That doesn't take away it's downright arrogant to say you don't need anything the competitors might offer, and really, any other commercial-software spokesman would be modded +5 Ignorant.
He doesn't say he doesn't need anything from Sun Solaris. Instead, he says that he doesn't think Solaris has anything left worth taking. He goes on to say, from the article, "But more importantly, if I'm wrong, that's OK. People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time." Yeah, a lot of arrogance there.
Open Source or about a platform? Why does OSS have to be tied to a platform?
If you are a fan of OSS then it shouldn't matter if it hurts or hinders a platform. Instead good software is expanding or continuing to expand to another platform.
Not only your points about if this were done in the past, but additionally the gap now as opposed to even five or six years ago between Linux and Solaris is so tiny, one would probably ask, "What can Linux in the server room not provide that Solaris does, and does it really matter?"
I just installed FC3 and it seems like it's pretty much there. Is there a specific functionality you are thinking about? You have all the basics, office, email, browsing etc.
I am curious to see what you feel is missing?
Respectfully, there is a lot more to business software than the basics. Beyond the basics is where the functionality is missing.
Here is a quick list of software that is missing for us: ERP client software, SQL report writers (Crystal Reports for example), legacy DOS applications (that run without emulation), vertical applications related to the industry this company competes in, etc., etc.
Obviously, the ERP front-end is a show stopper. Take the report writer; without Seagate Software offering a Linux version, we'd have rewrite thousands of reports unless a comparable piece of software existed that has all the features of Crystal reports we use and can do the conversion for us. Until then here is no way that will fly.
Also, we write a lot of in-house software using Borland's Delphi product. Kylix (version that runs on Linux) is not even comparable. We'd have to retool. Again, a time consuming process. In this case, the state of Kylix is solely Borland's fault.
If the business moves over to Linux gradually, there is increased administrative effort. That has its own set of issues.
I'm not suggesting that Linux won't be there. Just that it isn't there yet.
The virus, worm, trojan field advances, sometimes rapidly. If a new worm arrives that hasn't been seen before how much help can someone be that hasn't written or played the game in a year or longer? I think your question, and I'm not attacking you, is much like asking if forensic science is needed, just ask the murders....
I think the third question, can reverse-engineering be done more efficiently, is the important one because it will help question #2 significantly.
I keep reading how Linux is ready for the businees and the first question that comes to mind is emulation or hosting an OS seems to be a requirement at any level other than the most basic, e.g., email and word processing.
The second question that comes to mind is at what level is this statement being made? I've yet to read comments that go further than email and a spreadsheet? I don't see comments where Crystal Reports is substituted for zzzzz software or Gold Mine is replaced with this or that.
It would seem that new and/or small business would have a great chance at really embracing whatever distro of Linux. Running something like VMWare seems like a kludge. That isn't to say VMWare is a bad product. It isn't. However there would seem to be a lot of duplicity to make sure the host and guest OS can access the same resources until eventually the Linux distro could be used in place of Windows without VMWare or a similar product.
When vendors of major business applications write support Linux then it would seem that statement holds more water. The situation is getting there for sure but I don't see how such a bold statement can be made now. How many IT departments have the time/resources/money to switch over if lucky or use completely different software in place of software that has been doing the job just fine?
My perception of the success Mozilla/Firefox has beside a breadth of features is its security. I wonder if this bounty is more preemptive in nature to help ensure the positive security piece-of-mind Mozilla/Firefox has rather than the type of bounty Tex has.
If Mozilla/Firefox where to lose the mainstream perception of a more secure browser why would users of IE switch?
I helped push the use of Firefox on the vast majority of machines where I work. The amount of malware finding its way onto the systems of users who don't know any better has been substantially reduced.
I found it harder to push the use of Mozilla on users (just for testing) than it was to push FireFox when we decided to go with that browser. Users seemed to be put off that Mozilla looked different enough to "scare" them where Firefox looks more modern and has more similarities to IE which helped ease the transition. In fact not a single person complained once FireFox fired up.
This isn't to say Mozilla is a poor browser but to users who don't have an understanding of why using an alternate browser to IE is a good thing, superficial changes seem to matter much more than any functional feature.
Right, you dislike the idea of getting attention so much you expose your cleavage enough to draw attention. You could already be on a voyeur website somewhere or some kids wall who has a lipstick cam or, use your imagination. Your bust and butt definitely are reasons not to implement this technology.
ps...it could be a woman who puts a picture of your T&A up on the wall -- not just a guy....
For that matter, how hard would it be to restrict which programs are allowed to create files with runnable extensions without prompting?
Lavasoft has products that do some of what you are asking about. However, I think the functionality that you are requesting should be provided by Microsoft and not be something a user has to go out and purchase.
It would also give developers a chance to port features form Solaris to Linux or BSD, so that everyone could benefit from the hard work Sun has done on Solaris
What about the other way around? I see this sort of statement and mentality way too much. You sound like a parasite.
I agree to a point. Remember that writing an intuitive, well-designed interface is difficult at best.
What is this "gun" pointed at OSS that says people have to use the stuff in the first place and demand developers have to conform to whatever the latest ranter rants about? A good chunk of OSS is done by developers who do stuff generally for free and on their time. If the developer writes a piece of software with the intent or expection for the masses than he/she should certainly feel the heat of failing on the any of the five issues raised. Further, that developer should be thinking about usability and such. However, if the developer wrote it and threw it out there for others to use if found useful, who has the right to say the developer should do anything differently than how he/she did it in the first place?
After thinking about your post more, I'm thinking that I should have posted my problem rather than just giving up. It's almost ironic that on one hand one can praise how responsive a community is and then on the other hand not make use of it.
Perhaps I'm too jaded by vendors who don't respond.
This just isn't true. I gave SuSE 9.0 a try, and specifically tested this out about a week ago with a friend's USB drive, and it does the exact same thing you describe in OSX. Plug in the drive, an icon appears on the desktop. I was actually fairly surprised by it.
Mark, it was true for me. I had to drop to the command line and find the mount point that way. I am using a PNY Attache that has 128MB of storage.
If you want more people to use Linux, the best tool by far will be to make it usable by the general public, as easy and understandable as Windows is.
It's not going to happen, ever. The only reason windows is easy to use is because people are used to it, they've been trained to understand the feel of it and some of the logic behind how it works.
I don't entirely agree with that. Take a USB Flash drive. If I put that into a USB slot on OS X an icon appears on my desktop. If I have Finder open I see the same icon appear. There is feedback. I know that something happened. If I take the same USB flash drive over to Windows XP (Home Edition) I see: found new hardware and then your new hardware is installed and ready to use. If I open up Explorer or double-click on My Computer I see the icon representing the device under removable storage which makes a lot of sense. When I do the same with this SUSE 9.0 I get zero feedback. Zilch. I have no idea if my action was successful or not and worse I have no idea where this device was mounted. The process with SUSE isn't any where as intuitive as it could and should be.
Let us take that same Toshiba notebook and deal with video. The first time I put SUSE on it my card wasn't recognized. That didn't bug me so much. I had a low resolution but I could use the GUI and search for an appropriate driver. I found a package by nVidia. I run the package and it needs the kernel source code? What?! How many regular users will be like, WTF is kernel source code? Then what version? Oh, the source code corresponding to the version I'm running. Hmm, what version am I running? So we get by that and find out I cannot stay in the GUI to get my driver configured and working. Instead I have to boot into a text mode (again...regular users will love that) and run sax2. Great... I don't know what the preferred resolution is for the LCD display my laptop has. I no longer have my manuals but shouldn't the driver have an idea? Even the display is smart enough to tell me I'm in a less than optimal resolution. Great, boot back into the GUI and do a Google search for my laptop and find out the preferred resolution is 1280x800. Exit the GUI and set the resolution using "Expert Mode" (or whatever the tab was).
The point being that things like this can be made far easier and they should be. Using any Linux distro, you shouldn't be required to have a deep understanding of the hardware you are using when other OS's more often than not don't require that knowledge.
In my humble opinion I think that Linux distros, in particular the GUI's, will be come easier and easier to use and will actually exceed the usability of Windows as in general the community of Linux developers tend to listen to their users and that will make all the difference in the long run.
The proper way to improve security is invalidate all those EULA disclaimers. A few big lawsuits with billions in damage verdicts would do far more to focus Microsoft's attention than any government regulatory body.
Yeah, that will make a lot companies/independent coders want to release code. Imagine not releasing code until you are positive there are no exploits or holes in your code. I don't see too many claims of *cough* unbreakable software going around save for Oracle.
How many of us in IT want to do a *good* job? How many of us would like to show what we can do and the quality by which we can do it? Alas, how often is the time there? Instead you do your second best, if you are lucky, to meet insane deadline.
Contrast this with a hairdresser or any of those other positions. Those people are hired to attract customers. Take for example a plumber. When something breaks most people will trade time for a proper fix so this doesn't happen again. Those people can take pride in their jobs and are generally expected to exhibit their creativity.
Very few in IT are in a position to take their time to adhere to best practices when managers are screaming as a group to have *something* now and not later. When their desire to rush doesn't work out, who is to blame? Not them! At the end of the day it is hard to feel good about whatever you've done especially when you know if you had a bit more time you could have done a better job.
Slashdot Mirror
That doesn't take away it's downright arrogant to say you don't need anything the competitors might offer, and really, any other commercial-software spokesman would be modded +5 Ignorant.
He doesn't say he doesn't need anything from Sun Solaris. Instead, he says that he doesn't think Solaris has anything left worth taking. He goes on to say, from the article, "But more importantly, if I'm wrong, that's OK. People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time." Yeah, a lot of arrogance there.
Open Source or about a platform? Why does OSS have to be tied to a platform?
If you are a fan of OSS then it shouldn't matter if it hurts or hinders a platform. Instead good software is expanding or continuing to expand to another platform.
Heraldo could report from the huddle...
Not only your points about if this were done in the past, but additionally the gap now as opposed to even five or six years ago between Linux and Solaris is so tiny, one would probably ask, "What can Linux in the server room not provide that Solaris does, and does it really matter?"
The kid looking at the camera is thinking, "Dad is the geek and he is making us do this!"
I just installed FC3 and it seems like it's pretty much there. Is there a specific functionality you are thinking about? You have all the basics, office, email, browsing etc. I am curious to see what you feel is missing?
Respectfully, there is a lot more to business software than the basics. Beyond the basics is where the functionality is missing.
Here is a quick list of software that is missing for us: ERP client software, SQL report writers (Crystal Reports for example), legacy DOS applications (that run without emulation), vertical applications related to the industry this company competes in, etc., etc.
Obviously, the ERP front-end is a show stopper. Take the report writer; without Seagate Software offering a Linux version, we'd have rewrite thousands of reports unless a comparable piece of software existed that has all the features of Crystal reports we use and can do the conversion for us. Until then here is no way that will fly.
Also, we write a lot of in-house software using Borland's Delphi product. Kylix (version that runs on Linux) is not even comparable. We'd have to retool. Again, a time consuming process. In this case, the state of Kylix is solely Borland's fault.
If the business moves over to Linux gradually, there is increased administrative effort. That has its own set of issues.
I'm not suggesting that Linux won't be there. Just that it isn't there yet.
More business related software runs on the Linux platform.
The virus, worm, trojan field advances, sometimes rapidly. If a new worm arrives that hasn't been seen before how much help can someone be that hasn't written or played the game in a year or longer? I think your question, and I'm not attacking you, is much like asking if forensic science is needed, just ask the murders....
I think the third question, can reverse-engineering be done more efficiently, is the important one because it will help question #2 significantly.
I keep reading how Linux is ready for the businees and the first question that comes to mind is emulation or hosting an OS seems to be a requirement at any level other than the most basic, e.g., email and word processing.
The second question that comes to mind is at what level is this statement being made? I've yet to read comments that go further than email and a spreadsheet? I don't see comments where Crystal Reports is substituted for zzzzz software or Gold Mine is replaced with this or that.
It would seem that new and/or small business would have a great chance at really embracing whatever distro of Linux. Running something like VMWare seems like a kludge. That isn't to say VMWare is a bad product. It isn't. However there would seem to be a lot of duplicity to make sure the host and guest OS can access the same resources until eventually the Linux distro could be used in place of Windows without VMWare or a similar product.
When vendors of major business applications write support Linux then it would seem that statement holds more water. The situation is getting there for sure but I don't see how such a bold statement can be made now. How many IT departments have the time/resources/money to switch over if lucky or use completely different software in place of software that has been doing the job just fine?
If OSS really takes off in California, maybe other states will turn to this justification.
It's been happening in Rhode Island for some time. Not to the extent California is looking to achieve but at least it is happening.
EWeek on Opens Source and RI
that to MS as they are going in the opposite direction.
I read somewhere today that Intel engineers have developed a new compound to use for the insulating layer on the gates, to replace SiO2
Yeah, it's called "high-K". Here is a link.
My perception of the success Mozilla/Firefox has beside a breadth of features is its security. I wonder if this bounty is more preemptive in nature to help ensure the positive security piece-of-mind Mozilla/Firefox has rather than the type of bounty Tex has.
If Mozilla/Firefox where to lose the mainstream perception of a more secure browser why would users of IE switch?
I helped push the use of Firefox on the vast majority of machines where I work. The amount of malware finding its way onto the systems of users who don't know any better has been substantially reduced.
I found it harder to push the use of Mozilla on users (just for testing) than it was to push FireFox when we decided to go with that browser. Users seemed to be put off that Mozilla looked different enough to "scare" them where Firefox looks more modern and has more similarities to IE which helped ease the transition. In fact not a single person complained once FireFox fired up.
This isn't to say Mozilla is a poor browser but to users who don't have an understanding of why using an alternate browser to IE is a good thing, superficial changes seem to matter much more than any functional feature.
Right, you dislike the idea of getting attention so much you expose your cleavage enough to draw attention. You could already be on a voyeur website somewhere or some kids wall who has a lipstick cam or, use your imagination. Your bust and butt definitely are reasons not to implement this technology.
ps...it could be a woman who puts a picture of your T&A up on the wall -- not just a guy....
What's hypocritical about prefering the rights of actual people over the "rights" of corporations?
'cause corporations are made up of people just like you and I...um...damn, that corporate add worked!
So the cameras do nothing, but give the impression of protection, all the while invading our privacy.
Exactly what sort of privacy do you expect on a public street?
For that matter, how hard would it be to restrict which programs are allowed to create files with runnable extensions without prompting?
Lavasoft has products that do some of what you are asking about. However, I think the functionality that you are requesting should be provided by Microsoft and not be something a user has to go out and purchase.
It would also give developers a chance to port features form Solaris to Linux or BSD, so that everyone could benefit from the hard work Sun has done on Solaris
What about the other way around? I see this sort of statement and mentality way too much. You sound like a parasite.
I agree to a point. Remember that writing an intuitive, well-designed interface is difficult at best.
What is this "gun" pointed at OSS that says people have to use the stuff in the first place and demand developers have to conform to whatever the latest ranter rants about? A good chunk of OSS is done by developers who do stuff generally for free and on their time. If the developer writes a piece of software with the intent or expection for the masses than he/she should certainly feel the heat of failing on the any of the five issues raised. Further, that developer should be thinking about usability and such. However, if the developer wrote it and threw it out there for others to use if found useful, who has the right to say the developer should do anything differently than how he/she did it in the first place?
After thinking about your post more, I'm thinking that I should have posted my problem rather than just giving up. It's almost ironic that on one hand one can praise how responsive a community is and then on the other hand not make use of it.
Perhaps I'm too jaded by vendors who don't respond.
This just isn't true. I gave SuSE 9.0 a try, and specifically tested this out about a week ago with a friend's USB drive, and it does the exact same thing you describe in OSX. Plug in the drive, an icon appears on the desktop. I was actually fairly surprised by it.
Mark, it was true for me. I had to drop to the command line and find the mount point that way. I am using a PNY Attache that has 128MB of storage.
If you want more people to use Linux, the best tool by far will be to make it usable by the general public, as easy and understandable as Windows is. It's not going to happen, ever. The only reason windows is easy to use is because people are used to it, they've been trained to understand the feel of it and some of the logic behind how it works.
I don't entirely agree with that. Take a USB Flash drive. If I put that into a USB slot on OS X an icon appears on my desktop. If I have Finder open I see the same icon appear. There is feedback. I know that something happened. If I take the same USB flash drive over to Windows XP (Home Edition) I see: found new hardware and then your new hardware is installed and ready to use. If I open up Explorer or double-click on My Computer I see the icon representing the device under removable storage which makes a lot of sense. When I do the same with this SUSE 9.0 I get zero feedback. Zilch. I have no idea if my action was successful or not and worse I have no idea where this device was mounted. The process with SUSE isn't any where as intuitive as it could and should be.
Let us take that same Toshiba notebook and deal with video. The first time I put SUSE on it my card wasn't recognized. That didn't bug me so much. I had a low resolution but I could use the GUI and search for an appropriate driver. I found a package by nVidia. I run the package and it needs the kernel source code? What?! How many regular users will be like, WTF is kernel source code? Then what version? Oh, the source code corresponding to the version I'm running. Hmm, what version am I running? So we get by that and find out I cannot stay in the GUI to get my driver configured and working. Instead I have to boot into a text mode (again...regular users will love that) and run sax2. Great... I don't know what the preferred resolution is for the LCD display my laptop has. I no longer have my manuals but shouldn't the driver have an idea? Even the display is smart enough to tell me I'm in a less than optimal resolution. Great, boot back into the GUI and do a Google search for my laptop and find out the preferred resolution is 1280x800. Exit the GUI and set the resolution using "Expert Mode" (or whatever the tab was).
The point being that things like this can be made far easier and they should be. Using any Linux distro, you shouldn't be required to have a deep understanding of the hardware you are using when other OS's more often than not don't require that knowledge.
In my humble opinion I think that Linux distros, in particular the GUI's, will be come easier and easier to use and will actually exceed the usability of Windows as in general the community of Linux developers tend to listen to their users and that will make all the difference in the long run.
The proper way to improve security is invalidate all those EULA disclaimers. A few big lawsuits with billions in damage verdicts would do far more to focus Microsoft's attention than any government regulatory body.
Yeah, that will make a lot companies/independent coders want to release code. Imagine not releasing code until you are positive there are no exploits or holes in your code. I don't see too many claims of *cough* unbreakable software going around save for Oracle.
How many of us in IT want to do a *good* job? How many of us would like to show what we can do and the quality by which we can do it? Alas, how often is the time there? Instead you do your second best, if you are lucky, to meet insane deadline.
Contrast this with a hairdresser or any of those other positions. Those people are hired to attract customers. Take for example a plumber. When something breaks most people will trade time for a proper fix so this doesn't happen again. Those people can take pride in their jobs and are generally expected to exhibit their creativity.
Very few in IT are in a position to take their time to adhere to best practices when managers are screaming as a group to have *something* now and not later. When their desire to rush doesn't work out, who is to blame? Not them! At the end of the day it is hard to feel good about whatever you've done especially when you know if you had a bit more time you could have done a better job.