Exchange Server 5.5 can take a *very* long time to boot (ours takes about 5 mins end-to-end, 250 users) especially if you haven't purged down and defragmented the information stores.
49 minutes indicates an Exchange box that isn't getting the care and attention it requires.
As for the 18-minuter; well, that's probably one unresponsive box. Remember, Microsoft recommend one server per server application; now, please buy Small Business Server, which runs SQL, Proxy, Transaction, Exchange Servers all one one box:) --
All the sites mentioned in your story return regular search results on the.co.uk site, which may or may not have a degree of independence from the.com site.
I can't get to the.com site without getting redirected to the.co.uk one, and I can't be bothered to fiddle about to get this to work. The link in the story worked, though.
Lycos has a problem if it doesn't reverse this decision, for all the reasons stated so lucidly above.
That would be very, very nice. I have precisely no clue as to how hard it would be, though.
On a different note, I'd like to know how much effort is going into the installer for KDE 2.0; the 1.0 one wasn't much to speak of (although it's better than GNOME's - i.e. it does at least exist).
Dell still don't give that real sense of the warm and fuzzies that some very large corporations have when buying Compaq.
Dell have hit Compaq on the break, with very competitively priced desktop systems that *are complete*. You buy a PC from Dell, you get the whole 9 yards, PC, Monitor, Speakers, etc etc.
With Compaq, if you don't explicitly state that you want these things, you don't get them.
That's not so bad for corporate buyers, but it's a big deal for the home user. Also, Dell's software deals are fantastic, especially when it comes to getting Office real cheap. That's a big hit across the board.
Support? Well, *my* experience of Dell and Compaq support is that they're both pretty good. Dell's online stuff is better (dial in your asset tag and your stuff appears), while Compaq's is confusing and obtuse (and WTF *is* a SoftPaq?:). I've had decent service from field engineers from both companies (turn up on time, fix the problem in the time allowed etc), while other offices I hear from tell horror stories of Dell taking three weeks to send an engineer etc.
Acid test? We put Dell PCs on every desk. Compaqs are used for deliverable machines and test rigs.
We use Dell servers, because they rock.
But as for the sales figures, the massive buying power of Compaq's biggest customers will knock Dell back into 2nd place. --
I know there are some people with a deep seated and sometimes inexplicable opposition to the GPL (Brett Glass mysteriously leaps to mind) but I'm sure there are those who don't actually realize that you *can* sell your stuff under the GPL - in fact, I had this discussion only yesterday with a guy on a private news server. He was genuinely under the impression that the GPL forbade you from making commercial gain from your code. He had no objection to giving away the source to his product but he wanted to sell it and services based on it. And why not?
Maybe the OSS community needs to make some education type noises, as well as pointing out the benefits of the development model. --
I can't see the point of faffing around to the tune of £500 ($800) on top of the cost of the computer, when this differential will get you a nice fast 64-bit Alpha machine from Microway, (http://www.microway.com/specials/alpha.html#speci al4).
Alternatively get a G4 PowerMac. Or a SPARC 5.
Stop barking up the Intel tree, because there *are* alternatives. --
On all of the Linux boxes I run (2xDell OptiPlex GX1 (ATI Rage Pro), 1xK6-2 400 (Riva TNT)) the mouse is as responsive under XFree86 3.3.5 as it is under NT.
It's all down to whether your card provides a hardware cursor.
"2. Plug and Play Everywhere! Joe Blow does not want to mount and unmount CDs himself, nor does he want to figure out the IRQ, base I/O address, etc. for his hardware. So make sure that Joe Blow doesn't have to deal with those things."
I presume you mean PnP that actually works under Windows NT, or that doesn't screw all your other peripherals under 9x.
In other words, PnP like it doesn't exist on the PC. It works on the Mac, and it works on a Sun, and it works on a VAX. But those systems were designed up to a spec, not down to a price.
Bah. At least in Linux I can run a non-PnP ISA network card without having to know or care about the IRQ or IO port. Can't do that in NT. --
Picketing, handing out pamphlets and the other activities that xtians indulge in (one might say "it's legal, so WTF has it got to do with you?" but that's another argument) is harassment. And they don't just stand there, quietly putting their point across, all the time? Do they?
Screaming "murderer!" at someone is unlikely to make them warm to your viewpoint. Shooting their doctor even less so.
If you want to debate, then debate. But that kind of behaviour is illegal (in the UK, at least) and shooting doctors is not on, anywhere.
Remember, your opinion is precisely that. Do not attempt to qualify it as fact. --
This isn't murder, people, this is *natural selection*.
As a race we have subverted the process of natural selection, allowing those individuals who would previously have never survived and reproduced to perpetuate their genetic material, flawed as it is.
The whole purpose of life on this planet is as a means for individuals to attempt to perpetuate their DNA to the next generation. Also remember that DNA only "wants" the best individuals to survive, because the best individuals have the best chance of reproducing and therefore satisfying the genetic imperative.
What we have done is to stop this process, halting the winnowing, and allowing the gene pool of our species to stagnate.
Whether this will have any effects that can be seen in our lifetimes remains to be seen, but there *is* an increase in cancers, and there *is* an increase in allergic reactions. Both of those phenomena could be caused by other factors, but the reduced quality of human genetic material is one possible cause.
Religionists will try to place all this in some kind of moral context, which patently doesn't make sense to try to do. The universe doesn't care. As Dawkins said, it's just blind, pitiless indifference.
Many of the problems that Katz talks about come from the fact that the religious right is gaining in influence; not because it has any intrinsic value, but because people like to hate. And the RR give people something to hate (anything that isn't them) and the moral high ground from which to do it.
Fling a few guns and death sentences into the mix (you might as well shoot the cop/hostage, you're gonna die anyway) and you have a society that's collapsing from the inside out.
I suppose this is what you get when everyone's "free". --
These are *made* for kiosks
on
$200 Linux PCs
·
· Score: 2
You know, those annoying booths they have in public libraries, connected to the council Web site or whatever, or that provide employment advice.
Why bother with a regular PC when one of these will do just as well?
Was the part that talked about "as many versions as there are people who use it".
This is the old fragmentation argument popping up again. It's rubbish; I wish people would stop wittering on about it, because it's flat out not true. There are weaknesses in Linux that need to be addressed and this isn't one of them. Fix the fscking file system calls (the ones that aren't 64-bit safe) and stop worrying about some mythical phenomenon called fragmentation.
The other passage I didn't like was the bit that went out of its way to characterise Linux users as aggressive, evangelical zealots. I was personally offended by this. Pick an OS, any OS, and you'll be able to find people like this.
The whole tone of this article felt wrong to me. It wasn't a careful deconstruction of The Cathedral And The Bazaar. It was a careful and painstaking attack on OSS via ESR, and I don't like that.
His arguments on the Infoworld Electric fora were thoroughly refuted and he hasn't been seen there for a while.
The gist of his opposition to the GPL is that it prevents people making money off software. Any attempt to disprove this (Look at Red Hat etc) met with personal abuse, denial, a change of subject, or silence.
I think the real reason is that his beloved FreeBSD is released under a licence he considers to be better, yet it's the GPL'd Linux which is running away with the press and the userbase. --
Do you have any idea how much a real support contract with MS costs?
Well, it's about £50,000 up front, plus £250 per incident. If that figure is wrong, I'm always glad to be corrected.
MS products never got bought because of the support. They got bought because they have Microsoft printed on the box, and that gives the PHBs a warm and fuzzy feeling, cos they've seen Microsoft advertising on TV.
Linux is gaining many, many footholds in corporate circles; and the companies are popping up that provide real support contracts (which give IT managers the warm and fuzzies). Red Hat and Linuxcare are only two.
Microsoft can't do Linux because Microsoft can't understand OSS.
My big question about this (and I think it's a hoax) is what would Siemens bring to the table after the UK passport office debacle?
I've just been through a bit of an upgrade cycle with my primary box - originally I had an S3 ViRGE DX 4MB, then I got hold of a Mystique 220 for £25 secondhand (the retail one with all the toys:), and yesterday I got my 16MB AGP Riva TNT, which is a visible improvement over the ViRGE:).
The Matrox was the best 2D card I've ever seen - in fact, in some 2D tests it's actually faster than the TNT. (Of course the TNT whomps it on 3D).
The other nice thing about the Matrox is that kernel 2.2.x has explicit support for the Mystique when it comes to the all important frame buffer console. 1152x864x32bpp with the nice SPARC font (12x22) is a damn nice working environment.
Also, all the StarOffice/S3V Xserver problems went away, too.
Finally (in praise of the card I've just ditched) the Mystiques make great partners for a Voodoo2, cos they put out a very strong, clean video signal which survives the passthru better than most.
Many of Todd's points would be true if Linux was a proprietary OS, trying to break into the market, like BeOS.
But it isn't. Linux is a Vast Internet Thing that doesn't care anymore about competition, or markets. If MS disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't make any difference (although IBM might actually admit they make OS/2 Warp 4)
As for the flexibility thing - Linux's flexibility is the reason it is where it is.
#ifdef OFFTOPIC Rule 1 of HCI. Microsoft Windows and its applications are, generally, how NOT to do it. Windows lost the HCI plot when it moved to the 95 explorer shell. Windows 3 was nice, everything was consistent, users liked it. The 95 shell is broken from a UI point of view. It's inconsistent, illogical and confusing. If you want an example of a really easy interface, you still have to go to the Mac. #endif
Linux is easy to use *now*. Installation doesn't count. The people who would barf on a Linux install would equally barf on a Windows install.
Compare like with like. Windows-only boxen should *only* be compared with Linux-only boxen.
There'll always be a place for character displays (ask the accounts department and goods inward) too.
Command lines are useful as well. AutoCAD 2000 keeps the command line and for good reason - it's often the fastest way to do what you want.
Slashdot Mirror
NT needs at least a 486.
:)
Don't even waste the time on the 386 - that's a Linux firewall waiting to happen
Peter.
--
Exchange Server 5.5 can take a *very* long time to boot (ours takes about 5 mins end-to-end, 250 users) especially if you haven't purged down and defragmented the information stores.
:)
49 minutes indicates an Exchange box that isn't getting the care and attention it requires.
As for the 18-minuter; well, that's probably one unresponsive box. Remember, Microsoft recommend one server per server application; now, please buy Small Business Server, which runs SQL, Proxy, Transaction, Exchange Servers all one one box
--
All the sites mentioned in your story return regular search results on the .co.uk site, which may or may not have a degree of independence from the .com site.
.com site without getting redirected to the .co.uk one, and I can't be bothered to fiddle about to get this to work. The link in the story worked, though.
I can't get to the
Lycos has a problem if it doesn't reverse this decision, for all the reasons stated so lucidly above.
Peter.
--
...is for KDE to be able to use GTK+/E themes.
That would be very, very nice. I have precisely no clue as to how hard it would be, though.
On a different note, I'd like to know how much effort is going into the installer for KDE 2.0; the 1.0 one wasn't much to speak of (although it's better than GNOME's - i.e. it does at least exist).
Peter.
--
Dell still don't give that real sense of the warm and fuzzies that some very large corporations have when buying Compaq.
:). I've had decent service from field engineers from both companies (turn up on time, fix the problem in the time allowed etc), while other offices I hear from tell horror stories of Dell taking three weeks to send an engineer etc.
Dell have hit Compaq on the break, with very competitively priced desktop systems that *are complete*. You buy a PC from Dell, you get the whole 9 yards, PC, Monitor, Speakers, etc etc.
With Compaq, if you don't explicitly state that you want these things, you don't get them.
That's not so bad for corporate buyers, but it's a big deal for the home user. Also, Dell's software deals are fantastic, especially when it comes to getting Office real cheap. That's a big hit across the board.
Support? Well, *my* experience of Dell and Compaq support is that they're both pretty good. Dell's online stuff is better (dial in your asset tag and your stuff appears), while Compaq's is confusing and obtuse (and WTF *is* a SoftPaq?
Acid test? We put Dell PCs on every desk. Compaqs are used for deliverable machines and test rigs.
We use Dell servers, because they rock.
But as for the sales figures, the massive buying power of Compaq's biggest customers will knock Dell back into 2nd place.
--
I know there are some people with a deep seated and sometimes inexplicable opposition to the GPL (Brett Glass mysteriously leaps to mind) but I'm sure there are those who don't actually realize that you *can* sell your stuff under the GPL - in fact, I had this discussion only yesterday with a guy on a private news server. He was genuinely under the impression that the GPL forbade you from making commercial gain from your code. He had no objection to giving away the source to his product but he wanted to sell it and services based on it. And why not?
Maybe the OSS community needs to make some education type noises, as well as pointing out the benefits of the development model.
--
Amazon have to do SOMETHING to stay in the headlines, cuz their bottom line is getting attention for all the wrong reasons.
"Look! We have another reason to sink yet more VC into us!".
Bah. Turn a profit, why don't you?
--
I can't see the point of faffing around to the tune of £500 ($800) on top of the cost of the computer, when this differential will get you a nice fast 64-bit Alpha machine from Microway, (http://www.microway.com/specials/alpha.html#speci al4).
Alternatively get a G4 PowerMac.
Or a SPARC 5.
Stop barking up the Intel tree, because there *are* alternatives.
--
I disagree.
On all of the Linux boxes I run (2xDell OptiPlex GX1 (ATI Rage Pro), 1xK6-2 400 (Riva TNT)) the mouse is as responsive under XFree86 3.3.5 as it is under NT.
It's all down to whether your card provides a hardware cursor.
--
"2. Plug and Play Everywhere! Joe Blow does not want to mount and unmount CDs himself, nor does he want to figure out the IRQ, base I/O address, etc. for his hardware. So make sure that Joe Blow doesn't have to deal with those things."
I presume you mean PnP that actually works under Windows NT, or that doesn't screw all your other peripherals under 9x.
In other words, PnP like it doesn't exist on the PC. It works on the Mac, and it works on a Sun, and it works on a VAX. But those systems were designed up to a spec, not down to a price.
Bah. At least in Linux I can run a non-PnP ISA network card without having to know or care about the IRQ or IO port. Can't do that in NT.
--
Picketing, handing out pamphlets and the other activities that xtians indulge in (one might say "it's legal, so WTF has it got to do with you?" but that's another argument) is harassment. And they don't just stand there, quietly putting their point across, all the time? Do they?
Screaming "murderer!" at someone is unlikely to make them warm to your viewpoint. Shooting their doctor even less so.
If you want to debate, then debate. But that kind of behaviour is illegal (in the UK, at least) and shooting doctors is not on, anywhere.
Remember, your opinion is precisely that. Do not attempt to qualify it as fact.
--
Isn't the KKK made up of WMCs?
When religion exists in the minds of men, that is its cage.
The universe is more awesome, more terrifying, and more wonderful than any religious experience.
There's no such thing as "better than life", when you *really* think about it.
--
This isn't murder, people, this is *natural selection*.
As a race we have subverted the process of natural selection, allowing those individuals who would previously have never survived and reproduced to perpetuate their genetic material, flawed as it is.
The whole purpose of life on this planet is as a means for individuals to attempt to perpetuate their DNA to the next generation. Also remember that DNA only "wants" the best individuals to survive, because the best individuals have the best chance of reproducing and therefore satisfying the genetic imperative.
What we have done is to stop this process, halting the winnowing, and allowing the gene pool of our species to stagnate.
Whether this will have any effects that can be seen in our lifetimes remains to be seen, but there *is* an increase in cancers, and there *is* an increase in allergic reactions. Both of those phenomena could be caused by other factors, but the reduced quality of human genetic material is one possible cause.
Religionists will try to place all this in some kind of moral context, which patently doesn't make sense to try to do. The universe doesn't care. As Dawkins said, it's just blind, pitiless indifference.
Many of the problems that Katz talks about come from the fact that the religious right is gaining in influence; not because it has any intrinsic value, but because people like to hate. And the RR give people something to hate (anything that isn't them) and the moral high ground from which to do it.
Fling a few guns and death sentences into the mix (you might as well shoot the cop/hostage, you're gonna die anyway) and you have a society that's collapsing from the inside out.
I suppose this is what you get when everyone's "free".
--
You know, those annoying booths they have in public libraries, connected to the council Web site or whatever, or that provide employment advice.
Why bother with a regular PC when one of these will do just as well?
The colours are groovy, too.
--
Was the part that talked about "as many versions as there are people who use it".
This is the old fragmentation argument popping up again. It's rubbish; I wish people would stop wittering on about it, because it's flat out not true. There are weaknesses in Linux that need to be addressed and this isn't one of them. Fix the fscking file system calls (the ones that aren't 64-bit safe) and stop worrying about some mythical phenomenon called fragmentation.
The other passage I didn't like was the bit that went out of its way to characterise Linux users as aggressive, evangelical zealots. I was personally offended by this. Pick an OS, any OS, and you'll be able to find people like this.
The whole tone of this article felt wrong to me. It wasn't a careful deconstruction of The Cathedral And The Bazaar. It was a careful and painstaking attack on OSS via ESR, and I don't like that.
Bah.
--
Thanks to the X-Files, a whole new generation has grown up believing in hogwash like UFOs, telepathy, teleportation, etc etc.
As a firm rationalist, I think the X-Files is as dangerous as TV evangelism, and about as valid.
Hell, even the stories were crap after Toombs.
It deserves to be cancelled NOW.
--
Brett Glass has a long history of being anti-GPL.
His arguments on the Infoworld Electric fora were thoroughly refuted and he hasn't been seen there for a while.
The gist of his opposition to the GPL is that it prevents people making money off software. Any attempt to disprove this (Look at Red Hat etc) met with personal abuse, denial, a change of subject, or silence.
I think the real reason is that his beloved FreeBSD is released under a licence he considers to be better, yet it's the GPL'd Linux which is running away with the press and the userbase.
--
No, it isn't.
h tml
It's released under the Artistic Licence.
http://www.perl.com/pub/language/misc/Artistic.
The Artistic License is considerably less complex than the GPL, and less restrictive too. You may or may not consider this a Good Thing.
--
IBM have released Object REXX for Linux.
Just go to www.ibm.com and search for it.
It's a free download.
I've tried it. It works. It's REXX. Happy happy joy joy.
--
Don't forget the fact that Linux has booted on Merced (IA-64).
:)
That makes 11 chips. If I can count, which isn't necessarily a given
--
Nah.
:)
/. effect won't hurt them too much.
Netcraft says they're running Apache 1.3.1 on Solaris - and you can bet your granny that it's not a single CPU Ultra 5 with 32MB RAM
They have a humungous site, with many many servers, so I guess the
--
Support? Microsoft?
Do you have any idea how much a real support contract with MS costs?
Well, it's about £50,000 up front, plus £250 per incident.
If that figure is wrong, I'm always glad to be corrected.
MS products never got bought because of the support. They got bought because they have Microsoft printed on the box, and that gives the PHBs a warm and fuzzy feeling, cos they've seen Microsoft advertising on TV.
Linux is gaining many, many footholds in corporate circles; and the companies are popping up that provide real support contracts (which give IT managers the warm and fuzzies). Red Hat and Linuxcare are only two.
Microsoft can't do Linux because Microsoft can't understand OSS.
My big question about this (and I think it's a hoax) is what would Siemens bring to the table after the UK passport office debacle?
Peter.
--
I've just been through a bit of an upgrade cycle with my primary box - originally I had an S3 ViRGE DX 4MB, then I got hold of a Mystique 220 for £25 secondhand (the retail one with all the toys :), and yesterday I got my 16MB AGP Riva TNT, which is a visible improvement over the ViRGE :).
The Matrox was the best 2D card I've ever seen - in fact, in some 2D tests it's actually faster than the TNT. (Of course the TNT whomps it on 3D).
The other nice thing about the Matrox is that kernel 2.2.x has explicit support for the Mystique when it comes to the all important frame buffer console. 1152x864x32bpp with the nice SPARC font (12x22) is a damn nice working environment.
Also, all the StarOffice/S3V Xserver problems went away, too.
Finally (in praise of the card I've just ditched) the Mystiques make great partners for a Voodoo2, cos they put out a very strong, clean video signal which survives the passthru better than most.
Peter.
It's a well structured, thoughtful article.
Many of Todd's points would be true if Linux was a proprietary OS, trying to break into the market, like BeOS.
But it isn't. Linux is a Vast Internet Thing that doesn't care anymore about competition, or markets. If MS disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't make any difference (although IBM might actually admit they make OS/2 Warp 4)
As for the flexibility thing - Linux's flexibility is the reason it is where it is.
#ifdef OFFTOPIC
Rule 1 of HCI. Microsoft Windows and its applications are, generally, how NOT to do it. Windows lost the HCI plot when it moved to the 95 explorer shell. Windows 3 was nice, everything was consistent, users liked it. The 95 shell is broken from a UI point of view. It's inconsistent, illogical and confusing.
If you want an example of a really easy interface, you still have to go to the Mac.
#endif
Linux is easy to use *now*. Installation doesn't count. The people who would barf on a Linux install would equally barf on a Windows install.
Compare like with like. Windows-only boxen should *only* be compared with Linux-only boxen.
There'll always be a place for character displays (ask the accounts department and goods inward) too.
Command lines are useful as well. AutoCAD 2000 keeps the command line and for good reason - it's often the fastest way to do what you want.
Still, a good article and food for thought.
Peter.