Um, how about everyone but Novell has called his bluff. What exactly are people suppose to do to "call his bluff"? He said that Linux violates Microsoft's patents, and the Linux vendors need to negotiate licensing. Not calling his bluff would be to quickly send over the lawyers to beg for licensing, by refusing to, everyone else is "calling his bluff".
And I believe right there it TFA it says Redhat is "not impressed".
Go ahead Ballmer, sue o-way, we're waiting. Heck I use that so called "patent infringing" evil OS Linux in my business, sue me.
I agree 100%, I don't understand this slave mentality we have these days. Employers treat their employees like children and, of course, people live up to expectations and act like children.
My rules for employees are simple, do your job well, or I will fire you. The rest I don't care about. I'm not paying to have a pet around that only does what I say while attached to a leash. I'm hiring someone to do a job, a job they are agreeing to do.
Employees are just vendors that are permanent (for a period of time) and exclusive. But they are vendors, vendors of work. If I don't like the work, I'll replace them with another vendor if a better one exists.
This is how a free market works, it's sad that this basic concept of American life left so long ago. In 1900 most people owned their own business and had a stake in the community. Now-a-days, we are just a number of micro-communist-nations, I.E, large corporations. I just don't get it.
If the management doesn't know if employees are doing their jobs then I'd find new managers.
Unless you have special needs, like government mandated privacy laws, such as medical databases, what does it matter if employees spend all day on IM or EBay or Gmail. If they aren't doing their job, fire them, if they are, then let them continue; how they choose to do their job is up to them, they aren't children or pets.
Oh, how did we get along for 100s of years without employers monitoring everything an employee does. The founding fathers and mothers wouldn't be happy with how we turned out, we became what they fought so hard against.
60,000 downloads of Ruby for Windows last month on RubyForge says someone is getting it to work on Windows. What does that mean "work effectively"?
I highly doubt a Window-centric Corporation would retrained all thier developers, and switch to an open source laungauge that isn't supported by Microsoft only if it had "better support". I call shanigans. Ruby is making inroads in PHP, Perl, and Python shops; I woudln't hold my breath for Windows shops. I have many clients like this, they rarely even know about anything that isn't made by Microsoft, much less consider it.
World's most popular OS, perhaps you are limiting that to desktops?
Oh, and I'm sure Microsoft going to port.net to Linux and OS X any day now.
12 years old (December 21st, 1995) but who's counting a few years.
First off, the parent of my post said that the Windows port wasn't as fast as Linux and should be supported and worked on more. Ruby supports Windows just fine thank you.
Second, Ruby has had an interesting history. It was basically unknown in the west until Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first book in English in 2000. At that time, the language started to take off, and only in the last few years has development really ramped up. So technically it is 12 years old, but in reality it is a very new language.
Unless you have Microsoft (.net) or Sun (Java) putting a huge amount of resources into development, languages take a long time to fully bake. This is normal, expected, and desired.
Choose to use Windows for development... heh, you almost had me there, nicely done.
I think this is just because of the age of the language, as the same was true for Perl and others when they were young.
Most servers are going to be running a *nix, and the primary domain of scripting languages is the command line and the server. If someone is running Windows as a web-server, they most likely will be using.net, because frankly, why else would you be using Windows as a web-server? (Serious question)
As Ruby matures, so will things like performance and secondary OS support. JRuby and Ruby.net will solve this problem too.
Currently, I find, a lot of developers of Ruby and Ruby on Rails run under Linux or OS X. Many of the questions on the Ruby forums from Windows users are things like "Why does it run in DOS", "Can you make apps like I can in VB, what is Ruby good for?". I don't know but I'm guessing those people are going to give up on Ruby, and probably would never consider Perl or Python either.
Minor note, Ruby on Rails is the web development flavor of the month, not ruby. There are a lot of interesting things happening in plain ole ruby, plus there are other web frameworks than Ruby on Rails, such as Nitro, Camping, etc.
I find it amusing someone would say learn Python because it's used more. Python may be older, but it's still sitting in the programming language high chair right next to Ruby. People say the same thing about Python; "if you want a job learn Java, c#, c++"; and you know what they're right, if you want a job learn Java, period.
I like both Ruby and Python, and I think a programmer would do well to learn one or both. They aren't as popular yet, like Java or c#, but I think they will be. And if you understand the concepts in one, you'll understand the other. Like Gretzky said, "I skate where the puck is going to be, not where it is"; good advice.
Please explain to me why you have to "install" an application? What is the purpose exactly, how is an application any different than a text file? I'll write an install script to give to my users to install Foo.txt in their Documents folder; that's basically the same thing.
I guess I'm old, but I remember when if you wanted to run an application, you copied it to wherever you liked, and ran it. Then along came Windows with their brilliant ActiveX controls, registry, and DLL hell; you had to write a special application to "install" an app, because the process became so complicated that no users could be expected to figure it out. Installers are a bandaid on the real problem.
In OS X, it isn't "drag the app into the Applications folder" to install it. It is "put the app wherever you darn well please, and run it". You can also have 2 copies of the same app, but different versions, next to each other; they run fine because they aren't "installed". Heck, you can even run the app from the compressed DMG file if you want, OS X doesn't stop you.
App bundles are the way to go for GUI apps, and Linux should follow this approach. For command line tools, and libraries, OS X works the same as *nix, it uses either Fink, Ports, or you compile them yourself; I think this works well in OS X, Linux, and BSD.
As for uninstalling, don't even get me started; uninstalling? WTF
What you aren't understanding is: it isn't the concept of asking for permission when you need to do something that requires administrator rights, that Microsoft got right, it's the way they implemented this feature that is so bad. Microsoft often gets the general ideas right, but the details are so wrong.
Higher up in the thread someone mentions what happens when you copy a file to a folder in Program Files. Because Program Files folders are protected you need elevated permissions to do that. The right thing to do is say that it requires elevated permissions, ask if you want to do it, then do it. But in some cases it asks you 3 times for one file (do you want to copy, do you want to elevate, do you want to overwrite, do you want to be admin, do you need help with writing your letter). Why can't they give you one box that says, "The file already exists and this copy requires administrator rights, do you want to allow this?", then when you say OK, you are done. Why, why, why can't they do this, are they short of money?
And Mac and Linux do exactly the same thing, they ask your permission to do admin tasks, except they got the details right so they don't irritate the user to death. A guarantee people are just going to shut off UAC because it's annoying, defeating the whole purpose.
"They can port Office to Apple, Linux, heck, Solaris if they wanted to...."
Yeah, that would be great if they would just port Office to Apple. I'd probably get a Mac if they did that. Oh and if Macs could read my PC floppy discs, and use my two button mouse, and my LCD monitor. I wish Macs could do all that; dare to dream.
The bulk of programmers are programming in Java, for which the IDEs are identical, because most of them run on OS X as well as Windows (Eclipse, NetBeans, Idea).
All the open source editors people love, such as EMacs, VI, etc. run exactly the same in OS X as they do in Linux or FreeBSD. Without using some hack like Cygwin. OS X has the same compiler too, gcc, as it uses it itself for compiling.
OS X has my very favorite editor TextMate, which I miss very much when I'm on Windows.
XCode is used mainly for Objective-C and Cocoa work. I've used it some, it's fine, but not awesome. How is Visual Studio for Cocoa development?
As for Visual Studio being all that; I use it a lot when doing c# work, and it is hardly all that, and it is hardly ahead of other IDEs like Eclipse or my favorite Java IDE, IntelliJ IDEA (which had re-factoring and such years before Microsoft "invented" it in Visual Studio 2005).
Yes, if you are programming in Visual Basic.net OS X sucks, well, because you can't program Visual Basic in OS X. But if you are programming in any non-Microsoft controlled language the tools in OS X are exactly the same, or better (TextMate baby), as they are in any other platform.
I disagree. I don't think that just because you excel at programming, doesn't mean you can't excel at design, whether that be UI design, or logo design.
The real problem is most programmers have absolutely no training or education in design. It's just as silly to expect a programmer to know how to produce a good design without any design skills, as it is to expect a graphic artist, because they are good with a computer, to be able to program Photoshop.
I've been a programmer for 10 years, and I also study design. When I talk to many programmers, they aren't familiar with the most basic rules of design (ones they would learn on the first day of any design class).
I think programming is both a craft and an art, and a majority of programmers I know are also musicians (I'm not, my artistic interests lay in the visual arts). So I don't think these skills are mutually exclusive.
Having said all that, I do think there are different levels of programmers; I think I'm a pretty good programmer, but I won't be programming a compiler or a kernel anytime soon. The type people who are attracted to that type of programming are probably the people who are least interested in design (generalization of course). Those are also the types who are most attracted to Linux, to get back on topic, so Linux's UI is a reflection of this. OS X is the exact opposite as it attracts the artistic engineers.
But perhaps I'm just an oddity, as I love the command line, Linux, and OS X; go figure.
MS gets away with it because people don't complain with either their mouths or with their wallets. 10 years ago, no company would even try such a thing because the users would simply not buy the software. Actually some companies did use various copy protection schemes, but eventually they all stopped to satisfy their customers. MS has, basically, a monopoly on the desktop now; satisfying customers has never been a high priority on a monopolist's lists of things to care about.
Yes, you are right on the OEM license issue. I was responding to your eye rolling on how activation is a "minor" inconvenience.
Yes, Linux and BSD are FOSS, and thus why there is no Activation. I was noting a fact that they don't have Activation, and it is something to consider when deciding on an OS.
As for OS X, no you can't buy a Mac without OS X installed. But you can buy the latest version and install it on your 10 computers, which isn't legal, but Apple does nothing technical to stop you. So yes they have an interest in stopping that. But they choose to not include Activation (which they specifically note in their marketing literature) for customer satisfaction reasons. You see, Apple is clawing its way up, and it is very important to them to make their customers happy; I'm sure if they were to get to the top they would act just like Microsoft does now. If that were to happen we shouldn't stand for that either.
Activation is an annoyance to legitimate customers with basic needs, it forces legitimate customers with advanced needs to commit a crime (a felony I believe) to use it, and does absolutely nothing to stop software pirates. Nice work pal!
Roll your eyes all you want, but the problems with Activation are twofold, one is it does nothing to stop most piracy, and thus is technically poor, and two, how many minor conveniences need to stack up before you people care.
Activation does very little to stop the vast majority of piracy. A 5 second Google search will give you a key generator that bypasses it all together. I'm absolutely sure that the guy in China puts the phone down, after being denied his new Activation key, and throws away the 100,000 copies of XP he just pressed in his garage. If you really want to do Activation, at least do it like iTunes does, allow you to unactivate a computer and reactivate it on another computer; why does MS care what computer it is on as long it is only on 1 computer. Technically speaking, activation is just lame.
Let's imagine that every piece of software you've bought followed Microsoft's lead: you reinstall your motherboard, or buy a computer, and you have to call the 27 different companies and ask for permission to please use the software license you've purchased on your new equipment; please, please, I'm not bad, I swear. Perhaps there will be "Software License Lawyers" in the future that will, for a fee, make your case to all of your vendors, why you should be able to use the product you bought on the hardware you want.
It truly amazes me what people put up with. Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X all don't have Activation; something to consider.
Add me to the list, I'm a Linux user who prefers OS X on the desktop. For servers, I use Linux all the way. In OS X I use the terminal as much as the GUI, and I use ports to install apps as much as I drag applications into my Application folder.
Yes, yes, and yes again; you are exactly right. People, time and again, choose cheap software over higher priced higher quality software. People refuse to pay for backups, for testing, and for high quality.
First off, comparing the costs of hiring a programmer to make software to be used by one person with commercial software that is used by millions is silly. Commercial software costs millions of dollars to write, and they sell it for a 100 dollars per person to millions of customers. Custom software costs thousands of dollars to write, and the developers charge thousands of dollars to their 1 customer.
Secondly, there is a common misconception that open source software is suppose to be directly modified by end users, and this is why it is so 'wonderful'. Open source software is beneficial because it allows many smaller developers to work together to produce a quality of software they couldn't possible produce on their own. The end users benefit indirectly from OSS, not directly.
If you like Firefox, Google, using the Internet (most web servers and such are OSS), OS X, and even Windows (which uses OSS code, such as the TCP/IP stack, from Free BSD), then thank OSS. All end users should do is use the best software for the best price for their particular needs. Let the developers worry about things like OSS. This way, wether OSS or commercial, the best bubbles to the top; which is as it should be.
Good idea, take one of the most successful languages of all time and force major changes to it, just so little Timmy can spend more time at "the Wal*Mart", buying WWF toys, rather than at school.
English's great success is due to its flexibility and its ability to integrate other languages. The downside is its obscure spelling.
I'm brushing up on my Cantonese, awaiting the new leaders of the world.
Actually your search is worse than random because the group you are searching for has the ability to avoid the search to a much higher degree than pure randomness.
For my clients, what you describe is mostly what they need, more and more bandwidth, more and more processing power. But for me, as small company, the servers, as they were, were over powered. I'd guess most small companies are like this, that is why so many Linux boxen are running on old 486s.
I wasn't interested in more power, as I think my current setup provides similar performance as the old setup. My goal was to move my servers to a virtualization environment for ease of backup, ease of maintenance, and ease of transferring my servers to new hardware. One of my servers was dying, the hard drive at least, so this was a good time.
I chose the laptop, well, because it was just plain cool, and worked great for my needs. Since my servers are now all setup under virtualization, when I do need more performance it will be easy as pie.
My backup situation is better now too. I suspend (whatever this is called in VWWare) the servers so that they aren't running, I copy the virtual machines over to another external drive, then I bring them back up. You can write a script for this, as VMWare supports scripting, which is very nice. I prefer to backup the whole machine, and because the drives are SATA, this is very fast.
As for running a bunch or processes on one machine, in Windows it is often better to run a separate OS for each server. Linux doesn't have this problem, obviously, but there are still advantages of using virtualization with Linux. Once VMWare runs OS X-On-Intel-Mac I'll be as happy as a kitten following a leaky cow.
I'm a developer, so my needs aren't as great as an admin's would be, but I'm very happy with my setup for my needs.
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around, that had a lot of memory and a 7200rpm 2.5" drive it it. I installed a SATA PCMCIA card and am running my virtual machines off of an external SATA enclosure and drive.
Now I know what you all are saying, but the X31 works great, and is plenty beefy for the 2 servers it is replacing (a Pentium III 500mhz and an AMD 1ghz). The great thing about it is, it is absolutely quiet, it has its own 12" screen, keyboard and mouse (track-pad), and it has a built in UPS system. I have it hooked up the the same UPS that was running the other 2 servers, so if the power goes out, this thing will probably run a week without power.
The SATA external drive is fast, so that isn't an issue, and since it is external I place the drive away from the computer and sight for safety.
VMWare Server is great, and I really appreciate the price (free). I'm currently using Virtual PC for my workstation virtualization (testing, different environments during development, etc), but since I'm so happy with VMWare Server, I'll be switching over to VMWare workstation on my next upgrade. If a client ever needs serious virtualization I'll recommend they give ESX server a try. I think VMWare giving away their basic server is a smart move for them.
The really nice thing about converting my physical servers to virtual ones is how portable they are now. I literally can suspend my 2 servers, disconnect my external SATA drive, move it to a beefy machine, connect it, and resume the 2 servers on the faster machine; that's slick.
Slashdot Mirror
"As for the mac users, isn't there a port of OpenOffice to that already?"
Yes, NeoOffice. It works well.
$50/year is for their PREMIUM service (10gb mailbox instead of 2, etc). The regular services is still free.
Um, how about everyone but Novell has called his bluff. What exactly are people suppose to do to "call his bluff"? He said that Linux violates Microsoft's patents, and the Linux vendors need to negotiate licensing. Not calling his bluff would be to quickly send over the lawyers to beg for licensing, by refusing to, everyone else is "calling his bluff".
And I believe right there it TFA it says Redhat is "not impressed".
Go ahead Ballmer, sue o-way, we're waiting. Heck I use that so called "patent infringing" evil OS Linux in my business, sue me.
I agree 100%, I don't understand this slave mentality we have these days. Employers treat their employees like children and, of course, people live up to expectations and act like children.
My rules for employees are simple, do your job well, or I will fire you. The rest I don't care about. I'm not paying to have a pet around that only does what I say while attached to a leash. I'm hiring someone to do a job, a job they are agreeing to do.
Employees are just vendors that are permanent (for a period of time) and exclusive. But they are vendors, vendors of work. If I don't like the work, I'll replace them with another vendor if a better one exists.
This is how a free market works, it's sad that this basic concept of American life left so long ago. In 1900 most people owned their own business and had a stake in the community. Now-a-days, we are just a number of micro-communist-nations, I.E, large corporations. I just don't get it.
If the management doesn't know if employees are doing their jobs then I'd find new managers.
Unless you have special needs, like government mandated privacy laws, such as medical databases, what does it matter if employees spend all day on IM or EBay or Gmail. If they aren't doing their job, fire them, if they are, then let them continue; how they choose to do their job is up to them, they aren't children or pets.
Oh, how did we get along for 100s of years without employers monitoring everything an employee does. The founding fathers and mothers wouldn't be happy with how we turned out, we became what they fought so hard against.
Wow, I feel better now, thanks for listening.
Note: The name "Viska" is an attempt by Microsoft, via clever obfuscation, to ward off the pending patent litigation.
2007 is the year of Linux. Vista sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
But seriously, Viska sucks so hard Hoover Inc. sued for patent infringement.
Pico is a good Windows User detector, I just wish it had an editor.
60,000 downloads of Ruby for Windows last month on RubyForge says someone is getting it to work on Windows. What does that mean "work effectively"?
.net to Linux and OS X any day now.
I highly doubt a Window-centric Corporation would retrained all thier developers, and switch to an open source laungauge that isn't supported by Microsoft only if it had "better support". I call shanigans. Ruby is making inroads in PHP, Perl, and Python shops; I woudln't hold my breath for Windows shops. I have many clients like this, they rarely even know about anything that isn't made by Microsoft, much less consider it.
World's most popular OS, perhaps you are limiting that to desktops?
Oh, and I'm sure Microsoft going to port
12 years old (December 21st, 1995) but who's counting a few years.
First off, the parent of my post said that the Windows port wasn't as fast as Linux and should be supported and worked on more. Ruby supports Windows just fine thank you.
Second, Ruby has had an interesting history. It was basically unknown in the west until Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first book in English in 2000. At that time, the language started to take off, and only in the last few years has development really ramped up. So technically it is 12 years old, but in reality it is a very new language.
Unless you have Microsoft (.net) or Sun (Java) putting a huge amount of resources into development, languages take a long time to fully bake. This is normal, expected, and desired.
Choose to use Windows for development... heh, you almost had me there, nicely done.
I think this is just because of the age of the language, as the same was true for Perl and others when they were young.
.net, because frankly, why else would you be using Windows as a web-server? (Serious question)
Most servers are going to be running a *nix, and the primary domain of scripting languages is the command line and the server. If someone is running Windows as a web-server, they most likely will be using
As Ruby matures, so will things like performance and secondary OS support. JRuby and Ruby.net will solve this problem too.
Currently, I find, a lot of developers of Ruby and Ruby on Rails run under Linux or OS X. Many of the questions on the Ruby forums from Windows users are things like "Why does it run in DOS", "Can you make apps like I can in VB, what is Ruby good for?". I don't know but I'm guessing those people are going to give up on Ruby, and probably would never consider Perl or Python either.
Minor note, Ruby on Rails is the web development flavor of the month, not ruby. There are a lot of interesting things happening in plain ole ruby, plus there are other web frameworks than Ruby on Rails, such as Nitro, Camping, etc.
I find it amusing someone would say learn Python because it's used more. Python may be older, but it's still sitting in the programming language high chair right next to Ruby. People say the same thing about Python; "if you want a job learn Java, c#, c++"; and you know what they're right, if you want a job learn Java, period.
I like both Ruby and Python, and I think a programmer would do well to learn one or both. They aren't as popular yet, like Java or c#, but I think they will be. And if you understand the concepts in one, you'll understand the other. Like Gretzky said, "I skate where the puck is going to be, not where it is"; good advice.
I prefer Ruby, but that is just a preference.
Please explain to me why you have to "install" an application? What is the purpose exactly, how is an application any different than a text file? I'll write an install script to give to my users to install Foo.txt in their Documents folder; that's basically the same thing.
I guess I'm old, but I remember when if you wanted to run an application, you copied it to wherever you liked, and ran it. Then along came Windows with their brilliant ActiveX controls, registry, and DLL hell; you had to write a special application to "install" an app, because the process became so complicated that no users could be expected to figure it out. Installers are a bandaid on the real problem.
In OS X, it isn't "drag the app into the Applications folder" to install it. It is "put the app wherever you darn well please, and run it". You can also have 2 copies of the same app, but different versions, next to each other; they run fine because they aren't "installed". Heck, you can even run the app from the compressed DMG file if you want, OS X doesn't stop you.
App bundles are the way to go for GUI apps, and Linux should follow this approach. For command line tools, and libraries, OS X works the same as *nix, it uses either Fink, Ports, or you compile them yourself; I think this works well in OS X, Linux, and BSD.
As for uninstalling, don't even get me started; uninstalling? WTF
What you aren't understanding is: it isn't the concept of asking for permission when you need to do something that requires administrator rights, that Microsoft got right, it's the way they implemented this feature that is so bad. Microsoft often gets the general ideas right, but the details are so wrong.
Higher up in the thread someone mentions what happens when you copy a file to a folder in Program Files. Because Program Files folders are protected you need elevated permissions to do that. The right thing to do is say that it requires elevated permissions, ask if you want to do it, then do it. But in some cases it asks you 3 times for one file (do you want to copy, do you want to elevate, do you want to overwrite, do you want to be admin, do you need help with writing your letter). Why can't they give you one box that says, "The file already exists and this copy requires administrator rights, do you want to allow this?", then when you say OK, you are done. Why, why, why can't they do this, are they short of money?
And Mac and Linux do exactly the same thing, they ask your permission to do admin tasks, except they got the details right so they don't irritate the user to death. A guarantee people are just going to shut off UAC because it's annoying, defeating the whole purpose.
"They can port Office to Apple, Linux, heck, Solaris if they wanted to...."
Yeah, that would be great if they would just port Office to Apple. I'd probably get a Mac if they did that. Oh and if Macs could read my PC floppy discs, and use my two button mouse, and my LCD monitor. I wish Macs could do all that; dare to dream.
The bulk of programmers are programming in Java, for which the IDEs are identical, because most of them run on OS X as well as Windows (Eclipse, NetBeans, Idea).
All the open source editors people love, such as EMacs, VI, etc. run exactly the same in OS X as they do in Linux or FreeBSD. Without using some hack like Cygwin. OS X has the same compiler too, gcc, as it uses it itself for compiling.
OS X has my very favorite editor TextMate, which I miss very much when I'm on Windows.
XCode is used mainly for Objective-C and Cocoa work. I've used it some, it's fine, but not awesome. How is Visual Studio for Cocoa development?
As for Visual Studio being all that; I use it a lot when doing c# work, and it is hardly all that, and it is hardly ahead of other IDEs like Eclipse or my favorite Java IDE, IntelliJ IDEA (which had re-factoring and such years before Microsoft "invented" it in Visual Studio 2005).
Yes, if you are programming in Visual Basic.net OS X sucks, well, because you can't program Visual Basic in OS X. But if you are programming in any non-Microsoft controlled language the tools in OS X are exactly the same, or better (TextMate baby), as they are in any other platform.
I disagree. I don't think that just because you excel at programming, doesn't mean you can't excel at design, whether that be UI design, or logo design.
The real problem is most programmers have absolutely no training or education in design. It's just as silly to expect a programmer to know how to produce a good design without any design skills, as it is to expect a graphic artist, because they are good with a computer, to be able to program Photoshop.
I've been a programmer for 10 years, and I also study design. When I talk to many programmers, they aren't familiar with the most basic rules of design (ones they would learn on the first day of any design class).
I think programming is both a craft and an art, and a majority of programmers I know are also musicians (I'm not, my artistic interests lay in the visual arts). So I don't think these skills are mutually exclusive.
Having said all that, I do think there are different levels of programmers; I think I'm a pretty good programmer, but I won't be programming a compiler or a kernel anytime soon. The type people who are attracted to that type of programming are probably the people who are least interested in design (generalization of course). Those are also the types who are most attracted to Linux, to get back on topic, so Linux's UI is a reflection of this. OS X is the exact opposite as it attracts the artistic engineers.
But perhaps I'm just an oddity, as I love the command line, Linux, and OS X; go figure.
MS gets away with it because people don't complain with either their mouths or with their wallets. 10 years ago, no company would even try such a thing because the users would simply not buy the software. Actually some companies did use various copy protection schemes, but eventually they all stopped to satisfy their customers. MS has, basically, a monopoly on the desktop now; satisfying customers has never been a high priority on a monopolist's lists of things to care about.
Yes, you are right on the OEM license issue. I was responding to your eye rolling on how activation is a "minor" inconvenience.
Yes, Linux and BSD are FOSS, and thus why there is no Activation. I was noting a fact that they don't have Activation, and it is something to consider when deciding on an OS.
As for OS X, no you can't buy a Mac without OS X installed. But you can buy the latest version and install it on your 10 computers, which isn't legal, but Apple does nothing technical to stop you. So yes they have an interest in stopping that. But they choose to not include Activation (which they specifically note in their marketing literature) for customer satisfaction reasons. You see, Apple is clawing its way up, and it is very important to them to make their customers happy; I'm sure if they were to get to the top they would act just like Microsoft does now. If that were to happen we shouldn't stand for that either.
Activation is an annoyance to legitimate customers with basic needs, it forces legitimate customers with advanced needs to commit a crime (a felony I believe) to use it, and does absolutely nothing to stop software pirates. Nice work pal!
Roll your eyes all you want, but the problems with Activation are twofold, one is it does nothing to stop most piracy, and thus is technically poor, and two, how many minor conveniences need to stack up before you people care.
Activation does very little to stop the vast majority of piracy. A 5 second Google search will give you a key generator that bypasses it all together. I'm absolutely sure that the guy in China puts the phone down, after being denied his new Activation key, and throws away the 100,000 copies of XP he just pressed in his garage. If you really want to do Activation, at least do it like iTunes does, allow you to unactivate a computer and reactivate it on another computer; why does MS care what computer it is on as long it is only on 1 computer. Technically speaking, activation is just lame.
Let's imagine that every piece of software you've bought followed Microsoft's lead: you reinstall your motherboard, or buy a computer, and you have to call the 27 different companies and ask for permission to please use the software license you've purchased on your new equipment; please, please, I'm not bad, I swear. Perhaps there will be "Software License Lawyers" in the future that will, for a fee, make your case to all of your vendors, why you should be able to use the product you bought on the hardware you want.
It truly amazes me what people put up with. Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X all don't have Activation; something to consider.
Add me to the list, I'm a Linux user who prefers OS X on the desktop. For servers, I use Linux all the way. In OS X I use the terminal as much as the GUI, and I use ports to install apps as much as I drag applications into my Application folder.
Yes, yes, and yes again; you are exactly right. People, time and again, choose cheap software over higher priced higher quality software. People refuse to pay for backups, for testing, and for high quality.
People get the software they deserve.
First off, comparing the costs of hiring a programmer to make software to be used by one person with commercial software that is used by millions is silly. Commercial software costs millions of dollars to write, and they sell it for a 100 dollars per person to millions of customers. Custom software costs thousands of dollars to write, and the developers charge thousands of dollars to their 1 customer.
Secondly, there is a common misconception that open source software is suppose to be directly modified by end users, and this is why it is so 'wonderful'. Open source software is beneficial because it allows many smaller developers to work together to produce a quality of software they couldn't possible produce on their own. The end users benefit indirectly from OSS, not directly.
If you like Firefox, Google, using the Internet (most web servers and such are OSS), OS X, and even Windows (which uses OSS code, such as the TCP/IP stack, from Free BSD), then thank OSS. All end users should do is use the best software for the best price for their particular needs. Let the developers worry about things like OSS. This way, wether OSS or commercial, the best bubbles to the top; which is as it should be.
Good idea, take one of the most successful languages of all time and force major changes to it, just so little Timmy can spend more time at "the Wal*Mart", buying WWF toys, rather than at school.
English's great success is due to its flexibility and its ability to integrate other languages. The downside is its obscure spelling.
I'm brushing up on my Cantonese, awaiting the new leaders of the world.
" making your search no better than random."
Actually your search is worse than random because the group you are searching for has the ability to avoid the search to a much higher degree than pure randomness.
For my clients, what you describe is mostly what they need, more and more bandwidth, more and more processing power. But for me, as small company, the servers, as they were, were over powered. I'd guess most small companies are like this, that is why so many Linux boxen are running on old 486s.
I wasn't interested in more power, as I think my current setup provides similar performance as the old setup. My goal was to move my servers to a virtualization environment for ease of backup, ease of maintenance, and ease of transferring my servers to new hardware. One of my servers was dying, the hard drive at least, so this was a good time.
I chose the laptop, well, because it was just plain cool, and worked great for my needs. Since my servers are now all setup under virtualization, when I do need more performance it will be easy as pie.
My backup situation is better now too. I suspend (whatever this is called in VWWare) the servers so that they aren't running, I copy the virtual machines over to another external drive, then I bring them back up. You can write a script for this, as VMWare supports scripting, which is very nice. I prefer to backup the whole machine, and because the drives are SATA, this is very fast.
As for running a bunch or processes on one machine, in Windows it is often better to run a separate OS for each server. Linux doesn't have this problem, obviously, but there are still advantages of using virtualization with Linux. Once VMWare runs OS X-On-Intel-Mac I'll be as happy as a kitten following a leaky cow.
I'm a developer, so my needs aren't as great as an admin's would be, but I'm very happy with my setup for my needs.
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around, that had a lot of memory and a 7200rpm 2.5" drive it it. I installed a SATA PCMCIA card and am running my virtual machines off of an external SATA enclosure and drive.
Now I know what you all are saying, but the X31 works great, and is plenty beefy for the 2 servers it is replacing (a Pentium III 500mhz and an AMD 1ghz). The great thing about it is, it is absolutely quiet, it has its own 12" screen, keyboard and mouse (track-pad), and it has a built in UPS system. I have it hooked up the the same UPS that was running the other 2 servers, so if the power goes out, this thing will probably run a week without power.
The SATA external drive is fast, so that isn't an issue, and since it is external I place the drive away from the computer and sight for safety.
VMWare Server is great, and I really appreciate the price (free). I'm currently using Virtual PC for my workstation virtualization (testing, different environments during development, etc), but since I'm so happy with VMWare Server, I'll be switching over to VMWare workstation on my next upgrade. If a client ever needs serious virtualization I'll recommend they give ESX server a try. I think VMWare giving away their basic server is a smart move for them.
The really nice thing about converting my physical servers to virtual ones is how portable they are now. I literally can suspend my 2 servers, disconnect my external SATA drive, move it to a beefy machine, connect it, and resume the 2 servers on the faster machine; that's slick.