Here in the upper midwest at a Medical Device manufacturer, I am one of the younger people on my team, and I am 39. We're developing critical life-care embedded code (implanted devices.) I guess in more volatile fields where quality doesn't impact safety as much, maybe they can hire people right out of school. There seems to be a shortage of embedded-system techies, and I don't see that being addressed in schools. With the further 'mainstreaming' of Computer Science and programming curriculums, there just aren't as many people coming into the field of programming right down to the wire, on hardware platforms, as there are the more office types. I know there continues to be a real shortage of people who can sling embedded code, and I don't see much draw to get people into it, as opposed to higher level programming.
The goal would be to work to disrupt the MicroSoft cash flow by creating a consortium of Lotus, Novell, Corel, StarOffice, Adobe, Oracle, and others to make a standardized, testable, and brandable file format that would allow new add on products and to cut of the monopoly profits from Office.
That kind of exclusionary collusion is illegal, because it amounts to forming a software cartel. And Microsoft would implement an import filter for the new format as quickly as it became public.
Well, I know that if one in four Americans woke up one morning to find their computer suddently had a Unix operating system on it in place of whatever they had learned to use (and used at work, etc.) they wouldn't be recommeding it to their friends.
I like Unix-like OSes for some of what I do with a computer. Enough that it's installed on several of my home computers as the only OS. I know that there are a lot of people out there in the real world who aren't as into computers for the computer itself who would NOT like a Unix-like OS.
I bet that for some ~ peak three day period when RedHat 6.0 was just released, that it outsold any other OS on the market. That could be said for many products. It's just a matter of picking the right point in time to calculate your derivative.
You can buy Windows 98 as the full retail version by walking into a store, carrying the shrink-wrapped box to a cash register, and presenting payment. In my case, it was $179 instead of $89 for the "upgrade" version. Both were on the store shelf beside each other. I intended to continue to use Windows 95 on the bench computer (for the EPROM programmer, and talking to emulators and stuff), along with Slackware Linux and NetBSD on several other computers on my home network. So I opted to buy the full-retail version for a new machine, rather than paying $89 for an "upgrade" copy that I would then immediately break the license for (by installing it on a new machine and keeping the Win 95 os online that it was to "upgrade".) Buying an upgrade copy and breaking the license agreement is no different from getting a pirate CD copy from a back alley somewhere.
Part of the appeal of the free Unix OSes like NetBSD (and free Unix clones like the Linux OSes) is that there isn't a moral/legal burden put on people with multiple machines.
No, you've gotten it all wrong. You wouldn't leave the money on the counter. There would be a ceramic piggy bank sitting on the counter to put the money into. But everybody would be ashamed to admit even think about breaking into it.
If it compiles the source at runtime (Python also does this), then it's a compiler. An interpreter 'interprets' every line of code while the program is running. Run-time compilation gives you the flexibility of code you can change 'on the fly' during debugging, but the speed of a compiled language (granted, not optimized the way a modern C compiler is.)
Opera is a "damn fine browser." It has a button right on the edge of the frame that you click. It toggles graphics on and off. It also has a usable "history/favorites/shortcuts" (call it what you may) repository, so you don't have to write down every link you might want to return to on a piece of paper next to your keyboard. If Lynx has such a feature, I've never been able to find it.
If you want a text-only environment, by all means use Lynx and hang out in Usenet. Don't prescribe how the rest of us should experience the WWW.
It's good of you to put "Lynx is a damn fine browser" right up front. It helps us interpet anything else you write. You should put it in your tagline.
Was NT ever anything but an "addon"?
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SGIs Linux Future
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What this news sounds like is that since Linux is available at no cost, it will come bundled with the servers (why do people immediately start talking about workstations at this point?). Has NT ever been 'bundled' with the hardware? Is it costing extra anything new?
Neither acts like a virus. Unless you can show that either can spread from machine to machine without human intervention and control. Computer viruses propogate on their own.
Slackware is actually cool. It's my favorite flavor of Linux OS. I've been running it on and off since I was weaned off Yggdrasil in about 1994. But I'm moving towards BSD for my own reasons. I'm sorry for sounding like I was trashing the slack in that comment.
I want to hook up my two SYM1's to make some sort of a "networked deathmatch game" for them. Maybe call it "Quake Zero". It of course wouldn't do very many FPS in 3-D. But with only an LCD Hex display, there wouldn't be much point.
Oracle has a LONG LONG history of vaporware that goes back to when the company started. It's well established in the printed record. This spring I read a 'sympathetic' biography of Larry Ellison (it was obvious that it was written by somebody who had received friendly access to Larry) where some of his personal ethical lapses were documented. Things like sleeping with employees, having them fired when he breaks up with them. Outright lieing to customers about new releases. The book title is "The Difference between God and Larry Ellison (God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison)".
Oh, and wether or not a company has "credible competition" has nothing to do with wether a company is ethical or not.
I am NOT writing this to apologize for Microsoft in any way or form, just to point out that it's not a pink-and-fuzzy world out there of happy ethical competitors, except for big mean bad Microsoft.
Shine a bright light on any large successful company, and you can find dark spotty areas. All of Microsoft's competitiors have engaged in dirty tricks in the past as well. Read up on Larry Ellison at Oracle someday (one of the loud critics of Microsoft) if you want to see real sleaze in action.
Well, the Win32 API is just one of the APIs that Microsoft offers on the NT kernel. There's a pretty nice Posix API made by a third party (Interix) that rumor has it may be folded into the NT system in a big way. It's fairly robust implementation of Posix (includes GCC, but it also integrates Microsoft C for building Posix binaries), and lets most Free Software packages be built and run on an NT kernel. And it's totally alien to Win32, unlike Cygnus (it has pretty much equal status as far as the Kernel is concerned).
But I know how crazy it is to talk up anything Microsoft does in this forum. Sadly there are a lot of people with an irrational hatred of Microsoft in the world. They somewhat blunt the real criticism that is due that company and their products.
Actually, the more Microsoft draws attention to Linux, before it's really ready for the mainstream, the more of a risk there is that an unpolished experience will turn off masses of people. I sometimes shudder at all the regular Joes going down to BestBuy to buy a happy-shiney RedHat Linux box of CDs and taking it home expecting it to be the same experience as loading a new game. If ten people are turned off for every one who gets it, Linux is in trouble.
Mr. Ballmer wouldn't be saying it as loud and publicly as he is right now, but he'd be saying it. Microsoft thrives on competition, in case you hadn't noticed. And there's a lot of it these days, because the market for traditional PCs is saturated, and the market for new information appliances is still somewhat unformed. MS-DOS compatability isn't enough in the new markets, so Microsoft have their work cut out for them.
Actually, in terms of sheer quantity, MOST software is written for the purpose of embedding the binaries into the chip itself and selling the chip inside a product. The old fashioned keyboard/screen stuff is a minority of the software running out there.
Quite a bit of the software I personally have written is hooked directly to people's bodies right now by electrodes.
A lot of the software is making your car run clean (or at all), keeping that Furbie annoying, and pumping the keystrokes or mouse swipes into your PC.
Very little of the total software in the world is stored for end use on magnetic media.
Unfortunately, the NYT article really only covers the middle-years "commercial" home computers. The kind you could buy as a finished product at a department store.
When I read the lead above which said it was comprehensive, I was hoping it would at least bring up the S-100 stuff, and the really cool old hardware. But it was an article for mass consumption, so it didn't mention anything that you couldn't bring up by hooking up a TV set and plugging it in.
Personal Computer Hackers back then (to make the distinction from the cool stuff being done on things like BSD in University labs) were burning their code into EPROMs, hacking the BIOS and bootloader to get CP/M to load, etc. You had to own a soldering iron to get very far. Consumers were buying the machines that came in injection moulded plastic cases.
I still have a pair of SYM-1's (6502) and a BigBoard (Z-80). Sold my Altos 586 (it ran a five user version of Microsoft Xenix on an 8086 processor with 512K of RAM) to a collector a year ago.
Open Source makes it far easier for anybody who has decent programming skills to dig into the system and do all sorts of things. Generally on a local level, not on a widespread level as is the case with closed source OSes.
98% of the world's computer users are 'dumb enough' to use software they didn't compile themselves, from source code they personally reviewed. Actually that should be 99.99% of the world, since there isn't anybody here reading this message who has read every bit of source code for every thing s/he runs.
Open Source turns it into a "local" problem rather than a 'big scale' problem as is the case when unfriendly code is widely distributed in closed source software.
"Peer review" doesn't solve anything if Hacker X at Podunk Corporation slips an exploit into the payroll machine.
It's a far more complex issue than many people in this discussion thread seem ready to recognize.
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Here in the upper midwest at a Medical Device manufacturer, I am one of the younger people on my team, and I am 39. We're developing critical life-care embedded code (implanted devices.) I guess in more volatile fields where quality doesn't impact safety as much, maybe they can hire people right out of school. There seems to be a shortage of embedded-system techies, and I don't see that being addressed in schools. With the further 'mainstreaming' of Computer Science and programming curriculums, there just aren't as many people coming into the field of programming right down to the wire, on hardware platforms, as there are the more office types. I know there continues to be a real shortage of people who can sling embedded code, and I don't see much draw to get people into it, as opposed to higher level programming.
The goal would be to work to disrupt the MicroSoft cash flow by creating a consortium of Lotus, Novell, Corel, StarOffice, Adobe, Oracle, and others to make a standardized, testable, and brandable file format that would allow new add on products and to cut of the monopoly profits from Office.
That kind of exclusionary collusion is illegal, because it amounts to forming a software cartel. And Microsoft would implement an import filter for the new format as quickly as it became public.
Well, I know that if one in four Americans woke up one morning to find their computer suddently had a Unix operating system on it in place of whatever they had learned to use (and used at work, etc.) they wouldn't be recommeding it to their friends.
I like Unix-like OSes for some of what I do with a computer. Enough that it's installed on several of my home computers as the only OS. I know that there are a lot of people out there in the real world who aren't as into computers for the computer itself who would NOT like a Unix-like OS.
I bet that for some ~ peak three day period when RedHat 6.0 was just released, that it outsold any other OS on the market. That could be said for many products. It's just a matter of picking the right point in time to calculate your derivative.
You can buy Windows 98 as the full retail version by walking into a store, carrying the shrink-wrapped box to a cash register, and presenting payment. In my case, it was $179 instead of $89 for the "upgrade" version. Both were on the store shelf beside each other. I intended to continue to use Windows 95 on the bench computer (for the EPROM programmer, and talking to emulators and stuff), along with Slackware Linux and NetBSD on several other computers on my home network. So I opted to buy the full-retail version for a new machine, rather than paying $89 for an "upgrade" copy that I would then immediately break the license for (by installing it on a new machine and keeping the Win 95 os online that it was to "upgrade".) Buying an upgrade copy and breaking the license agreement is no different from getting a pirate CD copy from a back alley somewhere.
Part of the appeal of the free Unix OSes like NetBSD (and free Unix clones like the Linux OSes) is that there isn't a moral/legal burden put on people with multiple machines.
No, you've gotten it all wrong. You wouldn't leave the money on the counter. There would be a ceramic piggy bank sitting on the counter to put the money into. But everybody would be ashamed to admit even think about breaking into it.
The FBI can bust people for sending bad blocks?
I wasn't aware laws were being broken. It's mean-spirited but is it illegal?
Wrong.
If it compiles the source at runtime (Python also does this), then it's a compiler. An interpreter 'interprets' every line of code while the program is running. Run-time compilation gives you the flexibility of code you can change 'on the fly' during debugging, but the speed of a compiled language (granted, not optimized the way a modern C compiler is.)
You're putting words in my mouth.
Opera is a "damn fine browser." It has a button right on the edge of the frame that you click. It toggles graphics on and off. It also has a usable "history/favorites/shortcuts" (call it what you may) repository, so you don't have to write down every link you might want to return to on a piece of paper next to your keyboard. If Lynx has such a feature, I've never been able to find it.
If you want a text-only environment, by all means use Lynx and hang out in Usenet. Don't prescribe how the rest of us should experience the WWW.
It's good of you to put "Lynx is a damn fine browser" right up front. It helps us interpet anything else you write. You should put it in your tagline.
What this news sounds like is that since Linux is available at no cost, it will come bundled with the servers (why do people immediately start talking about workstations at this point?). Has NT ever been 'bundled' with the hardware? Is it costing extra anything new?
Neither acts like a virus. Unless you can show that either can spread from machine to machine without human intervention and control. Computer viruses propogate on their own.
Slackware is actually cool. It's my favorite flavor of Linux OS. I've been running it on and off since I was weaned off Yggdrasil in about 1994. But I'm moving towards BSD for my own reasons. I'm sorry for sounding like I was trashing the slack in that comment.
I want to hook up my two SYM1's to make some sort of a "networked deathmatch game" for them. Maybe call it "Quake Zero". It of course wouldn't do very many FPS in 3-D. But with only an LCD Hex display, there wouldn't be much point.
Oracle has a LONG LONG history of vaporware that goes back to when the company started. It's well established in the printed record. This spring I read a 'sympathetic' biography of Larry Ellison (it was obvious that it was written by somebody who had received friendly access to Larry) where some of his personal ethical lapses were documented. Things like sleeping with employees, having them fired when he breaks up with them. Outright lieing to customers about new releases. The book title is "The Difference between God and Larry Ellison (God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison)".
Oh, and wether or not a company has "credible competition" has nothing to do with wether a company is ethical or not.
I am NOT writing this to apologize for Microsoft in any way or form, just to point out that it's not a pink-and-fuzzy world out there of happy ethical competitors, except for big mean bad Microsoft.
Get real.
Listen, Oracle is a company that can make Microsoft look like a bunch of eager Boy Scouts, as far as business ethics goes.
Shine a bright light on any large successful company, and you can find dark spotty areas. All of Microsoft's competitiors have engaged in dirty tricks in the past as well. Read up on Larry Ellison at Oracle someday (one of the loud critics of Microsoft) if you want to see real sleaze in action.
Well, the Win32 API is just one of the APIs that Microsoft offers on the NT kernel. There's a pretty nice Posix API made by a third party (Interix) that rumor has it may be folded into the NT system in a big way. It's fairly robust implementation of Posix (includes GCC, but it also integrates Microsoft C for building Posix binaries), and lets most Free Software packages be built and run on an NT kernel. And it's totally alien to Win32, unlike Cygnus (it has pretty much equal status as far as the Kernel is concerned).
But I know how crazy it is to talk up anything Microsoft does in this forum. Sadly there are a lot of people with an irrational hatred of Microsoft in the world. They somewhat blunt the real criticism that is due that company and their products.
Actually, the more Microsoft draws attention to Linux, before it's really ready for the mainstream, the more of a risk there is that an unpolished experience will turn off masses of people. I sometimes shudder at all the regular Joes going down to BestBuy to buy a happy-shiney RedHat Linux box of CDs and taking it home expecting it to be the same experience as loading a new game. If ten people are turned off for every one who gets it, Linux is in trouble.
Mr. Ballmer wouldn't be saying it as loud and publicly as he is right now, but he'd be saying it. Microsoft thrives on competition, in case you hadn't noticed. And there's a lot of it these days, because the market for traditional PCs is saturated, and the market for new information appliances is still somewhat unformed. MS-DOS compatability isn't enough in the new markets, so Microsoft have their work cut out for them.
Actually, in terms of sheer quantity, MOST software is written for the purpose of embedding the binaries into the chip itself and selling the chip inside a product. The old fashioned keyboard/screen stuff is a minority of the software running out there.
Quite a bit of the software I personally have written is hooked directly to people's bodies right now by electrodes.
A lot of the software is making your car run clean (or at all), keeping that Furbie annoying, and pumping the keystrokes or mouse swipes into your PC.
Very little of the total software in the world is stored for end use on magnetic media.
Unfortunately, the NYT article really only covers the middle-years "commercial" home computers. The kind you could buy as a finished product at a department store.
When I read the lead above which said it was comprehensive, I was hoping it would at least bring up the S-100 stuff, and the really cool old hardware. But it was an article for mass consumption, so it didn't mention anything that you couldn't bring up by hooking up a TV set and plugging it in.
Personal Computer Hackers back then (to make the distinction from the cool stuff being done on things like BSD in University labs) were burning their code into EPROMs, hacking the BIOS and bootloader to get CP/M to load, etc. You had to own a soldering iron to get very far. Consumers were buying the machines that came in injection moulded plastic cases.
I still have a pair of SYM-1's (6502) and a BigBoard (Z-80). Sold my Altos 586 (it ran a five user version of Microsoft Xenix on an 8086 processor with 512K of RAM) to a collector a year ago.
Golly, gee thanks. I guess I should prowl around the NetBSD site more often. Say goodbye to Slackware on that box if cdd works.
Aieeee! Where did that bitmap of a black helicopter come from!?!
Open Source makes it far easier for anybody who has decent programming skills to dig into the system and do all sorts of things. Generally on a local level, not on a widespread level as is the case with closed source OSes.
98% of the world's computer users are 'dumb enough' to use software they didn't compile themselves, from source code they personally reviewed. Actually that should be 99.99% of the world, since there isn't anybody here reading this message who has read every bit of source code for every thing s/he runs.
Open Source turns it into a "local" problem rather than a 'big scale' problem as is the case when unfriendly code is widely distributed in closed source software.
"Peer review" doesn't solve anything if Hacker X at Podunk Corporation slips an exploit into the payroll machine.
It's a far more complex issue than many people in this discussion thread seem ready to recognize.