Java doesn't cost you a dime. There are multiple implementations... one from Sun, another from IBM, Blackdown, HP, etc.
What you mean is that Java, unlike Linux distros, has a single maintainer and hasn't allowed the language to be fragmented.
Do you realize why most companies won't write apps for Linux? No profit. They have to port to Redhat, Debian, Suse... yes, the differences are minor to a guru, but each is different. Each has a different installation/upgrade mechanism, etc.
Windows is a solid, controlled platform. If Linux had a similar driver, it would wipe Windows off the planet... of course, it probably wouldn't have made it to where it is at... and it will probably ~still~ wipe Windows off the planet!:) It's just taking longer this way.
My point being, when you say Java is not "free", what you really means that you don't like Sun retaining control of the spec. It's not free enough to suit you (even though it costs no money, that's not "free"), so you say it's not free and compare it to MS's C#. Hogwash.
You already have a free, cross platform, enterprise capable language. It's called Java (and J2EE). Use it or continue to watch MS roll over the community.
You pay money for your CPU and this service is free.
I take great exception to someone tracking me and having me pay for the technology. (I know, but let's ignore my ISP for the moment).
But if someone wants to provide a free service, then you get what you pay for. Be sure you read the terms of service. If you don't like it, use something else.
Intel put their tracking into something you paid $$ for. That's different.
Any idiot who thinks the Republicans are the only ones planning to use the internet (or any advertising available to them) is just plain dumb... or just has their head in the sand.
Okay, (re-reading my post), I know it's talking about servers... ~but~ this is still a huge step forward for the percieved legitimacy of Linux in the corporate world.
Sun is shipping it. IBM has been for a while, but now expanding. Heck, Novell might even become a player again!
I haven't been following this that closely, but hasn't SCO already had several unfavorable rulings in the IBM case? Haven't they been ordered to ~finally~ show the offending code? That should end that case quickly...
Now they are taking on someone else with enough $$ to fight for a while.
With any luck, this will be the beginning of the end for the SCO travesty.
How many fronts can they fight on at one time anyway?
Also, don't rule out the influence factor. We drive more sales than most people realize.
As geeks, we are usually the early adoptors for any new technology. If it's hackable, we are more likely to buy it, so it looks better to the bean counters in accounting. Early sales are a great indicator of product potential. Also, during the last couple of boom years, we had the $$ to spend on the toys as well.
Secondly, who do our are friends and family ask advice from about what they should buy? Us!
And never ever forget the mighty Slashdot effect! Who's going to post a review here (and drive sales) if the device doesn't have a Linux kernel and can't be hacked!:)
If you keep it patched and up to date, you shouldn't have a problem. But that means (at a minimum) weekly, preferably daily via a script each night.
Most users don't know how to do updates on their systems... those are the folks who shouldn't leave it up and running.
You are aware of the recent (last 3 to 6 months) worth of exploits in this program, right? I'm not that familiar with the details, I think there was an exploit (recently) that let the attacker take over your box. This announcement was not of that magnitude, but it hasn't been that long.
Leaving up a service you don't need is not a smart thing to do. My friend didn't need SSH up anymore (he had temporarily) but he thought there was no reason to take it down, so he left the port open on his router.
Next morning, things were hosed.:(
The moral is if you need SSH, FTP or any other service up, keep one eye BugTraq... but slashdot posts a lot of the good ones for those of us who don't have time to read everything.
But, if you don't have a need for the service, shut down the port! NEVER leave up a port you don't need up. There are tons of script kiddies out there just trolling for an opening. If you don't belive me, just turn on the logging for your router and watch the probes go rolling by.
While the license matters to a lot of people, I care if it works.
If it doesn't have accelerated support for video card X (and forking the tree will have that effect as development resources get divided), I don't care how open it is.
Does is matter how far you can open the hood of the car? I'd rather be able to open it three quarters of the way open to see a nice eight cylinder 450 than to be able to open it compeletely and see the hamster and his wheel.
I don't see why (insert company name here) should be flamed for shipping closed source. Why should software fall under open source They're shipping binary files, right?
Come on... open source advocates who are religious about being open suing over someone infringing on their logo??
Would it be acceptable to print the code on a tee shirt and sell that?
C# whips the tar off of Java (and most non-optimized C code) in most benchmarks. Why? Because it's running on Windows only for these benchmarks. Anyone remember IIS running faster than Apache because of MS taking advantadge of undocumented platform APIs?
Do you think C# on Linux/BSD/*nix is going to be near as fast as C# on Windows? Think again. It may eventually catch up, but not before it gets a reputation for being dog slow. (See Java as an example).
C is really fast. If you know how to optimize it, nothing can beat it (except assember or some special Fortran routines, if it works for you project). If you ~don't~ know how to optimize C really well, Java (anywhere) and C# (on Win32) can be as fast or faster. Usually is much faster, these days.
Java runs, with very little effort, on every major OS and platform out there. (And yes, I do this for a living). I work at SAS (http://www.sas.com) and we ship the same codebase on Win32, HP-UX, HPi, Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc. The advances in the Just In Time compilers has made a huge difference in performance. (There are some differences in the major J2EE environments, but even that is addressable and minor compared to an entire product port).
Yes, it's still true that a programming guru can write some smoking C code, but Joe Sixpack Programmer usually can't beat Java's performance. And yes, I'm talking big number crunching. At a prior job (at a biotech), we crunched Big Numbers (two month runs on a grid of machines) and Java did a very respectable job. We spent our time improving algorythms (from a bio point of view, not a C/ASM point of view).
The C#/Mono crowd is spending a lot of mindshare in making sure that MS's latest language will run anywhere, and that's great. I am glad they are doing it and applaud the effort.
But Java is far and away the fastest true cross platform language out there right now. It's got the best cross platform enterprise environments available. If you are looking the most speed ~and~ portability, the King isn't dead yet.:)
I was having some disk issues on a machine or two so I went out and bought a 160 gig drive for $80 (after rebate), got an IDE controller card to be sure it would work in the older machine I use as a server (~400 mhz) and put shares on it.
Now every machine in the house (including my 5 year old's box) backs itself up completely every night
If I ever get really paranoid, I'll buy a second drive and have them mirrorred... but that's another day.:)
Seriously, these single huge drives make great backup solutions... just be sure to get two if the data really matters.
Anyone old enough to remember this saying...
"DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run"
Oh yeah, this won't affect Java, the best cross platform server side application language out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Java doesn't cost you a dime. There are multiple implementations... one from Sun, another from IBM, Blackdown, HP, etc.
What you mean is that Java, unlike Linux distros, has a single maintainer and hasn't allowed the language to be fragmented.
Do you realize why most companies won't write apps for Linux? No profit. They have to port to Redhat, Debian, Suse... yes, the differences are minor to a guru, but each is different. Each has a different installation/upgrade mechanism, etc.
Windows is a solid, controlled platform. If Linux had a similar driver, it would wipe Windows off the planet... of course, it probably wouldn't have made it to where it is at... and it will probably ~still~ wipe Windows off the planet! :) It's just taking longer this way.
My point being, when you say Java is not "free", what you really means that you don't like Sun retaining control of the spec. It's not free enough to suit you (even though it costs no money, that's not "free"), so you say it's not free and compare it to MS's C#. Hogwash.
You already have a free, cross platform, enterprise capable language. It's called Java (and J2EE). Use it or continue to watch MS roll over the community.
This gives the consumer the choice... sounds like a good thing to me.
You don't like it, buy another model for yourself.
You pay money for your CPU and this service is free.
I take great exception to someone tracking me and having me pay for the technology. (I know, but let's ignore my ISP for the moment).
But if someone wants to provide a free service, then you get what you pay for. Be sure you read the terms of service. If you don't like it, use something else.
Intel put their tracking into something you paid $$ for. That's different.
All this time I thoght they were the same thing! :)
Seriously, as to the original post, find an innovative way to apply an old principal. This is a Very Smart Thing to do. Kudos!
I built a dual Opteron w/2 gigs of ram for $1,700 last year... it would be cheaper now. That's with an 80 gig hard drive w/8 megs of cache.
(smiling) Does Mac or Sun offer anything like that?
Any idiot who thinks the Republicans are the only ones planning to use the internet (or any advertising available to them) is just plain dumb... or just has their head in the sand.
Sun is shipping it. IBM has been for a while, but now expanding. Heck, Novell might even become a player again!
IBM might finally make this happen!
I don't mean to degrade the contributions of the countless people who laid the foundation, but this is ~huge~!
Did the Intel Centrino marketing push put any $$ into these spots?
In short, can I talk my local coffee shop into making their WiFi free with either of these ploys?
Now they are taking on someone else with enough $$ to fight for a while.
With any luck, this will be the beginning of the end for the SCO travesty.
How many fronts can they fight on at one time anyway?
As geeks, we are usually the early adoptors for any new technology. If it's hackable, we are more likely to buy it, so it looks better to the bean counters in accounting. Early sales are a great indicator of product potential. Also, during the last couple of boom years, we had the $$ to spend on the toys as well.
Secondly, who do our are friends and family ask advice from about what they should buy? Us!
And never ever forget the mighty Slashdot effect! Who's going to post a review here (and drive sales) if the device doesn't have a Linux kernel and can't be hacked! :)
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22Christopher+E ccleston%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en
He just 'looks' like a Doctor Who to me.... maybe it's the nose?
I make no call either way, but they are allegedly committing a crime by tricking people who are without a doubt attempting to commit a crime. Hmmm....
I know a lot of Slashdotters won't but a jury will have trouble with this one. :)
Most users don't know how to do updates on their systems... those are the folks who shouldn't leave it up and running.
You are aware of the recent (last 3 to 6 months) worth of exploits in this program, right? I'm not that familiar with the details, I think there was an exploit (recently) that let the attacker take over your box. This announcement was not of that magnitude, but it hasn't been that long.
Next morning, things were hosed. :(
The moral is if you need SSH, FTP or any other service up, keep one eye BugTraq... but slashdot posts a lot of the good ones for those of us who don't have time to read everything.
But, if you don't have a need for the service, shut down the port! NEVER leave up a port you don't need up. There are tons of script kiddies out there just trolling for an opening. If you don't belive me, just turn on the logging for your router and watch the probes go rolling by.
He doesn't know what was to blame... he only had Apache and SSH open though.
Next morning, box his linux and windows box had been compromised.
Slashdot is a great forum for this type of critical patch. Gets the news out very quickly to people who dont read the security sites everyday.
While we argue and sue each other over dinosaur mascots...
While we debate Open Source versus Free Software versus GPL versus LGPL...
Microsoft is adding more features to their products...
What percentage of the desktop does MS own now? 90%? 95%?
Wonder why? I don't.
We could always stop majoring on the minors and make better software... but's that just me.
If it doesn't have accelerated support for video card X (and forking the tree will have that effect as development resources get divided), I don't care how open it is.
Does is matter how far you can open the hood of the car? I'd rather be able to open it three quarters of the way open to see a nice eight cylinder 450 than to be able to open it compeletely and see the hamster and his wheel.
Could you sell a tee shirt with the code printed on it? ;)
I don't see why (insert company name here) should be flamed for shipping closed source. Why should software fall under open source They're shipping binary files, right?
Come on... open source advocates who are religious about being open suing over someone infringing on their logo??
Would it be acceptable to print the code on a tee shirt and sell that?
C# whips the tar off of Java (and most non-optimized C code) in most benchmarks. Why? Because it's running on Windows only for these benchmarks. Anyone remember IIS running faster than Apache because of MS taking advantadge of undocumented platform APIs?
Do you think C# on Linux/BSD/*nix is going to be near as fast as C# on Windows? Think again. It may eventually catch up, but not before it gets a reputation for being dog slow. (See Java as an example).
C is really fast. If you know how to optimize it, nothing can beat it (except assember or some special Fortran routines, if it works for you project). If you ~don't~ know how to optimize C really well, Java (anywhere) and C# (on Win32) can be as fast or faster. Usually is much faster, these days.
Java runs, with very little effort, on every major OS and platform out there. (And yes, I do this for a living). I work at SAS (http://www.sas.com) and we ship the same codebase on Win32, HP-UX, HPi, Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc. The advances in the Just In Time compilers has made a huge difference in performance. (There are some differences in the major J2EE environments, but even that is addressable and minor compared to an entire product port).
Yes, it's still true that a programming guru can write some smoking C code, but Joe Sixpack Programmer usually can't beat Java's performance. And yes, I'm talking big number crunching. At a prior job (at a biotech), we crunched Big Numbers (two month runs on a grid of machines) and Java did a very respectable job. We spent our time improving algorythms (from a bio point of view, not a C/ASM point of view).
The C#/Mono crowd is spending a lot of mindshare in making sure that MS's latest language will run anywhere, and that's great. I am glad they are doing it and applaud the effort.
But Java is far and away the fastest true cross platform language out there right now. It's got the best cross platform enterprise environments available. If you are looking the most speed ~and~ portability, the King isn't dead yet. :)
Instead of moving into a combat zone, you could take the advice of last week's Slashdot article and move to India to work! :)
Now every machine in the house (including my 5 year old's box) backs itself up completely every night
If I ever get really paranoid, I'll buy a second drive and have them mirrorred... but that's another day. :)
Seriously, these single huge drives make great backup solutions... just be sure to get two if the data really matters.
Anyone old enough to remember this saying... "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" Oh yeah, this won't affect Java, the best cross platform server side application language out there.