SuSE can be installed, for free, off
their own ftp servers, which they pay bandwidth
costs of. You simply download a floppy image,
boot it, and install off the network. CDROM
images are not put up, partly because it would
be significant effort (especially to keep them up to date!), bandwidth, space, etc. And partly
beacause they're giving you an incentive to buy the product.
This doesn't change the fact that you can install off the internet for $0, quite easily.
Python is transitioning from a bsd-like license
to a bsd-like license. Those who wish to get their knickers in a twist over the in-between phase are grasping at straws.
Guido does not want to relinquish final control over Python, and he wants to get paid for what other language implementors do for free.
Linus does not want to relinquish final control over Linux. What's your point? Guido is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) but the license does not prevent one from making alternate versions, and in fact this has been done more than once.
As for Guido wanting to get paid for doing Python work, sure.. why not? As for getting paid for what other people contribute, please explain yourself in some level of detail?
2) Python is defined by it's implementation. There's no standard for developers to rely on. That means ultimately you are at the mercy of the good or bad judgement of the Python team.
While there may no standards body stamping an official document, this statement also applies to Perl, TCL, and many other popular scripting languages in its class, as well as Java. In practical reality, there are mulitple implementations of Python which are in fact compatible, and have been multiple independent implementations for some time. I wouldn't get too worried about this "one implementation problem".
3) New versions break old programs. I do NOT want my customers to have to have 2 or 3 versions of Python installed.
The python 1.x -> 2.0 transition was painless
for all those I have spoken with. I have not had
any of my code hiccup or cough at all except perhaps to tell me that some packages have been deprecated over the years, though they still work.
If you compare this to the K&R -> ANSI C transition, or the TCL 7 -> 8 transition, or some of the severl perl transitions, it's a walk in the park.
4) There are better alternatives. Lisp or Ruby.
While these languages are interesting, they do not have the same advantages as Python. Some examples would be a clean readable language, a cohesive standard library, a simple syntax, and a strong OO heritage pulling from background such as smalltalk. Ruby and Lisp do interesting things of their own, but are not languages I would consider in the same breath. Ruby, FWIW, suffers from the same above problems as Python.
I read the intros/first chapters of about half the books up there, and.. unfortunately found none of them appealing. *sigh*
I really wanted to, they just seem like what I call the 80% of science fiction. Bland prose.. ungripping stories.. blah. My tastes aren't everyone's I suppose.. some people think David Drake is a great read, I think it's pretty mindless.
I will give them this, I actually picked up half these books and tried reading them.. Which given the covers I would never have done in the store. I would really love it if more authors would do this.. it lets me browse books when i have time, not just when I'm in the store.
I wonder if the first impression effect occurs differently on web browsers than paper...
Yeah, I'll switch to IE6.. when it isn't available on my platform.
Yeah, IE6 is entirely focused on standards compliance.
And oh, Netscape 6 is completely uncompliant... Have you EVEN LOOKED?
Thanks michael, I've filtered you from my slashdot banners. Obviously your ability to sift intelligently through internet news is even more poor than your co-editors.
Chopsticks are actually more advanced than forks and knives. Forks and knives are only required when your food comes in a big mass that you have to reduce yourself, such a a dead beast. In china, thousands of years ago, they developed their cooking methods to such an extent that gross cutting and hacking of the food during the dinner was no longer necessary. All food was prepared so that it could be eaten as-is. Thus chopsticks represent an advancement in utensil technology that the west has never achieved.
It is called The Anti-censorship-proxy proxy.
Or something like that.
You can find it on freshmeat etc.
-josh
Re:Looks like they are going the way of Redhat...
on
SuSE 7.0
·
· Score: 1
Well, there is also the update edition, which is cheap and includes all the cds, and only ships you the sections of the manual which have actually changed.
Version numbers are useful when comparing within a product, not between products.
Re:Gee, what a coincidence
on
SuSE 7.0
·
· Score: 1
This is pretty silly.
Both Red Hat and SuSE have been planning such a release for a long time now. That Red Hat's _beta_ was announced slightly before SuSE's product is a coincidence.
I'm a computer user and in the computer industry. I don't fit the mould you describe. I've given the the Kibaale Children's Fund, AmFar, Habitat for Humanity in significant amounts, and to other organizations in much smaller sums.
One thing I did differently than you seem to be suggesting was to give _locally_. My donations have been all mailed. I would use a web format if it was cost effective for charities to offer them, but it isn't. So I'm curious if the Silicon Valley folks are really that selfish or if they just aren't giving to their local area, which would make sense, they don't see any poverty in their daily cycle.
I suspect you're right though. I see all to many people whose goal is to become "rich" and are saving every penny until that day (maybe never) comes.
Maybe the original mac was innovative for being all in one like this, but the iMac certainly isn't.
foundation for all modern-day GUIs *
Bought/stolen.
- WebObjects
Bought.
- Aqua
Maybe original, but mainly eye-candy of rather questionable merit.
- Newton
Not the first failure in pen-based computing, and certainly not the last, but did certainly include some major innovations. On this last one you actually hit your mark!
Look guys, The CEO was a bad choice. The LXCare people knew this way early, but it's not an easy thing to fire a CEO. The CIO was brough in by him and was a fool. The both bled capital like crazy, the one in rediculous expenses, the other in the stupid "Sorcerer" project which was more or less irrelevant to their main business model.
What we've seen recently is two things
The booting of the incompetent, irrelevant, moneywasters
The trimming down of the staff to fit a company not planning on making all their money off an IPO.
Yes, LinuxCare doesn't have guaranteed success right now, but neither does Red Hat, Caldera, etc. Most Linux companies are in growth/bleed mode., which is always tricky.
I believe that if LinuxCare can focus on providing a high quality core product, and that is support, they will do fine.
I bought a Reality 332 (original Virge) card from them, but it had some problems.
Namely, on my old (it was 1996) fixed-frequency montor, I couldn't run the card at high resolutions. So I called them. No one answered. I had to leave a message.
"Hi, I'd like to ask how to control the sync rates used by your card/driver at high resolutions so it can work with my fixed-frequency monitor. Thanks!"
I got a call back when I was at work: "The Number Nine 332 card only supports multi-sync monitors. You must acquire a multi-sync monitor to use this card. If you have further questions you may contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX"
I thought it was really clever of them not to mention this anywhere in the product description, sales lit, etc. (a lot of people still had such monitors then). Luckily, a trip to the s3 ftp site turned up a dos utility that would program the card to your preferred sync rates. I dropped it in the autoexec, and ha, it worked.
I called back the support flack: "Hello there, this is the guy who called about his fixed freqency monitor before.. ticket number A56B34XX-QQ. I have a further question. Would you like me to train your support department on your products? It seems the Reality 332 supports fixed-frequency just fine. I am using it successfully right now. To learn more about your products, visit the s3 web site."
All I can say is thank goodness s3 was running a decent operation at the time. That virge was a highly dependable 2d card for dos, demos, windows, linux, games, etc. The 3d sucked, but hey it was cheap anyway, and the other option at the time was the verite, and I'm glad I didn't buy that.
3. Any closed source programs that you make which reference the library do NOT have to be GPL'd and their source does NOT have to be open, but of course, it would be better for everyone if it were.
The GPL does not clearly indicate what is vs. what is not a derivative work in all cases, at least as far as the actual text of the license. While the text may be clear to a lawyer, it is not clear to me. However, what is clear to me is that the general understanding of the implications in the discussions I have seen in the Free Software world is that linking against GPL code is only legitimate if your code is also under the GPL. Thus this library, under the GPL, _requires_ your code to be released under the GPL, unless you choose not to link against it (use it) in your program.
At the risk of sounding accusatory, it seems to me that LinuxCare was focusing _too_ much on the tools surrounding support in a varieity of areas.
Certainly giving your support team the tools to do their jobs is critical, but the impression I got was that management wanted to generate tools to actually do the work. I've seen lots of companies try to do this and fail. I have never seen such a set of tools that handle more than 5% of customer requests. What's far more important is making sure these tools document information so that they can be of use internally as well as externally.
Hopefully I misinterpereted things, and LinuxCare is already working on these issues.
Well, I don't know the history behind this, but I'm certainly using Reiser on LVM across multiple disks here.
I'm not using any software raid though, so I can't comment on that... Using LVM with software RAID always seems so convoluted and byzantine to me anyway...
Clue impaired mac-people
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
A quote from the article:
I'd seen these servers called the Cobalt Raq, great little one rack-space computers, however PC-based. So, I asked myself, why couldn't the iMac be a Raq with a little coaxing?
Say what? This guy means to tell us that a MIPS-based Linux rack-mount solution is a "PC"?
I guess mac folks tend to think of the world as "Macs" and "everything else". I wonder what he'd make of a Macintosh running SuSE Linux...
Linux is too large for a number of types of embedded devices, and Linux is _certainly not_ realtime, nor are the realtime Linux extensions ready to be used in ABS, rockets, satellites, etc.
However, this still leaves a very large and rapidly growing segment of the embedded market. Designs where the underlying OS is not important, and simply making the thing go, networking, tasking, filesystem too, without spending too much money on it.
You have to remember, there are two main costs in embedded. Engineering costs, shipment costs. Linux may raise the latter slightly, but it can cut down on the former GREATLY. It also runs on commodity system hardware, which means the hardware costs often drop as well. Again, we're talking about roles that don't directly affect people's lives.
Lastly, reliability is always always always going to depend upon the developers of the system. No operating environment can fix that problem. You can provide tools, etc. to identify problems. You can provide tools to help solve problems. You can provide testing environments, etc. But in the end it is always up the developers of the embedded product to make it stable. This is as true on Linux as it is on CE as it is on VxWorks.
Now, if the operating environment itself is not stable, this screws the developers as well. Fortunately, most embedded OSes and Linux are both stable enough when the hardware and software run on them are restricted (as it is with all embedded systems).
Huh? We've been shipping the most current libjpeg for quite some time, there's just been a lack of agreement among linux vendors as to what to name the library file.
It doesn't need to be "downloaded" to the CPU. It simply exists in memory space.
You know when you see a message on your screen regarding the card during system boot up? That is proof positive that this thing has an "expansion ROM" which integrates with the BIOS. If you refuse to believe that it replaces any BIOS service calls, then you can do that, but its a relatively trivial affair to write a DOS program to check the memory locations of the BIOS routines and check them when the card is present and not present.
Slashdot Mirror
This is at best misleading.
SuSE can be installed, for free, off their own ftp servers, which they pay bandwidth costs of. You simply download a floppy image, boot it, and install off the network. CDROM images are not put up, partly because it would be significant effort (especially to keep them up to date!), bandwidth, space, etc. And partly beacause they're giving you an incentive to buy the product.
This doesn't change the fact that you can install off the internet for $0, quite easily.
Python is transitioning from a bsd-like license to a bsd-like license. Those who wish to get their knickers in a twist over the in-between phase are grasping at straws.
Linus does not want to relinquish final control over Linux. What's your point? Guido is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) but the license does not prevent one from making alternate versions, and in fact this has been done more than once.
As for Guido wanting to get paid for doing Python work, sure.. why not? As for getting paid for what other people contribute, please explain yourself in some level of detail?
While there may no standards body stamping an official document, this statement also applies to Perl, TCL, and many other popular scripting languages in its class, as well as Java. In practical reality, there are mulitple implementations of Python which are in fact compatible, and have been multiple independent implementations for some time. I wouldn't get too worried about this "one implementation problem".
The python 1.x -> 2.0 transition was painless for all those I have spoken with. I have not had any of my code hiccup or cough at all except perhaps to tell me that some packages have been deprecated over the years, though they still work.
If you compare this to the K&R -> ANSI C transition, or the TCL 7 -> 8 transition, or some of the severl perl transitions, it's a walk in the park.
While these languages are interesting, they do not have the same advantages as Python. Some examples would be a clean readable language, a cohesive standard library, a simple syntax, and a strong OO heritage pulling from background such as smalltalk. Ruby and Lisp do interesting things of their own, but are not languages I would consider in the same breath. Ruby, FWIW, suffers from the same above problems as Python.
To find out more, please visit
Stand On Guard
I'm sorry that your pet usability tool was not included, but that doesn't at all constitute an actual review of the usability features.
I read the intros/first chapters of about half the books up there, and .. unfortunately found none of them appealing. *sigh*
I really wanted to, they just seem like what I call the 80% of science fiction. Bland prose.. ungripping stories.. blah. My tastes aren't everyone's I suppose.. some people think David Drake is a great read, I think it's pretty mindless.
I will give them this, I actually picked up half these books and tried reading them.. Which given the covers I would never have done in the store. I would really love it if more authors would do this.. it lets me browse books when i have time, not just when I'm in the store.
I wonder if the first impression effect occurs differently on web browsers than paper...
Hi.
Canadians are Americans. Look at a map. I thought it was us United States residents that were supposed to be so geographically challenged...
Yeah, I'll switch to IE6 .. when it isn't available on my platform.
Yeah, IE6 is entirely focused on standards compliance.
And oh, Netscape 6 is completely uncompliant... Have you EVEN LOOKED?
Thanks michael, I've filtered you from my slashdot banners. Obviously your ability to sift intelligently through internet news is even more poor than your co-editors.
Amazing.
Yes of course this was a joke.. BUT
Chopsticks are actually more advanced than forks and knives. Forks and knives are only required when your food comes in a big mass that you have to reduce yourself, such a a dead beast. In china, thousands of years ago, they developed their cooking methods to such an extent that gross cutting and hacking of the food during the dinner was no longer necessary. All food was prepared so that it could be eaten as-is. Thus chopsticks represent an advancement in utensil technology that the west has never achieved.
This already exists.
It is called The Anti-censorship-proxy proxy.
Or something like that.
You can find it on freshmeat etc.
-josh
Well, there is also the update edition, which is cheap and includes all the cds, and only ships you the sections of the manual which have actually changed.
Cheaper shipping, same information.
What's to complain about?
Version numbers are useful when comparing within a product, not between products.
This is pretty silly.
Both Red Hat and SuSE have been planning such a release for a long time now. That Red Hat's _beta_ was announced slightly before SuSE's product is a coincidence.
Collusion, what Mr. Hatch suggests is going on, is not operating within US law. Here your argument ends.
Hmm.
I'm a computer user and in the computer industry. I don't fit the mould you describe. I've given the the Kibaale Children's Fund, AmFar, Habitat for Humanity in significant amounts, and to other organizations in much smaller sums.
One thing I did differently than you seem to be suggesting was to give _locally_. My donations have been all mailed. I would use a web format if it was cost effective for charities to offer them, but it isn't. So I'm curious if the Silicon Valley folks are really that selfish or if they just aren't giving to their local area, which would make sense, they don't see any poverty in their daily cycle.
I suspect you're right though. I see all to many people whose goal is to become "rich" and are saving every penny until that day (maybe never) comes.
Your list of apple innovations is interesting.
- QuickTime
Bought.
- ColorSync
Bought.
- AppleScript
definite also-ran to Rexx, DLC, etc.
- iMac
Maybe the original mac was innovative for being all in one like this, but the iMac certainly isn't.
foundation for all modern-day GUIs *
Bought/stolen.
- WebObjects
Bought.
- Aqua
Maybe original, but mainly eye-candy of rather questionable merit.
- Newton
Not the first failure in pen-based computing, and certainly not the last, but did certainly include some major innovations. On this last one you actually hit your mark!
What we've seen recently is two things
Yes, LinuxCare doesn't have guaranteed success right now, but neither does Red Hat, Caldera, etc. Most Linux companies are in growth/bleed mode., which is always tricky.
I believe that if LinuxCare can focus on providing a high quality core product, and that is support, they will do fine.
Namely, on my old (it was 1996) fixed-frequency montor, I couldn't run the card at high resolutions. So I called them. No one answered. I had to leave a message.
"Hi, I'd like to ask how to control the sync rates used by your card/driver at high resolutions so it can work with my fixed-frequency monitor. Thanks!"
I got a call back when I was at work:
"The Number Nine 332 card only supports multi-sync monitors. You must acquire a multi-sync monitor to use this card. If you have further questions you may contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX"
I thought it was really clever of them not to mention this anywhere in the product description, sales lit, etc. (a lot of people still had such monitors then). Luckily, a trip to the s3 ftp site turned up a dos utility that would program the card to your preferred sync rates. I dropped it in the autoexec, and ha, it worked.
I called back the support flack:
"Hello there, this is the guy who called about his fixed freqency monitor before.. ticket number A56B34XX-QQ. I have a further question. Would you like me to train your support department on your products? It seems the Reality 332 supports fixed-frequency just fine. I am using it successfully right now. To learn more about your products, visit the s3 web site."
All I can say is thank goodness s3 was running a decent operation at the time. That virge was a highly dependable 2d card for dos, demos, windows, linux, games, etc. The 3d sucked, but hey it was cheap anyway, and the other option at the time was the verite, and I'm glad I didn't buy that.
3. Any closed source programs that you make which reference the library do NOT have to be GPL'd and their source does NOT have to be open, but of course, it would be better for everyone if it were.
The GPL does not clearly indicate what is vs. what is not a derivative work in all cases, at least as far as the actual text of the license. While the text may be clear to a lawyer, it is not clear to me. However, what is clear to me is that the general understanding of the implications in the discussions I have seen in the Free Software world is that linking against GPL code is only legitimate if your code is also under the GPL. Thus this library, under the GPL, _requires_ your code to be released under the GPL, unless you choose not to link against it (use it) in your program.
Certainly giving your support team the tools to do their jobs is critical, but the impression I got was that management wanted to generate tools to actually do the work. I've seen lots of companies try to do this and fail. I have never seen such a set of tools that handle more than 5% of customer requests. What's far more important is making sure these tools document information so that they can be of use internally as well as externally.
Hopefully I misinterpereted things, and LinuxCare is already working on these issues.
Mainwin combines the horror of MFC with the horror of Motif! How much worse can you get?
Mainwin is a short path to a large headache. Steer clear at all costs!
I'm not using any software raid though, so I can't comment on that... Using LVM with software RAID always seems so convoluted and byzantine to me anyway...
A quote from the article:
I'd seen these servers called the Cobalt Raq, great little one rack-space computers, however PC-based. So, I asked myself, why couldn't the iMac be a Raq with a little coaxing?
Say what? This guy means to tell us that a MIPS-based Linux rack-mount solution is a "PC"?
I guess mac folks tend to think of the world as "Macs" and "everything else". I wonder what he'd make of a Macintosh running SuSE Linux...
Linux is too large for a number of types of embedded devices, and Linux is _certainly not_ realtime, nor are the realtime Linux extensions ready to be used in ABS, rockets, satellites, etc.
However, this still leaves a very large and rapidly growing segment of the embedded market. Designs where the underlying OS is not important, and simply making the thing go, networking, tasking, filesystem too, without spending too much money on it.
You have to remember, there are two main costs in embedded. Engineering costs, shipment costs. Linux may raise the latter slightly, but it can cut down on the former GREATLY. It also runs on commodity system hardware, which means the hardware costs often drop as well. Again, we're talking about roles that don't directly affect people's lives.
Lastly, reliability is always always always going to depend upon the developers of the system. No operating environment can fix that problem. You can provide tools, etc. to identify problems. You can provide tools to help solve problems. You can provide testing environments, etc. But in the end it is always up the developers of the embedded product to make it stable. This is as true on Linux as it is on CE as it is on VxWorks.
Now, if the operating environment itself is not stable, this screws the developers as well. Fortunately, most embedded OSes and Linux are both stable enough when the hardware and software run on them are restricted (as it is with all embedded systems).
Huh? We've been shipping the most current libjpeg for quite some time, there's just been a lack of agreement among linux vendors as to what to name the library file.
It doesn't need to be "downloaded" to the CPU. It simply exists in memory space.
You know when you see a message on your screen regarding the card during system boot up? That is proof positive that this thing has an "expansion ROM" which integrates with the BIOS. If you refuse to believe that it replaces any BIOS service calls, then you can do that, but its a relatively trivial affair to write a DOS program to check the memory locations of the BIOS routines and check them when the card is present and not present.