We're starting to see Tim Horton's in the US, specifically Ohio.
I was first introduced to Tim Horton's in Vancouver BC a few years back while I was working a project up there. Good Coffee (I'll probably get flamed by Coffee Shop denizens for this). From my observation, Tim Horton's, and Donut shops in general, are not as common in BC as I'm hearing about here.
Oh, by the way, Wendy's International (a US company) "merged" with Tim Horton's last year. Wendy's being much the larger of the two makes Tim Horton's an American Donut Shop as much as anything.
I'm just pointing this out to tweak the Canadians. American companies operating in Canada do silly things like integrating a maple leaf (McDonald's and Pizza Hut are examples) into their signs in an attempt to calm Canadian fears about having their commerce dominated by American (US) business.
It's funny. Mexicans who I've known will point out that they are, in fact, Americans, Mexico being in North America. Canadians I've known have no problem whatsoever with the identification of people from the US being 'Americans'.
Open-source would be nice but not required. Money is not an issue. What's important to me is: it's UNIX native - not NT native and ported with one of those bloated NT-to-UNIX layers - and its data formats are *open*, *readable* and *programmable* - whether it sits in files or a database.
From what I've seen, Oracle products on UNIX fit the bill here. Note that he says that "Money is not an issue."
*open* doesn't mean Open Sourced. Oracle products are definitely programmable, and readable, if that means the data is conveniently manipulated.
As to Larry Ellison being a Billionaire. Oracle sells in a competitive database market. Ellison is rich because their product is good. Is there some requirement to hate those who are successful?
I don't know much about OLAP. I do know that Oracle is in that market, their products are reasonably "Open" and programmable and they claim to integrate well with the Web. I believe they've committed to porting their entire product line to Linux as well, but they have it all on numerous flavors of Unix today.
So, we notice that women and men are different with regards to certain proclivities that are often associated with "geekiness". Yes, you can observe some statistical facts surrounding women and men and their representation in the "geek" population.
And, where do we go from here?
I'm concerned that this question is asked for either political reasons or because some male geek is lonely and frustrated that there just doesn't seem to be enough women geeks out there who can understand and appreciate him.
Neither of these reasons for asking is worthy of an answer.
Debating this question on Slashdot would likely lend credence to stereotypes. We don't really want to address some problem here. Mostly, I'm concerned that we want support for our biases.
If someone was seriously asking these questions and was prepared to do some serious cognitive studies that would actually add to human understanding, I might feel differently.
If you are a lonely and frustrated person and feel you are underappreciated by women, don't get involved in too much self-pity. Men have had this problem for as long as there have been women. Recognize that it may be you who needs to understand the women around you better in order to get closer to them. I've known a lot of men who are difficult to get to know and then complain that nobody will befriend them. A lot of it's an act out of fear of interaction and failure. Get over it. One of the reasons that geekiness is sometimes associated with Autism is that geeks can be self-absorbed, petty children who want the world to turn around them. I would recommend that you take steps to fight this stereotype and to make sure that you do not become a real life representation of 'Autistic' behavior.
What's being recommended here is really not much different from Slashdot moderation, but it applies to subject matter that's not "News for Nerds", in other words, stuff that doesn't matter.
It would have to be an AI as no people have the time or patience to sort through all the garbage, right?
Or do they?
Don't all the myriad "portal" sites do exactly this, except they use Human Intelligence rather than Artificial Intelligence.
Perhaps it can be argued that commercial portal sites are more likely to try to sell us some of the garp we're trying to avoid by going to a portal. (Has anyone seen what's happened to Deja(news) lately? It's hardly recognizable. Almost no mention of discussion groups or News at all!)
That being the case, perhaps there is a place in this Wide World of Web for a 'Public Service' portal. A portal that helps us find things we need, but without any advertising or other (investor) types of issues. Kind of like NPR for the Internet. Well, like NPR used to be before they started running all those ads that start "This program is made possible by...".
I find it Ironic that Katz, while arguing for a filter that would make his web experience both enlightening and convenient, failed to avail himself of that fine HTML feature of providing a link to a URL.
Here's an extract from the article that I've edited for your clicking convenience.
In his recent essay in Netfut ure No. 94, Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale.
Its all about the applications. If I don't have anything to run on the cluster, it is useless.
It's ironic to hear an opinion like this on Slashdot. If the application is Open Source or Java, it runs on OpenVMS just fine.
There is often some porting effort required with Open Sources onto OpenVMS, but it's not bad and it's getting better all the time. DEC/Compaq have greatly improved the C compiler and libraries such that most Unix C sources just compile and run. Configuration scripts in sh or bash can be a problem, but someone has ported bash to run on OpenVMS now, so maybe that will be less of a problem in the future.
Perl builds out-of-the-box (latest.tar.gz) on OpenVMS, so there's the ever-increasing catalog of Perl applications available.
Apache was recently ported. There are also a number of excellent 'native' web servers to choose from on OpenVMS. The most popular is the OSU (Ohio State University) HTTPD. It's been running multi-threaded (Posix Threads) since 1994. At one time, it was probably the most popular multi-threaded web server in the world, although that honor probably goes to multi-threaded Apache or IIS now.
There's a Python port that I believe is pretty up-to-date, but I don't know much about this.
Compaq has the first (and only today?) 64-bit implementations of Java, for Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS. See here for information. So, the Java catalog of apps will be available with world-beating Alpha performance.
There's a team forming now to port the server part of Star Office to OpenVMS. So, OpenVMS may be a fine platform for Office apps soon.
Oracle runs on OpenVMS. So, if you need that world-beating clustering for a DB Server, you can run Oracle.
I apologize to Slashdot readers for filling up this discussion with what seems like OpenVMS marketing. Although I do work for Compaq, I'm far from holding any marketing position. I'm just a happy user and consultant on OpenVMS systems.
I suspect that this 'Anonymous Coward' is someone who works for one of the Unix vendors that seem to want to spread FUD about OpenVMS in good Holloween Document style.
Read the Holloween Documents. One of Microsoft's concerns is that they can't attack Linux with FUD regarding the future of it as a platform, as they can any other vendor's products. Standard FUD from Microsoft is to make people believe that only MS products will survive in the long term and have good application support. I've seen a number of examples of people who work for a certain Unix vendor who have been trying to spread the same kind of FUD against OpenVMS lately. This particular FUD is just not true and in the Open Source or thin-client world of the future, it's largely irrelevant anyway.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Compaq. No, I don't speak for Compaq.
I'll check out my local CompUSA. I hadn't seen FreeBSD there before, but I hadn't been looking for it.
Is this just a shrink wrapped copy of the CDs from Walnut Creek or something? Or is somebody supporting a FreeBSD shrink-wrapped release as Red Hat and others support their releases of Linux. Is there, for example, installation support on the phone?
If not, it sure seems like someone is missing a business opportunity. Seems like BSDI could get into this business rather easily, although they'd have to recognize that it competes with their current offerings. Still, they are probably best able to really support FreeBSD. If they don't do it, someone else may eventually get a head start in this market and compete with them and that wouldn't be good for BSD/OS. If *BSD doesn't start getting some serious mindshare and shelfspace, it may end up so marginalized by Linux that it would become to Free Operating Systems what OS/2 became to PC Operating Systems.
One thing you said that I have to take issue with is:
For example: micros~1 gave away IE, but in the store people paid top dollar for it.
Boy, I don't remember people paying top dollar for IE in stores. In fact, I remember it being a giveaway in bundles, mostly. Like, buy FrontPage and get IE for free. I recall a lot of stores selling IE for like $9.95 with a rebate offer of $9.95 (Free after Rebate!).
I always had the impression that Micros~1 was selling IE in stores so they could claim that they weren't really giving it away just to destroy NetScape. I could be wrong.
Also here you can test drive an OpenVMS Galaxy system.
This is the newest encarnation of the world-beating clustering technology that everybody is trying to copy. Shared everything, multiple OS instances in the same box, dynamically reassignable memory/CPU between instances, seemless clustering. Read the Galaxy overview here. VMS has been doing clustering since 1985 better than any Unix does it today and it's improved a lot since then. Yet somehow, OpenVMS gets the rap as being outmoded.
Disclosure statement: Yes, I am a Compaq employee. No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.
Microsoft just came out of, what they really felt, was the fight of their lives against Netscape. I think Microsoft won.
When all you had to do to win was make a better browser, they could gear up for that. Remember that the word is that they spent more on developing IE than they spent on Windows 95.
The fight against Linux is far more complicated.
Microsoft has realized that an important beach head onto the desktop for Linux will be games. If the average user sees that hot games run and run well on Linux, and you don't have to be a geek to play them, then this user is going to start thinking that he can use Linux for just about anything. Microsoft is doing useability studies on Linux games to determine how to win this battle.
But, unlike with Netscape, where they only had to win the browser battle, now they have to win against Linux Servers, Linux Office Suites and now, Linux games.
I liken the battle of Microsoft vs. Netscape to the early Cold War when the US and USSR were just competing by building Nuclear Weapons. The USSR could compete. The battle of Microsoft vs. Linux is like the late Cold War. When the USSR had to compete on a whole lot of technology fronts in the late '80s, they folded.
At one time there was some talk of AMD making Alpha chips for DEC/Compaq. Did that go anywhere?
That probably went nowhere because the DEC Hudson plant was never more than 30% (? seems like I heard this number) utilized. This utilization included the many StrongArms made there.
9/23/99 - LinuxOne has created a great deal of excitement in the Linux community with the announcement of its IPO. A Feature Story at slashdot.net and supportive opinions posted on LinuxToday.com give credence to the fact that LinuxOne is a Linux Company with a whole new business model.
Well, that covers the shell, but how about XFree? Also, I've found the MS-included telnet to be just about the worst implementation I've ever seen. I've found the free Tera Term to be quite acceptable. Tera Term seems to support most VT emulations well, works as a straight terminal emulator over the Com ports, supports huge scroll buffers, alternate screen geometries well and has a good scripting language. It even includes source, but it's copyrighted, not lefted.
Free is a big win for me. I keep the distribution Zip (943KB) in my breifcase so that I can install it on any machine that I happen to have to use at the moment. As a consultant, you never know what PC I'll have to use next. Sometimes it's more convenient to use a customers' desktop than my laptop. Even a tiny shareware payment is too much for me to keep track of. If NTCrt (Van Dyke) had a personal use license, that would allow me to use it on as many machines as I want, as long as it was me using it (requiring uninstallation if I used it on a customers machine), I might consider NTCrt.
Anybody have experience with any other source-available or Open Sourced Telnet/terminal emulators for Windows?
I keep hearing so much about how Americans are doing so well, how strong our economy is, how much everybody has. Why then, is greed becoming the defining trait of our culture? Are not Bill Gates' tens of billions enough? I kid you not, we as a culture and as a country are headed down a very ugly road; should we persist, we most certainly will get what we deserve.
Well said. And, it's all being done under the cover of the Clinton Whitehouse.
People had better wake up out there. Just because Bill "feels your pain" doesn't mean that he and the rest of the Democrats and Republicans are not selling you out BIG time.
This decade makes the Reagan '80s look like the Flower Power '60s with regard to serving big interests and greed.
Here's one of many examples. Big Mergers. You hear that the '80s was the decade of the Big Merger. What's happened in the '90s?
Biggest 3 (!) Oil Mergers - Exxon/Mobil, BP/Amoco, Shell US/Texaco 'downstream merger, everything but exploration'. This last one was totally stealth, not 1 in 1000 people know, I would bet, that the Shell or Texaco station on the corner now belongs to a holding company made up of Shell/Texaco/Saudi Aramco (SA, east of the Mississippi only).
Biggest Telecom Merger - MCI/WorldComm
Biggest Auto Merger - Daimler/Chrysler
Biggest Media Merger - CBS/Viacom. This last one was totally covered over by the Media we hope will protect us. The reason? The Media bosses want the right to merge as they see fit. Did anyone catch the CBS/Viacom execs press conference about the merger? They bragged that there was no organization like them, big enough to compete with them and that the new company would be unassailable. Isn't this exactly why we have anti-trust legislation? To prevent the unassailably large organization?
Biggest Financials merger - Citibank/Travelers - this one is unbelievable as well. It is illegal under the Banking Act of 1932 for a Bank to be in Insurance like this. The Justice Dept. is turning a blind eye to it while Citibank/Travelers work to get the law changed.
Now, under more Media cover, the extension of Intellectual Property Rights.
There's absolutely no need for this. Read the Constitution. Intellectual Property law is not about ensuring 'fairness' to those who create IP, it's about encouraging the creation of new IP. Databases are being built at an all time record rate and we need legislation to encourage their production? I would like to see the contribution record for all of those supporting this legislation with regard to those who would benefit from it (big Media, corporations that compile databases, research firms, etc.).
Every move that Sun makes that seems to be, on the surface, pro-Linux that is carried on Slashdot has been questioned here by Slashdot contributors as being not so much Pro-Linux as it is Anti-Microsoft.
It's not a bad article, don't get me wrong, but for Slashdot readers it's should be marked down as Redundant.
I hate giving ZD-Net credit for being insightful with opinions that we've seen on Slashdot for a long time.
It may be too little too late, but thank God we have avenues like Slashdot and Technocrat.net to alert us of this kind of thing.
Don't expect the media to raise any issues at all with this law. Media companies will benefit BIG time from such a law. They'll be able to compile all of those polls they're always running into databases and then copyright them. They'll be the first one's to commercialize the use of copyrighted on-line databases.
Copyrights are there not to ensure 'fairness'. They are there to encourage creation of intellectual property. Check the Constititution, not that Media considers THAT relevant anymore.
I haven't seen a lack of data collection/database creation under the present system. This is legislation that probably protects only campaign contributors.
Speaking of campaign contributors, if someone puts together campaign contribution databases will I be allowed to point out that Senators X, Y and Z and Congressmen A, B, C, D, (not E or F) and G got fat contributions and then supported some legislation? A case could certainly be made that I used their database and violated their copyright here.
I also believe the example of someone's book that was photocopied and placed on the Web to be bogus. It doesn't raise to the level of specious because nobody who knows ANYTHING about copyrights would believe that this is a problem. Of course the original author of a book is protected against it being published on the Web without permission. That's exactly what copyright protects.
They are attempting to extend copyright to every fact in a collection of facts. Very scary.
The theme of the contest is not betrayal in a man vs. machine story, but rather just betrayal. You can leave out the man vs. machine angle. You see, you'll be competing against a machine that will be writing a story. Or, is this your attempt to throw the readers off track? Write a betrayal story from a machines perspective so everybody thinks this is the story written by the machine.
Intriguing angle, but really, everyone will instantly recognize your style. It's so mechanical.
I would like to compile a list of the companies forbiding the use of OSS. It would be fun to create a "Open Source Users" stock index, and a coresponding "Open Source Refusers" index." It would be interesting to know which companies actively promote Open Source as these might be good places for those OSS Coders who are currently looking for day jobs. What do you all think?
From what we're hearing in this thread most companies will allow OSS to be used. Is this what is meant by "actively promote Open Source"?
It seems like there are several overlapping types of "active promotion" that would be possible.
An organization tolerates the use of OSS. From what we're hearing, this is most organizations.
An organization actively encourages OSS to be used. Such an organization would have a statement of policy which encourages and fosters OSS use and development. This would be similar to what the Clinton Administration has just announced (This link is the Slashdot story that references a story in Federal Times Online, the "topstory.html" link at Federal Times Online that it refers to has changed and this story doesn't seem to be referenced in their on-line archives. Is this story still on-line anywhere? I couldn't connect to whitehouse.gov this morning to check there).
An organization not only encourages OSS, but releases software that they have developed as Open Source, or perhaps unencumbered Freeware that could be re-released as Open Source when modified by the Open Source Community. There are many examples of companies like this, IBM, SGI and Cygnus come to mind immediately, but there are certainly a lot of others. There are many issues related to almost-Open Source releases, software essentially Free-to-use and modify, but you don't have the same license on the modified software that you had on the original. This is the model with Sun/Star Office/SCSL. I'm not sure if this is "active promotion" of OSS, but it's in some ways supportive of the goals of OSS.
Organizations that release only Open Source. These are relatively rare. The Linux distribution vendors (RedHat, SuSe, et al) are examples. The FSF is the archetype.
If you wanted to promote OSS through investment funds or boycotts, you would have a lot of different things to consider.
Some seem to believe that OSS is not only the most socially conscientious, but also the best business model. The idea is that a company that releases only OSS is going to be the best able to support it and will be the best able to take advantage of any community modifications that are made. Such a company gets the best software to sell, and has to keep sharp in it's support and updates or it can be overtaken by others with the same business model. At this time, this would be a somewhat speculative investment, I think, as it's largely untested as a business model.
I note Cygnus seemed to have has as their original business model to only support OSS, but lately they have been making Closed Source releases. This may be saying that Cygnus has determined that supporting OSS only is not a good business model, or it may just have been due to insecurity in Cygnus' management with the business model. I'd sure like to hear something from "the Open Source leader" (which is what Cygnus calls themselves) about this. Of course, if Cygnus learned this through market research, they may not be willing to share their analysis with potential competitors.
A different case can be made for investing in only those companies that allow or even actively encourage the use and release of OSS. This is a risk-adverse investment policy based on the observation that if an organization is unwilling to take advantage of the great store of value in OSS, then they will not compete as well.
Similarly, an OSS coder may have a difficult time finding employment at the "purist" OSS supporting organizations - those that only develop OSS software - the FSF and Linux distribution vendors only have so many jobs available, after all. Perhaps in the future, there will be more such options. Today, such a coder may wish to set their standard at no "OSS forbidding companies" (of course), or somewhere between this and the "pure" OSS supporting organization.
This brings up another potential competitive advantage to a "pure" OSS supporting organization. They might have more qualified applicants.
Re:How to succeed at bashing without really trying
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Must you look for negative comments where there aren't any?
Hmmm... Why do I do this?
I dunno. It beats the quality out of me.
How to succeed at bashing without really trying
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FreeBSD 3.3 Released
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I'm not an experienced Linux user. In fact, I have a lot more time invested in BSD derived systems than I do Linux, primarily SunOS 4 and Dec Ultrix. I do know what you mean about the file heirarchies on Linux vs. BSD systems.
That being said, I have to take issue with your post. It's tone and the clear implications you are making.
I really hate it when people are disingenous. It's a form of dishonesty, and it's one of the most difficult to really call someone on because they invariably fall back on a hurt tone saying something like "Oh, there, there, you took it the wrong way. Well, I'm sorry that I stepped on your rather delicate sensitivities".
In your case, you claim to be
...,not trying to bash, just trying to answer your questions/address your comments. So please take it as such.
But then, when you've read what you've said, saying that Linux users have "a lack of regard for orderly filesystems and directory heirarchies" and saying that you've "had the Linux beat out" of you. Now, what is it that is normally beat out of someone? Are you saying, in your not-so-clever way that Linux is equivalent to that thing that normally fills in the sentence "I had the ____ beat out of me."?
I don't mind people having strong opinions. Particularly well founded ones that are backed up by experience. What I have a problem with is someone who uses innuendo and outright insults and then claims to be "not trying to bash".
It's pretty clear to me from what I read here that there are a lot of people in the "Linux community" that want to learn what they can from the *BSD community. Sure, there's the odd, "Linux rulez, BSD dr00lz." post here, but by and large, there people on/. have been very receptive to positive BSD news. I get the strong impression from the *BSD zealots that they feel that they have little or nothing to learn from the Linux Community. You yourself say that "...we like Linux. It provides lots of good press for free OSes in general as well as commercial software support." Is that the best thing you can say about Linux, that it has a good mindshare?
In the future, I would appreciate it if, when you're bashing, do it and say you are. If you're not bashing, try to take care not to say things that are most easily interpreted "the wrong way".
Well, if this is trickier than people have made it out to be here. I'd like to hear about it.
With all the application vendors enthusiastically supporting Linux, a *BSD with a Linux "personality" might be a marketable thing.
Of course, cultural differences might make this difficult. *BSD supporters might prefer a Linux with a *BSD "personality", or perhaps they would prefer no Linux at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I was first introduced to Tim Horton's in Vancouver BC a few years back while I was working a project up there. Good Coffee (I'll probably get flamed by Coffee Shop denizens for this). From my observation, Tim Horton's, and Donut shops in general, are not as common in BC as I'm hearing about here.
Oh, by the way, Wendy's International (a US company) "merged" with Tim Horton's last year. Wendy's being much the larger of the two makes Tim Horton's an American Donut Shop as much as anything.
I'm just pointing this out to tweak the Canadians. American companies operating in Canada do silly things like integrating a maple leaf (McDonald's and Pizza Hut are examples) into their signs in an attempt to calm Canadian fears about having their commerce dominated by American (US) business.
It's funny. Mexicans who I've known will point out that they are, in fact, Americans, Mexico being in North America. Canadians I've known have no problem whatsoever with the identification of people from the US being 'Americans'.
The original poster asked for:
Open-source would be nice but not required. Money is not an issue. What's important to me is: it's UNIX native - not NT native and ported with one of those bloated NT-to-UNIX layers - and its data formats are *open*, *readable* and *programmable* - whether it sits in files or a database.
From what I've seen, Oracle products on UNIX fit the bill here. Note that he says that "Money is not an issue."
*open* doesn't mean Open Sourced. Oracle products are definitely programmable, and readable, if that means the data is conveniently manipulated.
As to Larry Ellison being a Billionaire. Oracle sells in a competitive database market. Ellison is rich because their product is good. Is there some requirement to hate those who are successful?
Check out this link at Oracle's web site
And, where do we go from here?
I'm concerned that this question is asked for either political reasons or because some male geek is lonely and frustrated that there just doesn't seem to be enough women geeks out there who can understand and appreciate him.
Neither of these reasons for asking is worthy of an answer.
Debating this question on Slashdot would likely lend credence to stereotypes. We don't really want to address some problem here. Mostly, I'm concerned that we want support for our biases.
If someone was seriously asking these questions and was prepared to do some serious cognitive studies that would actually add to human understanding, I might feel differently.
If you are a lonely and frustrated person and feel you are underappreciated by women, don't get involved in too much self-pity. Men have had this problem for as long as there have been women. Recognize that it may be you who needs to understand the women around you better in order to get closer to them. I've known a lot of men who are difficult to get to know and then complain that nobody will befriend them. A lot of it's an act out of fear of interaction and failure. Get over it. One of the reasons that geekiness is sometimes associated with Autism is that geeks can be self-absorbed, petty children who want the world to turn around them. I would recommend that you take steps to fight this stereotype and to make sure that you do not become a real life representation of 'Autistic' behavior.
Excuse me?
I'm interested in hearing your example of an innovative company.
It would have to be an AI as no people have the time or patience to sort through all the garbage, right?
Or do they?
Don't all the myriad "portal" sites do exactly this, except they use Human Intelligence rather than Artificial Intelligence.
Perhaps it can be argued that commercial portal sites are more likely to try to sell us some of the garp we're trying to avoid by going to a portal. (Has anyone seen what's happened to Deja(news) lately? It's hardly recognizable. Almost no mention of discussion groups or News at all!)
That being the case, perhaps there is a place in this Wide World of Web for a 'Public Service' portal. A portal that helps us find things we need, but without any advertising or other (investor) types of issues. Kind of like NPR for the Internet. Well, like NPR used to be before they started running all those ads that start "This program is made possible by...".
I find it Ironic that Katz, while arguing for a filter that would make his web experience both enlightening and convenient, failed to avail himself of that fine HTML feature of providing a link to a URL.
Here's an extract from the article that I've edited for your clicking convenience.
In his recent essay in Netfut ure No. 94, Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale.
Where did you get that idea?
Because we're so evil.
Evil people have the most to fear from other evil people. It's not like all evil people are friends.
It's ironic to hear an opinion like this on Slashdot. If the application is Open Source or Java, it runs on OpenVMS just fine.
There is often some porting effort required with Open Sources onto OpenVMS, but it's not bad and it's getting better all the time. DEC/Compaq have greatly improved the C compiler and libraries such that most Unix C sources just compile and run. Configuration scripts in sh or bash can be a problem, but someone has ported bash to run on OpenVMS now, so maybe that will be less of a problem in the future.
Perl builds out-of-the-box (latest.tar.gz) on OpenVMS, so there's the ever-increasing catalog of Perl applications available.
Apache was recently ported. There are also a number of excellent 'native' web servers to choose from on OpenVMS. The most popular is the OSU (Ohio State University) HTTPD. It's been running multi-threaded (Posix Threads) since 1994. At one time, it was probably the most popular multi-threaded web server in the world, although that honor probably goes to multi-threaded Apache or IIS now.
There's a Python port that I believe is pretty up-to-date, but I don't know much about this.
Compaq has the first (and only today?) 64-bit implementations of Java, for Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS. See here for information. So, the Java catalog of apps will be available with world-beating Alpha performance.
There's a team forming now to port the server part of Star Office to OpenVMS. So, OpenVMS may be a fine platform for Office apps soon.
Oracle runs on OpenVMS. So, if you need that world-beating clustering for a DB Server, you can run Oracle.
I apologize to Slashdot readers for filling up this discussion with what seems like OpenVMS marketing. Although I do work for Compaq, I'm far from holding any marketing position. I'm just a happy user and consultant on OpenVMS systems.
I suspect that this 'Anonymous Coward' is someone who works for one of the Unix vendors that seem to want to spread FUD about OpenVMS in good Holloween Document style.
Read the Holloween Documents. One of Microsoft's concerns is that they can't attack Linux with FUD regarding the future of it as a platform, as they can any other vendor's products. Standard FUD from Microsoft is to make people believe that only MS products will survive in the long term and have good application support. I've seen a number of examples of people who work for a certain Unix vendor who have been trying to spread the same kind of FUD against OpenVMS lately. This particular FUD is just not true and in the Open Source or thin-client world of the future, it's largely irrelevant anyway.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Compaq. No, I don't speak for Compaq.
Is this just a shrink wrapped copy of the CDs from Walnut Creek or something? Or is somebody supporting a FreeBSD shrink-wrapped release as Red Hat and others support their releases of Linux. Is there, for example, installation support on the phone?
If not, it sure seems like someone is missing a business opportunity. Seems like BSDI could get into this business rather easily, although they'd have to recognize that it competes with their current offerings. Still, they are probably best able to really support FreeBSD. If they don't do it, someone else may eventually get a head start in this market and compete with them and that wouldn't be good for BSD/OS. If *BSD doesn't start getting some serious mindshare and shelfspace, it may end up so marginalized by Linux that it would become to Free Operating Systems what OS/2 became to PC Operating Systems.
One thing you said that I have to take issue with is:
For example: micros~1 gave away IE, but in the store people paid top dollar for it.
Boy, I don't remember people paying top dollar for IE in stores. In fact, I remember it being a giveaway in bundles, mostly. Like, buy FrontPage and get IE for free. I recall a lot of stores selling IE for like $9.95 with a rebate offer of $9.95 (Free after Rebate!).
I always had the impression that Micros~1 was selling IE in stores so they could claim that they weren't really giving it away just to destroy NetScape. I could be wrong.
This is the newest encarnation of the world-beating clustering technology that everybody is trying to copy. Shared everything, multiple OS instances in the same box, dynamically reassignable memory/CPU between instances, seemless clustering. Read the Galaxy overview here. VMS has been doing clustering since 1985 better than any Unix does it today and it's improved a lot since then. Yet somehow, OpenVMS gets the rap as being outmoded.
Disclosure statement: Yes, I am a Compaq employee. No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.
When all you had to do to win was make a better browser, they could gear up for that. Remember that the word is that they spent more on developing IE than they spent on Windows 95.
The fight against Linux is far more complicated.
Microsoft has realized that an important beach head onto the desktop for Linux will be games. If the average user sees that hot games run and run well on Linux, and you don't have to be a geek to play them, then this user is going to start thinking that he can use Linux for just about anything. Microsoft is doing useability studies on Linux games to determine how to win this battle.
But, unlike with Netscape, where they only had to win the browser battle, now they have to win against Linux Servers, Linux Office Suites and now, Linux games.
I liken the battle of Microsoft vs. Netscape to the early Cold War when the US and USSR were just competing by building Nuclear Weapons. The USSR could compete. The battle of Microsoft vs. Linux is like the late Cold War. When the USSR had to compete on a whole lot of technology fronts in the late '80s, they folded.
That probably went nowhere because the DEC Hudson plant was never more than 30% (? seems like I heard this number) utilized. This utilization included the many StrongArms made there.
Well, that covers the shell, but how about XFree? Also, I've found the MS-included telnet to be just about the worst implementation I've ever seen. I've found the free Tera Term to be quite acceptable. Tera Term seems to support most VT emulations well, works as a straight terminal emulator over the Com ports, supports huge scroll buffers, alternate screen geometries well and has a good scripting language. It even includes source, but it's copyrighted, not lefted.
Free is a big win for me. I keep the distribution Zip (943KB) in my breifcase so that I can install it on any machine that I happen to have to use at the moment. As a consultant, you never know what PC I'll have to use next. Sometimes it's more convenient to use a customers' desktop than my laptop. Even a tiny shareware payment is too much for me to keep track of. If NTCrt (Van Dyke) had a personal use license, that would allow me to use it on as many machines as I want, as long as it was me using it (requiring uninstallation if I used it on a customers machine), I might consider NTCrt.
Anybody have experience with any other source-available or Open Sourced Telnet/terminal emulators for Windows?
Well said. And, it's all being done under the cover of the Clinton Whitehouse.
People had better wake up out there. Just because Bill "feels your pain" doesn't mean that he and the rest of the Democrats and Republicans are not selling you out BIG time.
This decade makes the Reagan '80s look like the Flower Power '60s with regard to serving big interests and greed.
Here's one of many examples. Big Mergers. You hear that the '80s was the decade of the Big Merger. What's happened in the '90s?
Biggest 3 (!) Oil Mergers - Exxon/Mobil, BP/Amoco, Shell US/Texaco 'downstream merger, everything but exploration'. This last one was totally stealth, not 1 in 1000 people know, I would bet, that the Shell or Texaco station on the corner now belongs to a holding company made up of Shell/Texaco/Saudi Aramco (SA, east of the Mississippi only).
Biggest Telecom Merger - MCI/WorldComm
Biggest Auto Merger - Daimler/Chrysler
Biggest Media Merger - CBS/Viacom. This last one was totally covered over by the Media we hope will protect us. The reason? The Media bosses want the right to merge as they see fit. Did anyone catch the CBS/Viacom execs press conference about the merger? They bragged that there was no organization like them, big enough to compete with them and that the new company would be unassailable. Isn't this exactly why we have anti-trust legislation? To prevent the unassailably large organization?
Biggest Financials merger - Citibank/Travelers - this one is unbelievable as well. It is illegal under the Banking Act of 1932 for a Bank to be in Insurance like this. The Justice Dept. is turning a blind eye to it while Citibank/Travelers work to get the law changed.
Now, under more Media cover, the extension of Intellectual Property Rights.
There's absolutely no need for this. Read the Constitution. Intellectual Property law is not about ensuring 'fairness' to those who create IP, it's about encouraging the creation of new IP. Databases are being built at an all time record rate and we need legislation to encourage their production? I would like to see the contribution record for all of those supporting this legislation with regard to those who would benefit from it (big Media, corporations that compile databases, research firms, etc.).
It's not a bad article, don't get me wrong, but for Slashdot readers it's should be marked down as Redundant.
I hate giving ZD-Net credit for being insightful with opinions that we've seen on Slashdot for a long time.
Don't expect the media to raise any issues at all with this law. Media companies will benefit BIG time from such a law. They'll be able to compile all of those polls they're always running into databases and then copyright them. They'll be the first one's to commercialize the use of copyrighted on-line databases.
Copyrights are there not to ensure 'fairness'. They are there to encourage creation of intellectual property. Check the Constititution, not that Media considers THAT relevant anymore.
I haven't seen a lack of data collection/database creation under the present system. This is legislation that probably protects only campaign contributors.
Speaking of campaign contributors, if someone puts together campaign contribution databases will I be allowed to point out that Senators X, Y and Z and Congressmen A, B, C, D, (not E or F) and G got fat contributions and then supported some legislation? A case could certainly be made that I used their database and violated their copyright here.
I also believe the example of someone's book that was photocopied and placed on the Web to be bogus. It doesn't raise to the level of specious because nobody who knows ANYTHING about copyrights would believe that this is a problem. Of course the original author of a book is protected against it being published on the Web without permission. That's exactly what copyright protects.
They are attempting to extend copyright to every fact in a collection of facts. Very scary.
The theme of the contest is not betrayal in a man vs. machine story, but rather just betrayal. You can leave out the man vs. machine angle. You see, you'll be competing against a machine that will be writing a story. Or, is this your attempt to throw the readers off track? Write a betrayal story from a machines perspective so everybody thinks this is the story written by the machine.
Intriguing angle, but really, everyone will instantly recognize your style. It's so mechanical.
From what we're hearing in this thread most companies will allow OSS to be used. Is this what is meant by "actively promote Open Source"?
It seems like there are several overlapping types of "active promotion" that would be possible.
An organization tolerates the use of OSS. From what we're hearing, this is most organizations.
An organization actively encourages OSS to be used. Such an organization would have a statement of policy which encourages and fosters OSS use and development. This would be similar to what the Clinton Administration has just announced (This link is the Slashdot story that references a story in Federal Times Online, the "topstory.html" link at Federal Times Online that it refers to has changed and this story doesn't seem to be referenced in their on-line archives. Is this story still on-line anywhere? I couldn't connect to whitehouse.gov this morning to check there).
An organization not only encourages OSS, but releases software that they have developed as Open Source, or perhaps unencumbered Freeware that could be re-released as Open Source when modified by the Open Source Community. There are many examples of companies like this, IBM, SGI and Cygnus come to mind immediately, but there are certainly a lot of others. There are many issues related to almost-Open Source releases, software essentially Free-to-use and modify, but you don't have the same license on the modified software that you had on the original. This is the model with Sun/Star Office/SCSL. I'm not sure if this is "active promotion" of OSS, but it's in some ways supportive of the goals of OSS.
Organizations that release only Open Source. These are relatively rare. The Linux distribution vendors (RedHat, SuSe, et al) are examples. The FSF is the archetype.
If you wanted to promote OSS through investment funds or boycotts, you would have a lot of different things to consider.
Some seem to believe that OSS is not only the most socially conscientious, but also the best business model. The idea is that a company that releases only OSS is going to be the best able to support it and will be the best able to take advantage of any community modifications that are made. Such a company gets the best software to sell, and has to keep sharp in it's support and updates or it can be overtaken by others with the same business model. At this time, this would be a somewhat speculative investment, I think, as it's largely untested as a business model.
I note Cygnus seemed to have has as their original business model to only support OSS, but lately they have been making Closed Source releases. This may be saying that Cygnus has determined that supporting OSS only is not a good business model, or it may just have been due to insecurity in Cygnus' management with the business model. I'd sure like to hear something from "the Open Source leader" (which is what Cygnus calls themselves) about this. Of course, if Cygnus learned this through market research, they may not be willing to share their analysis with potential competitors.
A different case can be made for investing in only those companies that allow or even actively encourage the use and release of OSS. This is a risk-adverse investment policy based on the observation that if an organization is unwilling to take advantage of the great store of value in OSS, then they will not compete as well.
Similarly, an OSS coder may have a difficult time finding employment at the "purist" OSS supporting organizations - those that only develop OSS software - the FSF and Linux distribution vendors only have so many jobs available, after all. Perhaps in the future, there will be more such options. Today, such a coder may wish to set their standard at no "OSS forbidding companies" (of course), or somewhere between this and the "pure" OSS supporting organization.
This brings up another potential competitive advantage to a "pure" OSS supporting organization. They might have more qualified applicants.
Hmmm... Why do I do this?
I dunno. It beats the quality out of me.
That being said, I have to take issue with your post. It's tone and the clear implications you are making.
I really hate it when people are disingenous. It's a form of dishonesty, and it's one of the most difficult to really call someone on because they invariably fall back on a hurt tone saying something like "Oh, there, there, you took it the wrong way. Well, I'm sorry that I stepped on your rather delicate sensitivities".
In your case, you claim to be
But then, when you've read what you've said, saying that Linux users have "a lack of regard for orderly filesystems and directory heirarchies" and saying that you've "had the Linux beat out" of you. Now, what is it that is normally beat out of someone? Are you saying, in your not-so-clever way that Linux is equivalent to that thing that normally fills in the sentence "I had the ____ beat out of me."?
I don't mind people having strong opinions. Particularly well founded ones that are backed up by experience. What I have a problem with is someone who uses innuendo and outright insults and then claims to be "not trying to bash".
It's pretty clear to me from what I read here that there are a lot of people in the "Linux community" that want to learn what they can from the *BSD community. Sure, there's the odd, "Linux rulez, BSD dr00lz." post here, but by and large, there people on /. have been very receptive to positive BSD news. I get the strong impression from the *BSD zealots that they feel that they have little or nothing to learn from the Linux Community. You yourself say that "...we like Linux. It provides lots of good press for free OSes in general as well as commercial software support." Is that the best thing you can say about Linux, that it has a good mindshare?
In the future, I would appreciate it if, when you're bashing, do it and say you are. If you're not bashing, try to take care not to say things that are most easily interpreted "the wrong way".
How do we know that this is the real Moderation, or if someone is juicing it up behind the scenes to increase the stock price, humnn?
What will be needed is MetaAuditModeration! ;)
Just kidding! Geez, I hope I don't a visit from The SEC or Andover.net's lawyers...
With all the application vendors enthusiastically supporting Linux, a *BSD with a Linux "personality" might be a marketable thing.
Of course, cultural differences might make this difficult. *BSD supporters might prefer a Linux with a *BSD "personality", or perhaps they would prefer no Linux at all.