day boundary. The result was that the uptime counter was reset, the systems kept running.
Linux is more efficient and reliable than NT, Java (from a design and implementaion standpoint) scales way better than VB, and CORBA works much better in the real world (the one with the internet and large corperate WANs).
And all of the above will work on x86, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, and PowerPC platforms, so your customers have a choice.
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To the director of free software development...
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GNOME 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Guess what, the people working on GNOME are doing it of their own free will. They don't think it's a waste of time, and neither do I. You're acting like choice is a bad thing, but I believe that freedom without choice isn't much freedom.
There are other people with flame throwers that would say that Linux is a cheap, badly written clone of FreeBSD. Should I format my HD and follow their lead?
It could also easily be argued that KDE is a cheap, badly written clone of Windows. That's not my opinion, but it's just as supportable a position as yours. As a matter of fact, it's a more supportable position. KDE looks a lot more like Windows than GNOME looks like KDE. Furthermore, Windows and MS Office exist now and Windows has a 100 million users. Heck, Windows is "free", you get it with virtually every machine you buy. Obviously the people working on KDE are just wasting their time.
I am not slamming KDE, I'm just bouncing your logic back at you.
Why use a system that has so many disadvantages (bad design, etc) when better solutions are availiable.
Nothing like a sweeping generalization with no facts. Very convincing.
Why do you care if some people like and use GNOME? If you want the one true solution, there's a company in Redmond, WA that will sell you one. God forbid we have a choice on the Linux Desktop...
...why don't Mandrake, Pacific High Tech, Caldera, and SuSE adopt the debian system?
I'm also curious why so many distributions choose RPM over dpkg, any distro maintainers out there willing to answer? And before someone answers with some "Red Hat is an evil monopoly," remember that anyone is free to grap all the Debian packages from ftp.debian.org and make a distribution of their own...
Full disclosure: I use Red Hat but I'm going to give Debian 2.1 a spin.
I believe that homebrewer was imploying what is know as sarcasm, one of many forms of humor. I don't speak for anyone, but I think an appropriate translation would be "They allow me to download their distro for free strictly following the letter and intent of the GPL. What's so evil about that?"
Slashdot Mirror
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Of course, there may be subtle timing bugs, but I haven't heard of any...
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Linux is completely open, no secret hooks, no proprietary APIs or formats. It may become dominant, but it can't dominate. Other OSes will always be free to compete, especially if they provide their users with freedom.
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Red Hat pays people to develop GPL code and to work on the kernel full time. Evil, pure evil. Sheesh.
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OLE2
ActiveX
ADO (or is it DAO?)
Yup, nothing like well thought out technology to make your job easier...
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Linux is fine for thin servers, just ask the folks at Cobalt. Regarding embedded systems, the requirements of the system determine which OSes are appropriate. For instance, Linux would be a reasonable choice for non-realtime applications that boot from a flash device.
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I'm old too, but I'm acting like a kid waiting for Xmas. :-)
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1. Per CPU licensing to make MS-DOS appear "free" to end customers (whereas DR-DOS cost extra).
2. Bogus error messages implying that Windows couldn't run on top of DR-DOS.
3. Publicly stating that OS/2 was the future of computing while privately planning to dump OS/2 in favor of Windows. (This really screwed over a lot of software developers, in case you're wondering)
4. Using undocumented APIs to improve the performance of Microsoft applications relative to competitors.
5. Preventing ISVs from placing competitors application's icons on the desktop.
6. Attempting to strike deals with competitors to split a market.
7. Hiring PR firms to simulate "grass roots" support.
8. Providing misleading evidence to a court of law.
The list is much longer than this, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head that's been extremely well documented. Microsoft dominance in the desktop market does give them a major advantage in the marketplace and it does make it virtually impossible to compete in with them (at least if you try to play by the same rules).
I have no interest in the government regulating the software industry, nor do I want them defining what an OS is or what belongs in it. But there is no way I would defend Microsoft's actions or pretend that they are somehow the only competent software company on the face of the planet.
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Freakin' disaster, no doubt.
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Personally, I have little use for "pure" democracy. I prefer representative democracy, although in the US today we have worst of both worlds (poll-based, knee-jerk, sound bite democracy).
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Shallow? The whole issue is that Red Hat thinks the "standard" platform should come with source code that can be fixed.
If a security problem with CDE, companies like Sun, IBM, and HP...
There was a security problem and Red Hat was at the mercy of an unresponsive vendor to wait for a Linux fix.
Where's the hypocrasy? Remember, the issue Red Hat had was that the Qt 1.x license was not compatible with all the GPLd code used in KDE and that Qt 1.x did not allow the redistribution of fixes.
Red Hat pays people to write GPLd code, what a bunch of bastards...
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BTW, it was at about the same time as the QPL 1.x white paper that Red Hat dropped CDE since they decided it is a basic technology and that they (Red Hat) were not allowed to fix security bug.
As far as any company that I know of goes, Red Hat has a true philosophy beyond making a buck. For that, I thank them.
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Don't worry about the LSB, Red Hat is a participant and I'm sure they'll try to abide by it. Red Hat is actually one of the most FSSTND/FHS compliant distributions which is why they rebuild packages to install in what some people consider "the wrong place" (which in their opinion is anywhere other than where a package's make install shoves stuff). Basically, some people get pissed off whatever you do...
I think Linux really does "level the playing field" in the OS realm. I suspect that Caldera will do just fine.
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Two points. 1) 500 days is a year and a half of continuous run time. Linux can run that long, but usually in that time someone upgrades the kernel or monkeys with the hardware. 2) I've heard reports of several 2.0 machines crossing the 500 day boundary. The result was that the uptime counter was reset, the systems kept running.
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Linux is more efficient and reliable than NT, Java (from a design and implementaion standpoint) scales way better than VB, and CORBA works much better in the real world (the one with the internet and large corperate WANs).
And all of the above will work on x86, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, and PowerPC platforms, so your customers have a choice.
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There are other people with flame throwers that would say that Linux is a cheap, badly written clone of FreeBSD. Should I format my HD and follow their lead?
It could also easily be argued that KDE is a cheap, badly written clone of Windows. That's not my opinion, but it's just as supportable a position as yours. As a matter of fact, it's a more supportable position. KDE looks a lot more like Windows than GNOME looks like KDE. Furthermore, Windows and MS Office exist now and Windows has a 100 million users. Heck, Windows is "free", you get it with virtually every machine you buy. Obviously the people working on KDE are just wasting their time.
I am not slamming KDE, I'm just bouncing your logic back at you.
Nothing like a sweeping generalization with no facts. Very convincing.
Why do you care if some people like and use GNOME? If you want the one true solution, there's a company in Redmond, WA that will sell you one. God forbid we have a choice on the Linux Desktop...
I'm also curious why so many distributions choose RPM over dpkg, any distro maintainers out there willing to answer? And before someone answers with some "Red Hat is an evil monopoly," remember that anyone is free to grap all the Debian packages from ftp.debian.org and make a distribution of their own...
Full disclosure: I use Red Hat but I'm going to give Debian 2.1 a spin.
As I said, I don't speak for anyone but myself.
It didn't upset me, it gave me a chance to beat the "more is better" drum. :-)