Why don't they do this? How hard could it be for them to divert their multi-distribution support services into an attempt at an SCO-branded Linux product?
Instead of having the support staff learn the ins and outs of multiple distributions, they would put some resources into rebranding and "enhancing" a Debian CD and sell "SCO Linux -- Enterprise Client" priced like MS is pricing NT Workstation/2000 Professional, with long-term service contracts available.
It offers the IT people a name they know with a product that costs SCO relatively little to develop and that is aimed at a different market segment than Monterrey anyway. If SCO Linux flops, the marginal loss on investment is low -- write off a couple proprietary "enhancements" and sell the support services for other peoples' Linuxes as already planned. If SCO Linux succeeds, then there's significant upside potential.
One problem could be cannibalism, but that assumes that external Linucies will be more than marginally less effective than an SCO Linux at eating SCO's Unix marketshare. Perhaps they would be.
Another problem might be that this would topple too many internal empires at SCO, while being opposed by large stockholders Microsoft and Novell. This isn't a slam -- you need enthusiasm either from the mid-level managers or from the major stockholders to make a major change in a large company. If both internal and external politics are against even an objectively good idea, it may hurt the company more to try to pursue it and fail/succeed marginally than not to try at all...
Back in 1992, Spy magazine had 1000 (or was it 100?) reasons to not vote for George Bush. Top on the list was "What would you think if the head of the KGB was elected president of Russia?".
Er, like a former head of the KGB was leader of the USSR from 1985-1992? Margaret Thatcher said the man was someone the West could deal with, Time Magazine thought enough of him to name him Man of the Decade for the 1980's, and the Swedes gave him a Nobel Peace Prize.
Sorry you missed Spy's little joke -- at the time, I personally thought it was hillarious.
You really gotta wonder about the mainstream media's claims that they're more reliable than Slashdot (see the recent Slashdot discussion of the topic) when it comes to getting the facts straight.
AOL has made no efforts to recall Tik/TOC/whatever, they haven't been sending threatening letters, they haven't even been making specific efforts to break Tik/TOC compatibility with AIM.
All AOL has done is 1)taken down one of their own a web pages; 2) tried to stop Microsoft and Yahoo client software from operating across AOL's messaging servers.
I disagree with both decisions, but it isn't a big deal. In the first case, IT'S JUST A FREAKING WEB PAGE!!! In the second case, if Microsoft set up a special, say, Windows OS support network and stopped non-IE browsers from accessing it, I'd be a bit miffed, but it IS their network.
In concept, the Nx586 decoder works like the code generator of a compiler, except at a lower level. Just as a C++ compiler converts C code into 80x86 machine code, the Nx586 decoder converts 80x86 machine code into RISC86 code.
Intel downplays NexGen's RISC86 and says the Pentium does something similar when it decodes complex 80x86 instructions into microcode primitives; in a sense, this is true. Complex instructions are broken down into 88-bit, fixed-length microinstructions that could be regarded as "RISC instructions," and many simple instructions don't require microcode at all because they're hard-wired in silicon. Intel also makes a valid point that code generators in modern compilers tend to avoid complex 80x86 instructions, because they can generate faster-running code by sticking to simpler instructions.
RISC86 instructions share some characteristics with Pentium microinstructions: They're quite long (the Nx586's eight-chip predecessor used 104-bit RISC86 instructions) and carry vital information of processor states that normally wouldn't be known to a true external RISC instruction. But there's still an important difference: Unlike microcode, NexGen's RISC86 can theoretically support its own assemblers, compilers, and application software. The Nx586 bus can bypass the 80x86 decoder and feed RISC86 instructions directly into the execution stages of the pipeline at full bus speeds. In fact, NexGen already has a RISC86 assembler, although it's for internal use only, since there's obviously no software market for RISC86 binaries.
The question is, does the K7 bus do what the Nx586 bus did and what the Socket 7 motherboard bus did not -- can it bypass the 80x86 decoder?
They're being redrawn by the mega-corps. What did Gibson call them? Zaibatsu?
That's the Japanese term for their competing interlocking webs of corporations...
Think of it, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, a corporation becomes self-sustaining
The problem is that there's no profit in super-conglomerization, so only a corporation independent of stockholder control can try to follow such a path in the first place.
Empirical evidence of this abounds. Japanese and German corporations tend to be more conglomerated than American firms -- and American firms tend to be more controlled by stockholder interests. Similarly, American companies have been tending to sell off "non-core" buisnesses in recent years, as the mutual fund revolution has made them more responsible to return-oriented investors.
For example, GM has spun off EDS, and has partially disgorged Hughes, and has spun off many of the parts divisions that it originally bought and built up under the names of Delco and Fisher Body under the name of Delphi. It's slowly cutting itself down to being an assembeler and distributer of autos, instead of expanding into new industries. Why? GM had stock broadly held by relatively weak individual investors in the '70s -- now it's got to answer to Wall Street brokerages that are trying to pull in 20%+ annual growth rates.
In short, the best defense against all-controlling megacorps is, oddly enough, free-market capitalism and the attendant profit pressure. The greatest enemy of power-hungry execs are profit-hungry stockholders who don't want to pay for grandiose empires.
Yes, it is not a great news...
on
UCITA is passed
·
· Score: 1
If the only software available for a vital corporate function is commercial hostageware, then there will be significant unfulfilled demand for non-hostageware. In a capitalist system, an unfulfilled demand involving zillions of dollars what is known as an opportunity. And it tends to draw entrepreneurs and their VCs like moths to a flame.
And better ensures that you will not have your software remotely deactiviated than a free software license and the ability to look at the source code?
Furthermore, would you trust your vital corporate functions to a random support firm, or the company that directs the development the software? The support contract model of free software is actually perfectly fits this kind of situation.
At WORST, this law will result in the commercial licenses and contracts for vital software to include no-deactivation clauses. At BEST, it will create a massive market for free software.
Fair is fair; you can't condemn MS's wrongs while supporting AOL's, even if AOL's are against MS. Either condemn them both or support them both, but don't say that AOL is somehow more saintly even though they're using the same tactics as MS does.
To have supplied arms to Finland in 1942, a free country fighting the despot Stalin, Soviet Communism, and Russian imperialsm, would have been a good thing in isolation. Unfortunately, it also would have aided Nazi Germany.
In principle, I support open standards and dislike what AOL is doing here.
On the other hand, Microsoft is famous for "embrace and extend". If there is an open protocol, it will get included in an MS client, which will get included in the next Windows. People will tend to use the (MS) client that comes with the machine instead of one they have to download. Microsoft will then add features that work only MS-client to MS-client, either tunnelled through the open protocol or in parallel through a secondary set of MS-run servers.
Would such an effort work? Maybe, maybe not. But open protocols is obviously riskier for AOL than keeping it proprietary. It would suggest, then, that AOL having proprietary control is a necessary evil to stop further Microsoft proprietarization (they have the OS, they have the document formats... do we want them to have more?)
Unless AOL also open-sources AIM. An Open Sourced AIM would help quickly reverse-engineer most MS extensions. It would also make it harder for MS to match the AIM feature set, since they can't discover what a random Swiss programmer is doing right now...
So, IMHO, the best option is open source and open protocol; proprietary is second-best; and open protocol that MS can e&e is the WORST choice.
I strongly believe in Darwinism, and if the animal died out for natural reasons (without humans being the accountable cause) then we must leave nature be.
Er, what's the difference between "natural causes" and humans? We are natural causes -- natuarally evolved creatures that, in our spread, have caused the extinction of some native species that were unable to adapt to us. To a real "believe[r] in Darwinism", the distinction between "natural" extinction and human-caused extinction doesn't exist.
As a specific example -- was the Americn horse driven extinct by natural causes (a new predator that crossed over a natural land bridge from Asia), or man (which happened to *be* that new predator)? (Anyone who says that "well, man hunts for sport while other animals don't", please see Stephen Jay Gould's "Bully for Brontosaurus" for remedial education.)
That isn't to say that we shouldn't make efforts to not drive species extinct. But this goofy natural/man dichotomy is indefensible unless man was created separately.
If you're a creationist, fine, I can respect that.
If you're a Darwinist, fine, I agree with you.
If you're a self-proclaimed Darwinist that still holds to the man-nature dichotomy of creationism you were taught by our culture, STOP AND THINK IT THROUGH!
Intel wants out of the consumer chip business. They want to focus on server machines and turn to Xeon and then Merced and leave the consumer out of their hands.
If Intel were to abandon the consumer market, that gives AMD a virtual monopoly on consumer processors. At the same time, AMD is selling a new high-end x86 processor on a server-derived motherboard architecture, while Intel sells a 4-year-old chip design (P6) on souped-up consumer motherboards.
And, there's more non-x86 competition at the server level, with Sun, IBM, SGI, Compaq, etc. So either non-x86 Merced has to be better at x86 than Athlon; or it has to be better at high-end work than entrenched RISC designs.
In short, there's a reason why Intel went after the low end with Celeron. Without the consumer market, Intel can't maintain its dominance.
cxhextris has a similar problem, however, and there may be others. To quote:
/* * hextris Copyright 1990 David Markley, dm3e@+andrew.cmu.edu, dam@cs.cmu.edu * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute, this software and its * documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that * the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting * documentation, and that the name of the copyright holders be used in * advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software with * specific, written prior permission, and that no fee is charged for further * distribution of this software, or any modifications thereof. The copyright * holder make no representations about the suitability of this software for * any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
[italics mine] It just seems likely that other packages have slipped through the screening, too, in inverse relation to the package's importance.
Perhaps it's wistful thinking on my part, but I noticed something that felt almost like shame in their putting NT dead last in their list
What I found even more interesting is they went far further into their future plans for Linux, the advantages of Linux, the status of the VWS port for Linux, etc. The NT section was essentially 'it runs VWS and can run Win32 apps'.
Maybe that's because you have to do a better job selling Linux than NT . . . any maybe not.
And what does the phrase "Designed for Windows" actually mean wrt. CPUs
With the AMD processors, it simply meant "fully Intel x86 compatible" in a way that J. Random Luser could understand. Mr. Luser, a "Windows Magazine" subscriber, doesn't understand "x86 compatible", and Intel's lawyers would hammer AMD if it advertised its chips as "Intel compatible" or "Pentium Compatible". It also meant, "See? A big name supports us! We're not such a risky choice!"
If you recall, the AMD486-100 had a "100 reasons" ad way back when ('93/94/95?). It repeated "Windows compatible" and "MS Office compatible" three or four times, but also mentioned that it was OS/2, DOS, NetWare, UNIX, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and SmartSuite compatible.
Caldera bought DR DOS to vindicate the strategy of its financier, Ray Noorda, when he was CEO and Chairman of Novell.
Ray Noorda was in charge when Novell bought Digital Research and Unix System Labs, as part of a plan to leverage NetWare into Novell dominance in the OS market. Noorda claimed that the subsequent Microsoft talk about a merger was a deliberate tactic to delay Novell integrating DR into its corporate structure, and Novell sued Microsoft.
Anyway, Noorda's strategy fell out of favor. He left, Novell sold USL, stopped working on Novell DOS, and dropped its anti-Microsoft lawsuit.
Noorda then funded Caldera. Caldera proceeded to enter the Unix market with Linux, bought DR/Novell DOS from Novell, and immediately sued Microsoft over DR DOS.
Yep -- Noorda-funded Caldera adopted both of the platforms that Noorda-led Novell added. It's ego -- if Caldera succeeds, Noorda is vindicated.
[F]urthermore, the K7 isn't actually AMD's seventh generation chip, AFAIK--I think their first chip core was a 386 clone.
AMD was a licensed producer of the Intel-designed 8086/88, 286, and 386 (the 40 MHz 386 was a fairly simple hack of the Intel 386). AMD has developed 3 cores entirely in-house (486, K5, K7 -- the K6 stared out as the NexGen Nx686). All have used microcode developed outside of AMD -- the 486/K5 were based on Intel 386 microcode, and the K7 is based on the RISC86 microcode developed by NexGen for the Nx586.
NexGen made really cool chips -- and, ever since AMD bought NexGen, AMD has too.
Cost/performance comparisons are valid, yes. But cost/MHz, no. Or would you really rather have a 133 MHz 486 (what AMD called a 586 because it was as fast as a Pentium 75) than a 120 MHz Pentium if both were offered for the same price?
Yes, generation is a vague term. But although there have been some engineering changes, the PPro/PII/PIII/Celeron/Xeon are basically variants on the same P6 design. And the K6/6-2/6-III are similarly all variants of the design that was started at NexGen as the Nx686, and are comparable in performance per MHz to the P6 chips.
The Athalon, however, is radically different in design than the Nx686 chips, much like the P6 was very different than the Pentiums and the Nx686 was from the Nx586. Accordingly, giving it the moniker of being "seventh generation" seems to be reasonable.
Why couldn't Congress have the guts to join the rest of the world with standards of meaurements?
Under Article I, section 8, the Congress has the authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the metric system in the United States. (No other system of measurements has been established by the Congress.) We were one of the original 17 signatories to the Treaty of the Meter in 1875. In 1893, the metric measurement standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Congress passed the Metric Coversion Act in 1975. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act Of 1988 designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," and required that all federal agencies use the metric system by 1992.
Accordingly, your question would be properly phrased as, "Why couldn't Congress have the guts to punish people for using non-metric measurements?"
Therefore, I ask you -- what should be the punishment for using a non-metric system in the U.S.? Six months in jail? $100 fine per incident? Life imprisonment without parole?
We are metric by law. The people, not Congress, are responsible for our current state.
Excuse me, but last time I checked AOL owned Netscape, not Sun. Yes, AOL and Sun have an alliance -- so did IBM and Microsoft in 1990. IBM said that Windows was just a transition stage between DOS and OS/2...and Microsoft decided differently, no? So take that Sun guy's talking with a grain or sixty-nine of salt.
Also, people are calling the next release "Navigator 5.0". However, remember that it's being built on what was originally going to be the 6.0 codebase. If Netscape had simply called Navigator 4.5/4.6 Navigator 5.0/5.1 instead, the pundits would be talking about the amazing success Mozilla is in delivering a better 6.0 than Microsoft faster...
MkLinux is Mach 3.0. Darwin is approximately Mach 2.5
However, the non-server MacOS X that will be released next year will be based on Mach 3.0. If Darwin is updated by Apple, it will then be easier to move MkLinux code to Darwin. And (virtually) nobody with the $500 for MacOS X Server is going to bother with a NuBus machine, anyway, so the demand for it won't be there until the client is released.
In short, it actually makes sense to focus on MkLinux now and MkBSD (Darwin) next year...
Another thing I'm curious about: why isn't Linus Torvalds supporting MkLinux more strongly? I know he's a proponent of portable implementations of Linux, so it seems odd to me that he seems so focused on the Intel port of monolithic Linux.
The problem is MkLinux isn't really Linux, it's the Linux kernel running on top of the Mach kernel, which means bloat and twice as many points of failure. Linus' preferring LinuxPPC to MkLinux is just like Linus theoretically preferring Linux-on-Alpha to a Linux subsystem to NT-on-Alpha. You might get more device drivers that way, and you might be able to run Linux apps anyway -- but it still would be NT, not Linux.
You know, I'm amazed that Red Hat doesn't have "first-time users" or "journalists afraid of partitioning" option that uses UMSDOS and swap files. That's the way *I* first installed Linux, with good ol' Slackware 2.0.1 and the 1.0.9 kernel.
No, it's not ideal. No, it won't show all the additional advantages Linux has on ext2. But it's a worthwhile option...
A Paraphrase/Interpretation of Be's Position: ----------------------------------------------- *BSD and Linux developers don't get irate phone calls if a chipset revision breaks the OS release on new machines sold under the old name. You see, Be-on-PPC was sold/given mostly to people who were using Macs. Accordingly, they expect the OS to "just work", and get irate if it doesn't.
The compatibility expectations of Wintel users adopting an alternative OS and of Unix users wanting to run something on a Power Mac are lower. Accordingly, Be not running on your oddball-clone-PC or Linux not running on your undocumented-chipset-revision-G3 aren't seen as deep failures of the OS vendor, but a ordinary (if irritating) phenomenon.
Accordingly, Be won't support the new Apple computers until Apple provides the necessary documentation. ----------------------------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they do this? How hard could it be for them to divert their multi-distribution support services into an attempt at an SCO-branded Linux product?
Instead of having the support staff learn the ins and outs of multiple distributions, they would put some resources into rebranding and "enhancing" a Debian CD and sell "SCO Linux -- Enterprise Client" priced like MS is pricing NT Workstation/2000 Professional, with long-term service contracts available.
It offers the IT people a name they know with a product that costs SCO relatively little to develop and that is aimed at a different market segment than Monterrey anyway. If SCO Linux flops, the marginal loss on investment is low -- write off a couple proprietary "enhancements" and sell the support services for other peoples' Linuxes as already planned. If SCO Linux succeeds, then there's significant upside potential.
One problem could be cannibalism, but that assumes that external Linucies will be more than marginally less effective than an SCO Linux at eating SCO's Unix marketshare. Perhaps they would be.
Another problem might be that this would topple too many internal empires at SCO, while being opposed by large stockholders Microsoft and Novell. This isn't a slam -- you need enthusiasm either from the mid-level managers or from the major stockholders to make a major change in a large company. If both internal and external politics are against even an objectively good idea, it may hurt the company more to try to pursue it and fail/succeed marginally than not to try at all...
Back in 1992, Spy magazine had 1000 (or was it 100?) reasons to not vote for George Bush. Top on the list was "What would you think if the head of the KGB was elected president of Russia?".
Er, like a former head of the KGB was leader of the USSR from 1985-1992? Margaret Thatcher said the man was someone the West could deal with, Time Magazine thought enough of him to name him Man of the Decade for the 1980's, and the Swedes gave him a Nobel Peace Prize.
Sorry you missed Spy's little joke -- at the time, I personally thought it was hillarious.
You really gotta wonder about the mainstream media's claims that they're more reliable than Slashdot (see the recent Slashdot discussion of the topic) when it comes to getting the facts straight.
:-)
Since 10-12-1994, SJ Games has had The Top Ten Media Errors About the SJ Games Raid available, and yet the NY Times managed to make both errors #4 and #5.
And you saw the correction here first, on Slashdot
The 99th percentile on neuroticism is the Tusken Warrior, and the 95th percentile on Openness is Yoda.
AOL has made no efforts to recall Tik/TOC/whatever, they haven't been sending threatening letters, they haven't even been making specific efforts to break Tik/TOC compatibility with AIM.
All AOL has done is 1)taken down one of their own a web pages; 2) tried to stop Microsoft and Yahoo client software from operating across AOL's messaging servers.
I disagree with both decisions, but it isn't a big deal. In the first case, IT'S JUST A FREAKING WEB PAGE!!! In the second case, if Microsoft set up a special, say, Windows OS support network and stopped non-IE browsers from accessing it, I'd be a bit miffed, but it IS their network.
To quote the June 1994 issue of
Byte magazine:
The question is, does the K7 bus do what the Nx586 bus did and what the Socket 7 motherboard bus did not -- can it bypass the 80x86 decoder?
They're being redrawn by the mega-corps. What did Gibson call them? Zaibatsu?
That's the Japanese term for their competing interlocking webs of corporations...
Think of it, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, a corporation becomes self-sustaining
The problem is that there's no profit in super-conglomerization, so only a corporation independent of stockholder control can try to follow such a path in the first place.
Empirical evidence of this abounds. Japanese and German corporations tend to be more conglomerated than American firms -- and American firms tend to be more controlled by stockholder interests. Similarly, American companies have been tending to sell off "non-core" buisnesses in recent years, as the mutual fund revolution has made them more responsible to return-oriented investors.
For example, GM has spun off EDS, and has partially disgorged Hughes, and has spun off many of the parts divisions that it originally bought and built up under the names of Delco and Fisher Body under the name of Delphi. It's slowly cutting itself down to being an assembeler and distributer of autos, instead of expanding into new industries. Why? GM had stock broadly held by relatively weak individual investors in the '70s -- now it's got to answer to Wall Street brokerages that are trying to pull in 20%+ annual growth rates.
In short, the best defense against all-controlling megacorps is, oddly enough, free-market capitalism and the attendant profit pressure. The greatest enemy of power-hungry execs are profit-hungry stockholders who don't want to pay for grandiose empires.
If the only software available for a vital corporate function is commercial hostageware, then there will be significant unfulfilled demand for non-hostageware. In a capitalist system, an unfulfilled demand involving zillions of dollars what is known as an opportunity. And it tends to draw entrepreneurs and their VCs like moths to a flame.
And better ensures that you will not have your software remotely deactiviated than a free software license and the ability to look at the source code?
Furthermore, would you trust your vital corporate functions to a random support firm, or the company that directs the development the software? The support contract model of free software is actually perfectly fits this kind of situation.
At WORST, this law will result in the commercial licenses and contracts for vital software to include no-deactivation clauses. At BEST, it will create a massive market for free software.
Fair is fair; you can't condemn MS's wrongs while supporting AOL's, even if AOL's are against MS. Either condemn them both or support them both, but don't say that AOL is somehow more saintly even though they're using the same tactics as MS does.
To have supplied arms to Finland in 1942, a free country fighting the despot Stalin, Soviet Communism, and Russian imperialsm, would have been a good thing in isolation. Unfortunately, it also would have aided Nazi Germany.
In principle, I support open standards and dislike what AOL is doing here.
On the other hand, Microsoft is famous for "embrace and extend". If there is an open protocol, it will get included in an MS client, which will get included in the next Windows.
People will tend to use the (MS) client that comes with the machine instead of one they have to download. Microsoft will then add features that work only MS-client to MS-client, either tunnelled through the open protocol or in parallel through a secondary set of MS-run servers.
Would such an effort work? Maybe, maybe not. But open protocols is obviously riskier for AOL than keeping it proprietary. It would suggest, then, that AOL having proprietary control is a necessary evil to stop further Microsoft proprietarization (they have the OS, they have the document formats... do we want them to have more?)
Unless AOL also open-sources AIM. An Open Sourced AIM would help quickly reverse-engineer most MS extensions. It would also make it harder for MS to match the AIM feature set, since they can't discover what a random Swiss programmer is doing right now...
So, IMHO, the best option is open source and open protocol; proprietary is second-best; and open protocol that MS can e&e is the WORST choice.
I strongly believe in Darwinism, and if the animal died out for natural reasons (without humans being the accountable cause) then we must leave nature be.
Er, what's the difference between "natural causes" and humans? We are natural causes -- natuarally evolved creatures that, in our spread, have caused the extinction of some native species that were unable to adapt to us. To a real "believe[r] in Darwinism", the distinction between "natural" extinction and human-caused extinction doesn't exist.
As a specific example -- was the Americn horse driven extinct by natural causes (a new predator that crossed over a natural land bridge from Asia), or man (which happened to *be* that new predator)? (Anyone who says that "well, man hunts for sport while other animals don't", please see Stephen Jay Gould's "Bully for Brontosaurus" for remedial education.)
That isn't to say that we shouldn't make efforts to not drive species extinct. But this goofy natural/man dichotomy is indefensible unless man was created separately.
If you're a creationist, fine, I can respect that.
If you're a Darwinist, fine, I agree with you.
If you're a self-proclaimed Darwinist that still holds to the man-nature dichotomy of creationism you were taught by our culture, STOP AND THINK IT THROUGH!
The pseudo-news crap like HardCopy, Dateline NBC etc. have to be about the most annoying shows on television to me these days.
C'mon! They're always good for a laugh. Their absurd brand of humor is at least as good as the Onion or Segfault.
Wait -- you're saying they're expecting me to take them seriously? Sorry, I'm not falling for that one, buddy.
Intel wants out of the consumer chip business. They want to focus on server machines and turn to Xeon and then Merced and leave the consumer out of their hands.
If Intel were to abandon the consumer market, that gives AMD a virtual monopoly on consumer processors. At the same time, AMD is selling a new high-end x86 processor on a server-derived motherboard architecture, while Intel sells a 4-year-old chip design (P6) on souped-up consumer motherboards.
And, there's more non-x86 competition at the server level, with Sun, IBM, SGI, Compaq, etc. So either non-x86 Merced has to be better at x86 than Athlon; or it has to be better at high-end work than entrenched RISC designs.
In short, there's a reason why Intel went after the low end with Celeron. Without the consumer market, Intel can't maintain its dominance.
cxhextris has a similar problem, however, and there may be others. To quote:
/*
* hextris Copyright 1990 David Markley, dm3e@+andrew.cmu.edu, dam@cs.cmu.edu
*
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute, this software and its
* documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
* the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
* copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
* documentation, and that the name of the copyright holders be used in
* advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software with
* specific, written prior permission, and that no fee is charged for further
* distribution of this software, or any modifications thereof. The copyright
* holder make no representations about the suitability of this software for
* any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
[italics mine]
It just seems likely that other packages have slipped through the screening, too, in inverse relation to the package's importance.
Perhaps it's wistful thinking on my part, but I noticed something that felt almost like shame in their putting NT dead last in their list
What I found even more interesting is they went far further into their future plans for Linux, the advantages of Linux, the status of the VWS port for Linux, etc. The NT section was essentially 'it runs VWS and can run Win32 apps'.
Maybe that's because you have to do a better job selling Linux than NT . . . any maybe not.
And what does the phrase "Designed for Windows" actually mean wrt. CPUs
With the AMD processors, it simply meant "fully Intel x86 compatible" in a way that J. Random Luser could understand. Mr. Luser, a "Windows Magazine" subscriber, doesn't understand "x86 compatible", and Intel's lawyers would hammer AMD if it advertised its chips as "Intel compatible" or "Pentium Compatible". It also meant, "See? A big name supports us! We're not such a risky choice!"
If you recall, the AMD486-100 had a "100 reasons" ad way back when ('93/94/95?). It repeated "Windows compatible" and "MS Office compatible" three or four times, but also mentioned that it was OS/2, DOS, NetWare, UNIX, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and SmartSuite compatible.
Caldera bought DR DOS to vindicate the strategy of its financier, Ray Noorda, when he was CEO and Chairman of Novell.
Ray Noorda was in charge when Novell bought Digital Research and Unix System Labs, as part of a plan to leverage NetWare into Novell dominance in the OS market. Noorda claimed that the subsequent Microsoft talk about a merger was a deliberate tactic to delay Novell integrating DR into its corporate structure, and Novell sued Microsoft.
Anyway, Noorda's strategy fell out of favor. He left, Novell sold USL, stopped working on Novell DOS, and dropped its anti-Microsoft lawsuit.
Noorda then funded Caldera. Caldera proceeded to enter the Unix market with Linux, bought DR/Novell DOS from Novell, and immediately sued Microsoft over DR DOS.
Yep -- Noorda-funded Caldera adopted both of the platforms that Noorda-led Novell added. It's ego -- if Caldera succeeds, Noorda is vindicated.
[F]urthermore, the K7 isn't actually AMD's seventh generation chip, AFAIK--I think their first chip core was a 386 clone.
AMD was a licensed producer of the Intel-designed 8086/88, 286, and 386 (the 40 MHz 386 was a fairly simple hack of the Intel 386). AMD has developed 3 cores entirely in-house (486, K5, K7 -- the K6 stared out as the NexGen Nx686). All have used microcode developed outside of AMD -- the 486/K5 were based on Intel 386 microcode, and the K7 is based on the RISC86 microcode developed by NexGen for the Nx586.
NexGen made really cool chips -- and, ever since AMD bought NexGen, AMD has too.
Cost/performance comparisons are valid, yes. But cost/MHz, no. Or would you really rather have a 133 MHz 486 (what AMD called a 586 because it was as fast as a Pentium 75) than a 120 MHz Pentium if both were offered for the same price?
Yes, generation is a vague term. But although there have been some engineering changes, the PPro/PII/PIII/Celeron/Xeon are basically variants on the same P6 design. And the K6/6-2/6-III are similarly all variants of the design that was started at NexGen as the Nx686, and are comparable in performance per MHz to the P6 chips.
The Athalon, however, is radically different in design than the Nx686 chips, much like the P6 was very different than the Pentiums and the Nx686 was from the Nx586. Accordingly, giving it the moniker of being "seventh generation" seems to be reasonable.
Why couldn't Congress have the guts to join the rest of the world with standards of meaurements?
Under Article I, section 8, the Congress has the authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the metric system in the United States. (No other system of measurements has been established by the Congress.) We were one of the original 17 signatories to the Treaty of the Meter in 1875. In 1893, the metric measurement standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Congress passed the Metric Coversion Act in 1975. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act Of 1988 designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," and required that all federal agencies use the metric system by 1992.
Accordingly, your question would be properly phrased as, "Why couldn't Congress have the guts to punish people for using non-metric measurements?"
Therefore, I ask you -- what should be the punishment for using a non-metric system in the U.S.? Six months in jail? $100 fine per incident? Life imprisonment without parole?
We are metric by law. The people, not Congress, are responsible for our current state.
Excuse me, but last time I checked AOL owned Netscape, not Sun. Yes, AOL and Sun have an alliance -- so did IBM and Microsoft in 1990. IBM said that Windows was just a transition stage between DOS and OS/2...and Microsoft decided differently, no? So take that Sun guy's talking with a grain or sixty-nine of salt.
Also, people are calling the next release "Navigator 5.0". However, remember that it's being built on what was originally going to be the 6.0 codebase. If Netscape had simply called Navigator 4.5/4.6 Navigator 5.0/5.1 instead, the pundits would be talking about the amazing success Mozilla is in delivering a better 6.0 than Microsoft faster...
MkLinux is Mach 3.0.
Darwin is approximately Mach 2.5
However, the non-server MacOS X that will be released next year will be based on Mach 3.0. If Darwin is updated by Apple, it will then be easier to move MkLinux code to Darwin. And (virtually) nobody with the $500 for MacOS X Server is going to bother with a NuBus machine, anyway, so the demand for it won't be there until the client is released.
In short, it actually makes sense to focus on MkLinux now and MkBSD (Darwin) next year...
Another thing I'm curious about: why isn't Linus Torvalds supporting MkLinux more strongly? I know he's a proponent of portable implementations of Linux, so it seems odd to me that he seems so focused on the Intel port of monolithic Linux.
The problem is MkLinux isn't really Linux, it's the Linux kernel running on top of the Mach kernel, which means bloat and twice as many points of failure. Linus' preferring LinuxPPC to MkLinux is just like Linus theoretically preferring Linux-on-Alpha to a Linux subsystem to NT-on-Alpha. You might get more device drivers that way, and you might be able to run Linux apps anyway -- but it still would be NT, not Linux.
You know, I'm amazed that Red Hat doesn't have "first-time users" or "journalists afraid of partitioning" option that uses UMSDOS and swap files. That's the way *I* first installed Linux, with good ol' Slackware 2.0.1 and the 1.0.9 kernel.
No, it's not ideal. No, it won't show all the additional advantages Linux has on ext2. But it's a worthwhile option...
A Paraphrase/Interpretation of Be's Position:
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*BSD and Linux developers don't get irate phone calls if a chipset revision breaks the OS release on new machines sold under the old name. You see, Be-on-PPC was sold/given mostly to people who were using Macs. Accordingly, they expect the OS to "just work", and get irate if it doesn't.
The compatibility expectations of Wintel users adopting an alternative OS and of Unix users wanting to run something on a Power Mac are lower. Accordingly, Be not running on your oddball-clone-PC or Linux not running on your undocumented-chipset-revision-G3
aren't seen as deep failures of the OS vendor, but a ordinary (if irritating) phenomenon.
Accordingly, Be won't support the new Apple computers until Apple provides the necessary documentation.
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