Let's hope they also worked on the "won't run my critical apps", "won't work the the hardware I own" and "Won't connect to my server" problems. When they solve those, then it'll be as good as XP!
I think you'll find that for a lot of these metrics, IOPS count for a lot. The number of times you can ask a disk for information and get it in a second varies right now between 30 and 80. The new flash media up that figure by a factor of 1000 without resorting to high end bleeding edge hardware. That's the advantage of "solid state" in "Solid State Disk".
When we move to SSD, the Vista Disadvantage may go away. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they're about two years ahead of the production and price/volume curve here. Maybe they should delay it.
Since they're still selling XP on netbooks for the forseeable future (throughout the life of W7, and maybe beyond), it seems likely they'll be providing patches, well, forever in PC terms.
Look at what his technology leadership has done to influence hardware and software purchases in Brazil... and Peru... And Russian Schools... and Africa... and China...
We need the guy. I say let him stay. We can afford a few thousand bucks a year for new chairs. The kind of influence that can turn entire countries to open source in a single contact cannot be replaced.
All operating systems configured from the default installer are bad. They all contain software that's vulnerable, excess services, excess features, apps you won't use.
All operating systems purchased pre-installed from OEMs are bad. They contain all of the above, plus all the applications that anybody was willing to pay on the disk.
What an average user needs in the real world is somebody between him and the vendors to cut out the extraneous, useless and outright harmful stuff they include, build in all of the latest patches and his required software, mount his documents folders in a separate partition or network share, and create a reliable system image for quick restore in case of disaster (one on the machine for quick restore, one on offline storage for redundancy).
This is a service. Enterprises do it. We need it for the common man and we need to educate the common man that it's worth the expense. An installer even an idiot can use is an installer only an idiot would want to.
Most versions of Vista come with an upgrade license that lets you step up to a more responsive, highly evolved system with a more optimized front end. It's called "XP". It lacks some of Vista's fancy DRM features, but I hear it has better compatibility with legacy applications and hardware.
But Joe User is going to use Windows 7 on his quad core to type emails. You want to increase his productivity? Score him a few grams of Columbian marching powder. He'll babble incoherently five times as fast as before. That's more "productive", right?
Now look around at all the businesses that count on their credit lines and cash flows to keep the lights on, that practice "just in time" economics and lose money nine months a year so they can get the gravy Christmas business that's not coming this year.
It'll get better one day, but it'll get worse first. This is no way to run a going concern.
At least they've stopped demanding name and address from cash customers. I'm sure the dead presidents I've put in their database are getting enough junk mail to have their own landfill.
It is the usual course when companies partner and grant rights that they trumpet the fact on both sides - even if the underlying contract is held in confidence for strategy reasons. Certainly SCO and Sun both announced loudly in the press at the time of the 2003 agreement that the agreement granted the right and Solaris would be open sourced. Novell has not endorsed this position yet.
The 1994 Sun Agreement had a 20-year confidentiality restriction prohibiting Sun from publicly disclosing the licensed source code. These confidentiality restrictions prevented Sun from publicly releasing or "opensourcing" the Solaris source code.
...
After entering into the 2003 Sun Agreement, Sun released an opensource version of its UNIX-based Solaris product, called "OpenSolaris." As its name suggests, OpenSolaris is based on Sun's Solaris operating system, which is in turn based on Novell's SVRX intellectual property. Absent the removal of the 1994 Sun Agreement's confidentiality restrictions, Sun would not have been licensed to publicly release the OpenSolaris source code.
The evidence presented at trial established that the 2003 Sun Agreement conveyed substantial rights to the SVRX intellectual property retained by Novell because of Sun's ability to open source Solaris.
...
The 2003 Sun Agreement specifically states that it "amends and restates" Sun's 1994 SVRX buy-out agreement with Novell. SCO has no authority to enter such an agreement unless it is incidentally involved in the licensing of UnixWare.
The court concludes that the release of confidentiality requirements in Section 8.1 of the 2003 Sun Agreement is not merely incidental to a UnixWare license. The provision had significant independent value to Sun as it allowed Sun to opensource its Solaris UNIX-based product. While several of the provisions in the Agreement focus on UnixWare and specific device drivers, the amendment with respect to confidentiality relates to the same technology licensed in the 1994 Buy-out Agreement and had significant independent value to Sun apart from a license to the newest versions of UnixWare.
That said, final judgment has not yet been entered. The judge does not propose to "undo" the deal, in recognition that it's not possible to restore the parties to their prior conditions. You really can't unring the bell. Some day we'll have answers to the question and it seems likely that Novell will not try to revoke Sun's deal with respect to Open Solaris.
But that's the future. This is now, and right now the outcome and legality are still in doubt.
The Court concludes that Sun's 2003 Agreement License, therefore, "concerns" a buy-out, and SCO was required to follow the additional restrictions imposed by Amendment No. 2 on transactions that concern buy-outs. SCO did not comply with these terms. The Court thus concludes and declares that SCO was without authority to enter into the 2003 Sun Agreement under Amendment 2, Section B, of the APA.
Yes, I recall. It takes a fine reading of the Court's opinions. Novell isn't pushing it yet because they're still in court but the day will come and these findings are definitive.
The world is a bridge; pass over it; but build not your dwelling there.
Look. We live in a litigious world. Although it's good guidance to tell programmers to avoid getting involved in discussions of, or reading, patents and their applications, it's a different thing to choose to be ignorant of your field, its history and the decisions surrounding it. The law is the law and it's a waste of time to develop applications that have been obviated by lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's hope they also worked on the "won't run my critical apps", "won't work the the hardware I own" and "Won't connect to my server" problems. When they solve those, then it'll be as good as XP!
I think you'll find that for a lot of these metrics, IOPS count for a lot. The number of times you can ask a disk for information and get it in a second varies right now between 30 and 80. The new flash media up that figure by a factor of 1000 without resorting to high end bleeding edge hardware. That's the advantage of "solid state" in "Solid State Disk".
When we move to SSD, the Vista Disadvantage may go away. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they're about two years ahead of the production and price/volume curve here. Maybe they should delay it.
Since they're still selling XP on netbooks for the forseeable future (throughout the life of W7, and maybe beyond), it seems likely they'll be providing patches, well, forever in PC terms.
Look at what his technology leadership has done to influence hardware and software purchases in Brazil... and Peru... And Russian Schools... and Africa... and China...
We need the guy. I say let him stay. We can afford a few thousand bucks a year for new chairs. The kind of influence that can turn entire countries to open source in a single contact cannot be replaced.
I think I have something in my eye.
All operating systems configured from the default installer are bad. They all contain software that's vulnerable, excess services, excess features, apps you won't use.
All operating systems purchased pre-installed from OEMs are bad. They contain all of the above, plus all the applications that anybody was willing to pay on the disk.
What an average user needs in the real world is somebody between him and the vendors to cut out the extraneous, useless and outright harmful stuff they include, build in all of the latest patches and his required software, mount his documents folders in a separate partition or network share, and create a reliable system image for quick restore in case of disaster (one on the machine for quick restore, one on offline storage for redundancy).
This is a service. Enterprises do it. We need it for the common man and we need to educate the common man that it's worth the expense. An installer even an idiot can use is an installer only an idiot would want to.
Most versions of Vista come with an upgrade license that lets you step up to a more responsive, highly evolved system with a more optimized front end. It's called "XP". It lacks some of Vista's fancy DRM features, but I hear it has better compatibility with legacy applications and hardware.
But Joe User is going to use Windows 7 on his quad core to type emails. You want to increase his productivity? Score him a few grams of Columbian marching powder. He'll babble incoherently five times as fast as before. That's more "productive", right?
If they named the different editions after Clippy avatars. That way they'd be collectible. You know, like Pokemon cards.
Oh, Yeah. There it is.
If you do a search for "flying chairs screensaver" you'll find there's a good market for this product.
Now look around at all the businesses that count on their credit lines and cash flows to keep the lights on, that practice "just in time" economics and lose money nine months a year so they can get the gravy Christmas business that's not coming this year.
It'll get better one day, but it'll get worse first. This is no way to run a going concern.
At least they've stopped demanding name and address from cash customers. I'm sure the dead presidents I've put in their database are getting enough junk mail to have their own landfill.
Yet another reason to buy online.
/frisk the UPS driver?
Your mistake. It's right here.
Don't worry. It's a common error. Get the facts and you'll understand.
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
It is the usual course when companies partner and grant rights that they trumpet the fact on both sides - even if the underlying contract is held in confidence for strategy reasons. Certainly SCO and Sun both announced loudly in the press at the time of the 2003 agreement that the agreement granted the right and Solaris would be open sourced. Novell has not endorsed this position yet.
From the ruling:
The 1994 Sun Agreement had a 20-year confidentiality restriction prohibiting Sun from publicly disclosing the licensed source code. These confidentiality restrictions prevented Sun from publicly releasing or "opensourcing" the Solaris source code.
...
After entering into the 2003 Sun Agreement, Sun released an opensource version of its UNIX-based Solaris product, called "OpenSolaris." As its name suggests, OpenSolaris is based on Sun's Solaris operating system, which is in turn based on Novell's SVRX intellectual property. Absent the removal of the 1994 Sun Agreement's confidentiality restrictions, Sun would not have been licensed to publicly release the OpenSolaris source code.
The evidence presented at trial established that the 2003 Sun Agreement conveyed substantial rights to the SVRX intellectual property retained by Novell because of Sun's ability to open source Solaris.
...
The 2003 Sun Agreement specifically states that it "amends and restates" Sun's 1994 SVRX buy-out agreement with Novell. SCO has no authority to enter such an agreement unless it is incidentally involved in the licensing of UnixWare.
The court concludes that the release of confidentiality requirements in Section 8.1 of the 2003 Sun Agreement is not merely incidental to a UnixWare license. The provision had significant independent value to Sun as it allowed Sun to opensource its Solaris UNIX-based product. While several of the provisions in the Agreement focus on UnixWare and specific device drivers, the amendment with respect to confidentiality relates to the same technology licensed in the 1994 Buy-out Agreement and had significant independent value to Sun apart from a license to the newest versions of UnixWare.
That said, final judgment has not yet been entered. The judge does not propose to "undo" the deal, in recognition that it's not possible to restore the parties to their prior conditions. You really can't unring the bell. Some day we'll have answers to the question and it seems likely that Novell will not try to revoke Sun's deal with respect to Open Solaris.
But that's the future. This is now, and right now the outcome and legality are still in doubt.
And peoples descended from them, are immune, smaller percentages from central asia.
Yes, in time.
Do you have any idea how many monkeys it takes to fly a toaster?
It's a challenging pursuit and quite frosty.
Not Solaris. Open Solaris.
The Court concludes that Sun's 2003 Agreement License, therefore, "concerns" a buy-out, and SCO was required to follow the additional restrictions imposed by Amendment No. 2 on transactions that concern buy-outs. SCO did not comply with these terms. The Court thus concludes and declares that SCO was without authority to enter into the 2003 Sun Agreement under Amendment 2, Section B, of the APA.
You don't have to dig down very far. The relevant Judge's ruling is currently on Groklaw's main page as the top article. In red for ease of locating.
I just don't see the conspiracy
I'm with you on that.
Yes, I recall. It takes a fine reading of the Court's opinions. Novell isn't pushing it yet because they're still in court but the day will come and these findings are definitive.
This is zealotry:
The world is a bridge; pass over it; but build not your dwelling there.
Look. We live in a litigious world. Although it's good guidance to tell programmers to avoid getting involved in discussions of, or reading, patents and their applications, it's a different thing to choose to be ignorant of your field, its history and the decisions surrounding it. The law is the law and it's a waste of time to develop applications that have been obviated by lawyers.
God bless the lawyers. Gently may they swing.