Open Source software continues to impress me after so many years. This again proves, how much better software can be, if you remove management, lawyers, sales department etc. and make good programmers work together without short-term profit in mind.
Both Ralph Nader (USA) and the German government are focusing a lot on the fact, that there must be an alternative to Windows, and that prices must be set by having a competitive market, not by judging how much money you are capable of spending on an OS.
In order to create such a competitive market, the products need to become more interchangeable. You can do this by letting several companies sell Windows (like the judge Jackson split would have made possible), by standardizing the Windows API as an ISO standard (somebody actually tried this once!), or by making sure that most software products on the market run on at least two operating systems.
Linux is getting there - even MS Office runs on Linux. This is why the German government introduces Linux as the purchasing alternative to Microsoft and uses resources (tax money) to make it a real alternative.
There is no problem with having Microsoft around and Windows installed on a lot of PCs, as long as it's not the obvious choice.
This idg overview is extremely undetailed and not very useful. With several countries, like Denmark, it didn't cover all the Linux activities going on. The German parliament is actually going to use Linux on their servers, and their focus on multiple vendors in government IT spending isn't mentioned.
"Snapshots from the OS front" is actually a precise description of the content.
Nobody addresses the fact that tubes are usually used for power amplifiers, not preamplifiers. Why would anyone use a power amplifier inside a PC? A good power amplifier weighs at least 4kg and doesn't fit into a PC case.
There is absolutely no reason to abandon the standard e-mail file format, including uuencode for file formats. Doing that, you would end up with a file format that depends on certain versions of the e-mail file format to work optimally. If you want to reduce harddisk space, zip it like OpenOffice.org does.
E-mails are documents. Documents belong into the home directory, and so do e-mails. If you want to do something new, you should use the harddisk folders as e-mail storage, so that e-mails, spreadsheets and documents mix. This probably requires inventing a new ".e-mail" file format so that e-mails can be properly recognized and indexed.
Storing one e-mail in one file is not a problem as long as you index the filenames properly, for which you can use gdbm.
The german consumer organization "Stifung Warentest" made a comparative test between a lot of free e-mail services. Two of them failed, one of these were Hotmail. It was actually a very good test that tested both availability, usability, licenses etc. Hotmail failed on their license agreement and security issues.
One competitor that got a good mark was Yahoo mail.
It looks pretty much as a 7.3 version because most tools, installation etc. are almost unchanged compared to version 7.2. But since a 7.3 version also means binary compatibility, including gcc Red Hat edition 2.96, it will probably be followed by an 8.0 version within few months, featuring newer python, gcc 3.x, much improved installation routines, improved graphical looks when booting etc. The competitors already have this, and Red Hat must be working on it, too.
There is no good merge functionality in StarOffice 5.2 or OpenOffice.org 1.0. The StarOffice 5.2 report designer is extremely limited and the Word processing merge function can only merge to multiple documents. You cannot merge a simple address list from your address book, believe it or not.
This is probably the most stupid idea I ever heard of. Think embedded: "I just updated my washing machine to the latest version of bash". Do I have to say more?
Being a long-time beta-tester of the "tar cf/dev/null" backup system on Linux, I have decided to hand over my duties. Anybody interested in taking over this task, please respond.
The zlib incident has clearly demonstrated how well the Linux security model works. Within 24 hours after publishing the vulnerability, Linux servers were fixed all over the world, and still nobody seems to know how much Microsoft products are vulnerable.
We will probably see more and more software and code that runs on both open-source platforms and on Windows, which means that we will also see more incidents where Microsoft's security service performance can be measured against the competition.
The difference between object oriented programming like.net and streamed programming like http, is that a webserver can start sending the html web page via http before it has completed calculating the web page. http does not need random access, whereas.net classes do.
Random access to properties and methods is one of the basic foundations for classes.
Some would complain that http is ascii. Well, all e-mails are sent as ascii. In order to send national characters like æøåéüñ, you can use MIME encoding. Unicode can also be embedded in 8 bit character streams. Ascii is good, because it's easy to debug, easy to troubleshoot.
http has been tested for many years. Many webservers out there still don't conform 100% to the standard (like not allowing HEAD requests for instance), and if you want a truly idenpendent standard, it will take lots of years before.net comes up with anything as stable as http. By then, replacing http will be unthinkable.
The most optimal technology seldom wins. But the technology that first gets widespread, often does. How many http servers have we got today? How many.net api based web servers do we have today?
OLE2 and.net are both made by Microsoft. If you want to know the complexity of a.net transferred user interface, have a look at the source code that makes it run. First, it needs a runtime. Next, you'll need to define classes. Do you get the point?
http has been designed to serve a special purpose, and is the optimal solution to this problem. It's ascii, it's fast, it's compact etc. And most important of all: It's a standard not controlled by a single company.
What.net will provide, is a proprietary solution on which other proprietary user interfaces can be built, and these user interfaces can then exist over a network.
There are many network oriented user interface protocols: X11, Citrix, Microsoft RDP, VNC are just a few of them. But none of these can replace http, and.net won't either.
If you want to know how complexity is, when a webpage is replaced with a.net solution, then have a look at the OLE2 "hello world" application source code.
You are developing a website. You don't need a generic method that determines if two colors differ enough - you need methods to find suitable colors that differ enough.
Several posts have good explanations on how to pick colors so that they differ a lot, including taking care of colorblind kids. That will make you finish the website much faster than doing cutting edge color research!
In several European countries, EULAs are not valid unless they are presented to the customer before purchase. EULAs inside the wrapping and EULAs on screen are not valid.
Microsoft seems to know that, since the Hotmail EULA is violating the German law, as specified in the test by http://www.StiftungWarentest.de/ in the august 2001 issue:
And in Denmark, where I come from, even if you were presented with an EULA before purchase, it would always be interpreted against the author (the software company), and unreasonable clauses would be overruled in court no matter what you write.
.net and Java is about productivity, not about how all software will be written in the future. Those programmers, whose work will improve the most, consider this a revolution. This happened with Visual Basic, UCSD Pascal, Java, and now.net.
But when you compare Delphi (a native compiler) with Visual Basic (a P bytecode compiler), there is no doubt which one delivers the best end-user products. Visual Basic requires a runtime and separate OCX-files etc., whereas software made with Delphi is often just an.exe file, that includes everything from the database engine to all widgets.
I believe Java has problems for the same reason: How do you create a program that runs well on Mac OS 8, 9, X, Windows, Linux etc.? You definitely don't use the latest Java version, because that is not supported on all platforms! And somehow I cannot make some of my browsers run java apps in a stable way.
The whole idea of having a runtime is pretty troubled, and so it will be for Microsoft.net. Remember, that most PCs out there run Windows 98, a 4 year old operating system, and that Windows 98 is still one of the most sold operating systems on brand new computers. There is no doubt that the first versions of.net will be unstable and faulty just like everything else in version 1.0, which leads to the conclusion, that:
.net will not be widely supported on deployed desktops in a stable version before year 2008, and maybe even later if Linux gets widespread use on the desktop.
That's in 6 years. How did the world look like 6 years ago? Well, Windows 95 was gaining market share from Windows 3.x and Linus Thorvalds could go unnoticed on exhibitions.
If we want Linux to get the most used OS around, we also want commercial software on Linux. These are the options:
1) Do not release for Linux.
2) Rewrite everything from scratch to crossplatform C, C++ etc.
3) Release as binary for only one Platform. Like The Sims - doesn't run on a Mac.
This will also be the case in the future, unless Linux gets a good runtime, that compilers will support. Java is one option,.net is another.
People are much more willing to pay for services than software. In both cases you need your customers to get that credit card out of the pocket. Make the software free and the services a payment service.
The problem with software is, that you got so much different software that most people cannot handle licenses any more. But they surely do handle buying service. If you go into Kivio, for instance, and you need more stencils, it's extremely easy to click "Get more stencils" and buy some stencils at $5 a piece from TheKompany. And if you should accidentally delete a stencil without a backup, just buy it again...
A Linux distribution can consist of 90% software not covered by the LSB. Therefore, it makes no sense to discuss "administering an LSB system".
LSB is about minimum requirements for a distribution in order to make distributions more compatible, i.e. it's about deployment. If you distribution is LSB 1.1 compliant, then you should be able to install all software that only requires LSB 1.1. compliance. For a start, this will not cover ordinary GUI software.
In order to create a long-lasting standard, you cannot cover issues that are constantly changing or under development, so don't expect LSB to cover a whole distribution anytime soon. But LSB is an important step to make sure that distributions don't fork into something incompatible.
I know this post will get the score of zero, but you always have to fight ignorance and intolerance, so I simply have to post this.
More than 90% of the jews in Denmark were saved in a three day action created by all kind of Danes without any prior planning, even though the Germans hunted them. No other country has managed to hide so many jews and make so many jews escape. There is only one reason why it could be done: The ordinary Dane did not believe in nazism and wanted to fight it, risking their lives while doing it.
When the Germans invaded Denmark, we had no chance of stopping them. Our country was too small, our army too powerless. But we had a lot of transport ships and warships etc., and all got the following instructions: Leave Denmark. Join allied forces. Do not accept further instructions from Denmark until the war is over. They were much more useful in a bigger force than in a tiny war between Denmark and Germany. Our ambassador in USA immediately declared himself independent of Copenhagen etc. Our police force did everything they could to prevent Germans from enforcing anything, which resulted in having all policemen sent to concentration camps. They risked their lives and they did it with pride.
After WW2, Norway thanked Denmark for sending so much food to Norway. We tried to help all we could, because Norwegians are our brothers and sisters.
I'm not sure what makes you think that countries should not deserve to exist unless they did something specific during the second world war. I personally know a lot of people (dutch, jews, danes, germans) who have been to german concentration camps (KZ), and none of these would accept your attitudes.
Your argument about "rolled over and died" also applies to jews and many other peoples in Europe. Do you actually believe that Europe only should be divided in three countries, named Poland, France and Norway?
My e-mail address is available if you click "dybdahl", in case you want to would like to reply.
Slashdot Mirror
Open Source software continues to impress me after so many years. This again proves, how much better software can be, if you remove management, lawyers, sales department etc. and make good programmers work together without short-term profit in mind.
Both Ralph Nader (USA) and the German government are focusing a lot on the fact, that there must be an alternative to Windows, and that prices must be set by having a competitive market, not by judging how much money you are capable of spending on an OS.
In order to create such a competitive market, the products need to become more interchangeable. You can do this by letting several companies sell Windows (like the judge Jackson split would have made possible), by standardizing the Windows API as an ISO standard (somebody actually tried this once!), or by making sure that most software products on the market run on at least two operating systems.
Linux is getting there - even MS Office runs on Linux. This is why the German government introduces Linux as the purchasing alternative to Microsoft and uses resources (tax money) to make it a real alternative.
There is no problem with having Microsoft around and Windows installed on a lot of PCs, as long as it's not the obvious choice.
This idg overview is extremely undetailed and not very useful. With several countries, like Denmark, it didn't cover all the Linux activities going on. The German parliament is actually going to use Linux on their servers, and their focus on multiple vendors in government IT spending isn't mentioned.
"Snapshots from the OS front" is actually a precise description of the content.
If Perl 6 isn't backwards compatible, they do the same Microsoft does with Visual Basic .net: make programmers switch to other tools.
A good language can introduce new features without changing the basics. This is why PHP got so popular so fast.
That kind of enduser agreements does not comply with the consumer protection laws of most countries and are therefore not legal.
Nobody addresses the fact that tubes are usually used for power amplifiers, not preamplifiers. Why would anyone use a power amplifier inside a PC? A good power amplifier weighs at least 4kg and doesn't fit into a PC case.
There is absolutely no reason to abandon the standard e-mail file format, including uuencode for file formats. Doing that, you would end up with a file format that depends on certain versions of the e-mail file format to work optimally. If you want to reduce harddisk space, zip it like OpenOffice.org does.
E-mails are documents. Documents belong into the home directory, and so do e-mails. If you want to do something new, you should use the harddisk folders as e-mail storage, so that e-mails, spreadsheets and documents mix. This probably requires inventing a new ".e-mail" file format so that e-mails can be properly recognized and indexed.
Storing one e-mail in one file is not a problem as long as you index the filenames properly, for which you can use gdbm.
Dybdahl.
Having done coding and commenting for more than 20 years, the most successful I've found is this one:
// Initialize for the loop
// Set all characters in
// parameter s to space
Group several lines of code and comment them together with one or more lines of comments before the code. Example:
// This is an example of how to
// comment in an easy way
function doSomething (String s) {
int i=0;
int j=0;
while (condition) {
s[i] = " ";
i++;
}
}
The german consumer organization "Stifung Warentest" made a comparative test between a lot of free e-mail services. Two of them failed, one of these were Hotmail. It was actually a very good test that tested both availability, usability, licenses etc. Hotmail failed on their license agreement and security issues.
One competitor that got a good mark was Yahoo mail.
Dybdahl.
As the market size increases, Red Hat has to target more Windows users. Getting the boot process more graphical is one way to do it.
Some people don't like GUI tools for administering their computers, but they are around and they are here to stay. People actually use them.
If you look at SuSE's boot process, it's really nice. It contains everything Red Hat does, but it's extremely much nicer.
If Red Hat doesn't improve on this, they'll lose the big market.
Dybdahl.
It looks pretty much as a 7.3 version because most tools, installation etc. are almost unchanged compared to version 7.2. But since a 7.3 version also means binary compatibility, including gcc Red Hat edition 2.96, it will probably be followed by an 8.0 version within few months, featuring newer python, gcc 3.x, much improved installation routines, improved graphical looks when booting etc. The competitors already have this, and Red Hat must be working on it, too.
There is no good merge functionality in StarOffice 5.2 or OpenOffice.org 1.0. The StarOffice 5.2 report designer is extremely limited and the Word processing merge function can only merge to multiple documents. You cannot merge a simple address list from your address book, believe it or not.
This is probably the most stupid idea I ever heard of. Think embedded: "I just updated my washing machine to the latest version of bash". Do I have to say more?
Being a long-time beta-tester of the "tar cf /dev/null" backup system on Linux, I have decided to hand over my duties. Anybody interested in taking over this task, please respond.
The zlib incident has clearly demonstrated how well the Linux security model works. Within 24 hours after publishing the vulnerability, Linux servers were fixed all over the world, and still nobody seems to know how much Microsoft products are vulnerable.
We will probably see more and more software and code that runs on both open-source platforms and on Windows, which means that we will also see more incidents where Microsoft's security service performance can be measured against the competition.
The difference between object oriented programming like .net and streamed programming like http, is that a webserver can start sending the html web page via http before it has completed calculating the web page. http does not need random access, whereas .net classes do.
.net comes up with anything as stable as http. By then, replacing http will be unthinkable.
.net api based web servers do we have today?
Random access to properties and methods is one of the basic foundations for classes.
Some would complain that http is ascii. Well, all e-mails are sent as ascii. In order to send national characters like æøåéüñ, you can use MIME encoding. Unicode can also be embedded in 8 bit character streams. Ascii is good, because it's easy to debug, easy to troubleshoot.
http has been tested for many years. Many webservers out there still don't conform 100% to the standard (like not allowing HEAD requests for instance), and if you want a truly idenpendent standard, it will take lots of years before
The most optimal technology seldom wins. But the technology that first gets widespread, often does. How many http servers have we got today? How many
.net is useful, but not as a http replacement.
Dybdahl.
M.Sc.E.E. in networking
OLE2 and .net are both made by Microsoft. If you want to know the complexity of a .net transferred user interface, have a look at the source code that makes it run. First, it needs a runtime. Next, you'll need to define classes. Do you get the point?
http has been designed to serve a special purpose, and is the optimal solution to this problem. It's ascii, it's fast, it's compact etc. And most important of all: It's a standard not controlled by a single company.
.net will provide, is a proprietary solution on which other proprietary user interfaces can be built, and these user interfaces can then exist over a network.
.net won't either.
.net solution, then have a look at the OLE2 "hello world" application source code.
What
There are many network oriented user interface protocols: X11, Citrix, Microsoft RDP, VNC are just a few of them. But none of these can replace http, and
If you want to know how complexity is, when a webpage is replaced with a
You are developing a website. You don't need a generic method that determines if two colors differ enough - you need methods to find suitable colors that differ enough.
Several posts have good explanations on how to pick colors so that they differ a lot, including taking care of colorblind kids. That will make you finish the website much faster than doing cutting edge color research!
In several European countries, EULAs are not valid unless they are presented to the customer before purchase. EULAs inside the wrapping and EULAs on screen are not valid.
p _E 1=1&p_E3=50&p_E4=30&p_id=21352
Microsoft seems to know that, since the Hotmail EULA is violating the German law, as specified in the test by http://www.StiftungWarentest.de/ in the august 2001 issue:
http://www.warentest.de/pls/sw/SW.Main?p_KNR=0&
And in Denmark, where I come from, even if you were presented with an EULA before purchase, it would always be interpreted against the author (the software company), and unreasonable clauses would be overruled in court no matter what you write.
.net and Java is about productivity, not about how all software will be written in the future. Those programmers, whose work will improve the most, consider this a revolution. This happened with Visual Basic, UCSD Pascal, Java, and now .net.
.exe file, that includes everything from the database engine to all widgets.
.net. Remember, that most PCs out there run Windows 98, a 4 year old operating system, and that Windows 98 is still one of the most sold operating systems on brand new computers. There is no doubt that the first versions of .net will be unstable and faulty just like everything else in version 1.0, which leads to the conclusion, that:
.net is too late.
But when you compare Delphi (a native compiler) with Visual Basic (a P bytecode compiler), there is no doubt which one delivers the best end-user products. Visual Basic requires a runtime and separate OCX-files etc., whereas software made with Delphi is often just an
I believe Java has problems for the same reason: How do you create a program that runs well on Mac OS 8, 9, X, Windows, Linux etc.? You definitely don't use the latest Java version, because that is not supported on all platforms! And somehow I cannot make some of my browsers run java apps in a stable way.
The whole idea of having a runtime is pretty troubled, and so it will be for Microsoft
.net will not be widely supported on deployed desktops in a stable version before year 2008, and maybe even later if Linux gets widespread use on the desktop.
That's in 6 years. How did the world look like 6 years ago? Well, Windows 95 was gaining market share from Windows 3.x and Linus Thorvalds could go unnoticed on exhibitions.
Personally, I believe
Dybdahl.
If we want Linux to get the most used OS around, we also want commercial software on Linux. These are the options:
.net is another.
1) Do not release for Linux.
2) Rewrite everything from scratch to crossplatform C, C++ etc.
3) Release as binary for only one Platform. Like The Sims - doesn't run on a Mac.
This will also be the case in the future, unless Linux gets a good runtime, that compilers will support. Java is one option,
People are much more willing to pay for services than software. In both cases you need your customers to get that credit card out of the pocket. Make the software free and the services a payment service.
The problem with software is, that you got so much different software that most people cannot handle licenses any more. But they surely do handle buying service. If you go into Kivio, for instance, and you need more stencils, it's extremely easy to click "Get more stencils" and buy some stencils at $5 a piece from TheKompany. And if you should accidentally delete a stencil without a backup, just buy it again...
Dybdahl.
A Linux distribution can consist of 90% software not covered by the LSB. Therefore, it makes no sense to discuss "administering an LSB system".
LSB is about minimum requirements for a distribution in order to make distributions more compatible, i.e. it's about deployment. If you distribution is LSB 1.1 compliant, then you should be able to install all software that only requires LSB 1.1. compliance. For a start, this will not cover ordinary GUI software.
In order to create a long-lasting standard, you cannot cover issues that are constantly changing or under development, so don't expect LSB to cover a whole distribution anytime soon. But LSB is an important step to make sure that distributions don't fork into something incompatible.
I know this post will get the score of zero, but you always have to fight ignorance and intolerance, so I simply have to post this.
More than 90% of the jews in Denmark were saved in a three day action created by all kind of Danes without any prior planning, even though the Germans hunted them. No other country has managed to hide so many jews and make so many jews escape. There is only one reason why it could be done: The ordinary Dane did not believe in nazism and wanted to fight it, risking their lives while doing it.
When the Germans invaded Denmark, we had no chance of stopping them. Our country was too small, our army too powerless. But we had a lot of transport ships and warships etc., and all got the following instructions: Leave Denmark. Join allied forces. Do not accept further instructions from Denmark until the war is over. They were much more useful in a bigger force than in a tiny war between Denmark and Germany. Our ambassador in USA immediately declared himself independent of Copenhagen etc. Our police force did everything they could to prevent Germans from enforcing anything, which resulted in having all policemen sent to concentration camps. They risked their lives and they did it with pride.
After WW2, Norway thanked Denmark for sending so much food to Norway. We tried to help all we could, because Norwegians are our brothers and sisters.
I'm not sure what makes you think that countries should not deserve to exist unless they did something specific during the second world war. I personally know a lot of people (dutch, jews, danes, germans) who have been to german concentration camps (KZ), and none of these would accept your attitudes.
Your argument about "rolled over and died" also applies to jews and many other peoples in Europe. Do you actually believe that Europe only should be divided in three countries, named Poland, France and Norway?
My e-mail address is available if you click "dybdahl", in case you want to would like to reply.