The metric is not popularity. It's bringing the most to technology. You don't need to be well-known to bring anything to the technological state of the world. For example, the average user doesn't know anything about Oracle or DB2. Chances are, though, that their money is tracked in one (or both) of these. Technologically, they are very important, but both would fail your popularity contest.
From my naive position, it seems that the perception is that Stallman may spearhead the movement, Linus inspires it. And, since inspiration relies more on perception than reality, I think Linux wins out on that one.
In other words, Stallman without Linus would not have managed to get the whole world lined up to commit to open source. Linux without Stallman would likely have ended up with a BSD-type license, and we'd be likely in nearly the same position with OSS being a major threat to Gates.
While I would agree with the conclusion, I must disagree on the supporting arguments. I would agree with many other users' comments that most people would get by with OOo and never really care about missing features.
I think NewsForge summed it up reasonably well. It's the data that users care about. And since their data is in MSWord format, not ISO-standard XML format, why exactly would they care when everyone else uses MSWord format, too? Their data is safe and accessable by everyone who matters (mostly themselves).
A data format for a consumer product is rarely anything to get excited about. It's not going to get droves of users to convert. By itself, it is not something to warrant the conversion cost (time and/or money)
What it might do, however, is get the marketing drones at MS to want to put "ISO-compliant" on their boxes as if it were a selling feature. But I doubt it.
I suppose it depends on where you are. My two intern-style positions were first with the federal government (Canada), and second with a small, private firm (100 employees, $15m CDN/year gross income). At the time, Canadian government employees were generally paid 10-25% more than private employees, largely due to unions. However, the top performers in government service probably would never match the top performers in private companies in pay, again due to unions.
After experiencing both, I promised myself never to work in the public sector again. My manager was a sole bright spot in my experience there - I'm not sure how he got to be a manager without getting dirty in the politics, but everyone else was difficult to trust. The private firm was completely different - everyone had a common goal, and, though politics can never be completely eliminated in any relationship of three or more people, it was like night and day.
Note that one thing I've learned since graduating is that it is easier to understand and trust people whose motives you understand, because that gives a context to their actions. Clear motives (e.g., improve the customer experience so that we make more money) means that you know that person will do what s/he can in that area. But unclear motives, concealed behind a veil of politics, makes it impossible to work together, because you never know how your coworker will respond. But this is true regardless of where you find the politics.
Personally, I just found more politics in public service than private.
First, today's spam has a link that says "http://somelegitsite.com", but the href is "http://1.2.3.4/uniqueID" to make you think you're going to a legit site, but really sending you elsewhere. Hard to do with voice contact, or, rather, audio contact.
Second, they would never use a toll-free number. That would not only cost them money rather than you, but be easily traceable. For those who don't mind the traceability, it'll be a 900 number.
Besides, it'll all be automated - no human voice at the other end;-)
It's a tough call to say what's "balanced". A rather crude method is to say "50-50". But that doesn't take into account the "fringe" parties, independants, etc. Should all candidates be given equal airtime? Personally, I don't think that would be ideal - I really could care less about hearing about most of the other candidates.
Suppose, then, we come up with some sort of hand-waving idea of balanced being relative to the vote that each candidate will receive. Ignoring for a minute the obvious time-continuity issues, this would definitely be keeping the fringe to the fringe, but with the obvious downside of forcing a two-party system. No one else will get enough airtime to warrant voting, keeping them perpetually on the outside of the electoral process.
Maybe what we really want is "unbiased"? Report all the news, all sides, and let the populace decide. Sounds reasonable - even though some^Wmost voters will ignore the information, it's their choice to be uninformed, rather than the news outets' choice. There would be two ways about this: first, you can just take all the press releases and release that as news (the easy way), or you can research and look for all sides (the hard way). Which one do you think most people would do? Yeah. And if you do research, inevitably, you'll find some sides utterly unbelievable, and fail to report them in an unbiased manner, if you report them at all.
In today's society, what is evil? Are we not to accept all positions as valid, to be non-judgemental and non-ethnocentric? Why should we then apply our ethnocentric definition of "evil" to a company working in China - in a different ethnic society? In the US, censorship is evil. In China, censorship is not evil. How are we to judge their society?
Ok, I don't really believe that. Good and evil are absolutes, neither of which anyone really is 100%. China (the government, not the people) has some very evil policies (and others less so). And Google is simply placing profit before principle. Not surprising, really, as that is what any public company is required to do for their shareholders. Unfortunate, yes. Surprising, no.
Note to anonymouse cowards: first posts can be redundant if it repeats anything that is a trivial rewording of the FA. First posts aren't first posts - they're first comments to a post, and thus already second.
I'm not saying that this qualified.. 'cuz I haven't RTFA'd yet. But the general statement made still is incorrect.
Yes, you obtain tools to perform your objectives. But Microsoft makes those tools to obtain theirs.
If you find you don't like their objectives, find a new tools producer. If there are no others, then you can either suck it up, or create one. It's the latter which has caused so much free software in the first place. (In other words, I'm not advocating sucking it up - we make no progress that way.)
Just have to make sure that the developers stagger their start times, I suppose. Let's see - my manager starts work at 6AM, I start at 9:30ish (or at least, I did before I started telecommuting from the other side of the continent), and one of my coworkers starts between 11AM and 1PM, depending on the party the night before. I think that this would work fine.
Hmmm... where I work, we plan for a "final build" and then it's a month before we plan on actually shipping anything. It's merely saying that we know this will not be actually final, but we need to put hard dates down, or we'll never ship.
I would think that this is the same thing. It's sorta like NHL playoffs - "Game 5 (if needed)" is scheduled on TV.
This is probably one of the most interesting ideas I've ever heard of for getting fast/accurate counts. I'm sure there would be some work required to get it feasible, but I think we have the start of a fabulous way to overhaul the system in such a way that it would increase the average citizen's faith in democracy.
One thing I really like about Dave Barry is that he manages to be non-partisan and still finds ways to make everyone laugh about a political situation. While I'm sure he actually votes for some party during elections, his humour pokes fun at everyone (mostly himself), which makes it hard for anyone to just dismiss him. Which is good for his employer;-)
Debian can't be supported as long as it bucks the RPM trend
Let's face it. Most of the most popular distros are RPM-based. Many of this distros have collapsed, but as far as installed-base out there, if a company such as IBM is going to support a native installer (like installp on AIX, pkgadd on SystemV such as Sun or SCO, swinstall on HP-UX, etc.), which one are they going to pick? Each native installer is another CD in the box and another fixpak to generate. So, to keep costs down while still being able to claim Linux support, RPM it is.
There are other solutions here, of course. InstallShield MultiPlatform (ISMP), now called InstallShield X, or the new InstallShield for IBM Solution Installer would work - with their own problems of not being integrated with how the rest of the system is being installed. Using "rpm -qa" no longer tells you what is going on with that vendor's products. Solves one set of problems at the expense of creating others.
Stability is a hype word
I mean, come on. We're all predicting that the Longhorn delays will give Linux a chance to wedge in because the churn that industry pretends to hate isn't frequent enough. Industry, and the economy, is addicted to regular updates and regular fees to keep the money moving. If Ford doesn't buy a new OS, that OS vendor's employees don't get paid, and put off the purchase of their brand new Ford, which causes Ford to make less money. It's all funny-money anyway (and I'm a capitalist!).
In this industry, 3 years is a bit too long to delay. Companies are trying to get a bigger return on their buck, and want the features (and security fixes) available in the 2.4 or even 2.6 kernels. Sticking with the 2.2 kernel can be great for some people, but without some of those boosts, DB2 v8.2.x won't be able to get all the performance it can out of the machine.
What they want isn't a lack of options that Debian Stable offers. They want the option to stick with a 3-year-old product and still get support, or to update to the latest-and-greatest product and get more bang for their computer buck.
Have RH and SuSE/Novell managed to find the happy medium between the extremes of 3-month cycles and 3-year-cycles? Only time will tell. I would bet they've come close enough.
Re:Obligatory USian Viewpoint
on
Make Money Fast
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· Score: 1
Heck, when the $2 coin was first coming out, and there was a debate about what to call it ("twoonie" seems to have won out), I told everyone we should call it "One Dollar American". At the time, the value would have been pretty close...
I had all my Win 3.11/DOS apps working and my printer working just fine at the time. In fact, the primary reason I went to OS/2 was to run my DOS-based BBS and my Win 3.1-based compiler (Borland C++ v4) simultaneously. About all I can grant here is games. It wasn't until much later that things like WinModems and the like appeared which really killed OS/2's driver capabilities.
This detracts from my analogy with Mac... how? All these points apply to the Mac, and, as evidenced from my experience in point 1, it applies to the Mac more than to OS/2.
A bit of OS/2 history - Warp Connect seems to have beat Win95 out by a few months. Which seems to coincide closely with when I bought it - I recall buying Warp Connect early in 1996, and I remember that I had waited and agonised over the decision for a long time - many months. Had to buy a CDROM at the same time.
Regardless, MS has obviously won that battle with OS/2 support being withdrawn in 2006. MacOSX having more features than Longhorn is not a guarantor of success for MacOSX either. MS consistantly wins on fewer features.
How can MS be 1 step ahead in features when they are struggling to put into Windows by 2006 what is already in OS X? How can MS be 1 step ahead in features when I.E. does less than Firefox?
Us OS/2 guys always said the same thing about Windows - why wait for Windows95 when OS/2 had all its features, and stability as well? Obviously MS doesn't even need features to continue selling.
Don't tell me anyone is surprised at this. I mean, even Bill can't believe he has such a tight control of the market that he can delay Windows updates nearly indefinitely and get away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
The metric is not popularity. It's bringing the most to technology. You don't need to be well-known to bring anything to the technological state of the world. For example, the average user doesn't know anything about Oracle or DB2. Chances are, though, that their money is tracked in one (or both) of these. Technologically, they are very important, but both would fail your popularity contest.
From my naive position, it seems that the perception is that Stallman may spearhead the movement, Linus inspires it. And, since inspiration relies more on perception than reality, I think Linux wins out on that one.
In other words, Stallman without Linus would not have managed to get the whole world lined up to commit to open source. Linux without Stallman would likely have ended up with a BSD-type license, and we'd be likely in nearly the same position with OSS being a major threat to Gates.
While I would agree with the conclusion, I must disagree on the supporting arguments. I would agree with many other users' comments that most people would get by with OOo and never really care about missing features.
I think NewsForge summed it up reasonably well. It's the data that users care about. And since their data is in MSWord format, not ISO-standard XML format, why exactly would they care when everyone else uses MSWord format, too? Their data is safe and accessable by everyone who matters (mostly themselves).
A data format for a consumer product is rarely anything to get excited about. It's not going to get droves of users to convert. By itself, it is not something to warrant the conversion cost (time and/or money)
What it might do, however, is get the marketing drones at MS to want to put "ISO-compliant" on their boxes as if it were a selling feature. But I doubt it.
I suppose it depends on where you are. My two intern-style positions were first with the federal government (Canada), and second with a small, private firm (100 employees, $15m CDN/year gross income). At the time, Canadian government employees were generally paid 10-25% more than private employees, largely due to unions. However, the top performers in government service probably would never match the top performers in private companies in pay, again due to unions.
After experiencing both, I promised myself never to work in the public sector again. My manager was a sole bright spot in my experience there - I'm not sure how he got to be a manager without getting dirty in the politics, but everyone else was difficult to trust. The private firm was completely different - everyone had a common goal, and, though politics can never be completely eliminated in any relationship of three or more people, it was like night and day.
Note that one thing I've learned since graduating is that it is easier to understand and trust people whose motives you understand, because that gives a context to their actions. Clear motives (e.g., improve the customer experience so that we make more money) means that you know that person will do what s/he can in that area. But unclear motives, concealed behind a veil of politics, makes it impossible to work together, because you never know how your coworker will respond. But this is true regardless of where you find the politics.
Personally, I just found more politics in public service than private.
- First, today's spam has a link that says "http://somelegitsite.com", but the href is "http://1.2.3.4/uniqueID" to make you think you're going to a legit site, but really sending you elsewhere. Hard to do with voice contact, or, rather, audio contact.
- Second, they would never use a toll-free number. That would not only cost them money rather than you, but be easily traceable. For those who don't mind the traceability, it'll be a 900 number.
Besides, it'll all be automated - no human voice at the other endIt's a tough call to say what's "balanced". A rather crude method is to say "50-50". But that doesn't take into account the "fringe" parties, independants, etc. Should all candidates be given equal airtime? Personally, I don't think that would be ideal - I really could care less about hearing about most of the other candidates.
Suppose, then, we come up with some sort of hand-waving idea of balanced being relative to the vote that each candidate will receive. Ignoring for a minute the obvious time-continuity issues, this would definitely be keeping the fringe to the fringe, but with the obvious downside of forcing a two-party system. No one else will get enough airtime to warrant voting, keeping them perpetually on the outside of the electoral process.
Maybe what we really want is "unbiased"? Report all the news, all sides, and let the populace decide. Sounds reasonable - even though some^Wmost voters will ignore the information, it's their choice to be uninformed, rather than the news outets' choice. There would be two ways about this: first, you can just take all the press releases and release that as news (the easy way), or you can research and look for all sides (the hard way). Which one do you think most people would do? Yeah. And if you do research, inevitably, you'll find some sides utterly unbelievable, and fail to report them in an unbiased manner, if you report them at all.
Short version: easier said than done, I think.
Strange ... being in the database business, I'm getting the distinct impression from my management that we're following the money ... to AMD64.
From my perspective, IA64 is already dead.
In today's society, what is evil? Are we not to accept all positions as valid, to be non-judgemental and non-ethnocentric? Why should we then apply our ethnocentric definition of "evil" to a company working in China - in a different ethnic society? In the US, censorship is evil. In China, censorship is not evil. How are we to judge their society?
Ok, I don't really believe that. Good and evil are absolutes, neither of which anyone really is 100%. China (the government, not the people) has some very evil policies (and others less so). And Google is simply placing profit before principle. Not surprising, really, as that is what any public company is required to do for their shareholders. Unfortunate, yes. Surprising, no.
Note to anonymouse cowards: first posts can be redundant if it repeats anything that is a trivial rewording of the FA. First posts aren't first posts - they're first comments to a post, and thus already second.
.. 'cuz I haven't RTFA'd yet. But the general statement made still is incorrect.
I'm not saying that this qualified
Actually, I doubt it. The inquisition actually was there to reduce unjust punishment, not increase it as you seem to imply.
Yes, you obtain tools to perform your objectives. But Microsoft makes those tools to obtain theirs.
If you find you don't like their objectives, find a new tools producer. If there are no others, then you can either suck it up, or create one. It's the latter which has caused so much free software in the first place. (In other words, I'm not advocating sucking it up - we make no progress that way.)
Just have to make sure that the developers stagger their start times, I suppose. Let's see - my manager starts work at 6AM, I start at 9:30ish (or at least, I did before I started telecommuting from the other side of the continent), and one of my coworkers starts between 11AM and 1PM, depending on the party the night before. I think that this would work fine.
Hmmm ... where I work, we plan for a "final build" and then it's a month before we plan on actually shipping anything. It's merely saying that we know this will not be actually final, but we need to put hard dates down, or we'll never ship.
I would think that this is the same thing. It's sorta like NHL playoffs - "Game 5 (if needed)" is scheduled on TV.
This is probably one of the most interesting ideas I've ever heard of for getting fast/accurate counts. I'm sure there would be some work required to get it feasible, but I think we have the start of a fabulous way to overhaul the system in such a way that it would increase the average citizen's faith in democracy.
Generally speaking, with Dave Barry, it's both.
;-)
One thing I really like about Dave Barry is that he manages to be non-partisan and still finds ways to make everyone laugh about a political situation. While I'm sure he actually votes for some party during elections, his humour pokes fun at everyone (mostly himself), which makes it hard for anyone to just dismiss him. Which is good for his employer
Being Yaz's former cow-orker, Mandrake and Slackware were nowhere near the list.
To see what is tested, check http://www.ibm.com/db2/linux/validate - it's all right there.
A couple of counter points, I think.
Debian can't be supported as long as it bucks the RPM trend
Let's face it. Most of the most popular distros are RPM-based. Many of this distros have collapsed, but as far as installed-base out there, if a company such as IBM is going to support a native installer (like installp on AIX, pkgadd on SystemV such as Sun or SCO, swinstall on HP-UX, etc.), which one are they going to pick? Each native installer is another CD in the box and another fixpak to generate. So, to keep costs down while still being able to claim Linux support, RPM it is.
There are other solutions here, of course. InstallShield MultiPlatform (ISMP), now called InstallShield X, or the new InstallShield for IBM Solution Installer would work - with their own problems of not being integrated with how the rest of the system is being installed. Using "rpm -qa" no longer tells you what is going on with that vendor's products. Solves one set of problems at the expense of creating others.
Stability is a hype word
I mean, come on. We're all predicting that the Longhorn delays will give Linux a chance to wedge in because the churn that industry pretends to hate isn't frequent enough. Industry, and the economy, is addicted to regular updates and regular fees to keep the money moving. If Ford doesn't buy a new OS, that OS vendor's employees don't get paid, and put off the purchase of their brand new Ford, which causes Ford to make less money. It's all funny-money anyway (and I'm a capitalist!).
In this industry, 3 years is a bit too long to delay. Companies are trying to get a bigger return on their buck, and want the features (and security fixes) available in the 2.4 or even 2.6 kernels. Sticking with the 2.2 kernel can be great for some people, but without some of those boosts, DB2 v8.2.x won't be able to get all the performance it can out of the machine.
What they want isn't a lack of options that Debian Stable offers. They want the option to stick with a 3-year-old product and still get support, or to update to the latest-and-greatest product and get more bang for their computer buck.
Have RH and SuSE/Novell managed to find the happy medium between the extremes of 3-month cycles and 3-year-cycles? Only time will tell. I would bet they've come close enough.
Heck, when the $2 coin was first coming out, and there was a debate about what to call it ("twoonie" seems to have won out), I told everyone we should call it "One Dollar American". At the time, the value would have been pretty close...
A bit of OS/2 history - Warp Connect seems to have beat Win95 out by a few months. Which seems to coincide closely with when I bought it - I recall buying Warp Connect early in 1996, and I remember that I had waited and agonised over the decision for a long time - many months. Had to buy a CDROM at the same time.
Regardless, MS has obviously won that battle with OS/2 support being withdrawn in 2006. MacOSX having more features than Longhorn is not a guarantor of success for MacOSX either. MS consistantly wins on fewer features.
My next guess would be Intel. :-)
If you work at AMD, then it's still vaporware. Anything pre-announced is vaporware until it escapes the lab and into consumers' hands.
Hmmm .. a graphics card with an Itanium core? That might be pretty sweet ...
Us OS/2 guys always said the same thing about Windows - why wait for Windows95 when OS/2 had all its features, and stability as well? Obviously MS doesn't even need features to continue selling.
Don't tell me anyone is surprised at this. I mean, even Bill can't believe he has such a tight control of the market that he can delay Windows updates nearly indefinitely and get away with it.