Back in the day this would have been similar to using a celeron vs. the pentiumII cores.
I don't see the similarity here. The current Celeron and Pentium II cores are identical with the exception of differences of FSB speed, some bus interface differences, and the added on-chip L2 cache of Celeron. Whereas a 486SX was inferior to a 486DX because of the lack of a math coprocessor, which necessitated software emulation of floating point ops.
So it's not similar to using a Celeron vs. Pentium II/III. First generation Celerons, however, did not include any L2 cache, which made them much slower, and perhaps a comparison would have made sense in that case.
Well, there really IS a "MrSmiley" on Ebay and he seems to be a honest Ebay user, judging by his Ebay feedback. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands today, but do you think it's completely germane to mention someone's Ebay name as an example for crooks that pop up on Ebay from time to time?
I guess we should be more careful when we make up those names.
I am also one of those people who are waiting for a portable Internet client. Our wait might be over by the Spring, when Qubit Internet Appliance hits the market with a price lower than $400. Check the link out.
GraphOn is a company that's not even worth discussing here. They have some pretty lame remote computing tools (I evaluated them for our company), none of which was really better than VNC for our purposes. They have used Linux name to hype themselves since they showed up last year, and although all of their ads showed Linux as a platform they supported, none of their salespeople seemed to know about.
Why doesn't the Linux community punish the right companies? I mean, companies like XiG which slams Xfree and in general the Open Source community which lets it live, and GraphOn which claims to take advantage of Linux by using it liberally in their adds to hype their product; are much more dangerous and harmful than Microsoft. I guess the combined buying power of Linux users should be significant. Let's assume GraphOn decides to enforce this patent and collect royalties (which is likely-check their site out, they have recently employed the former IBM intellectual property and licensing VP!)and if even ten percent of all working Linux users who are in a decision making position opt not to buy GraphOn products for remote connectivity, I think GraphOn can never take off.
I should have said It is really difficult NOT to get a DSL unless you try very hard.
I've just discovered that programming in PL/SQL for long periods of time makes one sleepy and increases the frequency of typos. Also, friends don't let friends drive after coding in PL/SQL.
I'm surprised DSL service is unavailable in part of Potomac , MD. I live in Calverton, MD; close to College Park. I'm lucky to be about 1.8 miles yds. (wire-wise, physically I'm about 600yds.) from the CO, so when the Bell Atlantic people came to do the S/N ratio measurement, they told me I can go for 7.1M if I wanted to. I currently have a 640K line, and I'm quite pleased with it.
My suggestion would be to check out Flashcom, CAIS, and several other DSL providers in the area. They will gladly offer you DSL service in places Bell Atlantic can't. My guess is that BA has some rigid limits they want to stay in to minimize the trouble with customer service, i.e. they are only wiring people who are within a range that they KNOW their DSL will work trouble-free. I know several people living in Potomac area using a DSL line from CAIS. CAIS has a better reputation than Flashcom, you you might check them out first.
Comments about the connectivity of Washington DC area pop up at Slashdot from time to time, but I would agree the DC area is one of the best wired areas I have seen in the US. It is really difficult to get a DSL unless you try very hard. BA is not the only option.
With all due respect for his programming skills, personality and contributions to Open Source movement, I must say I'm surprised to see that none of the posts discussing the business model mention one possible motive behind Icaza's new company: Making a bundle of money by jumping on the Linux IPO bandwagon.
I agree the company can be very useful for GNOME and acceptance of Linux on the desktop. I fail to understand if the business model of selling support contracts for GNOME or GNOME apps is completely sound, though. Can anyone working in Fortune 1000 companies tell me if they are paying Microsoft for Windows or MS Office support contracts?
I believe the company is largely motivated by the opportunity of going to a quick IPO by riding on the Linux IPO wave. Yes, the company is founded by smart, savvy people who contributed a lot to Open Source. Yes, this is no LinuxOne-like scam. Yes, prospects for the company can be great if GNOME is widely accepted in especially the corporate world. But I don't think the business model makes sense until GNOME really takes off and corporate clients start buying support contracts. IMHO, that will not happen anytime soon, at least not before the first couple of rounds of financing for Helix Code. I believe they have positioned themselves either for being acquired by a bigger company, or a quick IPO after showing a token amount of revenues over the next couple of years.
I'm sure lots of companies are considering using Linux for ASP now, I wonder if Marc Andreessen's new company, Loudcloud, will be using it. Other than those efforts that we don't know about yet, there are already a couple of companies that offer Linux desktops that you can use on the Web-a "personal ASP" a la Desktop.com. You might want to check out WorkSpot, which allows you to have your own Linux desktop via VNC-they will offer various productivity sofware, so I guess that makes it an example of ASP with Linux.
Umm, not really. I would like to cut this short since it's not related to the subject; but posting anything favoring a Microsoft product over an Open Source package is almost always a sure way of getting yourself moderated down in Slashdot.
So is conformity really something most Slashdotters dislike? I don't think so. I agree posts that make any sense will eventually get moderated up, but only after being moderated down by several people, which prevents the article from even being seen by many others. I've seen many quite insightful posts discussing MS Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, or ASP vs. CGI/PHP moderated down as "troll". And I'm not talking about pointless, real flamebait posts or those including profanity.Perhaps this supports the original poster's opinion of the arrogance of Linux community-he definitely has a point.
On the other hand, strange as it seems, saying "go moderate this down" seems to cause the post o be moderated up.
It doesn't get you a commendation from the Ministry of Education in Turkey either. I'm not sure if he's still a teacher, but he used to be one, at least.
He won't probably need the teacher salary anymore; he's already a celebrity, and the Turkish TV channels and media are as idiotic as their counterparts everywhere(well, OK, probably not more than British tabloid press); therefore one TV channel or another will give him huge piles of cash to show up on TV. Ask any Turk you know if he/she knows who Reha Muhtar is.(He's roughly the equivalent of Jerry Springer, only purporting to be slightly more serious)
I also agree we all have other stuff to think about now (Transmeta is finally telling the world what they have under the covers, for one thing!), but thanks for opening this up.
Not every stupid web page gets a million hits. >What does this show, except that people are as >silly as ever and still follow the herd, >wherever it leads?
From what I have seen, this Web page was first and foremost a craze in Turkey before it spread out to the world. I can't be sure, I work and live in the States. But the type of guy portrayed in the Web page spoof (loser that can't get laid no matter what he does) is also a very funny thing in Turkey, and it is most likely that it's the same person who defaced Mahir's original site who started this. It just grew like wildfire after then. The fact that the English is extremely broken in a very hilarious way, and the desperate invitation to the opposite sex, which is a very foreign thing to Westerners because of the more relaxed, and natural state of male-female relationships there; made the page even funnier for people abroad, and hence we have Mahir even on Slashdot.
Is the page funny enough to warrant even temporary interest of more than one million people? Probably not.
I and many of my friends have been very angry at the guy who defaced Mahir's original page and started this stupidity. But I have been equally pleased that Mahir, no matter how stupid he may seem to you guys (because of a plea for sex he did not do in the first place), have given things a positive turn and changed the incredibly popular page to mention the tragedy in Chechnya at the bottom. It's a pity that his English is bad, and he can not convey his ideas properly. I hope his point gets taken, and everybody who hits Mahir's page in hope of seeing the hilarious, horny Turk reads the fine print and notices the word "Chechnya". Taking a hint from the effectiveness of air power over Kosovo, Russian forces are bombing the daylights out of innocent people there, just because the Chechens beat their miserable ground forces a couple of years ago.
Kudos to real Mahir for at least making a fair effort to get the message across; and coping with the incredible insult to his personality caused by the defaced Web site. Had the same thing happened to an American, he would have contacted FPI to track down the guy, start a lawsuit against him, and filling up the page with banner ads to make a quick buck of the situation. Now I hope Mahir doesn't screw up, influenced by the hordes of people from all over the world reported to be contacting him with various schemes to profit off the incident.
By the way, it is also hilarious that Mahir Cagri translates to "Skillful Invitation" in Turkish, don't you think? (It is a perfect translation, and the guy's name is real).
Great. After days of generating terrible publicity for our country for at least two weeks, the unknown idiot who has defaced the poor guy's Web page (The page is NOT created by Mahir. He put a personal Web page at an ISP in Bulgaria, and some idiot was amused with his physical appearance, and came up with the piece of crap that has been filling up mailboxes worldwide in the last two weeks.) finally made it to Slashdot.
Get over it, people. This is a bad joke. The guy is an ordinary teacher, and did not prepare the page himself. Still it is a fascinating example of how the Internet has changed the world.
Mahir is on the front pages of Turkish papers, and has been mentioned in a couple of other papers too, most notably Sweden's Aftonbladet and UK's The Observer. CNN has asked him for an interview, and he demanded $50,000.
Vidar, thanks for patiently responding to all questions on your product. Can you tell us what the projected price point is? I know LCD prices sometimes fluctuate, but a ballpark figure would be useful. And second, off-topic question: Does anyone know if GSM has been approved for hospital use?
I remember back when Slashdot was a pleasant discussion area for smart people with different opinions. Nowadays posting anything that seems to be slightly anti-Linux is a surefire way to get moderated down.
Why moderate this down as "Troll"? I think this is a completely valid point, and worth discussing about. Can a moderator with some common sense please moderate this post up?
If the Chinese start something like the Cultural Revolution to enforce use of Linux, the consequences may be a disaster for Chinese people.
Month-long mandatory emacs training camps for all students. (there are pictures of Chairman Mao and RMS in every classroom, and the day begins with pledge of allegiance to the great proleterian people of China and Eric Raymond)
Any Chinese citizen who fails to apply the latest government patches and compile the latest kernel will be warned twice. If an outdated kernel version is found on his/her machine for the third time in the obligatory nightly government inspection(all Linux systems in homes have to be connected to the People's Bureau of Operating Systems by a dedicated line), he/she will be declared an enemy of the state and will be executed by a single bullet to the brain.
All comrades have to install a simple PCI card containing a detonation circuitry and a fragmentation warhead with approx. 500g of TNT. Device drivers will be supplied graciously at the government Web site, and any attempt to bypass the government proxy servers will cause the card to detonate, eliminating the enemy of the proleteriat who happens to be using the system to access non-approved Web sites.
Use of the utility "fortune" will be prohibited since the name is reminiscent of the materialistic aspirations. A similar utility called "i_am_a_hardworking_little_servant_of_the_people" will be available at most government FTP servers.
The People's Republic of China respects the privacy of its people, and strong encryption software with powerful features like rot13 algorithm and 4-bit keys will be available free of charge to all citizens.
Free PCs will be available at government stores if you are willing to see inspirational Communist mottos and a waving red flag on approximately 80% of the screen. The rest of the included 14" monitor will be available for your own use.
If the Chinese use Linux to improve the performance of their intercontinental ballistic missiles, don't they have to release the diffs as a patch to the standard kernel? I can't wait for the modifications to surface at Freshmeat...
linux-kaboom.2.4.12-ac8.tar.gz : Linux kernel patch for the Long March IV strategic ICBM. Contributed by Lt. Shi Wong, General Tso and Capt. Ying-Yang; with patches by Alan Cox. Special thanks go to Loral Corp. of the USA.
Uhmm...Well, he definitely is not the first James Clark to come to mind in the context of software. My hat's off to James Clark of XML fame, sorry for the mix-up if there is really one. My sentiments about James Clark of Netscape stand, though.
I can understand why all those other names are there. I support Olivetti Research Lab(ORL), now AT for giving us VNC, the wonderful little piece of software. But some names simply should not be there...like:
James Clark: Give me a break, folks. What does this guy have to do with free software? Opening up Netscape source code was little more than a corporate maneuver to outsmart MS, IMHO, but look at where Netscape market share is now. Netscape still deserves a special award for being the only piece of software that's able to crash my Linux boxen, though. Show me a popular, usable open source project that was derived from Mozilla code and I will show you vaporware.
John Ousterhout: I guess Berkeley and Sun paid real low salaries, no? There are people who created languages that are far more popular than yours, Sir, but do they have a company? No. Not that it is a bad thing to make profit off your own creation...Either Ousterhout does not belong to the this list, or Larry Wall was really dumb not to go out on his own and start a company to make a fortune out of Perl. He would have showed up on the free software celebrities list anyway.
I've seen several notes which mention Ebay's instability problems and the use of Solaris/Oracle on Ebay. There is no doubt the database servers are very critical, but it looks like the application logic itself runs on NT & IIS. I had my own share of frustration with Ebay services in the past, and I believe the database was not to blame. Look at this URL:
(I made the item number up, but this is the correct form of URL to look up an item)
I know most server-side programming techniques allow aliases for server side apps/objects (i.e. I can write a Java servlet and call it "whateverISAPI.dll"), but the URL suggests that Ebay application logic is nothing but a bunch of ISAPI DLLs written for use with IIS. I would guess Ebay applications are written as ISAPI filters using MS Visual C++, and run on MS Windows NT servers running IIS. Or they have a really good reason to use another technology and call the program "ebayISAPI.dll".
Does anyone here know what Ebay runs on? Can anyone verify my guess, which I believe is pretty obvious to many Slashdotters.
I know WAP is yet to become popular, but I believe it's a well designed mechanism for devices with limited resources to access information. It's structured in a similar way to HTML, and standards-based. There will be a lot of different Internet appliances similar to Palm VII, Qualcomm pdQ and the like, and if each of them uses a different subset or a different "simplified" dialect of HTML, we developers will have a tough time.
I predict WAP will explode in Europe this Spring, when new GSM handsets with WAP capabilities hit the market and those creative Scandinavians find zillions of new ways of employing WAP in e-commerce. I guess the US will follow, and then all major e-commerce sites/companies will have to design WAP versions of their sites anyway. I understand they have to cater to the Palm VII crowd now, but Palm should see the light and release a WAP browser for Palm VII soon. I guess it will be a lot easier for everyone when all vendors standardize on WAP.
MSFT shareholders, fat and non-fat alike, were not very unhappy today, as Mr. Katz delightfully predicted. MSFT stock is down a grand 1.77 percent. As the previous post pointed out, anyone who had bought MSFT this morning actually made a profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day this would have been similar to using a celeron vs. the pentiumII cores.
I don't see the similarity here. The current Celeron and Pentium II cores are identical with the exception of differences of FSB speed, some bus interface differences, and the added on-chip L2 cache of Celeron. Whereas a 486SX was inferior to a 486DX because of the lack of a math coprocessor, which necessitated software emulation of floating point ops.
So it's not similar to using a Celeron vs. Pentium II/III. First generation Celerons, however, did not include any L2 cache, which made them much slower, and perhaps a comparison would have made sense in that case.
Well, there really IS a "MrSmiley" on Ebay and he seems to be a honest Ebay user, judging by his Ebay feedback. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands today, but do you think it's completely germane to mention someone's Ebay name as an example for crooks that pop up on Ebay from time to time?
I guess we should be more careful when we make up those names.
I am also one of those people who are waiting for a portable Internet client. Our wait might be over by the Spring, when Qubit Internet Appliance hits the market with a price lower than $400. Check the link out.
GraphOn is a company that's not even worth discussing here. They have some pretty lame remote computing tools (I evaluated them for our company), none of which was really better than VNC for our purposes. They have used Linux name to hype themselves since they showed up last year, and although all of their ads showed Linux as a platform they supported, none of their salespeople seemed to know about.
Why doesn't the Linux community punish the right companies? I mean, companies like XiG which slams Xfree and in general the Open Source community which lets it live, and GraphOn which claims to take advantage of Linux by using it liberally in their adds to hype their product; are much more dangerous and harmful than Microsoft. I guess the combined buying power of Linux users should be significant. Let's assume GraphOn decides to enforce this patent and collect royalties (which is likely-check their site out, they have recently employed the former IBM intellectual property and licensing VP!)and if even ten percent of all working Linux users who are in a decision making position opt not to buy GraphOn products for remote connectivity, I think GraphOn can never take off.
Just my two cents.
I should have said It is really difficult NOT to get a DSL unless you try very hard.
I've just discovered that programming in PL/SQL for long periods of time makes one sleepy and increases the frequency of typos. Also, friends don't let friends drive after coding in PL/SQL.
I'm surprised DSL service is unavailable in part of Potomac , MD. I live in Calverton, MD; close to College Park. I'm lucky to be about 1.8 miles yds. (wire-wise, physically I'm about 600yds.) from the CO, so when the Bell Atlantic people came to do the S/N ratio measurement, they told me I can go for 7.1M if I wanted to. I currently have a 640K line, and I'm quite pleased with it.
My suggestion would be to check out Flashcom, CAIS, and several other DSL providers in the area. They will gladly offer you DSL service in places Bell Atlantic can't. My guess is that BA has some rigid limits they want to stay in to minimize the trouble with customer service, i.e. they are only wiring people who are within a range that they KNOW their DSL will work trouble-free. I know several people living in Potomac area using a DSL line from CAIS. CAIS has a better reputation than Flashcom, you you might check them out first.
Comments about the connectivity of Washington DC area pop up at Slashdot from time to time, but I would agree the DC area is one of the best wired areas I have seen in the US. It is really difficult to get a DSL unless you try very hard. BA is not the only option.
With all due respect for his programming skills, personality and contributions to Open Source movement, I must say I'm surprised to see that none of the posts discussing the business model mention one possible motive behind Icaza's new company: Making a bundle of money by jumping on the Linux IPO bandwagon.
I agree the company can be very useful for GNOME and acceptance of Linux on the desktop. I fail to understand if the business model of selling support contracts for GNOME or GNOME apps is completely sound, though. Can anyone working in Fortune 1000 companies tell me if they are paying Microsoft for Windows or MS Office support contracts?
I believe the company is largely motivated by the opportunity of going to a quick IPO by riding on the Linux IPO wave. Yes, the company is founded by smart, savvy people who contributed a lot to Open Source. Yes, this is no LinuxOne-like scam. Yes, prospects for the company can be great if GNOME is widely accepted in especially the corporate world. But I don't think the business model makes sense until GNOME really takes off and corporate clients start buying support contracts. IMHO, that will not happen anytime soon, at least not before the first couple of rounds of financing for Helix Code. I believe they have positioned themselves either for being acquired by a bigger company, or a quick IPO after showing a token amount of revenues over the next couple of years.
I'm sure lots of companies are considering using Linux for ASP now, I wonder if Marc Andreessen's new company, Loudcloud, will be using it. Other than those efforts that we don't know about yet, there are already a couple of companies that offer Linux desktops that you can use on the Web-a "personal ASP" a la Desktop.com. You might want to check out WorkSpot, which allows you to have your own Linux desktop via VNC-they will offer various productivity sofware, so I guess that makes it an example of ASP with Linux.
Umm, not really. I would like to cut this short since it's not related to the subject; but posting anything favoring a Microsoft product over an Open Source package is almost always a sure way of getting yourself moderated down in Slashdot.
So is conformity really something most Slashdotters dislike? I don't think so. I agree posts that make any sense will eventually get moderated up, but only after being moderated down by several people, which prevents the article from even being seen by many others. I've seen many quite insightful posts discussing MS Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, or ASP vs. CGI/PHP moderated down as "troll". And I'm not talking about pointless, real flamebait posts or those including profanity.Perhaps this supports the original poster's opinion of the arrogance of Linux community-he definitely has a point.
On the other hand, strange as it seems, saying "go moderate this down" seems to cause the post o be moderated up.
I couldn't agree more. Frankly, I don't believe most of the Java bashers here ever sat down and wrote any application of substance in Java.
It doesn't get you a commendation from the Ministry of Education in Turkey either. I'm not sure if he's still a teacher, but he used to be one, at least.
He won't probably need the teacher salary anymore; he's already a celebrity, and the Turkish TV channels and media are as idiotic as their counterparts everywhere(well, OK, probably not more than British tabloid press); therefore one TV channel or another will give him huge piles of cash to show up on TV. Ask any Turk you know if he/she knows who Reha Muhtar is.(He's roughly the equivalent of Jerry Springer, only purporting to be slightly more serious)
I also agree we all have other stuff to think about now (Transmeta is finally telling the world what they have under the covers, for one thing!), but thanks for opening this up.
Not every stupid web page gets a million hits. >What does this show, except that people are as >silly as ever and still follow the herd, >wherever it leads?
From what I have seen, this Web page was first and foremost a craze in Turkey before it spread out to the world. I can't be sure, I work and live in the States. But the type of guy portrayed in the Web page spoof (loser that can't get laid no matter what he does) is also a very funny thing in Turkey, and it is most likely that it's the same person who defaced Mahir's original site who started this. It just grew like wildfire after then. The fact that the English is extremely broken in a very hilarious way, and the desperate invitation to the opposite sex, which is a very foreign thing to Westerners because of the more relaxed, and natural state of male-female relationships there; made the page even funnier for people abroad, and hence we have Mahir even on Slashdot.
Is the page funny enough to warrant even temporary interest of more than one million people? Probably not.
I and many of my friends have been very angry at the guy who defaced Mahir's original page and started this stupidity. But I have been equally pleased that Mahir, no matter how stupid he may seem to you guys (because of a plea for sex he did not do in the first place), have given things a positive turn and changed the incredibly popular page to mention the tragedy in Chechnya at the bottom. It's a pity that his English is bad, and he can not convey his ideas properly. I hope his point gets taken, and everybody who hits Mahir's page in hope of seeing the hilarious, horny Turk reads the fine print and notices the word "Chechnya". Taking a hint from the effectiveness of air power over Kosovo, Russian forces are bombing the daylights out of innocent people there, just because the Chechens beat their miserable ground forces a couple of years ago.
Kudos to real Mahir for at least making a fair effort to get the message across; and coping with the incredible insult to his personality caused by the defaced Web site. Had the same thing happened to an American, he would have contacted FPI to track down the guy, start a lawsuit against him, and filling up the page with banner ads to make a quick buck of the situation. Now I hope Mahir doesn't screw up, influenced by the hordes of people from all over the world reported to be contacting him with various schemes to profit off the incident.
Just my 2 cents.
By the way, it is also hilarious that Mahir Cagri translates to "Skillful Invitation" in Turkish, don't you think? (It is a perfect translation, and the guy's name is real).
Great. After days of generating terrible publicity for our country for at least two weeks, the unknown idiot who has defaced the poor guy's Web page (The page is NOT created by Mahir. He put a personal Web page at an ISP in Bulgaria, and some idiot was amused with his physical appearance, and came up with the piece of crap that has been filling up mailboxes worldwide in the last two weeks.) finally made it to Slashdot.
Get over it, people. This is a bad joke. The guy is an ordinary teacher, and did not prepare the page himself. Still it is a fascinating example of how the Internet has changed the world.
Mahir is on the front pages of Turkish papers, and has been mentioned in a couple of other papers too, most notably Sweden's Aftonbladet and UK's The Observer. CNN has asked him for an interview, and he demanded $50,000.
Vidar, thanks for patiently responding to all questions on your product. Can you tell us what the projected price point is? I know LCD prices sometimes fluctuate, but a ballpark figure would be useful. And second, off-topic question: Does anyone know if GSM has been approved for hospital use?
I remember back when Slashdot was a pleasant discussion area for smart people with different opinions. Nowadays posting anything that seems to be slightly anti-Linux is a surefire way to get moderated down.
Why moderate this down as "Troll"? I think this is a completely valid point, and worth discussing about. Can a moderator with some common sense please moderate this post up?
If the Chinese use Linux to improve the performance of their intercontinental ballistic missiles, don't they have to release the diffs as a patch to the standard kernel? I can't wait for the modifications to surface at Freshmeat...
linux-kaboom.2.4.12-ac8.tar.gz : Linux kernel patch for the Long March IV strategic ICBM. Contributed by Lt. Shi Wong, General Tso and Capt. Ying-Yang; with patches by Alan Cox. Special thanks go to Loral Corp. of the USA.
Uhmm...Well, he definitely is not the first James Clark to come to mind in the context of software. My hat's off to James Clark of XML fame, sorry for the mix-up if there is really one. My sentiments about James Clark of Netscape stand, though.
I can understand why all those other names are there. I support Olivetti Research Lab(ORL), now AT for giving us VNC, the wonderful little piece of software. But some names simply should not be there...like:
James Clark: Give me a break, folks. What does this guy have to do with free software? Opening up Netscape source code was little more than a corporate maneuver to outsmart MS, IMHO, but look at where Netscape market share is now. Netscape still deserves a special award for being the only piece of software that's able to crash my Linux boxen, though. Show me a popular, usable open source project that was derived from Mozilla code and I will show you vaporware.
John Ousterhout: I guess Berkeley and Sun paid real low salaries, no? There are people who created languages that are far more popular than yours, Sir, but do they have a company? No. Not that it is a bad thing to make profit off your own creation...Either Ousterhout does not belong to the this list, or Larry Wall was really dumb not to go out on his own and start a company to make a fortune out of Perl. He would have showed up on the free software celebrities list anyway.
I've seen several notes which mention Ebay's instability problems and the use of Solaris/Oracle on Ebay. There is no doubt the database servers are very critical, but it looks like the application logic itself runs on NT & IIS. I had my own share of frustration with Ebay services in the past, and I believe the database was not to blame. Look at this URL:
& item=555555555
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem
(I made the item number up, but this is the correct form of URL to look up an item)
I know most server-side programming techniques allow aliases for server side apps/objects (i.e. I can write a Java servlet and call it "whateverISAPI.dll"), but the URL suggests that Ebay application logic is nothing but a bunch of ISAPI DLLs written for use with IIS. I would guess Ebay applications are written as ISAPI filters using MS Visual C++, and run on MS Windows NT servers running IIS. Or they have a really good reason to use another technology and call the program "ebayISAPI.dll".
Does anyone here know what Ebay runs on? Can anyone verify my guess, which I believe is pretty obvious to many Slashdotters.
I know WAP is yet to become popular, but I believe it's a well designed mechanism for devices with limited resources to access information. It's structured in a similar way to HTML, and standards-based. There will be a lot of different Internet appliances similar to Palm VII, Qualcomm pdQ and the like, and if each of them uses a different subset or a different "simplified" dialect of HTML, we developers will have a tough time.
I predict WAP will explode in Europe this Spring, when new GSM handsets with WAP capabilities hit the market and those creative Scandinavians find zillions of new ways of employing WAP in e-commerce. I guess the US will follow, and then all major e-commerce sites/companies will have to design WAP versions of their sites anyway. I understand they have to cater to the Palm VII crowd now, but Palm should see the light and release a WAP browser for Palm VII soon. I guess it will be a lot easier for everyone when all vendors standardize on WAP.
MSFT shareholders, fat and non-fat alike, were not very unhappy today, as Mr. Katz delightfully predicted. MSFT stock is down a grand 1.77 percent. As the previous post pointed out, anyone who had bought MSFT this morning actually made a profit.
This has to be moderated up.
No, it was called ASAT. The link is here. Pegasus was a satellite launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences, I believe. It was launched off B-52s.