I treat my Mac Word 5.1 diskettes like a fine museum piece. I still use the program after all these years. Its run on a SE, IIci, Quadra 800, PMac 8100, PMac 9500, and most recently on the wife's G4 Pbook and OSX. Never misses a beat.
In college I became addicted to Borland's Sprint on the PC (and to a lesser extent Note Bene). I still have not found better on the PC side, and a regularly hit Borland's site to check to see if they have released sprint to the public domain.
The only DVDs I purchase are products that I want to keep for long periods of time. Only my most favorite films end up in my permanent collection.
A retail DVD that degrades in 8 hours totally defeats the point of purchasing a DVD. My lifestyle means that I will rarely "download" a DVD or even get pay per view content, I can almost always find something more important to do with my time, but I regularly pop in a DVD and watch portions over a period of time.
Linux is simply bloated if you use a "desktop" release such as fedora or suse. Worse, Gnome and KDE lack consistent user interface guidelines far worse than windows does (no current OS matches the seamless consistency of interface of the original MacOS). 512MB seems to be the minimum memory to have for a full size distro.
I run what is basically my own distro, with a minumum of packages installed as the base load. It takes roughly 500GB of storage and 128MB of memory to run the OS effectively. I use Blackbox/Fluxbox as my wm for speed and simplicity. I also use Blackbox on windows as my shell for the same reasons.
What keeps me off windows? Innovation. Simply put innovation is occurring in the open source realm and very little is on the windows side. If I want to try to nifty new widget from freshmeat....its going to require linux.
But I have found that I cannot eschew windows totally. First, Linux is not keeping pace with device drivers, especially on laptops. Second, I do play games, and that basically requires windows. Driver wrapper and WineX don't cut it.
I think it would be fruitful for technology for MS to fade away. MS is slowing the rate of change and innovation.
I think it would be bad for businesses if MS faded away BEFORE an equivelent end-to-end environment were available for business processing be it linux or something else.
I agree with that statement. My work laptop is pure windows XP. I can't afford to stop to fiddle with Linux in the middle of a presentation or meeting, etc.
Windows allows me to confidently drop into just about any environment and work immediately. OSX is almost this good. Linux can't do that at this time.
Then again, if you lack an MSDN subscription using windows is a complete and very expensive pain in the rear.
He makes some extremely good points. First and formost, is the claim that MS is not innovating quickly enough.
Linux/OSS is where the action is. It is where all of the really innovative code is being written. Its where the "Next Big Thing" will show up. By association, OSX's affinity for OSS unix code means it benefits from this too.
I find more and more that I am looking for ports FROM linux/OSS TO windows. That is a bad sign for MS.
The problem is that online games reward compulsive behavior. Real life penalizes compulsive behavior. I am definitely glad that I discovered online games AFTER school was finished. Girls, parties and wildness were hard enough to balance with school work....throw online gaming in the mix and I would have been doomed.
That said, I have many online friends who have failed out of school, lost jobs, and destroyed marriages due to online game play. Crazy but true.
The whole point was to "clone" unix
on
Stallman vs Ken Brown
·
· Score: 3, Informative
What is the big deal here? From my reading of the history of Linux and the statements of Torvalds, the entire point of linux was to reverse engineer Unix so that Torvalds could have an affordable personal unix.
That was also the point behind the development of Minix as well.
Bear in mind that at the time Unix licenses cost many thousands of dollars.
In the early 1980's I had a handmedown 1.6L diesel VW Rabbit with extended fuel tank (no ac, am radio, vinyl seats). It was not a chick car. It stuggled over 55mph.
It literally got 50-55mpg.
Am I missing something here? What is the point of hybrid vehicles getting moderate gasoline mpg? Diesel is a proven technology that can deliver extremely high efficiency and with new fuels pretty good environmental specs. Why on earth are expensive hybrids being forced on us?
Don't even get me started on the SUV market. It makes zero sense for any US SUV to ship with a gasoline engine. None of them can match the power, low end off-road torque and fuel efficiency of a diesel truck/SUV. Yet, Toyota is hawking a gas/electic Tundra Pickup?
The point is not that its an old list, the point is that there are windows-based cluster solutions out there and have been for a while. The reasons linux is popular with academic clusters are:
- free, duh - easily customizable and open kernel - ease of stipping the OS down to minimal levels
Until its free MS won't play in this ballpark in any serious way, although they will probably have PR clusters running here and there.
But, that does not mean that windows can't do it, and can't do it reliably. Windows is my least favorite OS; famiarity breeds contempt. But, if administered with the same care that unix admins administer linux, its just a stable and almost as secure. A poorly administered linux box is just as bad a poorly admininistered windows box, imo.
I read the article and supporting links with interest. It appears to be that the "green" movement dominating the world's population to serve the needs of an intangible "gaia" would be no different from Lenin/Stalin oppressing the massing in the name of "history".
Here is my take. MS simply takes too long to release new features and capabilities into the Windows line. Come on, WinFS is a file system. Its going to take them until the "end of the decade" to release a file system? Slack off the world domination lockin strategy of uber-integration and technology dependencies, and release a more modular OS.
Linux has the opposite problem. The pace of development and modularization of the system is excellent. But, the integration by the distributors is poor. From a clean vanilla install of any of the major distros too many pices do no work correctly. If the distro installs it off the media it should at least be tested and working.
XP Home is pretty much useless. In that light its rediculously overpriced. Home should price from Free to around $50. Pro, IMO, should be around $70-100 retail.
As far as "desktop" apps go. MS is again overpriced, but no worries. Quite a bit of OSS is porting to windows making windows much easier to migrate to from Linux.
Off the top of my head, abiword, sodipodi, OpenOffice, activeperl, apache, cygwin, BlackBox, GkrellM, Gimp, Plone, Apache, mysql and others have made my one windows gamebox fairly livable.
The for Redhat Enterprise distros are above those I get for windows. That is a MAJOR sticking point in my push to replace windows. If your requirements drive you to oracle on linux the savings of going to a "free" OS and low cost whitebox servers is totally gone and windows+SQLserver is cheaper. Based on the pricing I get; your milage may vary based on vendor and distro.
I have had several "I thought this was free" discussions with the business concerning Linux. The perception of freeness among the businessboys versus the actual cost of a commercial, supported linux is a stumbling block.
I would have to agree with the article's assertion about the destructive nature of OSS. A massive amount of corporate value is derived from IP. OSS basicaly drops the floor out from under that value. Eventually, this will apply to all classes of IP, music, drugs, art, literature, etc.
My current employment actually has a physical asset to sell. So from my perspective OSS only allows me to drive down my cost of delivering IT services. But, the impact on the supporting companies will be severe. I expect most of the major unix hardware/software vendors to be extinct within five years. Already, vendors such as Veritas, Legato, EMC, and others are finding hard sells at my company. Its difficult to pitch a $500 software license for Veritas storage tools for a zero dollar OS running on a $5000 server.
My "IP" is the knowlegde and skills to architect and deploy solutions ranging from top end proprietary *nix and windows solutions down to low cost OSS solutions. But, that skillset is a dime a dozen. My guess would be that real "technical" IT jobs will slowly fade as OSS gets more traction and emphasis will shift to the more mundane "business analyst" role of translating business needs and managing outsourced, extremely low-cost technical contractors.
Security? Its a wash. OSS is more secure if you are a non-US country because you can examine the code line by line to make sure there are no NSA backdoors (as there are in commmercial US operating systems).
Once comfortable with that a government can then make the original OSS code a proprietary, secure govt. release that is not returned to the OSS community thereby saving millions on developing their own OS.
Domestic issues revolving around poor K-12 education are a prime reasons why US students are falling behind. The education system is weak and the culture celebrates ingnorance, victimization, and celebrity. None of which motivate individual accomplishment.
The world is becoming a relatively safer and freer place. There is less incentive for anyone to stay in any particular place (or to flee a place) due to politics, resources or war. Scientists use to immigrate to the US; now there is much less reason for them to do so.
Mobility is key. Most knowledge workers can set up shop just about anywhere today. A major university or research center can be found close to almost anywhere. The internet allows universal scientific colloration and dissemination of information. A scientist could live in Deli, or Little Rock and still work with the best minds around the world.
Hurrah. Be happy. Be firm. Do not take calls or make work-related calls on your personal phone. Let your employer worry about how to contact you in the event of a system emergency.
Once your employer feels the pain, they will pony up for an alpha pager or cell phone.
Agreed. Outsourcing has little or no benefit to domestic workers (white or blue collar).
It gets worse. If you read the article closely exactly what jobs are being outsourced today? Entry level jobs. The article points out that the finished animation work is still done in the US, but if entry level jobs don't exist who will replace the skilled US animators when they retire? That's right, the production chain will shift completely overseas over time.
It gets even worse. The US federal government runs about a 4-5 trillion dollar budget. The combined 50 states run around a 2 trillion dollar budget. I have no idea what the combined budget of all of the county and city governments in the US might be, but my guess is in the 1-2 trillion range.
In light of a agregate 8 trillion dollar budget commitment just to run the government, exactly who will be paying this tab if low end or mid range income jobs migrate overseas?
I moved to a rural location last year and got DishNetwork satellite TV. So far weather has had a marginal impact on the use of the product. Basically, if its raining hard enough for me to lose satellite I am either going to lose power shortly or the weather is so bad we are already heading to the storm cellar.
Average, everyday rain has no impact on the product in my experience.
Ironically, I previously had timewarner cable at my old house. I lost cable service EVERY time it rained more than.5 inches. But, no matter how windy it got, I maintained cable service, unless that wind was accompanied by rain.
I have to agree, I've also been in the field for 10 years working in the sysadmin/engineering arena. I see the market totally declining in the next 5 years to the point that maybe 10% of current tech workers will be needed. Pay will be good for those 10%, but the rest will get nothing.
I make a very good salary, but I'm not sure that it is worth the hours I have to put in or the massive amounts of stress involved.
Simple managing of my expectations could allow me to live exactly as I do today on 1/3 the salary. Being a plumber or electrician is not really a bad idea.
I agree with this post. I'm firmly entrenched into the "internet generation" and rely on internet access to do my job as a unix sysadm and for liesure activities.
At the same time, I got sick of the crowding, development, taxes and general cost of living of the urban center where I work.
Luckily, I could move 30 miles outside of town, get 11 acres and a decent house, and be totally rural. Heck, I have wild turkeys outside my window in the mornings. The trade off, I am 10 miles from the nearest cable model fiber and the telco does not have a DLSAM for ISDN installed in my slick. Its dial up for me too and its worth it.
Bush's feudal America? Its only slightly difference from the Democrats version of Feudal America. On one hand are the heriditary elites and on the other are the Celebrity elites. Both envision the population as a faceless narod laboring outside their gated communities. Heck we already have "barshina", the russian term mandatory labor days devoted to the lord of the manor. The first 4 months of income go to paying income tax.
Neither party represents the "working man" any more. Where is Harry S. Truman when you need him.
ALL operating system are insecure. No exceptions. It is the responsibility of the OS vendor to find, fix and release patches for vulnerabilities. It is the responsibility of the user to apply those patches and secure his box.
The issue here is not that OS X has a vulnerability. The issue is that Windows has a larger installed based and thus being a more lucrative target has MORE of its vulnerabilities exploited.
MS is consistently late releasing fixed and then once the fixes are released, the sheer installed base of windows works against it. Around 80-87% of US internet users are on dial up. Most likely 90% of dial up users use Windows. A clean WinXP install requires over 128MB of downloaded patches. Exactly how many dialup users will ever patch their systems?
MS owes its users at a minimum a monthly CD of patches in the mail at NO charge if it wants to be a responsible internet neighbor. That alone would remove the most common reason why MS systems are so vulnerable.
Slashdot Mirror
I treat my Mac Word 5.1 diskettes like a fine museum piece. I still use the program after all these years. Its run on a SE, IIci, Quadra 800, PMac 8100, PMac 9500, and most recently on the wife's G4 Pbook and OSX. Never misses a beat.
In college I became addicted to Borland's Sprint on the PC (and to a lesser extent Note Bene). I still have not found better on the PC side, and a regularly hit Borland's site to check to see if they have released sprint to the public domain.
The only DVDs I purchase are products that I want to keep for long periods of time. Only my most favorite films end up in my permanent collection.
A retail DVD that degrades in 8 hours totally defeats the point of purchasing a DVD. My lifestyle means that I will rarely "download" a DVD or even get pay per view content, I can almost always find something more important to do with my time, but I regularly pop in a DVD and watch portions over a period of time.
Linux is simply bloated if you use a "desktop" release such as fedora or suse. Worse, Gnome and KDE lack consistent user interface guidelines far worse than windows does (no current OS matches the seamless consistency of interface of the original MacOS). 512MB seems to be the minimum memory to have for a full size distro.
I run what is basically my own distro, with a minumum of packages installed as the base load. It takes roughly 500GB of storage and 128MB of memory to run the OS effectively. I use Blackbox/Fluxbox as my wm for speed and simplicity. I also use Blackbox on windows as my shell for the same reasons.
What keeps me off windows? Innovation. Simply put innovation is occurring in the open source realm and very little is on the windows side. If I want to try to nifty new widget from freshmeat....its going to require linux.
But I have found that I cannot eschew windows totally. First, Linux is not keeping pace with device drivers, especially on laptops. Second, I do play games, and that basically requires windows. Driver wrapper and WineX don't cut it.
I think it would be fruitful for technology for MS to fade away. MS is slowing the rate of change and innovation.
I think it would be bad for businesses if MS faded away BEFORE an equivelent end-to-end environment were available for business processing be it linux or something else.
I agree with that statement. My work laptop is pure windows XP. I can't afford to stop to fiddle with Linux in the middle of a presentation or meeting, etc.
Windows allows me to confidently drop into just about any environment and work immediately. OSX is almost this good. Linux can't do that at this time.
Then again, if you lack an MSDN subscription using windows is a complete and very expensive pain in the rear.
He makes some extremely good points. First and formost, is the claim that MS is not innovating quickly enough.
Linux/OSS is where the action is. It is where all of the really innovative code is being written. Its where the "Next Big Thing" will show up. By association, OSX's affinity for OSS unix code means it benefits from this too.
I find more and more that I am looking for ports FROM linux/OSS TO windows. That is a bad sign for MS.
The problem is that online games reward compulsive behavior. Real life penalizes compulsive behavior.
I am definitely glad that I discovered online games AFTER school was finished. Girls, parties and wildness were hard enough to balance with school work....throw online gaming in the mix and I would have been doomed.
That said, I have many online friends who have failed out of school, lost jobs, and destroyed marriages due to online game play. Crazy but true.
What is the big deal here? From my reading of the history of Linux and the statements of Torvalds, the entire point of linux was to reverse engineer Unix so that Torvalds could have an affordable personal unix.
That was also the point behind the development of Minix as well.
Bear in mind that at the time Unix licenses cost many thousands of dollars.
Wave height is based on wind speed, duration and fetch. The linux wave is getting higher and higher.
My estimate is rought 18-20 months before the linux wave overcomes MS.
In the early 1980's I had a handmedown 1.6L diesel VW Rabbit with extended fuel tank (no ac, am radio, vinyl seats). It was not a chick car. It stuggled over 55mph.
It literally got 50-55mpg.
Am I missing something here? What is the point of hybrid vehicles getting moderate gasoline mpg? Diesel is a proven technology that can deliver extremely high efficiency and with new fuels pretty good environmental specs. Why on earth are expensive hybrids being forced on us?
Don't even get me started on the SUV market. It makes zero sense for any US SUV to ship with a gasoline engine. None of them can match the power, low end off-road torque and fuel efficiency of a diesel truck/SUV. Yet, Toyota is hawking a gas/electic Tundra Pickup?
The point is not that its an old list, the point is that there are windows-based cluster solutions out there and have been for a while. The reasons linux is popular with academic clusters are:
- free, duh
- easily customizable and open kernel
- ease of stipping the OS down to minimal levels
Until its free MS won't play in this ballpark in any serious way, although they will probably have PR clusters running here and there.
But, that does not mean that windows can't do it, and can't do it reliably. Windows is my least favorite OS; famiarity breeds contempt. But, if administered with the same care that unix admins administer linux, its just a stable and almost as secure. A poorly administered linux box is just as bad a poorly admininistered windows box, imo.
I read the article and supporting links with interest. It appears to be that the "green" movement dominating the world's population to serve the needs of an intangible "gaia" would be no different from Lenin/Stalin oppressing the massing in the name of "history".
Here is my take. MS simply takes too long to release new features and capabilities into the Windows line. Come on, WinFS is a file system. Its going to take them until the "end of the decade" to release a file system? Slack off the world domination lockin strategy of uber-integration and technology dependencies, and release a more modular OS.
Linux has the opposite problem. The pace of development and modularization of the system is excellent. But, the integration by the distributors is poor. From a clean vanilla install of any of the major distros too many pices do no work correctly. If the distro installs it off the media it should at least be tested and working.
I'm getting frustrated with both camps atm.
XP Home is pretty much useless. In that light its rediculously overpriced. Home should price from Free to around $50. Pro, IMO, should be around $70-100 retail.
As far as "desktop" apps go. MS is again overpriced, but no worries. Quite a bit of OSS is porting to windows making windows much easier to migrate to from Linux.
Off the top of my head, abiword, sodipodi, OpenOffice, activeperl, apache, cygwin, BlackBox, GkrellM, Gimp, Plone, Apache, mysql and others have made my one windows gamebox fairly livable.
The for Redhat Enterprise distros are above those I get for windows. That is a MAJOR sticking point in my push to replace windows. If your requirements drive you to oracle on linux the savings of going to a "free" OS and low cost whitebox servers is totally gone and windows+SQLserver is cheaper. Based on the pricing I get; your milage may vary based on vendor and distro. I have had several "I thought this was free" discussions with the business concerning Linux. The perception of freeness among the businessboys versus the actual cost of a commercial, supported linux is a stumbling block.
I would have to agree with the article's assertion about the destructive nature of OSS. A massive amount of corporate value is derived from IP. OSS basicaly drops the floor out from under that value. Eventually, this will apply to all classes of IP, music, drugs, art, literature, etc.
My current employment actually has a physical asset to sell. So from my perspective OSS only allows me to drive down my cost of delivering IT services. But, the impact on the supporting companies will be severe. I expect most of the major unix hardware/software vendors to be extinct within five years. Already, vendors such as Veritas, Legato, EMC, and others are finding hard sells at my company. Its difficult to pitch a $500 software license for Veritas storage tools for a zero dollar OS running on a $5000 server.
My "IP" is the knowlegde and skills to architect and deploy solutions ranging from top end proprietary *nix and windows solutions down to low cost OSS solutions. But, that skillset is a dime a dozen. My guess would be that real "technical" IT jobs will slowly fade as OSS gets more traction and emphasis will shift to the more mundane "business analyst" role of translating business needs and managing outsourced, extremely low-cost technical contractors.
Security? Its a wash. OSS is more secure if you are a non-US country because you can examine the code line by line to make sure there are no NSA backdoors (as there are in commmercial US operating systems).
Once comfortable with that a government can then make the original OSS code a proprietary, secure govt. release that is not returned to the OSS community thereby saving millions on developing their own OS.
Domestic issues revolving around poor K-12 education are a prime reasons why US students are falling behind. The education system is weak and the culture celebrates ingnorance, victimization, and celebrity. None of which motivate individual accomplishment. The world is becoming a relatively safer and freer place. There is less incentive for anyone to stay in any particular place (or to flee a place) due to politics, resources or war. Scientists use to immigrate to the US; now there is much less reason for them to do so. Mobility is key. Most knowledge workers can set up shop just about anywhere today. A major university or research center can be found close to almost anywhere. The internet allows universal scientific colloration and dissemination of information. A scientist could live in Deli, or Little Rock and still work with the best minds around the world.
Hurrah. Be happy. Be firm. Do not take calls or make work-related calls on your personal phone. Let your employer worry about how to contact you in the event of a system emergency.
Once your employer feels the pain, they will pony up for an alpha pager or cell phone.
Agreed. Outsourcing has little or no benefit to domestic workers (white or blue collar). It gets worse. If you read the article closely exactly what jobs are being outsourced today? Entry level jobs. The article points out that the finished animation work is still done in the US, but if entry level jobs don't exist who will replace the skilled US animators when they retire? That's right, the production chain will shift completely overseas over time. It gets even worse. The US federal government runs about a 4-5 trillion dollar budget. The combined 50 states run around a 2 trillion dollar budget. I have no idea what the combined budget of all of the county and city governments in the US might be, but my guess is in the 1-2 trillion range. In light of a agregate 8 trillion dollar budget commitment just to run the government, exactly who will be paying this tab if low end or mid range income jobs migrate overseas?
I moved to a rural location last year and got DishNetwork satellite TV. So far weather has had a marginal impact on the use of the product. Basically, if its raining hard enough for me to lose satellite I am either going to lose power shortly or the weather is so bad we are already heading to the storm cellar.
.5 inches. But, no matter how windy it got, I maintained cable service, unless that wind was accompanied by rain.
Average, everyday rain has no impact on the product in my experience.
Ironically, I previously had timewarner cable at my old house. I lost cable service EVERY time it rained more than
I have to agree, I've also been in the field for 10 years working in the sysadmin/engineering arena. I see the market totally declining in the next 5 years to the point that maybe 10% of current tech workers will be needed. Pay will be good for those 10%, but the rest will get nothing.
I make a very good salary, but I'm not sure that it is worth the hours I have to put in or the massive amounts of stress involved.
Simple managing of my expectations could allow me to live exactly as I do today on 1/3 the salary. Being a plumber or electrician is not really a bad idea.
I agree with this post. I'm firmly entrenched into the "internet generation" and rely on internet access to do my job as a unix sysadm and for liesure activities.
At the same time, I got sick of the crowding, development, taxes and general cost of living of the urban center where I work.
Luckily, I could move 30 miles outside of town, get 11 acres and a decent house, and be totally rural. Heck, I have wild turkeys outside my window in the mornings. The trade off, I am 10 miles from the nearest cable model fiber and the telco does not have a DLSAM for ISDN installed in my slick. Its dial up for me too and its worth it.
Bush's feudal America? Its only slightly difference from the Democrats version of Feudal America. On one hand are the heriditary elites and on the other are the Celebrity elites. Both envision the population as a faceless narod laboring outside their gated communities. Heck we already have "barshina", the russian term mandatory labor days devoted to the lord of the manor. The first 4 months of income go to paying income tax.
Neither party represents the "working man" any more. Where is Harry S. Truman when you need him.
ALL operating system are insecure. No exceptions. It is the responsibility of the OS vendor to find, fix and release patches for vulnerabilities. It is the responsibility of the user to apply those patches and secure his box. The issue here is not that OS X has a vulnerability. The issue is that Windows has a larger installed based and thus being a more lucrative target has MORE of its vulnerabilities exploited. MS is consistently late releasing fixed and then once the fixes are released, the sheer installed base of windows works against it. Around 80-87% of US internet users are on dial up. Most likely 90% of dial up users use Windows. A clean WinXP install requires over 128MB of downloaded patches. Exactly how many dialup users will ever patch their systems? MS owes its users at a minimum a monthly CD of patches in the mail at NO charge if it wants to be a responsible internet neighbor. That alone would remove the most common reason why MS systems are so vulnerable.