Some studies show that no matter what kind of anything is in common usage, there will always be a minority of people who propose something different. There are people out there who feel the need to stand out by advocating something different. It could be a self-esteem problem.
A decade ago there was Macintosh. Now there is Linux. Both have their relative merits as opposed to what "the majority" use. But there will always be zealots who get their kicks in rattling cages, playing "mine is better" games, etc.
It doesn't matter much. But it's amusing to watch their antics.
I wish I could be a Prima-donna and carry around a special keyboard in a little black case.
Unfortunately, I move around and use a half dozen machines around the labs at work. Nobody would be amused with me taking down emulators and such to replace the keyboard each time I use a particular piece of equipment because my ego demanded it.
I can telnet into the OS/2 machines from my main 'desktop' to the build runs on, but not the embedded OS/2 machines the product resides within.
Oh well. Life is rough. Keyboards are all necessary evils.
If you had to mention eBay and crashes to get your friend to know what Solaris is, you're preying on his ignorance. Then again, maybe it's unintentional on your part, proving that ignorance is sometimes contagious.
Linux had drivers for all sorts of devices, but it's very spotty support.
I would say that Windows 95 has the most driver support of any OS out there. Not that we were including it in the discussion, of course.
And no, I am not just talking about WinModems. And yes, we know how impressive it is that Linux has driver support for almost every piece of hardware that's at least three years old.
The day when ESR is vested with the Authority to issue Certifications is the day when some of us need to start pieing him in the face at public events.
I mean, really! This guy is a blowhard, and that's about the extent of it.
You've scratched just the surface of the cost of "going metric". A bunch of schoolteachers is the cheap part of it.
Billions of dollars of tooling and equipment would have to be changed. In order to make a bunch of scientists and foreigners happy.
I'm sorry. Why should the US economy go into the tank because a bunch of Europeans discovered they have ten fingers and decided to rip their infrastructure to hell?
250 Million people to learn a new system v.s. 5.75 Billion. Hmm, that'll be a tough choice!
If you think it's a matter of "people learning a new system" than you've been sitting in an educational institution too long and need your tenure revoked so you get out and see the real world. Converting to the metric system isn't just a matter of teaching a bunch of schoolchildren a bunch of happy new units.
There is tooling all over the place that is obsoleted when a new system of measures is imposed. There is incompatible hardware, all the way down to the threads on nuts and bolts.
So it isn't a matter of deciding that because 5.75 billion people (the bulk of whom don't have more than several items machined to any unit of measure, anyways) "know" metric (do us a favor, go quiz twenty random people off the street in Kenya about the metric system) that we should retool all our factories. The places that have the infrastructure, the tooling, the machinery, etc. get to decide. And it's far from proven that there are more Metric than Imperial Unit machine tools. Might makes right when it gets down to the metal. Deal with it.
250 Million people to learn a new system v.s. 5.75 Billion. Hmm, that'll be a tough choice!
If you think it's a matter of "people learning a new system" than you've been sitting in an educational institution too long and need your tenure revoked so you get out and see the real world. Converting to the metric system isn't just a matter of teaching a bunch of schoolchildren a bunch of happy new units.
There is tooling all over the place that is obsoleted when a new system of measures is imposed. There is incompatible hardware, all the way down to the threads on nuts and bolts.
So it isn't a matter of deciding that because 5.75 billion people (the bulk of whom don't have more than several items machined to any unit of measure, anyways) "know" metric (do us a favor, go quiz twenty random people off the street in Kenya about the metric system) that we should retool all our factories. The places that have the infrastructure, the tooling, the machinery, etc. get to decide. And it's far from proven that there are more Metric than Imperial Unit machine tools. Might makes right when it gets down to the metal. Deal with it.
Bookkeeping systems? Is that so that when they sell twenty microscopes in the US, they can bill at the equivalent of selling 14.234 microscopes in continental Europe?
I think that it's a grave error to ascribe to Napoleon the things that the French Revolution gave to culture.
Not that I am all that fond of a system of units based on imposing an arbitrary modulo-10 scale to everything measured. Systems of measurement have evolved over centuries to scale well to the units being measured. Then a bunch of "radicals" come along and want to shoehorn it all into modulo-10. The ten month calendar was also a part of the grande plan. And the French started the count of years over again at zero. Why aren't the Metric geeks fighting for that as well?
The "Metric system is the epitome of progress" crowd will never go away. There will always be people who insist that a system of units of measure is some marvelous thing. The best response is "get a life, loser."
I think it's too strong a statement to say that we will never be safe.
I think it is safe to say we aren't ready to handle it now, at least with our present technology and economic systems.
I personally, would like nuclear technology to be something that gets a lot of study, but that isn't implemented by economic interests. It just isn't safe to use in a system of economic compromises.
Besides which, why should we assume we need to use up all the fissionable material now? Maybe we'll be better capable of using it in a few centuries if we wait.
How many people are actually running Win95 (original release) with no security patches installed and get hacked on a regular basis?
Tweeks don't hack into Win95 boxes because:
1. There's not much they can do there when they've broken in- there isn't a single-point-of-vulnerabilty root account that gives away the whole store once access has been gained.
2. Win95 boxes don't contain much of value to a hacker, they are end-user, not server machines.
However, the fact of the matter would still be that Chevrolet produced a car with a faulty ABS computer. You might choose not to buy your next car from Chevrolet, if the inconvenience of having to bring the last one in for recalls clued you into quality problems at the manufacturer.
Needless to say if there were as many vehicle recalls as there are "Bugfixes" issued for RedHat Linux, we'd all have given up and started riding the bus ages ago.
Indeed. The Open Source community isn't just giving away the software for free. They're warning the people who use the Open Source packages that they'd darn well better hire someone from the Open Source community to babysit their server. Or use a hired-gun business like RedHat to do it for them.
I strongly suspect RedHat isn't going to perform such a task for free. Thus, the true cost of a "Linux server solution" is rather difficult to determine, and probably at least as great, if not greater, than buying a similar server platform and maintanence from Microsoft and their mob of MSCEs. Further, RedHat will engineer themselves out of business if they do too good a job on their distributions. Makes for an interesting bunch of conflicting interests, huh? (Microsoft, of course, has the same conflict with their product)
The "typical" corporate type would apply the service Packs to the NT install. Don't forget how old NT 4.0 is now.
I'm not so sure that the "typical" corporate type is going to be enthusiastic about having to check the RedHat website regularly for updates that might come in on a weekly or daily basis. I know his boss isn't going to be happy about having to let the person maintaining the server spend two hours a day crusing Usenet to keep up with the exploit-of-the-hour as it's announced to all the companies friends and foes.
In some ways, running an OpenSource system is like riding a Harley. If you like taking the engine apart, futzing around with it, and knowing that you'll be able to do so forever (the Harley scene is just like that, with swapmeets, etc.) then you'll enjoy owning the Harley. Better take along a toolkit on any long road trips, of course.
Many people don't run a server because they enjoy maintaining it. Only true Linux enthusiasts are going to want to do day-to-day maintanence of their servers. And even a Linux enthusiast is going to demand top dollar for maintaining a commercial server.
The coralary is: If it was necessary pay commercial shop rates for all repairs and maintanence done to a Harley, nobody could afford to own one.
What a great idea! Bind the Perl language to a single processor by implementing it in Assembler. We could all have "Perl6 coprocessors" that we would shoehorn into our hardware to run Perl scripts with.
Slashdot Mirror
Go back and read it again.
Oh, whatever.
Correct me if I am wrong:
The Gnu C Compiler holds a near monopoly on Free Operating Systems, correct?
You don't feel tied to GCC?
Some studies show that no matter what kind of anything is in common usage, there will always be a minority of people who propose something different. There are people out there who feel the need to stand out by advocating something different. It could be a self-esteem problem.
A decade ago there was Macintosh. Now there is Linux. Both have their relative merits as opposed to what "the majority" use. But there will always be zealots who get their kicks in rattling cages, playing "mine is better" games, etc.
It doesn't matter much. But it's amusing to watch their antics.
I wish I could be a Prima-donna and carry around a special keyboard in a little black case.
Unfortunately, I move around and use a half dozen machines around the labs at work. Nobody would be amused with me taking down emulators and such to replace the keyboard each time I use a particular piece of equipment because my ego demanded it.
I can telnet into the OS/2 machines from my main 'desktop' to the build runs on, but not the embedded OS/2 machines the product resides within.
Oh well. Life is rough. Keyboards are all necessary evils.
The old joke about "If Harley-Davidson made Airplanes" comes to mind, for one.
So, to apply the analogy, the commercial companies should just realize that the Pengiun has no clothes and take it out with a major offensive.
Makes sense to me.
If you had to mention eBay and crashes to get your friend to know what Solaris is, you're preying on his ignorance. Then again, maybe it's unintentional on your part, proving that ignorance is sometimes contagious.
Indeed.
I suspect that many other Sun investors and customers will be complaining about them releasing the source code for Solaris.
Probably not for the same reasons you give, of course.
We must preserve the right to fork.
We must preserve the right to fork.
Is that the new GNU Manifesto or something?
Linux had drivers for all sorts of devices, but it's very spotty support.
I would say that Windows 95 has the most driver support of any OS out there. Not that we were including it in the discussion, of course.
And no, I am not just talking about WinModems. And yes, we know how impressive it is that Linux has driver support for almost every piece of hardware that's at least three years old.
The day when ESR is vested with the Authority to issue Certifications is the day when some of us need to start pieing him in the face at public events.
I mean, really! This guy is a blowhard, and that's about the extent of it.
Sounds to me like metric conversion almost caused a plane crash there. Not the reverse.
You've scratched just the surface of the cost of "going metric". A bunch of schoolteachers is the cheap part of it.
Billions of dollars of tooling and equipment would have to be changed. In order to make a bunch of scientists and foreigners happy.
I'm sorry. Why should the US economy go into the tank because a bunch of Europeans discovered they have ten fingers and decided to rip their infrastructure to hell?
250 Million people to learn a new system v.s. 5.75 Billion. Hmm, that'll be a tough choice!
If you think it's a matter of "people learning a new system" than you've been sitting in an educational institution too long and need your tenure revoked so you get out and see the real world. Converting to the metric system isn't just a matter of teaching a bunch of schoolchildren a bunch of happy new units.
There is tooling all over the place that is obsoleted when a new system of measures is imposed. There is incompatible hardware, all the way down to the threads on nuts and bolts.
So it isn't a matter of deciding that because 5.75 billion people (the bulk of whom don't have more than several items machined to any unit of measure, anyways) "know" metric (do us a favor, go quiz twenty random people off the street in Kenya about the metric system) that we should retool all our factories. The places that have the infrastructure, the tooling, the machinery, etc. get to decide. And it's far from proven that there are more Metric than Imperial Unit machine tools. Might makes right when it gets down to the metal. Deal with it.
250 Million people to learn a new system v.s. 5.75 Billion. Hmm, that'll be a tough choice!
If you think it's a matter of "people learning a new system" than you've been sitting in an educational institution too long and need your tenure revoked so you get out and see the real world. Converting to the metric system isn't just a matter of teaching a bunch of schoolchildren a bunch of happy new units.
There is tooling all over the place that is obsoleted when a new system of measures is imposed. There is incompatible hardware, all the way down to the threads on nuts and bolts.
So it isn't a matter of deciding that because 5.75 billion people (the bulk of whom don't have more than several items machined to any unit of measure, anyways) "know" metric (do us a favor, go quiz twenty random people off the street in Kenya about the metric system) that we should retool all our factories. The places that have the infrastructure, the tooling, the machinery, etc. get to decide. And it's far from proven that there are more Metric than Imperial Unit machine tools. Might makes right when it gets down to the metal. Deal with it.
Bookkeeping systems? Is that so that when they sell twenty microscopes in the US, they can bill at the equivalent of selling 14.234 microscopes in continental Europe?
I think that it's a grave error to ascribe to Napoleon the things that the French Revolution gave to culture.
Not that I am all that fond of a system of units based on imposing an arbitrary modulo-10 scale to everything measured. Systems of measurement have evolved over centuries to scale well to the units being measured. Then a bunch of "radicals" come along and want to shoehorn it all into modulo-10.
The ten month calendar was also a part of the grande plan. And the French started the count of years over again at zero. Why aren't the Metric geeks fighting for that as well?
The "Metric system is the epitome of progress" crowd will never go away. There will always be people who insist that a system of units of measure is some marvelous thing. The best response is "get a life, loser."
I think it's too strong a statement to say that we will never be safe.
I think it is safe to say we aren't ready to handle it now, at least with our present technology and economic systems.
I personally, would like nuclear technology to be something that gets a lot of study, but that isn't implemented by economic interests. It just isn't safe to use in a system of economic compromises.
Besides which, why should we assume we need to use up all the fissionable material now? Maybe we'll be better capable of using it in a few centuries if we wait.
How many people are actually running Win95 (original release) with no security patches installed and get hacked on a regular basis?
Tweeks don't hack into Win95 boxes because:
1. There's not much they can do there when they've broken in- there isn't a single-point-of-vulnerabilty root account that gives away the whole store once access has been gained.
2. Win95 boxes don't contain much of value to a hacker, they are end-user, not server machines.
However, the fact of the matter would still be that Chevrolet produced a car with a faulty ABS computer. You might choose not to buy your next car from Chevrolet, if the inconvenience of having to bring the last one in for recalls clued you into quality problems at the manufacturer.
Needless to say if there were as many vehicle recalls as there are "Bugfixes" issued for RedHat Linux, we'd all have given up and started riding the bus ages ago.
Indeed. The Open Source community isn't just giving away the software for free. They're warning the people who use the Open Source packages that they'd darn well better hire someone from the Open Source community to babysit their server. Or use a hired-gun business like RedHat to do it for them.
I strongly suspect RedHat isn't going to perform such a task for free. Thus, the true cost of a "Linux server solution" is rather difficult to determine, and probably at least as great, if not greater, than buying a similar server platform and maintanence from Microsoft and their mob of MSCEs. Further, RedHat will engineer themselves out of business if they do too good a job on their distributions. Makes for an interesting bunch of conflicting interests, huh? (Microsoft, of course, has the same conflict with their product)
The "typical" corporate type would apply the service Packs to the NT install. Don't forget how old NT 4.0 is now.
I'm not so sure that the "typical" corporate type is going to be enthusiastic about having to check the RedHat website regularly for updates that might come in on a weekly or daily basis. I know his boss isn't going to be happy about having to let the person maintaining the server spend two hours a day crusing Usenet to keep up with the exploit-of-the-hour as it's announced to all the companies friends and foes.
In some ways, running an OpenSource system is like riding a Harley. If you like taking the engine apart, futzing around with it, and knowing that you'll be able to do so forever (the Harley scene is just like that, with swapmeets, etc.) then you'll enjoy owning the Harley. Better take along a toolkit on any long road trips, of course.
Many people don't run a server because they enjoy maintaining it. Only true Linux enthusiasts are going to want to do day-to-day maintanence of their servers. And even a Linux enthusiast is going to demand top dollar for maintaining a commercial server.
The coralary is: If it was necessary pay commercial shop rates for all repairs and maintanence done to a Harley, nobody could afford to own one.
So now what do all the people who insisted that it was purely a CGI hack have to say?
Is the crontab exploit still possible even in the current release?
Not impressive, folks.
Didn't you know? It's written in Visual Basic.
sheesh.
What a great idea! Bind the Perl language to a single processor by implementing it in Assembler. We could all have "Perl6 coprocessors" that we would shoehorn into our hardware to run Perl scripts with.
Not!