System and component vendors don't make money on these "lighthouse account" supercomputer sales. My experience, having worked in the past for a vendor that did this a lot, is that they're a money-loser. The motivation is bragging rights, though that can be fleeting. I know of several times that my employer declined to bid on a supercomputer deal as it would just be too expensive.
Typically, these systems are actually sold by system vendors (Dell, HP, IBM) and not processor vendors, though the processor vendor will support the bid. That #1 "AMD" system is actually a Cray. Software also plays a large part in success or failure.
If you watch the video, you hear the inventor explain why a clutch is bad because it limits torque input and has wear. Yes, a clutch would certainly solve at least this problem, but the major benefit given for this design is to eliminate a clutch.
If the input is from an electric motor, no clutch is needed because electric motors have maximum torque at zero RPM and the "gear change" shaft can be allowed to come up to speed. Then again, most electric cars have very simple transmissions with a single gear, so again what's the point?
Perhaps what one can do is have a gear disengage and not re-engage until the transmission is in "neutral".
I think the weakness in this design is the need to rotate the "bottom" shaft at a speed equal to the input shaft for neutral. While indeed it doesn't need a lot of power, it's a lot of rotation where, in competing designs, a clutch disengages or the drive motor is idling. I could see a lot of things going wrong if the synchronization was imperfect, or if something went wrong.
How do you start this up from a dead stop? Somehow you have to exactly match the shaft rotation speeds to keep it in neutral before you start moving forward, otherwise there will be a lurch.
I look forward to seeing how this is developed further. It has a lot of potential.
I thought Intel had partnered with DEC to make the Alpha chip. Also Intel held the patents on it. Intel finally decided to tell DEC sorry but we (Intel) do not want to use these (the Alpha chip designs) anymore. Or something like that anyway. Intel forced DEC to stop making the CPU which left DEC screwed.
Sorry, that is not even close. DEC sued Intel over infringements of the Alpha patents in Pentium processors. One of the results of the settlement was that Intel acquired DEC's Hudson, MA fab (which still operates today). In no way were DEC and Intel partners in Alpha, though ironically, Intel ended up making Alpha chips in the Hudson fab for several years under contract to DEC. What killed Alpha was years of neglect by Bob Palmer (DEC CEO) followed by Compaq's cluelessness. HP ended up with both Alpha and Itanium and bet the farm on the latter, but by that time it probably didn't matter.
Correction: Compaq bought DEC in mid-1999, HP bought Compaq in late 2001. Otherwise, you are mostly correct, though the majority of the Alpha design team ended up at Intel in 2001, when Intel acquired the Alpha architecture and compiler teams. Some Alpha designers did go to AMD and AMD licensed the Alpha EV6 bus for Opteron.
I happened upon an exhibit of Tezuka's work at the Tokyo-Edo Museum when I was visiting Japan in April. It had a TV showing an extended clip from the movie. It didn't show anything that hinted at the overall plot, other than it evidently being, as noted in the interview, an "origin movie". All of the text on the displays was in Japanese, so if there was any explanation of the movie plot, it eluded me. As a big fan of the English version from the 1960s, I'm eager to see the movie, but my expectations are low.
If your Windows 7 system with 4GB RAM shows less than that "usable", go into your BIOS options and turn off PCI memory remapping. The name of the option may vary and some motherboards may not support this. On my Asus P5B, it is under the North Bridge Configuration.
This drove me crazy until I found a forum post describing the solution. Even Windows 7 x64 was showing about 3GB "usable" for me before I did this.
I think you need to get over your dislike of Fortran and make use of the many good and modern Fortran compilers available to you, both freeware and commercial. Any of them has got to be a better solution than f2c - if you think Fortran is hard to read, that's nothing compared to the cryptic output of f2c, and then you're locked in to using the buggy and archaic f2c support library.
I am not familiar with the application you're using, but the limits you describe are almost certainly not due to the coding language chosen. As for programming interface, it's easy to call Fortran from other languages and, in most cases, to call other languages from Fortran.
One can write unreadable and unmaintainable code in any language. A big benefit of Fortran is that old code is still supported by modern Fortran compilers.
I've actually read the book...
on
Space Vulture
·
· Score: 1
The review is pretty much spot-on. I started reading SF in the early 60s, and have read a lot of the "pulp" SF from the 1930s, so I have a feel for what Space Vulture is trying to imitate.
I agree that it's not a very good homage, and certainly not a parody. The writing is clumsy and a bit over-the-top in places - E.E. Doc Smith, or even E.R. Burroughs, these guys aren't. When I was about halfway through the book, I found myself wondering if I would finish it or throw it against the wall in frustration.
I did finish it, though. I won't say that it redeemed itself in the end, but there were some amusing bits in there. Not something I would choose to reread or recommend to others.
If you think Space Vulture would interest you, may I suggest instead any of the E.E. "Doc" Smith books available for free at feedbooks.com, Project Gutenberg or elsewhere. Any one of them is better than Space Vulture.
As a Mini 9 owner and participant in the mydellmini.com forum, another not-insignificant number are running Windows 7. Oh, and Vista runs fine there too.
I will agree, from what I see, that there are a lot of Mini 9 owners running Ubuntu. But an equal number, I would estimate, buy the smallest, cheapest configuration (which is available with Ubuntu only) and then add their own memory, larger SSD and OS install - which might be OS X, XP, Vista or Windows 7. Someone has even managed to boot BeOS on a Mini 9!
There's nothing that special about the iPhone - all phones are "software driven". With other tethering-capable phones, tethering is done by either Bluetooth (with a standard "Personal Area Network" profile), or by a USB connection (requires software on the tethered computer). On my WM6 Treo 750, I just start the AT&T-provided "Internet Sharing" application and tap "Connect" - done.
I think that many who gush about the iPhone and think it is unique have never used a smartphone before, of which there are many excellent examples on the market. What is unique about the iPhone is the way Apple decides what you are allowed to use it for.
Tethering is not against AT&T rules in general. Tethering is supported on AT&T if you have a plan that allows it. In the past, all data plans allowed tethering, and that's the kind I have. Nowadays their data plans for PDA phones come in two levels, with and without tethering. The difference does not seem to be strictly enforced from what I have heard, but if you are caught tethering on a no-tether plan you may be subject to big extra charges.
I do not have an iPhone, and lack of tethering support is one of many reasons why. I occasionally tether with my Treo 750 and it works well.
Whatever the issue is with tethering on the iPhone, it would seem to be Apple and not AT&T. Many AT&T phones support tethering, but not the iPhone.
My wife and I have been members of SFBC for many, many years, and we like it a lot. There are many new books offered by SFBC at decent prices (lower than bookstores or Amazon), and new books in many popular series are offered by SFBC right about the time of publishing for retail, including authors such as Terry Pratchett, Lois McMasters Bujold, Elizabeth Moon and others.
SFBC also prints cost-effective "omnibus" editions collecting several books from older series into one volume, and reissues classics from Heinlein, Asimov and many more. Right now, they've got reissues of the "Lensman" series.
There are often deals for free shipping, buy 2 get 1 free, etc., especially if you order through the web site.
The one thing that can be an issue is the "negative option" method of "we'll send you these selections unless you tell us not to". You can do this online so it's not a big deal, but after you're a member for a while you can request to be switched to "positive option" where you don't get anything unless you ask for it.
SFBC does not have an enormous catalog - at any one time, there are perhaps several hundred titles available, more leaning to current popular series and classics.
Note that in most (but not all) cases, you are getting SFBC-printed editions. While they contain all the material of a retail issue, the physical size and cover printing may be different.
I'd say that we buy a dozen or more books a year from SFBC and have yet to be disappointed.
No, more reasonable would be to use "anything.invalid" as ".invalid" is a reserved top-level domain. The problem with that is that many email servers will reject mail apparently sent from nonexistent domains. This is why so much spam has the sender spoofed from valid domains (with made-up usernames.) Complicating the issue is that it there are so many different spam filtering mechanisms out there, some of dubious correctness.
ICANN reserved example.com, example.org and example.net for use in documentation and other places where you want to put an "example" domain name, but I find that most people are not aware of this. Email sent to these domains is discarded.
For reply addresses, a more reasonable protocol would be to use the sender's actual domain but with an invalid username, as Poromenos1 suggests. A further problem of using a domain not your own as a sender address is that the recipient's email server may block it due to SPF records or other checks on sender domains.
I remember once getting an incensed missive from the owner of asdfg.com who complained about emails we were sending him regarding updates of our product. Turned out that a user had entered that domain when he registered the product in an attempt to not get our emails.
Penryn is the code name for the CPU series, not a brand name. Specifically, it's the code name for the not-yet-released mobile processor, but as with the previous generation Merom, it has been used to apply to all three processor types (mobile, desktop, server) built from that technology generation. Intel is not introducing any new processor brand names for this as far as I know.
The processors will be generally sold as "Intel Core 2" or "Intel Xeon". The Pentium and Celeron brand names may also be applied to low-end models.
Since no new brand names are being used, I expect people to continue to use the code names to try to distinguish these new processors from their predecessors (code named Merom, Conroe, Woodcrest, Clovertown).
It is not worthless. The volume of calls received once you're on that list goes down tremendously. I discovered this accidentally when I switched VOIP providers and I had a new temporary number. I was suddenly deluged with marketing calls on the temporary number. Once my number had finished porting and the temporary number was shut off, the calls stopped.
I'm not saying that I never get any unsolicited marketing calls, but I get many many fewer than I would if I were not on the list. I do agree however that surveys and political calls, not being covered by the DNC list, make it less useful than it could be.
You must have either a short memory or you missed out on all the fun. NamesDirect suffered a massive meltdown of its DNS servers a few years back, leaving hundreds of thousands of domains in the dark for a week or more. They did not have sufficient capacity or redundancy in their servers and did not communicate with their customers for days. Perhaps it's better now, but as soon as I could, I transferred my domains out of there and would never return.
The registrar I've had the best luck with is eNom, though I left them for Registerfly a coup[le of years back (mainly because of pricing.) 10 of my 11 domains are out of Registerfly now (to a mixture of eNom and 1&1.)
I do use Dreamhost for hosting most of my sites and they've been good to me.
The article does NOT "explain the 90nm process and why these are more advanced than the Intel chips". Rather, it just makes this bald assertion and moves on. Intel, I'm sure, would disagree. AMD and Intel use somewhat different silicon technology, but is one "more advanced" than the other? Depends on whom you ask. What AMD solves with SOI Intel solves a different way. There is, of course, the fact that Intel has been cranking out very successful 65nm chips for about a year now and AMD has not (yet) shipped any.
I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that Intel's process technology is behind AMD's. Consider "overclockability" - Intel's 90nm chips have been proven to have lots of headroom (think Pentium D 805) and the AMD chips fall over with even slight overclocks. This says to me that Intel's silicon design is inherently better. Whatever Intel's past failings have been, and there have been many, silicon process technology is not among them.
What it is most likely to be is TiVo software running on a Motorola 64xx hardware platform, in use today by Cox and many other cable TV companies. It is well known that TiVo is already developing such a thing and that Comcast plans to offer it later this year.
So you would get the nice TiVo interface and feature set on the Motorola box. You might not get the networking features standalone TiVo users have become accustomed to, nor the "hackability" of older TiVo boxes.
An alternative would be the TiVo Series 3 box, due "second half" of this year. This is a dual-CableCARD HD box specifically designed for cable (no satellite or other external inputs.)
First off - I love osCommerce. I run a web store using it, have written several popular contributions and participate in the official forum. But the reviewer can perhaps be excused for thinking that there has not been a book on osCommerce before this - there are several. The problem is that Harald (or one of his minions) quickly removes from the forum any mention of any commercial product (book, add-on, service, etc.) relating to osCommerce other than those from his advertisers. Go to amazon.com and search for "oscommerce" - you'll get many hits.
Also censored from the forum is any mention of other cart software, especially those derived from osCommerce such as Zen Cart and CRE. Want to show how to interface osCommerce to a free API that also has a commercial version? Censored. Want to talk about your experience with a web host or SSL certificate provider? Censored. I once had an extended exchange with one of the forum moderators who seemed to equate "open source" to "one source".
In any event, osCommerce is "not for wimps". A lot of people think the same way the reviewer did - that you download it, install it, and have an instant web store suitable for your customers. It took me about four months the first time to where I had something I would be willing to let customers see, and another year before I learned enough about it to customize it for the particular business and create something of a unique look. (I'm a software engineer with more than 25 years of experience and twenty or so languages under my belt.) You need to understand at least basic PHP, and some familiarity with MySQL wouldn't hurt either. One of the worst features is that making changes to the overall "look" of an osCommerce store requires editing some thirty or more source files.
The current version of osCommerce was released three years ago. A small set of bug fixes was released last November. There has been ongoing work on a "Milestone 3" version that appears to introduce significant incompatibilities with the current and popular MS2. Personally, I'm skeptical that MS3 will ever be released, and even if it is, I think that most of the current MS2 users will ignore it.
Again, I love osCommerce. It is great software and I do what I can to support the community. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, there's so much you can do with it and hundreds of user add-ons and modifications. You should also look at the derivatives such as Zen and CRE. (These are two that come to mind, there may be others.) But if the letters PHP scare you, then you're better off looking elsewhere.
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System and component vendors don't make money on these "lighthouse account" supercomputer sales. My experience, having worked in the past for a vendor that did this a lot, is that they're a money-loser. The motivation is bragging rights, though that can be fleeting. I know of several times that my employer declined to bid on a supercomputer deal as it would just be too expensive.
Typically, these systems are actually sold by system vendors (Dell, HP, IBM) and not processor vendors, though the processor vendor will support the bid. That #1 "AMD" system is actually a Cray. Software also plays a large part in success or failure.
If you watch the video, you hear the inventor explain why a clutch is bad because it limits torque input and has wear. Yes, a clutch would certainly solve at least this problem, but the major benefit given for this design is to eliminate a clutch.
If the input is from an electric motor, no clutch is needed because electric motors have maximum torque at zero RPM and the "gear change" shaft can be allowed to come up to speed. Then again, most electric cars have very simple transmissions with a single gear, so again what's the point?
Perhaps what one can do is have a gear disengage and not re-engage until the transmission is in "neutral".
I think the weakness in this design is the need to rotate the "bottom" shaft at a speed equal to the input shaft for neutral. While indeed it doesn't need a lot of power, it's a lot of rotation where, in competing designs, a clutch disengages or the drive motor is idling. I could see a lot of things going wrong if the synchronization was imperfect, or if something went wrong.
How do you start this up from a dead stop? Somehow you have to exactly match the shaft rotation speeds to keep it in neutral before you start moving forward, otherwise there will be a lurch.
I look forward to seeing how this is developed further. It has a lot of potential.
I thought Intel had partnered with DEC to make the Alpha chip. Also Intel held the patents on it. Intel finally decided to tell DEC sorry but we (Intel) do not want to use these (the Alpha chip designs) anymore. Or something like that anyway. Intel forced DEC to stop making the CPU which left DEC screwed.
Sorry, that is not even close. DEC sued Intel over infringements of the Alpha patents in Pentium processors. One of the results of the settlement was that Intel acquired DEC's Hudson, MA fab (which still operates today). In no way were DEC and Intel partners in Alpha, though ironically, Intel ended up making Alpha chips in the Hudson fab for several years under contract to DEC. What killed Alpha was years of neglect by Bob Palmer (DEC CEO) followed by Compaq's cluelessness. HP ended up with both Alpha and Itanium and bet the farm on the latter, but by that time it probably didn't matter.
Correction: Compaq bought DEC in mid-1999, HP bought Compaq in late 2001. Otherwise, you are mostly correct, though the majority of the Alpha design team ended up at Intel in 2001, when Intel acquired the Alpha architecture and compiler teams. Some Alpha designers did go to AMD and AMD licensed the Alpha EV6 bus for Opteron.
You did not use a ReplayTV before TiVo. TiVo was the first to ship product - Replay announced first.
The limit if you ordered XP was 16GB SSD, not 8GB.
I happened upon an exhibit of Tezuka's work at the Tokyo-Edo Museum when I was visiting Japan in April. It had a TV showing an extended clip from the movie. It didn't show anything that hinted at the overall plot, other than it evidently being, as noted in the interview, an "origin movie". All of the text on the displays was in Japanese, so if there was any explanation of the movie plot, it eluded me. As a big fan of the English version from the 1960s, I'm eager to see the movie, but my expectations are low.
If your Windows 7 system with 4GB RAM shows less than that "usable", go into your BIOS options and turn off PCI memory remapping. The name of the option may vary and some motherboards may not support this. On my Asus P5B, it is under the North Bridge Configuration. This drove me crazy until I found a forum post describing the solution. Even Windows 7 x64 was showing about 3GB "usable" for me before I did this.
I think you need to get over your dislike of Fortran and make use of the many good and modern Fortran compilers available to you, both freeware and commercial. Any of them has got to be a better solution than f2c - if you think Fortran is hard to read, that's nothing compared to the cryptic output of f2c, and then you're locked in to using the buggy and archaic f2c support library.
I am not familiar with the application you're using, but the limits you describe are almost certainly not due to the coding language chosen. As for programming interface, it's easy to call Fortran from other languages and, in most cases, to call other languages from Fortran.
One can write unreadable and unmaintainable code in any language. A big benefit of Fortran is that old code is still supported by modern Fortran compilers.
The review is pretty much spot-on. I started reading SF in the early 60s, and have read a lot of the "pulp" SF from the 1930s, so I have a feel for what Space Vulture is trying to imitate.
I agree that it's not a very good homage, and certainly not a parody. The writing is clumsy and a bit over-the-top in places - E.E. Doc Smith, or even E.R. Burroughs, these guys aren't. When I was about halfway through the book, I found myself wondering if I would finish it or throw it against the wall in frustration.
I did finish it, though. I won't say that it redeemed itself in the end, but there were some amusing bits in there. Not something I would choose to reread or recommend to others.
If you think Space Vulture would interest you, may I suggest instead any of the E.E. "Doc" Smith books available for free at feedbooks.com, Project Gutenberg or elsewhere. Any one of them is better than Space Vulture.
As a Mini 9 owner and participant in the mydellmini.com forum, another not-insignificant number are running Windows 7. Oh, and Vista runs fine there too.
I will agree, from what I see, that there are a lot of Mini 9 owners running Ubuntu. But an equal number, I would estimate, buy the smallest, cheapest configuration (which is available with Ubuntu only) and then add their own memory, larger SSD and OS install - which might be OS X, XP, Vista or Windows 7. Someone has even managed to boot BeOS on a Mini 9!
FWIW, my Mini 9 runs Windows 7.
There's nothing that special about the iPhone - all phones are "software driven". With other tethering-capable phones, tethering is done by either Bluetooth (with a standard "Personal Area Network" profile), or by a USB connection (requires software on the tethered computer). On my WM6 Treo 750, I just start the AT&T-provided "Internet Sharing" application and tap "Connect" - done.
I think that many who gush about the iPhone and think it is unique have never used a smartphone before, of which there are many excellent examples on the market. What is unique about the iPhone is the way Apple decides what you are allowed to use it for.
Tethering is not against AT&T rules in general. Tethering is supported on AT&T if you have a plan that allows it. In the past, all data plans allowed tethering, and that's the kind I have. Nowadays their data plans for PDA phones come in two levels, with and without tethering. The difference does not seem to be strictly enforced from what I have heard, but if you are caught tethering on a no-tether plan you may be subject to big extra charges.
I do not have an iPhone, and lack of tethering support is one of many reasons why. I occasionally tether with my Treo 750 and it works well.
Whatever the issue is with tethering on the iPhone, it would seem to be Apple and not AT&T. Many AT&T phones support tethering, but not the iPhone.
My wife and I have been members of SFBC for many, many years, and we like it a lot. There are many new books offered by SFBC at decent prices (lower than bookstores or Amazon), and new books in many popular series are offered by SFBC right about the time of publishing for retail, including authors such as Terry Pratchett, Lois McMasters Bujold, Elizabeth Moon and others.
SFBC also prints cost-effective "omnibus" editions collecting several books from older series into one volume, and reissues classics from Heinlein, Asimov and many more. Right now, they've got reissues of the "Lensman" series.
There are often deals for free shipping, buy 2 get 1 free, etc., especially if you order through the web site.
The one thing that can be an issue is the "negative option" method of "we'll send you these selections unless you tell us not to". You can do this online so it's not a big deal, but after you're a member for a while you can request to be switched to "positive option" where you don't get anything unless you ask for it.
SFBC does not have an enormous catalog - at any one time, there are perhaps several hundred titles available, more leaning to current popular series and classics.
Note that in most (but not all) cases, you are getting SFBC-printed editions. While they contain all the material of a retail issue, the physical size and cover printing may be different.
I'd say that we buy a dozen or more books a year from SFBC and have yet to be disappointed.
ICANN reserved example.com, example.org and example.net for use in documentation and other places where you want to put an "example" domain name, but I find that most people are not aware of this. Email sent to these domains is discarded.
For reply addresses, a more reasonable protocol would be to use the sender's actual domain but with an invalid username, as Poromenos1 suggests. A further problem of using a domain not your own as a sender address is that the recipient's email server may block it due to SPF records or other checks on sender domains.
I remember once getting an incensed missive from the owner of asdfg.com who complained about emails we were sending him regarding updates of our product. Turned out that a user had entered that domain when he registered the product in an attempt to not get our emails.
Penryn is the code name for the CPU series, not a brand name. Specifically, it's the code name for the not-yet-released mobile processor, but as with the previous generation Merom, it has been used to apply to all three processor types (mobile, desktop, server) built from that technology generation. Intel is not introducing any new processor brand names for this as far as I know.
The processors will be generally sold as "Intel Core 2" or "Intel Xeon". The Pentium and Celeron brand names may also be applied to low-end models.
Since no new brand names are being used, I expect people to continue to use the code names to try to distinguish these new processors from their predecessors (code named Merom, Conroe, Woodcrest, Clovertown).
It is not worthless. The volume of calls received once you're on that list goes down tremendously. I discovered this accidentally when I switched VOIP providers and I had a new temporary number. I was suddenly deluged with marketing calls on the temporary number. Once my number had finished porting and the temporary number was shut off, the calls stopped.
I'm not saying that I never get any unsolicited marketing calls, but I get many many fewer than I would if I were not on the list. I do agree however that surveys and political calls, not being covered by the DNC list, make it less useful than it could be.
You must have either a short memory or you missed out on all the fun. NamesDirect suffered a massive meltdown of its DNS servers a few years back, leaving hundreds of thousands of domains in the dark for a week or more. They did not have sufficient capacity or redundancy in their servers and did not communicate with their customers for days. Perhaps it's better now, but as soon as I could, I transferred my domains out of there and would never return.
The registrar I've had the best luck with is eNom, though I left them for Registerfly a coup[le of years back (mainly because of pricing.) 10 of my 11 domains are out of Registerfly now (to a mixture of eNom and 1&1.)
I do use Dreamhost for hosting most of my sites and they've been good to me.
The article does NOT "explain the 90nm process and why these are more advanced than the Intel chips". Rather, it just makes this bald assertion and moves on. Intel, I'm sure, would disagree. AMD and Intel use somewhat different silicon technology, but is one "more advanced" than the other? Depends on whom you ask. What AMD solves with SOI Intel solves a different way. There is, of course, the fact that Intel has been cranking out very successful 65nm chips for about a year now and AMD has not (yet) shipped any.
I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that Intel's process technology is behind AMD's. Consider "overclockability" - Intel's 90nm chips have been proven to have lots of headroom (think Pentium D 805) and the AMD chips fall over with even slight overclocks. This says to me that Intel's silicon design is inherently better. Whatever Intel's past failings have been, and there have been many, silicon process technology is not among them.
What it is most likely to be is TiVo software running on a Motorola 64xx hardware platform, in use today by Cox and many other cable TV companies. It is well known that TiVo is already developing such a thing and that Comcast plans to offer it later this year.
So you would get the nice TiVo interface and feature set on the Motorola box. You might not get the networking features standalone TiVo users have become accustomed to, nor the "hackability" of older TiVo boxes.
An alternative would be the TiVo Series 3 box, due "second half" of this year. This is a dual-CableCARD HD box specifically designed for cable (no satellite or other external inputs.)
First off - I love osCommerce. I run a web store using it, have written several popular contributions and participate in the official forum. But the reviewer can perhaps be excused for thinking that there has not been a book on osCommerce before this - there are several. The problem is that Harald (or one of his minions) quickly removes from the forum any mention of any commercial product (book, add-on, service, etc.) relating to osCommerce other than those from his advertisers. Go to amazon.com and search for "oscommerce" - you'll get many hits.
Also censored from the forum is any mention of other cart software, especially those derived from osCommerce such as Zen Cart and CRE. Want to show how to interface osCommerce to a free API that also has a commercial version? Censored. Want to talk about your experience with a web host or SSL certificate provider? Censored. I once had an extended exchange with one of the forum moderators who seemed to equate "open source" to "one source".
In any event, osCommerce is "not for wimps". A lot of people think the same way the reviewer did - that you download it, install it, and have an instant web store suitable for your customers. It took me about four months the first time to where I had something I would be willing to let customers see, and another year before I learned enough about it to customize it for the particular business and create something of a unique look. (I'm a software engineer with more than 25 years of experience and twenty or so languages under my belt.) You need to understand at least basic PHP, and some familiarity with MySQL wouldn't hurt either. One of the worst features is that making changes to the overall "look" of an osCommerce store requires editing some thirty or more source files.
The current version of osCommerce was released three years ago. A small set of bug fixes was released last November. There has been ongoing work on a "Milestone 3" version that appears to introduce significant incompatibilities with the current and popular MS2. Personally, I'm skeptical that MS3 will ever be released, and even if it is, I think that most of the current MS2 users will ignore it.
Again, I love osCommerce. It is great software and I do what I can to support the community. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, there's so much you can do with it and hundreds of user add-ons and modifications. You should also look at the derivatives such as Zen and CRE. (These are two that come to mind, there may be others.) But if the letters PHP scare you, then you're better off looking elsewhere.
Well, there is this...