.. you throw them back an invoice (created in OO) showing how much it cost to buy. They can compare your big fat Zero against their 3 figure sum for MS Office at their leasure.
> I have been a very happy customer of both these
> vendors, but this merger makes no sense to me
You're not alone there. The only two people on the planet who do think it's a good idea are Fiorentina and Capellas. From what I read Capellas was desperately trying to keep the share price above the $10 mark, and they both believed Compaq's share price would rise as a result of the announcement. Instead, it dropped sharply. Capellas has seriously mis-read this one.
I hope the shareholders bounce the deal, and put Capellas out of a job. I can't speak for HP as I don't follow what they get up to, but Compaq doesn't need HP to build a successful future, it just needs managers who have balls to make tough decisions, who really understand the market they are in, have vision for the future, and who really believe in the company. Capellas is not one of them.
That thought had gone through my mind too. Could potentially turn a regular house fire into a small bomb. Building hydrogen containers that would be safe against this could push the price beyond the reach of general consumers.
That is a very neat idea. Or, you could have them feeding juice back into the local grid.
In the UK (dunno about anywhere else) there is precedent for that. Many companies that have large UPS generators that need to run them regularly to make sure they work, use the 'test' electricity to top up the National Grid, and they get paid for it too!
Personally I'd like to see the end of plastic cards and the use of implanted biochips, kind of like the electronic tags inserted into pets to register them. My "chip" would contain data about who I am and some unique ID number.
The reading computer can then look me up and retrieve additional identifying data from a central trusted source. For example: a retina scan, finger print data, facial map, voice analysis.. something like that.
So when shopping, I swipe my tag to give it my ID, and then stare into an infrared camera to take a retina scan. The shop computer checks my details, confirms I am who I say I am by comparing retina info, and then deducts the required amount from my account. I don't even have to sign anything.
I think this is cool on a number of fronts:
1) I don't need to worry about misplacing my plastic again.
2) I can't be parted from my cash source by a pick pocket.
3) Short of taking a knife to me and inflicting serious harm, I've very hard to rob at all.
4) The tag can be used for a number of things as well as money, e.g. to unlock building or car doors, log me into my computer, etc.
5) It's quick and convenient.
Anyone remember the PAN (Personal Area Network) work that IBM did a few years back. If the biochips are nano-engineered, they might be able have this capability too. You could download specific programs onto it for specific purposes just by touching a panel. The uses are many:)
> Until Linux drops the concept of memory
> overcommit, I'm afraid that the VM is going
> to continue to suck
Whether you want to overcommit or not depends on what you're doing. Most of my experience comes from Compaq's Tru64 Unix, where you have the option of selecting either mode. But Compaq only recommend you don't use overcommit on workstations or small non-critical systems. For large database/mission critical systems overcommit is a must. You absolutely do not want your big expensive multi-terrabyte database to get a bullet in the head from the OOM manager when memory runs out. Better that processes fail to start when memory gets tight.
There is no one size fits all solution to this issue, so different memory management algoriths are needed to suit the different usage types.
At the end of the day though, no software solution is better than sizing your system usage properly, and buying enough memory to handle it. Systems perform best when they never have to swap.
I hope they don't IPO too. Right how they're making a respectable amount of money and delivering a TOP quality service. Want proof? Google is my browser home page! I have NEVER made any external site my home page before; always kept them local to my own box. I do this because I use google a lot and because it's quick to load.
If they IPO, they'll ruin it. They will come under increasing pressure by profit chasing share holders to take all opportunities to raise revenue, and that will ultimately lead to ad bloated pages.
Google needs to resist the IPO trap and carry on doing what it does best - putting its customers first!
Macka
Release early, release often ..
on
KDE 2.2.1 Up
·
· Score: 1
Just cos you've never heard of it doesn't mean no one uses it. Hancom Office has been under development for 10 years now and already has a huge installed base in Asia because MS were very slow off the mark at supporting Asian languages.
It was also an MS-Windows only product, but then got ported to Linux using Wine. That didn't work out too well, so now they are doing a native port to Qt3 along with theKompany.
When finished it could make StarOffice irrelevant, as it will compete or surpass it on features, and will also run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X !
It will be nice for users to have a real cross platform alternative to StarOffice.
I'm sorry, that may be common perception, but in reality you are completely wrong. I spent 13 years working for a commercial vendor (9 in their Unix space) and can categoricly state that commercial sponsorship means anything but longevity of a product! A 10 year development roadmap can be swept under the carpet in an instant when the market shifts, or the company get brought out by another with a different focus.
It doesn't even have to be the company that gets sold, it could just be the product itself and its associated development staff! I've seen that happen too... the buyer brought the product, then canned it and sent around sales staff touting their own alternative. They were only after the customer base and weren't interested in the product in the least !!
And when a commercial product (usually closed source) gets pulled, the customer base is well and truely shafted, because when the product is gone, it's gone.
With a community product that is open source this can never happen. Lets assume a product goes stale. Even if a customer doesn't have the skills in house to continue working on the source code, he could easily employ a software house to do it if the product is important enough to him!
Commercial involement IMO is mostly good for one thing... image !!! Beyond that I'm highly skeptical they add much real value above and beyond what open source hackers can do for themselves.
Having a commercial player on your team does not automaticly mean success. Hell, take a look a CDE. That had ALL the commercial Unix players involved, and they threw 10's of millions of dollars at it, though I think a lot of that money got swallowed up in meetings and red tape between the vendors.
A programmer writing something because his heart and soul is in it does a better job than one who's motivation is the next month pay cheque.
... they can't trademark the use of the word "office". It must have existed and been in common use when Bill G was a mere twinkle in his dad's eye. It's a generic english word, not MS property.
I do 95% of my work on a PII 400Mhz laptop, and have an Athlon 550Mhz as my home office server.
I'm not interested in games, and frankly can't imagine what I would use a 1Ghz cpu for, never mind 2Ghz. In fact, these days I'm more interested in what I can get my Palm m505 to do.
Strange isn't it. A few years back I always used to shop for the most horsepower I could get for my money. Now I'd be inclined to shop for the 'least' horsepower; secure in the knowledge that it will easily do what I ask of it, and will be cheap to boot.
The only exception to the rule I can think of at the moment (sticking with home office) would be a Mac. I'm very tempted by the iMac's (I like the package) but am concerned that MacOS X really needs the grunt of a G4 to handle the accelerated screen work well. And of cause you can't get one yet in an iMac yet. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the newer and faster G3's running the optimised MacOS X 10.1
Hmm. Is there actually anything in law that says you own the rights to your own image anyway? I know, everyone assumes these days that if something is ours, we do or should have "rights" over it. But is that just common fantasy, or does it actually exist as part of a legal system?
Playing devil's advocate here, what if you don't own the rights to your own image? What if, to be part of a society, the rights of the society supercede your own. That happens right! If you break the law and threaten the society you live in, you loose your individual right to freedom; sometimes even your life. So there is precedent here of sorts.
And then there is always the argument that if you object, what are you trying to hide? Innocent people don't need to be afraid, do they?
I saw a documentary on UK TV only last week all about CCTV. They're already trialing this face recognition software in Shopping Malls around certain areas of London, and have been doing for a little while now.
In light of this, I'm wondering if Miguel will suddenly wake up and realise how he's both playing into Microsoft's hands and betraying end users, by attempting to legitimise.NET on Linux with Mono.
And no, this is NOT a Troll, because I am far from being alone with this opinion.
What have you got to say for yourself Miguel? Care to grace us with an answer?
The side effect will be that we may lose the Moon in the process
That would be nothing short of a disaster. I remember seeing a documentary on TV a couple of years ago where they showed that it was the gravitational pull of the moon in its particular orbit, that holds earth's axis in place. Thus stopping the spin of the earth from upending the poles or placing them somewhere completely different. We'd suffer terrible climate instability if the moon didn't exist where it does, and it's possible that life might never have developed here at all.
Compaq will be lucky to get it ported, much less enhanced. Remember, they will have to support Alpha through at least 2004
But they've already done it once, during the agreement with Sequent to produce an IA-64 port. I used to work for Digital/Compaq at the time, and they got quite a long way down the road to a successful port even in that short time. Don't forget, this is already a 64bit clean operating system, the port is not a difficult as you think. Also, they had not made any statements at all about throttling back on Tru64 development. That work will continue.
I think Oracle will be the final determining factor
Dead right. Go read the press release on nsye.com (lookup CPQ) you'll see that Oracle are 100% behind this move. Also, there was a cross licensing deal recently, giving Oracle unprecedented access to TruCluster DLM internals for Oracle 9i. Oracle support for Tru64 has never looked stronger.
And that's why the compiler technology has to be hotter, tighter, neater than normal.
Reading between the lines, I'd guess that post-McKinley is going to be some kind of EPIC + Alpha hybrid. Still offering an IA-64 instruction set, but with Alpha smarts and compiler tricks to wind up the performance even more.
Your choice of product names gives away just how out of touch you are with current technology offerings in the way of OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix's TruCluster Software.
Tru64 Unix (as it's now known) offers VMS style clustering on UNIX. No other vendor can currently compete in this arena. Sun's Serengeti doesn't match up, and Linux isn't there yet either. The GFS (Global Filesystem) is a significant step in the right direction, but that's only one piece in the puzzle. By the time they get parity with what TruClusters offer today, TruCluster will have moved on even further. Today, TruCluster can boast a common view of the mount table across cluster members (for any filesystem type that can sit on top of CFS). In the works, for example, are similar enhancement to the process table. I don't think that kind of functionality is even on the Linux development radar yet.
It's going to be several years before you can't buy an Alpha any more. That's a lifetime in this industry. There will be a few exceptions, there always is, but 99% of current Compaq Alpha customers will have moved on from current systems by then and will most likely port to IA-64 even if they are pissed with Compaq, because they will want to regain longevity, and gain flexibility over vendor and OS choice.
Don't worry about it. There will be new generations of Alphasystems coming out until 2004, and even after that you'll still be able to buy Alpha's for a number of years. It will be several years before the drip completely runs dry and by then your employer will probably be looking to use new applications. You'll probably be working for someone else by then anyway:)
I'm afraid it's you who's outdated. CISC.vs. RISC is old hat now. IA-64 is based on an architecture design called EPIC, which in turn has its roots in VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word). It's neither CISC nor RISC.
I don't remember what EPIC stands for, you can probably find it somewhere on Intel's site. Either that or wait around here for a bit, someone reading this is bound to know;-)
Slashdot Mirror
> I have been a very happy customer of both these
> vendors, but this merger makes no sense to me
You're not alone there. The only two people on the planet who do think it's a good idea are Fiorentina and Capellas. From what I read Capellas was desperately trying to keep the share price above the $10 mark, and they both believed Compaq's share price would rise as a result of the announcement. Instead, it dropped sharply. Capellas has seriously mis-read this one.
I hope the shareholders bounce the deal, and put Capellas out of a job. I can't speak for HP as I don't follow what they get up to, but Compaq doesn't need HP to build a successful future, it just needs managers who have balls to make tough decisions, who really understand the market they are in, have vision for the future, and who really believe in the company. Capellas is not one of them.
That thought had gone through my mind too. Could potentially turn a regular house fire into a small bomb. Building hydrogen containers that would be safe against this could push the price beyond the reach of general consumers.
That is a very neat idea. Or, you could have them feeding juice back into the local grid.
In the UK (dunno about anywhere else) there is precedent for that. Many companies that have large UPS generators that need to run them regularly to make sure they work, use the 'test' electricity to top up the National Grid, and they get paid for it too!
What point are you trying to make here?
Remember also that Gasoline is not pollution friendly, where as this is.
Personally I'd like to see the end of plastic cards and the use of implanted biochips, kind of like the electronic tags inserted into pets to register them. My "chip" would contain data about who I am and some unique ID number.
The reading computer can then look me up and retrieve additional identifying data from a central trusted source. For example: a retina scan, finger print data, facial map, voice analysis
So when shopping, I swipe my tag to give it my ID, and then stare into an infrared camera to take a retina scan. The shop computer checks my details, confirms I am who I say I am by comparing retina info, and then deducts the required amount from my account. I don't even have to sign anything.
I think this is cool on a number of fronts:
1) I don't need to worry about misplacing my plastic again.
2) I can't be parted from my cash source by a pick pocket.
3) Short of taking a knife to me and inflicting serious harm, I've very hard to rob at all.
4) The tag can be used for a number of things as well as money, e.g. to unlock building or car doors, log me into my computer, etc.
5) It's quick and convenient.
Anyone remember the PAN (Personal Area Network) work that IBM did a few years back. If the biochips are nano-engineered, they might be able have this capability too. You could download specific programs onto it for specific purposes just by touching a panel. The uses are many
Hey, a man can dream
Macka.
> Until Linux drops the concept of memory
> overcommit, I'm afraid that the VM is going
> to continue to suck
Whether you want to overcommit or not depends on what you're doing. Most of my experience comes from Compaq's Tru64 Unix, where you have the option of selecting either mode. But Compaq only recommend you don't use overcommit on workstations or small non-critical systems. For large database/mission critical systems overcommit is a must. You absolutely do not want your big expensive multi-terrabyte database to get a bullet in the head from the OOM manager when memory runs out. Better that processes fail to start when memory gets tight.
There is no one size fits all solution to this issue, so different memory management algoriths are needed to suit the different usage types.
At the end of the day though, no software solution is better than sizing your system usage properly, and buying enough memory to handle it. Systems perform best when they never have to swap.
Macka
I hope they don't IPO too. Right how they're making a respectable amount of money and delivering a TOP quality service. Want proof? Google is my browser home page! I have NEVER made any external site my home page before; always kept them local to my own box. I do this because I use google a lot and because it's quick to load.
If they IPO, they'll ruin it. They will come under increasing pressure by profit chasing share holders to take all opportunities to raise revenue, and that will ultimately lead to ad bloated pages.
Google needs to resist the IPO trap and carry on doing what it does best - putting its customers first!
Macka
.. now where have I heard that from
Macka
Just cos you've never heard of it doesn't mean no one uses it. Hancom Office has been under development for 10 years now and already has a huge installed base in Asia because MS were very slow off the mark at supporting Asian languages.
It was also an MS-Windows only product, but then got ported to Linux using Wine. That didn't work out too well, so now they are doing a native port to Qt3 along with theKompany.
When finished it could make StarOffice irrelevant, as it will compete or surpass it on features, and will also run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X !
It will be nice for users to have a real cross platform alternative to StarOffice.
I'm sorry, that may be common perception, but in reality you are completely wrong. I spent 13 years working for a commercial vendor (9 in their Unix space) and can categoricly state that commercial sponsorship means anything but longevity of a product! A 10 year development roadmap can be swept under the carpet in an instant when the market shifts, or the company get brought out by another with a different focus.
It doesn't even have to be the company that gets sold, it could just be the product itself and its associated development staff! I've seen that happen too
And when a commercial product (usually closed source) gets pulled, the customer base is well and truely shafted, because when the product is gone, it's gone.
With a community product that is open source this can never happen. Lets assume a product goes stale. Even if a customer doesn't have the skills in house to continue working on the source code, he could easily employ a software house to do it if the product is important enough to him!
Commercial involement IMO is mostly good for one thing
Macka
That's not how it started. I'm pretty sure if you checked you'd find that most were KDE developers before they were company employees.
Having a commercial player on your team does not automaticly mean success. Hell, take a look a CDE. That had ALL the commercial Unix players involved, and they threw 10's of millions of dollars at it, though I think a lot of that money got swallowed up in meetings and red tape between the vendors.
A programmer writing something because his heart and soul is in it does a better job than one who's motivation is the next month pay cheque.
Macka
... they can't trademark the use of the word "office". It must have existed and been in common use when Bill G was a mere twinkle in his dad's eye. It's a generic english word, not MS property.
Macka
I do 95% of my work on a PII 400Mhz laptop, and have an Athlon 550Mhz as my home office server.
I'm not interested in games, and frankly can't imagine what I would use a 1Ghz cpu for, never mind 2Ghz. In fact, these days I'm more interested in what I can get my Palm m505 to do.
Strange isn't it. A few years back I always used to shop for the most horsepower I could get for my money. Now I'd be inclined to shop for the 'least' horsepower; secure in the knowledge that it will easily do what I ask of it, and will be cheap to boot.
The only exception to the rule I can think of at the moment (sticking with home office) would be a Mac. I'm very tempted by the iMac's (I like the package) but am concerned that MacOS X really needs the grunt of a G4 to handle the accelerated screen work well. And of cause you can't get one yet in an iMac yet. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the newer and faster G3's running the optimised MacOS X 10.1
Macka
Hmm. Is there actually anything in law that says you own the rights to your own image anyway? I know, everyone assumes these days that if something is ours, we do or should have "rights" over it. But is that just common fantasy, or does it actually exist as part of a legal system?
Playing devil's advocate here, what if you don't own the rights to your own image? What if, to be part of a society, the rights of the society supercede your own. That happens right! If you break the law and threaten the society you live in, you loose your individual right to freedom; sometimes even your life. So there is precedent here of sorts.
And then there is always the argument that if you object, what are you trying to hide? Innocent people don't need to be afraid, do they?
Just some thoughts,
Macka
I saw a documentary on UK TV only last week all about CCTV. They're already trialing this face recognition software in Shopping Malls around certain areas of London, and have been doing for a little while now.
In light of this, I'm wondering if Miguel will suddenly wake up and realise how he's both playing into Microsoft's hands and betraying end users, by attempting to legitimise
And no, this is NOT a Troll, because I am far from being alone with this opinion.
What have you got to say for yourself Miguel? Care to grace us with an answer?
Macka
The side effect will be that we may lose the Moon in the process
That would be nothing short of a disaster. I remember seeing a documentary on TV a couple of years ago where they showed that it was the gravitational pull of the moon in its particular orbit, that holds earth's axis in place. Thus stopping the spin of the earth from upending the poles or placing them somewhere completely different. We'd suffer terrible climate instability if the moon didn't exist where it does, and it's possible that life might never have developed here at all.
Macka
Compaq will be lucky to get it ported, much less enhanced. Remember, they will have to support Alpha through at least 2004
But they've already done it once, during the agreement with Sequent to produce an IA-64 port. I used to work for Digital/Compaq at the time, and they got quite a long way down the road to a successful port even in that short time. Don't forget, this is already a 64bit clean operating system, the port is not a difficult as you think. Also, they had not made any statements at all about throttling back on Tru64 development. That work will continue.
I think Oracle will be the final determining factor
Dead right. Go read the press release on nsye.com (lookup CPQ) you'll see that Oracle are 100% behind this move. Also, there was a cross licensing deal recently, giving Oracle unprecedented access to TruCluster DLM internals for Oracle 9i. Oracle support for Tru64 has never looked stronger.
And that's why the compiler technology has to be hotter, tighter, neater than normal.
Reading between the lines, I'd guess that post-McKinley is going to be some kind of EPIC + Alpha hybrid. Still offering an IA-64 instruction set, but with Alpha smarts and compiler tricks to wind up the performance even more.
Your choice of product names gives away just how out of touch you are with current technology offerings in the way of OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix's TruCluster Software.
Tru64 Unix (as it's now known) offers VMS style clustering on UNIX. No other vendor can currently compete in this arena. Sun's Serengeti doesn't match up, and Linux isn't there yet either. The GFS (Global Filesystem) is a significant step in the right direction, but that's only one piece in the puzzle. By the time they get parity with what TruClusters offer today, TruCluster will have moved on even further. Today, TruCluster can boast a common view of the mount table across cluster members (for any filesystem type that can sit on top of CFS). In the works, for example, are similar enhancement to the process table. I don't think that kind of functionality is even on the Linux development radar yet.
Macka
It's going to be several years before you can't buy an Alpha any more. That's a lifetime in this industry. There will be a few exceptions, there always is, but 99% of current Compaq Alpha customers will have moved on from current systems by then and will most likely port to IA-64 even if they are pissed with Compaq, because they will want to regain longevity, and gain flexibility over vendor and OS choice.
Long term this will work out better for everyone.
Don't worry about it. There will be new generations of Alphasystems coming out until 2004, and even after that you'll still be able to buy Alpha's for a number of years. It will be several years before the drip completely runs dry and by then your employer will probably be looking to use new applications. You'll probably be working for someone else by then anyway
I'm afraid it's you who's outdated. CISC
I don't remember what EPIC stands for, you can probably find it somewhere on Intel's site. Either that or wait around here for a bit, someone reading this is bound to know
Macka