Though if sheer processing power for the buck were to be factored in, then Linux comes out on top.
Example: If you want a small workgroup server, Linux can give you a solid system at minimal cost.
Example: If you want a workstation, Linux can offer a very competitive environment complete with SMP, Networking, 3D Graphics, Standards Compliance, and Portability.
Example: If you want to perform calculations, a Beowulf cluster of Linux boxes can give wonderful results for a modest investment. I believe a Beowulf could be constructed that could beat an E10000 in raw calculating power for a fraction of the cost. For that matter... I believe that it is possible to build a cluster of E10000's using Beowulf technology that could beat just about anything on the planet - it'd be expensive though...:)
Like I've said before, Solaris and all the other commercial Unix's are a wonderful thing! They are very mature and stable but they by no means provide the greatest value to the greatest number of customers.
If I was going to run a bank or a hospital server that attended to mission critical services, I'd choose a commercial UNIX (not that Linux wouldn't do the job but because of current high-end scalablitiy issues). But, for the subsidiary systems like workstations, terminals, and research tools, I'd use Linux.
The point here is... with enough money, you can build the fastest computer in the world. Linux just brings the power of UNIX within the reach of the average person. Good for UNIX no matter how you look at it!
but Mindcraft is playing poker. They have the unreleased results of Test #2 and those tests may or may not be favorable to NT. These unreleased results are Mindcrafts hole cards.
Now, let's say we refuse the test and Mindcraft releases the results of the second test showing favorable results for NT. They can say that they offered to retest but we refused. They win. Mindcraft's stock is going up.
If we refuse to do the tests and Mindcraft doesn't release the results of Test #2 because they are unfavorable to NT, Mindcraft will simply change their name and go on spinning for their customers. They lose a round.
Let's say we do the test and it is so narrow in scope that the hardware is prime terra firma for NT but less than savory for Linux. Also, the tests must be done using software current as of April 1999 meaning that there may be broken drivers. Our experts tune Linux to it's utmost yet Linux still doesn't perform as well as NT. They win. Mindcraft is back in business.
Let's say we do the tests and Linux wins. Someone already said that Microsoft could spin that too! "Linux is faster than NT if you can get Linus Torvalds to install it for you!" Linux wins but they still look good. Mindcraft's rep is restored.
Based on these scenarios... I say we should participate in the tests. They should be held at a neutral site or have them at a major trade show with the world looking on and installed from a clean machine. That way, if Linux loses, it'll be in a fair fight! I can't imagine Linux losing by much though if at all. I am confident.:)
You can't say that NT beats Linux or Linux beats NT based on such a small sampling of situations! Mindcraft appears to be saying as much though...
I expect that if you were to take the CD's and the supplied boot disks and tested NT vs Linux on uniprocessor machines, then Linux would do quite well! Then install and compile the latest 2.2 kernel and all the appropriate NT patches and test uni and multiprocessor configurations. And do the tests on more than one hardware configuration.
Evidently, we are going to need to have a project dedicated to testing and put out a Hardware Compatability List! Hardware that is either supported by the manufacturer or the manufacturer provides detailed specifications to third-party driver writers would likely appear prominently on the list.
force massive upgrades to W2k and Win98. It's a profit motive! They DON'T WANT people to fix their Win95... they WAN'T them to upgrade. The Microsoft Rep said it himself - people will spend MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Obviously, Microsoft was selling a broken operating system until June of 1998 - just 1.5 years shy of the millenium. And, you can't tell me they hadn't done any testing at that time to see if Win95 was compliant.
Microsoft's attitude appears to be: Who cares! We'll just sell 'em an upgrade!
I've got one in my machine and it rocks! I've played BFRIS (which looks pretty good but I don't like the confined feeling) and Quake2 (I had to do some adjustments because it was running too fast).
>The article quotes one student as saying that he >doesn't want a technical degree because he wants >to broaden his horizons, discover himself, >become an educated person, and so forth.
>Well, that's fine, and those are admirable goals; >but the simple reality is that a CS degree >doesn't prevent you from achieving them.
I agree with this! As a matter of fact, barring a well planned personal study regimen, college is just about the best way to get a well rounded education.
In college, I was exposed to the Arts, Classical Music, Physical Education, History, English Composition (I never would have done it on my own as I hated it!), Accounting, MacroEconomics and World Literature. Just thinking about it makes me want to go enroll for the Fall Semester! Though, I'm making too much money to give up my full-time programming job to finish my Bachelor's Degree *WHICH* I'll bet is one of the underlying causes of the conditions outlined in the report. CS jobs *can* be had with little college education if the demand is high enough. Good for the workers; bad for the employers. (I'd have to say that the employers brought much of this on themselves. Hiring overseas workers is just going to exacerbate the problem.)
>College isn't tech school, and a different major >won't make it one.
This one I don't agree with. You said college is what you make it right? Well then, you can treat it as a tech school with trendy technical curricula -OR- you can get the education that you deserve. The choice is yours!
Why update if your system is running good? Let us other guinea pigs try it out first and if it fills the bill and will give you significantly more than you have now then yeah... you might *consider* breaking your uptime consistancy.
in Anne Arundel County some time back and the Cable Co. would routinely send us out without enough traps. I you ask me... traps are just too easy to tamper with anyway (especially the ones in the peds). They should use special set-top boxes to do the filtering like most everyone else! Nice to see things haven't changed that much.
But... RedHat already has commercial investors that in turn have their investors. At this point in the game, I think most investors involved are knowledgeable about the alternative to a level playing field in the OS game. Extinction! They are investing in something that is a real or potential benefit to their continued survival.
Going "Public", on the other hand, is a different animal altogether. The positive aspects of which would be pubilc involvement in the free and open source community, the availability of an investment point for those interested in Linux's continued growth and their own personal profit, the influx of cash that could provide a boost to R&D, the increased competition to provide for better and more widespread services for Linux customers. The negative aspects could be the alteration of the decision making process as others have pointed out and the proprietization of certain components of commercial distributions - however, in well run companies, a market analysis is done to determine the customer makeup - and if RedHat's customers are expecting adhereance to free and open software standards then that is *HOPEFULLY* what the CEO will ensure.
Microsoft used to have a very large - very technical userbase. To a degree, they still have a goodly mindshare but only because of the profit motive. Many of the technical protagonists that Microsoft used to depend on as customers have literally *Migrated* to Linux and become antagonists. Is such a migration something that a profit minded RedHat is willing to endure? Who knows?
On the flip side, look at Caldera. For the longest time, they have been marketing to the business crowd and succeeding on a moderate scale; now they are targeting a different market segment with their newest release - newbies. They may lose some technical users but gain many non-technical ones. They are a corporation that is looking for profit!
Money for Linux can't be a bad thing... It may change the goals of some companies but as long as they sell a product based on GPL work, it can't be all bad. The whole community benefits from modifications they make that in turn get used by other corporations who make modifications that in turn get released to the community and so on ad-infinitum. The best possible benefit *I* can see is corporate sponsorship of Free Software/Open Source projects and additional hiring of programmers to work on such projects. I consider getting paid to work on Open Source projects to be a kind of sponsorship; creating more time for Open Source work - accelerating the process.
They would be able to distribute LINUX and SCO-UNIX to their customers. They may take a short-term hit on profits but would have long-term gains. Their business is going bye-bye gradually anyway. Why should they just fade away when they can apply their resources to Linux and have a crack distribution going in no time?
I really don't understand why they choose to lose.
I'll buy one if they fix the mechanical problems.
on
Yoda Furby
·
· Score: 1
I'm not going to buy Yoda furby for *ANY* price if it's just going to die a horrible grinding death. But, if they fix the mechanical problems then... I'll get one.
Oh, and a Tux the Linux Penguin version would be a smash hit! HEHEhehehehe....
I bought an Tux the Penguin from a local store and had it for half and hour before my little neice saw it. I couldn't pry it from her hands.
I'm sure those engineers would love to further optimise Linux to work even better on their BEOWULF clusters. I fully expect to see even greater support for clusters very soon.
The possibilities of Linux are just WAAAY too exciting!:)
because, Microsoft can force the acceptance of their technology just by including it on every CD shipped. People who have Windows will have no choice but to accept it. Even though Microsoft Audio will be reluctantly accepted, that doesn't mean there wont be MP3 files available; it just means that the Recording Industry is going to attempt to sell you what you can get for free.
My idea of the future is: Artists release MP3's for free, they get very popular, they tour to make money.
I read about a technique call interfereometry in some scientific magazines that may allow for finding earth size planets surrounding distant stars. The technique would use arrays of smaller mirrors or detectors to simulate a larger single unit. Also, a smaller subset of the array could be used to go out-of-phase to cancel out the radiation of the parent star and make the remaining objects easier to analyse.
They'd use spectroscopy and doppler-shift to gain additional information on composition and motion.
Anyone know what techniques they used for the discovery? A URL to a paper?
I'll say right off that I like the Mac interface and feel that it is about the easiest one there is to use. Macs are also VERY easy to support! You can reinstall the System folder while the machine is running by doing a simple copy! You can boot clean by holding down a simple key. The OS provides meaningful feedback to help diagnose and fix problems etc... etc... etc...
While the Mac is an excellent Multimedia machine, it's stability is still no great leap over what a Windows machine's is. Hence, Apple's adoption of a more stable OSX/BSD kernel while retaining the World Famous Mac interface.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is carrying so much baggage (read backwards compatability), proprietary interfaces (read exclusivity), and interdependencies (read House of Cards idea incorporated in DLL structure) that they have painted themselves into a corner. They have so tightly integrated the User Interface with the rest of thier OS structure that it is nearly inextricable. Microsoft has focused on ease-of-use to combat Apple - thier main strategy for the last five years, taking competitor's ideas and incorporating them into the OS - Browsers and Multimedia Extensions, and hiding the underlying functions from the world and presenting stylized API's - Win32, MAPI, TAPI.
All this time, Linux has been putting in the plumbing and laying a firm foundation. Now the framing is done, the electricity is in, the insulation is up, the sheetrock is delivered and the brickwork is just finished. It wont be long until this house is ready for the average user to live in. All the components are interchangeable and customizable by the homeowner too.
You wouldn't build a house and put pretty woodwork and all the amenities in it and then find out that your foundation was cracking would you? Apple found it's foundation aging so, they moved the house, added a new and improved foundation, and put the same house back onto the new foundation. Microsoft went in and gutted thier house, lifted it up - crumbling the weak former foundation, shoved a supposedly firmer foundation under it and set the house back down on the foundation only to find that it doesn't quite fit. (Reportedly breaks 70% of existing applications.) Also, Microsoft has prefurnished it with it's own implements and nailed them to the floor leaving little room for differentiation.
I really look forward to seeing and using MacOSX, laughing at Win2000, and enjoying my Linux system along with all the new software and opportunities included.
1. Lack of OEM Manufacturer Support. Many manufacturer's of hardware don't release enough information for the creation of OpenSource drivers. This is changing rapidly. 2. Many manufacturer's don't adhere to the letter of the specifications that ARE open or available. For example: The Plug-N-Play spec. Many times, information is incorrect or ommitted entirely from the on-board ROM. The manufacturer's rely on special OEM drivers to take up the slack. I expect this to become a major issue and be resolved in future generations of hardware. 3. The rest are items that are yet to be addressed and represent opportunities for enterprising businesses and OpenSource projects.
With GNOME, I just right clicked on the little modem monitor thingy that I'd added to my panel, chose properties and added "ifup ppp0" for connection and "ifdown ppp0" for disconnection.
System configuration was easy using linuxconf and the gnome configuration tool. E has a nice configuration tool too!
When something is difficult to do, it becomes an opportunity for business to sell a product. A need is percieved, a need is satisfied, and a profit is made.
Take for example - the Linux system: Before distributions, it took an experienced and determined computer user to even get it to boot! (A business opportunity if ever there was one.) Take the installation of applications on a computer system - not easy for newbies but now is a no-brainer thanks to InstallShield. Take the problems with having to reinstall and reconfigure a Windows system - not easy for anyone but now is alot easier thanks to GHOST. Take the percieved lack of administrative coherancy in systems - opportunities for products such as CA-UniCenter and Novell Directory Services.
Difficulty equates to business opportunity. There is NO reason why a profit can't be made on making something easier to use. It is, after all, Microsoft's claim to fame.
With Linux, however, the promise of stability is as real as the firm foundation the Linux Kernel represents. The addition of ease of use items may well be left to third-party developers who have a free and open ended invitation to make a quick and solid buck.
The free and open development DOES have alot to do with software engineering. When person or group A makes a breakthrough or ingenious design... person or group B can use said breakthrough or ingenious design to produce another breakthrough or ingenious design that is then shared with others - the benefits could and sometimes do takie on a geometrical progression in evolution of product.
This is the free and open development fostered by Richard M. Stallman AND, in the same basic light, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, OSI, SPI, FSF etc... etc... ad infinitum.
Since we have gotten seriously off-topic... I'll reiterate my original point: Microsoft made an investment that they'll reap by stripping MIT of it's talent in favor of Microsoft Research.
Slashdot Mirror
I dug a little deeper and found out it was a spoof!
http://members.tripod.com/~tzimisce69
He does warn you in advance though...
Though if sheer processing power for the buck were to be factored in, then Linux comes out on top.
:)
Example: If you want a small workgroup server, Linux can give you a solid system at minimal cost.
Example: If you want a workstation, Linux can offer a very competitive environment complete with SMP, Networking, 3D Graphics, Standards Compliance, and Portability.
Example: If you want to perform calculations, a Beowulf cluster of Linux boxes can give wonderful results for a modest investment. I believe a Beowulf could be constructed that could beat an E10000 in raw calculating power for a fraction of the cost. For that matter... I believe that it is possible to build a cluster of E10000's using Beowulf technology that could beat just about anything on the planet - it'd be expensive though...
Like I've said before, Solaris and all the other commercial Unix's are a wonderful thing! They are very mature and stable but they by no means provide the greatest value to the greatest number of customers.
If I was going to run a bank or a hospital server that attended to mission critical services, I'd choose a commercial UNIX (not that Linux wouldn't do the job but because of current high-end scalablitiy issues). But, for the subsidiary systems like workstations, terminals, and research tools, I'd use Linux.
The point here is... with enough money, you can build the fastest computer in the world. Linux just brings the power of UNIX within the reach of the average person. Good for UNIX no matter how you look at it!
but Mindcraft is playing poker. They have the unreleased results of Test #2 and those tests may or may not be favorable to NT. These unreleased results are Mindcrafts hole cards.
:)
Now, let's say we refuse the test and Mindcraft releases the results of the second test showing favorable results for NT. They can say that they offered to retest but we refused. They win. Mindcraft's stock is going up.
If we refuse to do the tests and Mindcraft doesn't release the results of Test #2 because they are unfavorable to NT, Mindcraft will simply change their name and go on spinning for their customers. They lose a round.
Let's say we do the test and it is so narrow in scope that the hardware is prime terra firma for NT but less than savory for Linux. Also, the tests must be done using software current as of April 1999 meaning that there may be broken drivers. Our experts tune Linux to it's utmost yet Linux still doesn't perform as well as NT. They win. Mindcraft is back in business.
Let's say we do the tests and Linux wins. Someone already said that Microsoft could spin that too! "Linux is faster than NT if you can get Linus Torvalds to install it for you!" Linux wins but they still look good. Mindcraft's rep is restored.
Based on these scenarios... I say we should participate in the tests. They should be held at a neutral site or have them at a major trade show with the world looking on and installed from a clean machine. That way, if Linux loses, it'll be in a fair fight! I can't imagine Linux losing by much though if at all. I am confident.
I needed to read just what you said. I think we all did.
Stay on target.... Just a little longer... Staaaay on target!
You can't say that NT beats Linux or Linux beats NT based on such a small sampling of situations! Mindcraft appears to be saying as much though...
I expect that if you were to take the CD's and the supplied boot disks and tested NT vs Linux on uniprocessor machines, then Linux would do quite well! Then install and compile the latest 2.2 kernel and all the appropriate NT patches and test uni and multiprocessor configurations. And do the tests on more than one hardware configuration.
Evidently, we are going to need to have a project dedicated to testing and put out a Hardware Compatability List! Hardware that is either supported by the manufacturer or the manufacturer provides detailed specifications to third-party driver writers would likely appear prominently on the list.
force massive upgrades to W2k and Win98. It's a profit motive! They DON'T WANT people to fix their Win95... they WAN'T them to upgrade. The Microsoft Rep said it himself - people will spend MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Obviously, Microsoft was selling a broken operating system until June of 1998 - just 1.5 years shy of the millenium. And, you can't tell me they hadn't done any testing at that time to see if Win95 was compliant.
Microsoft's attitude appears to be: Who cares! We'll just sell 'em an upgrade!
I've got one in my machine and it rocks! I've played BFRIS (which looks pretty good but I don't like the confined feeling) and Quake2 (I had to do some adjustments because it was running too fast).
:)
Just get a 3Dfx Voodoo2 card.
>The article quotes one student as saying that he
>doesn't want a technical degree because he wants
>to broaden his horizons, discover himself,
>become an educated person, and so forth.
>Well, that's fine, and those are admirable goals;
>but the simple reality is that a CS degree
>doesn't prevent you from achieving them.
I agree with this! As a matter of fact, barring a well planned personal study regimen, college is just about the best way to get a well rounded education.
In college, I was exposed to the Arts, Classical Music, Physical Education, History, English Composition (I never would have done it on my own as I hated it!), Accounting, MacroEconomics and World Literature. Just thinking about it makes me want to go enroll for the Fall Semester! Though, I'm making too much money to give up my full-time programming job to finish my Bachelor's Degree *WHICH* I'll bet is one of the underlying causes of the conditions outlined in the report. CS jobs *can* be had with little college education if the demand is high enough. Good for the workers; bad for the employers. (I'd have to say that the employers brought much of this on themselves. Hiring overseas workers is just going to exacerbate the problem.)
>College isn't tech school, and a different major
>won't make it one.
This one I don't agree with. You said college is what you make it right? Well then, you can treat it as a tech school with trendy technical curricula -OR- you can get the education that you deserve. The choice is yours!
Why update if your system is running good? Let us other guinea pigs try it out first and if it fills the bill and will give you significantly more than you have now then yeah... you might *consider* breaking your uptime consistancy.
:))
i.e.: Don't upgrade yet!
It's pure trollishness plain and simple. I wouldn't doubt if he'd been given an incentive to write the article by Microsoft. Who cares anyway!
I say, "Why waste time putting effort into Windows when we have a free and open alternative!"
in Anne Arundel County some time back and the Cable Co. would routinely send us out without enough traps. I you ask me... traps are just too easy to tamper with anyway (especially the ones in the peds). They should use special set-top boxes to do the filtering like most everyone else! Nice to see things haven't changed that much.
How are the stripers in the bay doing these days?
But... RedHat already has commercial investors that in turn have their investors. At this point in the game, I think most investors involved are knowledgeable about the alternative to a level playing field in the OS game. Extinction! They are investing in something that is a real or potential benefit to their continued survival.
Going "Public", on the other hand, is a different animal altogether. The positive aspects of which would be pubilc involvement in the free and open source community, the availability of an investment point for those interested in Linux's continued growth and their own personal profit, the influx of cash that could provide a boost to R&D, the increased competition to provide for better and more widespread services for Linux customers. The negative aspects could be the alteration of the decision making process as others have pointed out and the proprietization of certain components of commercial distributions - however, in well run companies, a market analysis is done to determine the customer makeup - and if RedHat's customers are expecting adhereance to free and open software standards then that is *HOPEFULLY* what the CEO will ensure.
Microsoft used to have a very large - very technical userbase. To a degree, they still have a goodly mindshare but only because of the profit motive. Many of the technical protagonists that Microsoft used to depend on as customers have literally *Migrated* to Linux and become antagonists. Is such a migration something that a profit minded RedHat is willing to endure? Who knows?
On the flip side, look at Caldera. For the longest time, they have been marketing to the business crowd and succeeding on a moderate scale; now they are targeting a different market segment with their newest release - newbies. They may lose some technical users but gain many non-technical ones. They are a corporation that is looking for profit!
Money for Linux can't be a bad thing... It may change the goals of some companies but as long as they sell a product based on GPL work, it can't be all bad. The whole community benefits from modifications they make that in turn get used by other corporations who make modifications that in turn get released to the community and so on ad-infinitum. The best possible benefit *I* can see is corporate sponsorship of Free Software/Open Source projects and additional hiring of programmers to work on such projects. I consider getting paid to work on Open Source projects to be a kind of sponsorship; creating more time for Open Source work - accelerating the process.
They would be able to distribute LINUX and SCO-UNIX to their customers. They may take a short-term hit on profits but would have long-term gains. Their business is going bye-bye gradually anyway. Why should they just fade away when they can apply their resources to Linux and have a crack distribution going in no time?
I really don't understand why they choose to lose.
I'm not going to buy Yoda furby for *ANY* price if it's just going to die a horrible grinding death. But, if they fix the mechanical problems then... I'll get one.
Oh, and a Tux the Linux Penguin version would be a smash hit! HEHEhehehehe....
I bought an Tux the Penguin from a local store and had it for half and hour before my little neice saw it. I couldn't pry it from her hands.
I'm sure those engineers would love to further optimise Linux to work even better on their BEOWULF clusters. I fully expect to see even greater support for clusters very soon.
:)
The possibilities of Linux are just WAAAY too exciting!
Put a protected computer running Windows in a Chimpanzee cage with a Linux CD in it and see if the chimps can install Caldera.
Would they have it done in an hour, a day, a week?
He's saying color ls with classify is NOT standard in a default RH install.
/etc/profile and the /etc/bashrc EVERY TIME I install RH. How hard is this to fix?
I have to modify the
because, Microsoft can force the acceptance of their technology just by including it on every CD shipped. People who have Windows will have no choice but to accept it. Even though Microsoft Audio will be reluctantly accepted, that doesn't mean there wont be MP3 files available; it just means that the Recording Industry is going to attempt to sell you what you can get for free.
My idea of the future is:
Artists release MP3's for free, they get very popular, they tour to make money.
I read about a technique call interfereometry in some scientific magazines that may allow for finding earth size planets surrounding distant stars. The technique would use arrays of smaller mirrors or detectors to simulate a larger single unit. Also, a smaller subset of the array could be used to go out-of-phase to cancel out the radiation of the parent star and make the remaining objects easier to analyse.
They'd use spectroscopy and doppler-shift to gain additional information on composition and motion.
Anyone know what techniques they used for the discovery? A URL to a paper?
but not at the expense of stability.
I'll say right off that I like the Mac interface and feel that it is about the easiest one there is to use. Macs are also VERY easy to support! You can reinstall the System folder while the machine is running by doing a simple copy! You can boot clean by holding down a simple key. The OS provides meaningful feedback to help diagnose and fix problems etc... etc... etc...
While the Mac is an excellent Multimedia machine, it's stability is still no great leap over what a Windows machine's is. Hence, Apple's adoption of a more stable OSX/BSD kernel while retaining the World Famous Mac interface.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is carrying so much baggage (read backwards compatability), proprietary interfaces (read exclusivity), and interdependencies (read House of Cards idea incorporated in DLL structure) that they have painted themselves into a corner. They have so tightly integrated the User Interface with the rest of thier OS structure that it is nearly inextricable. Microsoft has focused on ease-of-use to combat Apple - thier main strategy for the last five years, taking competitor's ideas and incorporating them into the OS - Browsers and Multimedia Extensions, and hiding the underlying functions from the world and presenting stylized API's - Win32, MAPI, TAPI.
All this time, Linux has been putting in the plumbing and laying a firm foundation. Now the framing is done, the electricity is in, the insulation is up, the sheetrock is delivered and the brickwork is just finished. It wont be long until this house is ready for the average user to live in. All the components are interchangeable and customizable by the homeowner too.
You wouldn't build a house and put pretty woodwork and all the amenities in it and then find out that your foundation was cracking would you? Apple found it's foundation aging so, they moved the house, added a new and improved foundation, and put the same house back onto the new foundation. Microsoft went in and gutted thier house, lifted it up - crumbling the weak former foundation, shoved a supposedly firmer foundation under it and set the house back down on the foundation only to find that it doesn't quite fit. (Reportedly breaks 70% of existing applications.) Also, Microsoft has prefurnished it with it's own implements and nailed them to the floor leaving little room for differentiation.
I really look forward to seeing and using MacOSX, laughing at Win2000, and enjoying my Linux system along with all the new software and opportunities included.
in Linux are easy to classify.
:)
1. Lack of OEM Manufacturer Support. Many manufacturer's of hardware don't release enough information for the creation of OpenSource drivers. This is changing rapidly.
2. Many manufacturer's don't adhere to the letter of the specifications that ARE open or available. For example: The Plug-N-Play spec. Many times, information is incorrect or ommitted entirely from the on-board ROM. The manufacturer's rely on special OEM drivers to take up the slack. I expect this to become a major issue and be resolved in future generations of hardware.
3. The rest are items that are yet to be addressed and represent opportunities for enterprising businesses and OpenSource projects.
Things are getting better all the time!
With GNOME, I just right clicked on the little modem monitor thingy that I'd added to my panel, chose properties and added "ifup ppp0" for connection and "ifdown ppp0" for disconnection.
:)
System configuration was easy using linuxconf and the gnome configuration tool. E has a nice configuration tool too!
Works like a charm!
When something is difficult to do, it becomes an opportunity for business to sell a product. A need is percieved, a need is satisfied, and a profit is made.
Take for example - the Linux system: Before distributions, it took an experienced and determined computer user to even get it to boot! (A business opportunity if ever there was one.) Take the installation of applications on a computer system - not easy for newbies but now is a no-brainer thanks to InstallShield. Take the problems with having to reinstall and reconfigure a Windows system - not easy for anyone but now is alot easier thanks to GHOST. Take the percieved lack of administrative coherancy in systems - opportunities for products such as CA-UniCenter and Novell Directory Services.
Difficulty equates to business opportunity. There is NO reason why a profit can't be made on making something easier to use. It is, after all, Microsoft's claim to fame.
With Linux, however, the promise of stability is as real as the firm foundation the Linux Kernel represents. The addition of ease of use items may well be left to third-party developers who have a free and open ended invitation to make a quick and solid buck.
Exactly my point. Life did adapt, does and continues to do so.
Be the horseshoe crab not the trilobite!
Thank you Mr. T! :)
The free and open development DOES have alot to do with software engineering. When person or group A makes a breakthrough or ingenious design... person or group B can use said breakthrough or ingenious design to produce another breakthrough or ingenious design that is then shared with others - the benefits could and sometimes do takie on a geometrical progression in evolution of product.
This is the free and open development fostered by Richard M. Stallman AND, in the same basic light, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, OSI, SPI, FSF etc... etc... ad infinitum.
Since we have gotten seriously off-topic... I'll reiterate my original point: Microsoft made an investment that they'll reap by stripping MIT of it's talent in favor of Microsoft Research.