Personally (linux user since 1996) I couldn't care less if someone uses one OS or some other. But what I like about your statement is: You didn't put up with poorly supported Win-only hardware and basically told the NForce2-folks to go to hell with their product because it doesn't properly support the OS you prefer.
You could have achieved exactly the same by looking whether a certain piece of hardware is supported under linux before buying it, but evidently Apple makes this task just a little bit easier.
I just wait for the moment when hardware manufacturers realize that Win-only hardware doesn't sell all that well... at least I made sure that no one in our company buys CD ROM drives from LG.
It might be good news for you that something's being done about this. Linksys produced a router based on linux which used the Broadcom chip set, but "unfortunately" forgot about the GPL when they shipped their product. Now they are in legal deep sh*t and will most likely have to provide the sources to the driver.
Two conclusions: 1. Broadcom sucks rocks for not providing driver specs 2. We'll get them anyway thanks to Linksys's dumbness.
MS can create NET 2.0, but is has to be backwards compatible with older versions or people wouldn't use it. People don't download critical patches, why would they install NET 2.0 even if it was free ?
Therefore, if Mono only supports NET 1.1, most people get from it what they want. AFAIK samba didn't support all brand new server features right away and still did a decent job for most of us.
As far as Wine is concerned, it would do much better if people desparately depended on it. I use linux at work and find it much easier (and cheaper and more rewarding for my employer) to use Mozilla, OpenOffice and gcc than fiddling with Wine and the respective Windows equivalents.
If people really depended on MS-Software, Wine would rock by now. The same goes for Mono, it'll only live if lots of people care about.NET applications, and only time can tell.
A phone maker mostly benefits from being able to tinker with the system and not having to pay license costs per unit sold. Regardless of how Palm or Microsoft charge for licenses, they try to make money somehow with something similar to what linux folks have written for free.
A more important question is why Slashdot folks should bother (as normal user you never see the underlying software of mobile phones anyway). Here the point is that if a player comes close to dominating the market, they tend to lock out competitors from associated markets.
Example: If MS dominates the mobile phone market, they'll make damn sure that only Windows PCs or WinCE devices can connect to their phones. Similar things could be imagined if Palm dominated the phone market and you'd try to connect random PDAs to your phone.
If linux is the underlying OS, there is a moderate to high chance, that open protocols are used for linking a PC or PDA to your phone (Motorola, Nokia, Siemens has no direct reason to actively lock out other OSs or PDAs). Linux and *NIX folks might have to reverse engineer some protocols, but aren't expected to be actively prevented from doing so (e.g. through patents or DMCA-crap)
First: If you don't enforce a patent, you lose it. If they get through with MSFT, they have to go after all other browsers.
Second: I hear a lot of whining about patent portfolio companies. If you are in R&D and see, how large corporations continue to slash R&D funds because they don't generate revenue (share holder value) right away you'll understand why IP law suits are not necessarily a bad thing. These companies might not generate a final product but they do produce something of value. R&D is hard work, for those who don't know.
Okay, so it's pretty laughable when you say it all that way. You have only 3 core arguments. 1) The U.S. is a bully that wants low gas prices. 2) We should always put what our neighbors think is in their best interest ahead of what we believe to be in everyone's best interest. 3) The American government is a propaganda machine like Nazi germany.
I guess that's the big difference between Old Europe, as some may call it and the US, as they stand today.
Finding consensus if you could hit hard and get what you want dominated european politics for hundreds of years, including, but not limited to Nazi Germany. After the horros of WWII people figured out that there is just no point in trying to dominate the whole world.
Seeking consensus means that more often than you like you give in and lose an argument but if everyone adheres to this principle all of us win. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the US are the strongest superpower in the world, but
have lost two towers to terrorists
have 100000 soldiers suffering from "gulf war disease" from the previous war
sent over 200000 of their people to the near east fighting while I enjoy a sunday's walk in the
spring sun
have to be afraid whenever they go abroad as tourists because they are hated in most parts of the world
Do you seem to remember we went in and cleaned house in Afghanistan?
Well, take another look at Afghanistan. You collaborated with local criminals, then called the "northern alliance", who brushed away the Taliban regime but let Ossama bin Laden run because they were paid off.
As far as I can tell, democracy has not been established there, women still wear "Burquas" and the leader Karsai, installed by US troops, holds power over as much as Kabul during day.
If that's the democracy you are trying to bring to the iraqi people, it may not be worse than the crook who rules them now, but it's not what will make them grateful towards the US.
What's wrong is doing it by bullying innocents. Saddam is no innocent. Not by a long shot. We already have good enough reasons to go into Iraq.
Mr. Powell showed 3D animations of bio weapons lab trucks to the UN. I was truly impressed! They knew Saddams whereabouts at the brink of war but are seemingly unable to produce more than 3D animations of one of these trucks ????? Maybe you have good enough reasons for going into iraq but you did one piss poor job in explaining those reasons to the general public.
What's really been happening is simple and obvious, yet most people haven't quite realized it. The news outlets are the driving forces.
So what you say is that news outlets drove US politicians into this war? Think about the implications of your statement with respect to the justification of this war....
> but let's face it, we're really not doing anything all that different than we always have. doesn't make it right, of course, but at least it follows precedent.
Well, following precedent still doesn't make it right. Quite to the contrary! Think of the "Three strikes and you are out"-law so popular these days.
and for my part, I hope he does it quickly; filling up my SUV every 2 weeks with $1.65/gal gasoline isn't cheap
Well, that's an excellent justification. Let's go kill thousands of arabs (who cares about them anyway?), so you can carry your fat ass around in some big gas guzzler without having to worry about high gas prices. Has your regard for human life completely gone amok?
but even in post-9/11 america, the system still has enough checks and balances to prevent a war based SOLELY on those reasons
It doesn't, if people worry more about their own finances than about human lifes, provided those to be killed are strangers.
no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most
People don't claim that Bush fights against the will of his constituents. It's american news outlets, perceived by many as being instruments of propaganda, which indicate that democracy doesn't seem to be working at this moment. Add to that your new Patriot Act and europeans are reminded of the slow and initially very subtle degradation of democracy in many countries in the late 1930s.
in the case of Grenada and Panama, we have the Monroe Doctrine asserting our right to police our own hemisphere
This is like the Moe the class bully telling his class mates of the Moe Doctrine by which all of them owe him a part of their lunch money. Monroe might have really liked his doctrine but it was established unilaterally and is in force not because of international treaties but because of the military superiority of the US which can dictate pretty much anything nowadays. Worldwide.
we've been actively fulfilling our obligations under that treaty since day one, policing the Iraqi no-fly zones. the fact that US planes routinely get shot at while doing their duty there proves Iraq's contempt for that peace treaty. an unenforced treaty is completely worthless, so it's up to us to remind Iraq that it can either play by the rules, or suffer the consequences
Few of your planes got shot at, none ever was shot down, IIRC. Several iraqi radar station were bombed to rubbles after locking onto US planes. So don't imply that iraqi non compliance was without consequences in the past. The institution in force of enforcing the peace treaty is, IIRC, the UN security council. They have been actively pursuing this issue, maybe not to the full satisfaction of the US, british and spanish government, though. Still, try pulling out a shot gun in public if you feel that your police department doesn't protect you and see whether your fellow citizens approve of this...
as for the rest of the world's opinion, I wish they would support us, but when they all stand around and do nothing, at some point someone has to take over and get stuff done
Ok. Your TV program sucked, it was a boring Wednesday evening, your friends all busy doing something, so something had to happen, folks !!! Hello!!! We're talking about people getting killed here, not stuff getting done like cleaning your carpet.
France and Germany were wonderfully supportive when we went into Bosnia, in a quest to interfere with a country's own civil war, and with no real objectives
Oh, none. Except that there was a bloody war going on, 200000 people dead by then, maroding soldiers running around raping and killing, Sarajevo being shelled from surrounding mountains on a daily basis, so called Safe Zones getting raided by serb nationalists killing 1000s of people. That's of course not nearly as much of an objective as gas prices, I u
Linus makes about three times as much as the average high tech worker in the silicon valley, and that not without reason. Supposedly Linus was instrumental within the DOS EMU development where they basically have to fully emulate an 80X86 processor - pretty much what that mysterious Transmeta chip is supposed to do some day.
You can safely assume that Linus wouldn't have accepted a random hardware development job if he couldn't use his previous experience.
It doesn't matter that the injunction was lifted. If you program in any language, you spend weeks, months or even years before you can produce high quality code. Learning a computer language is a major investment, that you wouldn't make if you know this computer language will likely not exist in the near future.
Regardless of Microsofts marketing muscle, if their incompatible version of Java is likely to disappear in the near future (even if that means a year or two), they won't get anyone outside Redmont to write decent applications with it. I'm not worried about some throw away applets for some lame web pages that will only work under IE5. Remember that Windows doesn't dominate the desktop because of ActiveX but because of the "Big Applications" like Office, Photoshop, AutoCad and all these Games. Notice that only some of these are made by Microsoft!
If SUN is eventually going to win this case (and that's what the article suggests), MS Java is finished. Not in two years, but for all practical purposes now.
This would hardly qualify as arrogance on my side. This guy never tried to _use_ linux, he just installed it, and couldn't find the applications he wanted, and then proceeded with collectively dismissing linux. He took no effort whatsoever to figure it out or maybe even find out that most applications he needed came with the CDROM.
If this was some random Joe Nobody, I wouldn't care. The problem is he is IT student and you can bet in a few years he will work in some IT department of some company and will make big decisions - based in obvious ignorance. Doesn't it strike you as odd, that he choses Windows because it comes with Apache ????? Doesn't it strike you as sheer ignorance if he says there are no web development tools for linux when the very forum he posted that is written and based on linux ????
You can criticize me for replying to flame bait, which is probably not a smart thing. But you should learn to distinguish between people who ask for help and people who are just plain ignorant. Please also realize, that if you use Windows out of protest against me, you hurt yourself more than you hurt me:-)
You played around with RedHat 5.2, probably because some kewl d00d told you it is the kewl thing to do... you didn't bother reading hardware compatibility lists (I'd hate to watch you installing NT4 on a brand new computer), so you had some initial problems... you even had to be social to solve one of your problems!
Then you got it installed and started poking around. Ok, you didn't like the first GUI, and the second one was "klunky", and the applications didn't automatically show up in the start menu. What a shame! Well, the documentation was over your head, so just leave it the way it is... ?
But now comes the real bummer about linux: It doesn't come with apache, word processors and image editing tools! Hmmm. I must have gotten the wrong CD, since I had all these. Miracles never cease! You must have gotten a magical Windows CD, too, since the last time I installed Windows 95, it didn't install Photoshop, Word and Apache:-( Dang, I could have saved a lot of money!
I'm glad you are happy with Windows (especially if they give you all these development tools for free), but I'd hate to work for a company where people like you are responsible for IT. As far as I know, Dilbert hates his job:-) It's just amazing to me that the Windows folks in our department constantly ask us UNIX folks when Windows crashes and burns and never bother asking their Windows peers...
People don't seem to get the idea of Open Source
on
MkLinux Not Dead
·
· Score: 2
Folks!
Whenever some journalist complains that linux lacks commercial backing, he gets major flames for being clueless. Even the last AC here states it as the most obvious truth that Open Source projects don't depend on corporate backing, in fact, projects live as long as anybody cares about them.
And suddenly, as soon as an Open Source project gets dumped by a company, everybody cries that this is the end of the project. I have some bad news for all these pundits: Nobody can predict the future in computing. A guy called Bob Metcalfe had to eat his predictions once, and might have to eat his predictions again in a few years (except that this time he was more careful and didn't guarantee for his rants.)
I don't know whether MkLinux will be around five years from now, but I also don't know, whether Apple will be around either (please, no stupid flame wars here)! Nobody knows!
At this point in time I'm happy that MkLinux exists, since I have a PB5300 to write my thesis on, and I wouldn't trust the more common office packages which run under MacOS. In addition to that I didn't have to pay Windows tax (how many got their money back after the "Great Windows Refund Day" ?). LinuxPPC doesn't run on NuBus machines, so performance comparisons are moot. As far as I'm concerned, MkLinux is alive.
Last time I bought a computer I looked at the AMD web site and all it said was how unbelievably well their processors worked with all kinds of Windows. Like if there was no other OS out there... And then I remembered this embarassing affair with the AMD K6's >64MB problem, where they simply brushed the linux folks off, instead of helping them figure out what was wrong (IIRC, it turned out to be a K6 bug).
Someone who works there told me that their marketing folks want to push AMD processors into the business sector, and that they want to wipe out the perception that AMD processors are only for hackers. With this in mind, I don't see AMD doing anything for gcc/linux/*BSD in the forseeable future:-(
But then again, I might be proven wrong by future events...
Well, while your argument holds for most virii, it does not hold for this explorer.worm thing. Let's go quickly through it's behavioral patterns:
- It comes in an attachment. Well, I also use attachments under linux, and have done that for years.
- Clicking on that attachment automatically performs an action based on file type. Hmmm, most advanced graphical mail programs do that under linux (xfmail, kmail, netscape mail,...).
- It goes through the users hard disk drives and wipes out all productivity related files. Well, while most of my file system under linux can not be hit by a normal user, most of a user's productivity related files do indeed sit in his/her home directory, which is writable by that user. Or at least I can't remember the last time when I put a Starwriter document in/var/run:-)
- It catches all incoming mails and automatically replies to every one with a delayed response. This is no problem whatsoever under UNIX and linux. Everyone with basic knowledge in system programming could hack such a thing within a few days (or probably less).
I fail to see one action in this list that requires root privileges. Ok, you could wipe out only your own files and not everybody elses, but since this worm/virus spreads around via email and I get emails from my friends and coworkers all the time, it would barely make a difference...
And I hope you do not suggest that people run a process viewer at all times and check every minute whether there is a daemon running that shouldn't be there. As linux installations get easier to install and more and more people with very little computer knowledge use linux regularly, you simply can't expect that (it would even be a pain for experienced users).
I do agree that well written multi user OSs can prevent a lot of trouble and stop a large number of really lame virii from spreading around. But they are definitely not a siver bullet. Combine that with the fact, that many users hate the multi user concept and circumvent it where possible (I know lots of people who run NT always as admins to avoid lame permission problems. And look in the average linux news group and count the newbee posts with sender root@localhost...)
Cheers
Rudi
PS: The reason why there have been so few linux virii in the past is because linux is not on everybody's sh*t list. Most people with more than average computer knowledge despise Microsoft and their products (although they might use them at work and thereby gain programming knowledge under Windows) and I could assume that it is considered cool in certain misguided communities to write virii that trash a Windows box. I can hardly believe anyone would get peer recognition for writing a virus/worm that shreds a linux lab and takes down www.linux.org.
So, with "inodes and shit" you meant, that the standard kernel configuration as shipped by some distribution imposed a (let's say arbitrary) limit that could be changed easily and didn't even require down loading patches or actually fixing bugs ????
Would this also mean that if Linus (or whoever worked on that piece of code) would have set a higher limit then you would consider linux suitable for a million pages a day ?
Is it just me or do your statements just merely indicate that Rob and you spent a night hacking and cursing until you found why MySQL bombed and that you are pissed that it was just because of a silly, unnecessary limit set in the kernel?
I'm glad you helped Rob getting Slashdot to work but please let your unpleasant experience not obscure the view on the whole issue. You can say you wouldn't run a high end web server on a plain vanilla RedHat/Debian/Suse/@&^%$&^% install, and everybody would agree. You could argue that there should be an easy to understand kernel configuration option "Configure for server [y/N]" that would raise some limits, and most of us would agree.
The bottom line I seem to be getting here is that a lot of people got linux based high traffic web servers working after some tweaking, but there appear to be different opinions on how much tweaking is acceptable. This could be easily solved by releasing a distribution that is configured for high end servers (higher limits, some desktop stuff removed, basic server packages preconfigured and running, serial console, firewall,...)
Some of the statements made by them may be considered a little bit harsh (Especially the claim that linux office productivity applications are a poor substitute for their M$ counterparts). But the Gartner Group isn't supposed to advocate linux but is supposed to tell MSEs whether to junk their NT or commercial UNIX setup and go with linux or not.
And their answer is clear: If you make widgets, have no idea about computers and it doesn't matter to you if your computer crashes frequently, stay away from linux. If you are a somewhat technical company where employees stopped using the CD ROM drive as cup holder last year, then watch linux because it may be the next great thing waiting around the corner. And if you are willing to take the risk of a platform change (and that's always a risk!), and trust your folks to do it, go for it.
And then they give step by step instructions how to slowly and sneekingly convert your company to a linux shop, without alerting PHBs and MicroZombies. I was rolling when I read:'...aging NetWare versions, "orphaned" Unix variants, unreliable Windows servers...' Face it, folks: these are the three core targets for linux in the server market right now!
And they are also right if they say that it's risky to junk all your current computer systems and switch to linux at once. I just keep reading success stories here on/. where bosses didn't even know that their file server ran on linux except that they suddenly was a lot more stable than the previous NT file server setup... These bosses would have reacted quite differently if they suddenly couldn't run PowerPoint on their desktops any more (no matter how bad it is).
All together, this article sounds a lot better than this collection of FUD and BS in that IEEE magazine and I don't see a point in writing a fierce rebuttal. In fact, a fierce rebuttal would probably hurt the cause more than it would help. The Gartner Group seems to have actually looked into the matter (there may be some small factual errors, but I'm sure I could find some in the Linux Gazette, too), and they assessed quite well and without unnecessary hype, how linux will enter the MSE market in the next two years and where its current limitations are. We don't need yet another hype article from Jesse Berst, who "always knew that linux is going to make major inroads.."
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Personally (linux user since 1996) I couldn't care less if someone uses one OS or some other. But what I like about your statement is: You didn't put up with poorly supported Win-only hardware and basically told the NForce2-folks to go to hell with their product because it doesn't properly support the OS you prefer.
... at least I made sure that no one in our company buys CD ROM drives from LG.
You could have achieved exactly the same by looking whether a certain piece of hardware is supported under linux before buying it, but evidently Apple makes this task just a little bit easier.
I just wait for the moment when hardware manufacturers realize that Win-only hardware doesn't sell all that well
It might be good news for you that something's being done about this. Linksys produced a router based on linux which used the Broadcom chip set, but "unfortunately" forgot about the GPL when they shipped their product. Now they are in legal deep sh*t and will most likely have to provide the sources to the driver.
Two conclusions:
1. Broadcom sucks rocks for not providing driver specs
2. We'll get them anyway thanks to Linksys's dumbness.
MS can create NET 2.0, but is has to be backwards compatible with older versions or people wouldn't use it. People don't download critical patches, why would they install NET 2.0 even if it was free ?
.NET applications, and only time can tell.
Therefore, if Mono only supports NET 1.1, most people get from it what they want. AFAIK samba didn't support all brand new server features right away and still did a decent job for most of us.
As far as Wine is concerned, it would do much better if people desparately depended on it. I use linux at work and find it much easier (and cheaper and more rewarding for my employer) to use Mozilla, OpenOffice and gcc than fiddling with Wine and the respective Windows equivalents.
If people really depended on MS-Software, Wine would rock by now. The same goes for Mono, it'll only live if lots of people care about
A phone maker mostly benefits from being able to tinker with the system and not having to pay license costs per unit sold. Regardless of how Palm or Microsoft charge for licenses, they try to make money somehow with something similar to what linux folks have written for free.
A more important question is why Slashdot folks should bother (as normal user you never see the underlying software of mobile phones anyway). Here the point is that if a player comes close to dominating the market, they tend to lock out competitors from associated markets.
Example: If MS dominates the mobile phone market, they'll make damn sure that only Windows PCs or WinCE devices can connect to their phones. Similar things could be imagined if Palm dominated the phone market and you'd try to connect random PDAs to your phone.
If linux is the underlying OS, there is a moderate to high chance, that open protocols are used for linking a PC or PDA to your phone (Motorola, Nokia, Siemens has no direct reason to actively lock out other OSs or PDAs). Linux and *NIX folks might have to reverse engineer some protocols, but aren't expected to be actively prevented from doing so (e.g. through patents or DMCA-crap)
First: If you don't enforce a patent, you lose it. If they get through with MSFT, they have to go after all other browsers.
Second: I hear a lot of whining about patent portfolio companies. If you are in R&D and see, how large corporations continue to slash R&D funds because they don't generate revenue (share holder value) right away you'll understand why IP law suits are not necessarily a bad thing. These companies might not generate a final product but they do produce something of value. R&D is hard work, for those who don't know.
Okay, so it's pretty laughable when you say it all that way. You have only 3 core arguments. 1) The U.S. is a bully that wants low gas prices. 2) We should always put what our neighbors think is in their best interest ahead of what we believe to be in everyone's best interest. 3) The American government is a propaganda machine like Nazi germany.
I guess that's the big difference between Old Europe, as some may call it and the US, as they stand today.
Finding consensus if you could hit hard and get what you want dominated european politics for hundreds of years, including, but not limited to Nazi Germany. After the horros of WWII people figured out that there is just no point in trying to dominate the whole world.
Seeking consensus means that more often than you like you give in and lose an argument but if everyone adheres to this principle all of us win. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the US are the strongest superpower in the world, but
have lost two towers to terrorists
have 100000 soldiers suffering from "gulf war disease" from the previous war
sent over 200000 of their people to the near east fighting while I enjoy a sunday's walk in the spring sun
have to be afraid whenever they go abroad as tourists because they are hated in most parts of the world
Do you seem to remember we went in and cleaned house in Afghanistan?
Well, take another look at Afghanistan. You collaborated with local criminals, then called the "northern alliance", who brushed away the Taliban regime but let Ossama bin Laden run because they were paid off.
As far as I can tell, democracy has not been established there, women still wear "Burquas" and the leader Karsai, installed by US troops, holds power over as much as Kabul during day.
If that's the democracy you are trying to bring to the iraqi people, it may not be worse than the crook who rules them now, but it's not what will make them grateful towards the US.
What's wrong is doing it by bullying innocents. Saddam is no innocent. Not by a long shot. We already have good enough reasons to go into Iraq.
Mr. Powell showed 3D animations of bio weapons lab trucks to the UN. I was truly impressed! They knew Saddams whereabouts at the brink of war but are seemingly unable to produce more than 3D animations of one of these trucks ????? Maybe you have good enough reasons for going into iraq but you did one piss poor job in explaining those reasons to the general public.
What's really been happening is simple and obvious, yet most people haven't quite realized it. The news outlets are the driving forces.
So what you say is that news outlets drove US politicians into this war? Think about the implications of your statement with respect to the justification of this war ....
> but let's face it, we're really not doing anything all that different than we always have. doesn't make it right, of course, but at least it follows precedent.
Well, following precedent still doesn't make it right. Quite to the contrary! Think of the "Three strikes and you are out"-law so popular these days.
and for my part, I hope he does it quickly; filling up my SUV every 2 weeks with $1.65/gal gasoline isn't cheap
Well, that's an excellent justification. Let's go kill thousands of arabs (who cares about them anyway?), so you can carry your fat ass around in some big gas guzzler without having to worry about high gas prices. Has your regard for human life completely gone amok?
but even in post-9/11 america, the system still has enough checks and balances to prevent a war based SOLELY on those reasons
It doesn't, if people worry more about their own finances than about human lifes, provided those to be killed are strangers.
no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most
People don't claim that Bush fights against the will of his constituents. It's american news outlets, perceived by many as being instruments of propaganda, which indicate that democracy doesn't seem to be working at this moment. Add to that your new Patriot Act and europeans are reminded of the slow and initially very subtle degradation of democracy in many countries in the late 1930s.
in the case of Grenada and Panama, we have the Monroe Doctrine asserting our right to police our own hemisphere
This is like the Moe the class bully telling his class mates of the Moe Doctrine by which all of them owe him a part of their lunch money. Monroe might have really liked his doctrine but it was established unilaterally and is in force not because of international treaties but because of the military superiority of the US which can dictate pretty much anything nowadays. Worldwide.
we've been actively fulfilling our obligations under that treaty since day one, policing the Iraqi no-fly zones. the fact that US planes routinely get shot at while doing their duty there proves Iraq's contempt for that peace treaty. an unenforced treaty is completely worthless, so it's up to us to remind Iraq that it can either play by the rules, or suffer the consequences
Few of your planes got shot at, none ever was shot down, IIRC. Several iraqi radar station were bombed to rubbles after locking onto US planes. So don't imply that iraqi non compliance was without consequences in the past. The institution in force of enforcing the peace treaty is, IIRC, the UN security council. They have been actively pursuing this issue, maybe not to the full satisfaction of the US, british and spanish government, though. Still, try pulling out a shot gun in public if you feel that your police department doesn't protect you and see whether your fellow citizens approve of this ...
as for the rest of the world's opinion, I wish they would support us, but when they all stand around and do nothing, at some point someone has to take over and get stuff done
Ok. Your TV program sucked, it was a boring Wednesday evening, your friends all busy doing something, so something had to happen, folks !!! Hello!!! We're talking about people getting killed here, not stuff getting done like cleaning your carpet.
France and Germany were wonderfully supportive when we went into Bosnia, in a quest to interfere with a country's own civil war, and with no real objectives
Oh, none. Except that there was a bloody war going on, 200000 people dead by then, maroding soldiers running around raping and killing, Sarajevo being shelled from surrounding mountains on a daily basis, so called Safe Zones getting raided by serb nationalists killing 1000s of people. That's of course not nearly as much of an objective as gas prices, I u
Linus makes about three times as much as the average high tech worker in the silicon valley, and that not without reason. Supposedly Linus was instrumental within the DOS EMU development where they basically have to fully emulate an 80X86 processor - pretty much what that mysterious Transmeta chip is supposed to do some day.
You can safely assume that Linus wouldn't have accepted a random hardware development job if he couldn't use his previous experience.
Folks,
It doesn't matter that the injunction was lifted. If you program in any language, you spend weeks, months or even years before you can produce high quality code. Learning a computer language is a major investment, that you wouldn't make if you know this computer language will likely not exist in the near future.
Regardless of Microsofts marketing muscle, if their incompatible version of Java is likely to disappear in the near future (even if that means a year or two), they won't get anyone outside Redmont to write decent applications with it. I'm not worried about some throw away applets for some lame web pages that will only work under IE5. Remember that Windows doesn't dominate the desktop because of ActiveX but because of the "Big Applications" like Office, Photoshop, AutoCad and all these Games. Notice that only some of these are made by Microsoft!
If SUN is eventually going to win this case (and that's what the article suggests), MS Java is finished. Not in two years, but for all practical purposes now.
This would hardly qualify as arrogance on my side. This guy never tried to _use_ linux, he just installed it, and couldn't find the applications he wanted, and then proceeded with collectively dismissing linux. He took no effort whatsoever to figure it out or maybe even find out that most applications he needed came with the CDROM.
:-)
If this was some random Joe Nobody, I wouldn't care. The problem is he is IT student and you can bet in a few years he will work in some IT department of some company and will make big decisions - based in obvious ignorance. Doesn't it strike you as odd, that he choses Windows because it comes with Apache ????? Doesn't it strike you as sheer ignorance if he says there are no web development tools for linux when the very forum he posted that is written and based on linux ????
You can criticize me for replying to flame bait, which is probably not a smart thing. But you should learn to distinguish between people who ask for help and people who are just plain ignorant. Please also realize, that if you use Windows out of protest against me, you hurt yourself more than you hurt me
You played around with RedHat 5.2, probably because some kewl d00d told you it is the kewl thing to do ... you didn't bother reading hardware compatibility lists (I'd hate to watch you installing NT4 on a brand new computer), so you had some initial problems ... you even had to be social to solve one of your problems!
... ?
:-( Dang, I could have saved a lot of money!
:-) It's just amazing to me that the Windows folks in our department constantly ask us UNIX folks when Windows crashes and burns and never bother asking their Windows peers ...
Then you got it installed and started poking around. Ok, you didn't like the first GUI, and the second one was "klunky", and the applications didn't automatically show up in the start menu. What a shame! Well, the documentation was over your head, so just leave it the way it is
But now comes the real bummer about linux: It doesn't come with apache, word processors and image editing tools! Hmmm. I must have gotten the wrong CD, since I had all these. Miracles never cease! You must have gotten a magical Windows CD, too, since the last time I installed Windows 95, it didn't install Photoshop, Word and Apache
I'm glad you are happy with Windows (especially if they give you all these development tools for free), but I'd hate to work for a company where people like you are responsible for IT. As far as I know, Dilbert hates his job
Folks!
Whenever some journalist complains that linux lacks commercial backing, he gets major flames for being clueless. Even the last AC here states it as the most obvious truth that Open Source projects don't depend on corporate backing, in fact, projects live as long as anybody cares about them.
And suddenly, as soon as an Open Source project gets dumped by a company, everybody cries that this is the end of the project. I have some bad news for all these pundits: Nobody can predict the future in computing. A guy called Bob Metcalfe had to eat his predictions once, and might have to eat his predictions again in a few years (except that this time he was more careful and didn't guarantee for his rants.)
I don't know whether MkLinux will be around five years from now, but I also don't know, whether Apple will be around either (please, no stupid flame wars here)! Nobody knows!
At this point in time I'm happy that MkLinux exists, since I have a PB5300 to write my thesis on, and I wouldn't trust the more common office packages which run under MacOS. In addition to that I didn't have to pay Windows tax (how many got their money back after the "Great Windows Refund Day" ?). LinuxPPC doesn't run on NuBus machines, so performance comparisons are moot. As far as I'm concerned, MkLinux is alive.
Last time I bought a computer I looked at the AMD web site and all it said was how unbelievably well their processors worked with all kinds of Windows. Like if there was no other OS out there ... And then I remembered this embarassing affair with the AMD K6's >64MB problem, where they simply brushed the linux folks off, instead of helping them figure out what was wrong (IIRC, it turned out to be a K6 bug).
:-(
...
Someone who works there told me that their marketing folks want to push AMD processors into the business sector, and that they want to wipe out the perception that AMD processors are only for hackers. With this in mind, I don't see AMD doing anything for gcc/linux/*BSD in the forseeable future
But then again, I might be proven wrong by future events
Cheers
Rudi
Well, while your argument holds for most virii, it does not hold for this explorer.worm thing. Let's go quickly through it's behavioral patterns:
...).
/var/run :-)
...
...)
- It comes in an attachment. Well, I also use attachments under linux, and have done that for years.
- Clicking on that attachment automatically performs an action based on file type. Hmmm, most advanced graphical mail programs do that under linux (xfmail, kmail, netscape mail,
- It goes through the users hard disk drives and wipes out all productivity related files. Well, while most of my file system under linux can not be hit by a normal user, most of a user's productivity related files do indeed sit in his/her home directory, which is writable by that user. Or at least I can't remember the last time when I put a Starwriter document in
- It catches all incoming mails and automatically replies to every one with a delayed response. This is no problem whatsoever under UNIX and linux. Everyone with basic knowledge in system programming could hack such a thing within a few days (or probably less).
I fail to see one action in this list that requires root privileges. Ok, you could wipe out only your own files and not everybody elses, but since this worm/virus spreads around via email and I get emails from my friends and coworkers all the time, it would barely make a difference
And I hope you do not suggest that people run a process viewer at all times and check every minute whether there is a daemon running that shouldn't be there. As linux installations get easier to install and more and more people with very little computer knowledge use linux regularly, you simply can't expect that (it would even be a pain for experienced users).
I do agree that well written multi user OSs can prevent a lot of trouble and stop a large number of really lame virii from spreading around. But they are definitely not a siver bullet. Combine that with the fact, that many users hate the multi user concept and circumvent it where possible (I know lots of people who run NT always as admins to avoid lame permission problems. And look in the average linux news group and count the newbee posts with sender root@localhost
Cheers
Rudi
PS: The reason why there have been so few linux virii in the past is because linux is not on everybody's sh*t list. Most people with more than average computer knowledge despise Microsoft and their products (although they might use them at work and thereby gain programming knowledge under Windows) and I could assume that it is considered cool in certain misguided communities to write virii that trash a Windows box. I can hardly believe anyone would get peer recognition for writing a virus/worm that shreds a linux lab and takes down www.linux.org.
So, with "inodes and shit" you meant, that the standard kernel configuration as shipped by some distribution imposed a (let's say arbitrary) limit that could be changed easily and didn't even require down loading patches or actually fixing bugs ????
...)
Would this also mean that if Linus (or whoever worked on that piece of code) would have set a higher limit then you would consider linux suitable for a million pages a day ?
Is it just me or do your statements just merely indicate that Rob and you spent a night hacking and cursing until you found why MySQL bombed and that you are pissed that it was just because of a silly, unnecessary limit set in the kernel?
I'm glad you helped Rob getting Slashdot to work but please let your unpleasant experience not obscure the view on the whole issue. You can say you wouldn't run a high end web server on a plain vanilla RedHat/Debian/Suse/@&^%$&^% install, and everybody would agree. You could argue that there should be an easy to understand kernel configuration option "Configure for server [y/N]" that would raise some limits, and most of us would agree.
The bottom line I seem to be getting here is that a lot of people got linux based high traffic web servers working after some tweaking, but there appear to be different opinions on how much tweaking is acceptable. This could be easily solved by releasing a distribution that is configured for high end servers (higher limits, some desktop stuff removed, basic server packages preconfigured and running, serial console, firewall,
Some of the statements made by them may be considered a little bit harsh (Especially the claim that linux office productivity applications are a poor substitute for their M$ counterparts). But the Gartner Group isn't supposed to advocate linux but is supposed to tell MSEs whether to junk their NT or commercial UNIX setup and go with linux or not.
/. where bosses didn't even know that their file server ran on linux except that they suddenly was a lot more stable than the previous NT file server setup ... These bosses would have reacted quite differently if they suddenly couldn't run PowerPoint on their desktops any more (no matter how bad it is).
.."
And their answer is clear: If you make widgets, have no idea about computers and it doesn't matter to you if your computer crashes frequently, stay away from linux. If you are a somewhat technical company where employees stopped using the CD ROM drive as cup holder last year, then watch linux because it may be the next great thing waiting around the corner. And if you are willing to take the risk of a platform change (and that's always a risk!), and trust your folks to do it, go for it.
And then they give step by step instructions how to slowly and sneekingly convert your company to a linux shop, without alerting PHBs and MicroZombies. I was rolling when I read:'...aging NetWare versions, "orphaned" Unix variants, unreliable Windows servers...' Face it, folks: these are the three core targets for linux in the server market right now!
And they are also right if they say that it's risky to junk all your current computer systems and switch to linux at once. I just keep reading success stories here on
All together, this article sounds a lot better than this collection of FUD and BS in that IEEE magazine and I don't see a point in writing a fierce rebuttal. In fact, a fierce rebuttal would probably hurt the cause more than it would help. The Gartner Group seems to have actually looked into the matter (there may be some small factual errors, but I'm sure I could find some in the Linux Gazette, too), and they assessed quite well and without unnecessary hype, how linux will enter the MSE market in the next two years and where its current limitations are. We don't need yet another hype article from Jesse Berst, who "always knew that linux is going to make major inroads