I believe this effort became a necessity when Oracle was developing their Exadata and Exalogic platforms, which are Linux based.
Oracle basically said to service their high end Linux customers the kernel in the current RHEL offering is out of date, so they decided to support 2 kernels for their customers... one that tracks the RHEL kernel (Unbreakable Linux) and one that tracks the mainline Kernel (Enterprise Linux). Enterprise Linux includes all the high performance features Oracle needs that even the mainline Linux community is too slow to incorporate. That's all Oracle is doing. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach to me.
Almost everything Red Hat ships in Enterprise Linux is not from Red Hat.
Excellent point... there are 100 other Linux distributions, and I haven't seen any of them approached with as much/. FUD as I've seen in this thread.
Hitachi dropped ORCL so ORCL has nothing in the way of real storage equip to sell or resell.
You seem to have this reversed. Oracle terminated their Hitachi agreement when they finalized the Sun deal to focus on Sun storage products. For high end storage they may need to find a replacement, but from a pure business standpoint it makes sense for Oracle to try to focus on solutions using their own hardware.
From someone who works where the coding "standard" is indentation set to 2 and spaces it's a nightmare. If it were tabs then your indent size would be up to you, but nooooooooooo.
Tabs for indentation are a good theory, and in the context of a single editor, work fine. However step out of that context and it's a roll of the dice.
Go ahead and set up your editor to the preference of your choice... lets say 3 for this example. Save your code. Use "cat" or "type" from the command line and what indentation do you see? Typically 8 space indents. Bring it up a different editor and it's a crap shoot. May be configured for 2 or 3 or 4 or just default to 8. Maybe you want to print it from a box that you don't have "your" editor configured for it. Again, roll the dice. Want to do a diff on the command line? Probably 8 spaces again. Diff in a tool? Again, roll the dice.
You put indents with spaces then there's no question that no matter what computer, what application, you will see 3 space indents. Write new code with whatever you want, modify exiting code with whatever it was written in. Just be consistent. Tabs don't give you cross-tool consistency.
I'd also say your Ford/Chevy analogy somewhat misses the point.
The speedometer change is analogous to the missing desktop icon referenced by the parent--any person with common sense should be able to figure out how to run a program by using their eyes, so why don't they?
I've had to train my mom on Windows over the phone and can say that even though I've used windows since v2.0, I find it maddening that it is neither intuitive to her nor easy to explain without sitting in front of her. She has also asked me about the phony virus scan trojan. Similarly I got a call from my Aunt, an adept Mac user, who was utterly frustrated that she couldn't figure out how to run a program in Windows.
As far as crusty MS Office users unable to use Open Office, I wholeheartedly disagree. I find Open Office refreshing that it mimics 99% of the pre-2007 MS Office look and feel. The ribbon menu concept smacks of MS simply trying only to differentiate itself from rote copycats like OO.
Security? Ubuntu has one-click 100% system updates for the latest security patches and bug fixes. There is a multi-billion dollar industry made out of protecting and repairing malware infested Windows PCs and that industry is largely unnecessary for Ubuntu. Simplicity is not having to deal with it.
Your point is well taken, and is probably Dell's reason for doing all this... they threw in the towel because they have better help desk support personnel for Windows than Ubuntu.
Is your response a sad acknowledgement
that most people are incapable of learning multiple variations of the same skill?
"I know Outlook but that Evolution thing is just WAY over my head." "I've been driving a Ford truck for years, but this here Chevy has the speedometer in the wrong place so I can't drive it."
Kids are coercive and manipulative--it's natural for them to exercise their boundaries starting from the time they are infants... it's really fascinating to watch how smart toddlers really are in this area, and it goes against much of parental nature to tell their kids they can't have something.
The parents who get into trouble are the ones who give in too often, sometimes making up for what they didn't get as kids. Once in a while is fine, even necessary, but too often gives kids the impression they can get, on command, what they want, and thus become spoiled brats.
My daughter begs for food from a handful of restaurants for lunch and dinner (a couple of which are fast food), for which I'll oblige on occasion (especially when I'm too tired to cook), and other times I have no problem saying "no, we're making dinner at home tonight." In fact her reward for good grades (elementary school) is to go out for sushi. I'll acknowledge some of that is luck, but some of that is due to training--consistency in enforcement of rules.
This watchdog group is implying parents need help keeping their kids away from McDonalds. Are parents incapable of saying "no honey, we're going to eat in tonight" or "no we're going to... instead" or "no you can't have a Big Mac and fries, but you can have the grilled chicken sandwich and a fruit salad." When do lawyers become more important to our society than parental responsibility? It's just all backwards.
I agree with the parent. $41.5 Billion is fictitious number...a political ploy for purposes of FUD. it's a number that governments will be concerned with, and have an incentive to step in, whereas, say, $41.5 million is just a cost of doing business. People still have an incentive to write books even though all books are available for free in libraries.
It's also important to reiterate that the "10% users who account for 90% of piracy" download many times more games than they would have otherwised purchased... and they don't have time to play them all anyhow.
But pretending that bandwidth is a free resource and that you already paid for it in your "unlimited" data plan is ridiculous.
Not intending to be too picky, but this is mis-statement... someone who is paying for some sort of unlimited data plan is not assuming that bandwidth is free.
What TFA seems to be implying is that ISPs, mobile carriers, TV, etc should be combined, which is the only way to achieve a single plan for multiple points of Internet access. Sure we can go back to the AT&T-owns-all-communications model, but we've been there, and didn't like it.
I can understand the importance of securing the core Internet backbone, especially since it was originally put in place by/for government for military and university purposes.
The prerequisite is to assume that the government can react faster to a security threat than the private sector manufacturers of the network equipment to patch it up and that the government has a fleet of network engineers that are better than the engineers that were in charge of the network in the first place. I just don't see it because the hardware is typically proprietary, and how can an outsider react faster than the ones in charge of the networks?
Oracle has a unique business model for being one of the two biggest software companies in the world -- you can download most of their core products easily and try them out at no cost. Some of the products are flat out free (JDeveloper, Oracle SQL Developer). When you license them, it's not because they are limpware, that they are expired, or need a serial number... because they don't. The incentive is primarily for purchase of security updates and support. This is completely Unlike the other big software company, which doesn't allow downloads, no try before you buy, have to use serial numbers, restrict upgrade paths, and install phone-home services to keep them aware of who is running legit copies of their software and who isn't.
The thing is, this topic seems to be more about what to do with Solaris. Oracle used to use Solaris as their tier 1 development platform in the 90's, then turned to Linux years ago. Now that they're in deep with both, which open source *nix OS do they focus on? Is there any value in Solaris over Linux? They know that Linux is both open source and is profitable (Red Hat). Oracle knows there is money in open source software or they wouldn't have purchased MySQL properties, attempted to purchase JBoss, even thrown around talks with a Red Hat acquisitionetc. This may be more about trying to figure out how to focus so they can supply turn-key servers to their customers rather than general "is oss profitable."
At this point what's to tell Oracle that Solaris is better than Linux, because, I'm not sure they're convinced?
Considering mobile applications are the hottest thing going and that Both Android and Blackberry use Java APIs, the author brushes over this fact by stating they are non-standard custom API's and JVMs... but what open source language/standards-based API has strict across-the-board standards? Apple? proprietary. Ruby? laughable. Python? no..Net? proprietary...though good point about Mono being more popular than Java on Linux, a topic for another discussion.
That being said, I was disappointed Android has only a Java API... It would have been interesting if Google could have made Python the de facto API for Android, based on their support of the language, but probably felt Java was...well...better for the task at hand.
A computer should be separate from the software; as such a customer should never be compelled to buy a computer conditional on also buying the software on the device. Of course this is already covered under US antitrust law as illegal tying even if it is rarely if ever enforced.
In other news, Apple Computer has hit an all time high in the stock market...
Yes I wholeheartedly agree. We had a new employee who did just that -- refactored a pile of mission-critical code, added unit tests, cut unused code, added data constraints, and made it more maintainable. At the end of the day that person was deemed to be unproductive and fired, and all the code thrown to the wind. This is what business types think of refactoring.
They had already merged business operations and sharing of weekend publishing duties. The only thing left in competition was the news and printing operations so in a downward spiraling industry it was both logical and inevitable for them to "combine" those too. They were in bed together, so it not as much a matter of DP outlasting RMN, it was inevitable for one to be closed at some point due to declining readership. In 99% of the rest of the country competition had already been eliminated.
Don't kid yourself by assuming burglars go to jail. I've had people caught in felony robbery of my house, later identified and booked by police, admitted to the crime, and didn't serve 1 minute in a cell. Maybe those involved with prior convictions spent a couple weeks in jail, but really, it hardly a disincentive.
You are spot on, yet conveniently overlook the fact that most developers are not the "best" and all these methodologies are there to get the other, say, 90% of the IT workforce productive.
The original poster's complaint is the removal of that top 10% talent from what they do best into an administrative job that can be performed by anyone off the street who can follow a 10-point checklist every day (which is why Scrum is popular yet ironically never implemented correctly). It's a management blunder of the worst kind.
The industry has unfortunately gone away from single-player RPG games to date. Origin's Ultima series is second to none, but another one they put out is fully deserving of a remake: Autoduel. Great concept and execution of the original, but even so, the game has huge potential in a reboot.
Oracle hasn't had much of an issue with fault tolerance since it's OPS (Oracle Parallel Server) days, or its newer RAC technology (Real Application Clusters).
Oracle's current licensing is basically per-processor based, regardless of whether you have one server with 4 processors or 4 servers with 1 processor (other restrictions apply, etc). In the past Oracle has also had no problems implementing licensing like UPU (Universal Power Unit) so licenses were based upon fabricated value representing the "power" of the hardware used... e.g., higher for fault tolerant SMP machines and lesser for x86 machiens.
I think you're trying to be funny, but frankly can't be sure, because what you say is exactly how I think Microsoft rationalizes the multiple concurrent user deficiency in their OS.
I can imagine engineers at Microsoft still believing that each household has one desktop and no expectation of the need to use your computer remotely. No one needs to access their computer on vacation at grandma's house or from an internet cafe, or from their netbook which is a primary driver of multi-desktops per household. This is the problem that Google is solving with their online apps.
The primary driver to computing in this day and age is networking, and it has been for the better part of the past 20 years. I don't understand why does opening a session on a remote desktop have to require the local user to log out? It's a problem that was solved decades ago.
Microsoft has been actively stifling competition, and in effect, innovation for at least two decades in the name of profit. It has worked famously for them from a business standpoint, but in its wake has been left many superior OS's and applications for dead. At one point Microsoft was good at copying or acquiring third party innovation for inclusion into Windows, but now you just have to look at the single user desktop model STILL in use by Windows, and their current guerrilla tactics used to ensure large contracts are awarded for Windows desktops over free alternatives. Great business, but innovation has been largely limited to those required for survival tactics.
Twitter is like blogging in 140 characters or less, eliminating the need for well thought out articles. Like iPhone apps, it can hold someone's interest for a few minutes before going to the next site.
Slashdot Mirror
Oracle basically said to service their high end Linux customers the kernel in the current RHEL offering is out of date, so they decided to support 2 kernels for their customers... one that tracks the RHEL kernel (Unbreakable Linux) and one that tracks the mainline Kernel (Enterprise Linux). Enterprise Linux includes all the high performance features Oracle needs that even the mainline Linux community is too slow to incorporate. That's all Oracle is doing. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach to me.
Almost everything Red Hat ships in Enterprise Linux is not from Red Hat.
Excellent point... there are 100 other Linux distributions, and I haven't seen any of them approached with as much /. FUD as I've seen in this thread.
Don't fret, word is native ZFS is coming to Linux next month.
Hitachi dropped ORCL so ORCL has nothing in the way of real storage equip to sell or resell.
You seem to have this reversed. Oracle terminated their Hitachi agreement when they finalized the Sun deal to focus on Sun storage products. For high end storage they may need to find a replacement, but from a pure business standpoint it makes sense for Oracle to try to focus on solutions using their own hardware.
From someone who works where the coding "standard" is indentation set to 2 and spaces it's a nightmare. If it were tabs then your indent size would be up to you, but nooooooooooo.
Tabs for indentation are a good theory, and in the context of a single editor, work fine. However step out of that context and it's a roll of the dice.
Go ahead and set up your editor to the preference of your choice... lets say 3 for this example. Save your code. Use "cat" or "type" from the command line and what indentation do you see? Typically 8 space indents. Bring it up a different editor and it's a crap shoot. May be configured for 2 or 3 or 4 or just default to 8. Maybe you want to print it from a box that you don't have "your" editor configured for it. Again, roll the dice. Want to do a diff on the command line? Probably 8 spaces again. Diff in a tool? Again, roll the dice.
You put indents with spaces then there's no question that no matter what computer, what application, you will see 3 space indents. Write new code with whatever you want, modify exiting code with whatever it was written in. Just be consistent. Tabs don't give you cross-tool consistency.
I'd also say your Ford/Chevy analogy somewhat misses the point.
The speedometer change is analogous to the missing desktop icon referenced by the parent--any person with common sense should be able to figure out how to run a program by using their eyes, so why don't they?
There are two valid themes here.. ease of use and security. Lets start with ease of use. I always liked The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment
I've had to train my mom on Windows over the phone and can say that even though I've used windows since v2.0, I find it maddening that it is neither intuitive to her nor easy to explain without sitting in front of her. She has also asked me about the phony virus scan trojan. Similarly I got a call from my Aunt, an adept Mac user, who was utterly frustrated that she couldn't figure out how to run a program in Windows.
As far as crusty MS Office users unable to use Open Office, I wholeheartedly disagree. I find Open Office refreshing that it mimics 99% of the pre-2007 MS Office look and feel. The ribbon menu concept smacks of MS simply trying only to differentiate itself from rote copycats like OO.
Security? Ubuntu has one-click 100% system updates for the latest security patches and bug fixes. There is a multi-billion dollar industry made out of protecting and repairing malware infested Windows PCs and that industry is largely unnecessary for Ubuntu. Simplicity is not having to deal with it.
Your point is well taken, and is probably Dell's reason for doing all this... they threw in the towel because they have better help desk support personnel for Windows than Ubuntu.
Is your response a sad acknowledgement that most people are incapable of learning multiple variations of the same skill?
"I know Outlook but that Evolution thing is just WAY over my head."
"I've been driving a Ford truck for years, but this here Chevy has the speedometer in the wrong place so I can't drive it."
Is this where we are in society? I don't buy it.
Kids are coercive and manipulative--it's natural for them to exercise their boundaries starting from the time they are infants... it's really fascinating to watch how smart toddlers really are in this area, and it goes against much of parental nature to tell their kids they can't have something.
The parents who get into trouble are the ones who give in too often, sometimes making up for what they didn't get as kids. Once in a while is fine, even necessary, but too often gives kids the impression they can get, on command, what they want, and thus become spoiled brats.
My daughter begs for food from a handful of restaurants for lunch and dinner (a couple of which are fast food), for which I'll oblige on occasion (especially when I'm too tired to cook), and other times I have no problem saying "no, we're making dinner at home tonight." In fact her reward for good grades (elementary school) is to go out for sushi. I'll acknowledge some of that is luck, but some of that is due to training--consistency in enforcement of rules.
This watchdog group is implying parents need help keeping their kids away from McDonalds. Are parents incapable of saying "no honey, we're going to eat in tonight" or "no we're going to ... instead" or "no you can't have a Big Mac and fries, but you can have the grilled chicken sandwich and a fruit salad." When do lawyers become more important to our society than parental responsibility? It's just all backwards.
I agree with the parent. $41.5 Billion is fictitious number...a political ploy for purposes of FUD. it's a number that governments will be concerned with, and have an incentive to step in, whereas, say, $41.5 million is just a cost of doing business. People still have an incentive to write books even though all books are available for free in libraries.
It's also important to reiterate that the "10% users who account for 90% of piracy" download many times more games than they would have otherwised purchased... and they don't have time to play them all anyhow.
But pretending that bandwidth is a free resource and that you already paid for it in your "unlimited" data plan is ridiculous.
Not intending to be too picky, but this is mis-statement... someone who is paying for some sort of unlimited data plan is not assuming that bandwidth is free.
What TFA seems to be implying is that ISPs, mobile carriers, TV, etc should be combined, which is the only way to achieve a single plan for multiple points of Internet access. Sure we can go back to the AT&T-owns-all-communications model, but we've been there, and didn't like it.
I can understand the importance of securing the core Internet backbone, especially since it was originally put in place by/for government for military and university purposes.
The prerequisite is to assume that the government can react faster to a security threat than the private sector manufacturers of the network equipment to patch it up and that the government has a fleet of network engineers that are better than the engineers that were in charge of the network in the first place. I just don't see it because the hardware is typically proprietary, and how can an outsider react faster than the ones in charge of the networks?
What muscle memory? This isn't Donkey Kong, It's a pattern recognition game that doesn't play the same way twice.
Oracle has a unique business model for being one of the two biggest software companies in the world -- you can download most of their core products easily and try them out at no cost. Some of the products are flat out free (JDeveloper, Oracle SQL Developer). When you license them, it's not because they are limpware, that they are expired, or need a serial number... because they don't. The incentive is primarily for purchase of security updates and support. This is completely Unlike the other big software company, which doesn't allow downloads, no try before you buy, have to use serial numbers, restrict upgrade paths, and install phone-home services to keep them aware of who is running legit copies of their software and who isn't.
The thing is, this topic seems to be more about what to do with Solaris. Oracle used to use Solaris as their tier 1 development platform in the 90's, then turned to Linux years ago. Now that they're in deep with both, which open source *nix OS do they focus on? Is there any value in Solaris over Linux? They know that Linux is both open source and is profitable (Red Hat). Oracle knows there is money in open source software or they wouldn't have purchased MySQL properties, attempted to purchase JBoss, even thrown around talks with a Red Hat acquisitionetc. This may be more about trying to figure out how to focus so they can supply turn-key servers to their customers rather than general "is oss profitable."
At this point what's to tell Oracle that Solaris is better than Linux, because, I'm not sure they're convinced?
Considering mobile applications are the hottest thing going and that Both Android and Blackberry use Java APIs, the author brushes over this fact by stating they are non-standard custom API's and JVMs... but what open source language/standards-based API has strict across-the-board standards? Apple? proprietary. Ruby? laughable. Python? no. .Net? proprietary...though good point about Mono being more popular than Java on Linux, a topic for another discussion.
That being said, I was disappointed Android has only a Java API... It would have been interesting if Google could have made Python the de facto API for Android, based on their support of the language, but probably felt Java was...well...better for the task at hand.
A computer should be separate from the software; as such a customer should never be compelled to buy a computer conditional on also buying the software on the device. Of course this is already covered under US antitrust law as illegal tying even if it is rarely if ever enforced.
In other news, Apple Computer has hit an all time high in the stock market...
Yes I wholeheartedly agree. We had a new employee who did just that -- refactored a pile of mission-critical code, added unit tests, cut unused code, added data constraints, and made it more maintainable. At the end of the day that person was deemed to be unproductive and fired, and all the code thrown to the wind. This is what business types think of refactoring.
They had already merged business operations and sharing of weekend publishing duties. The only thing left in competition was the news and printing operations so in a downward spiraling industry it was both logical and inevitable for them to "combine" those too. They were in bed together, so it not as much a matter of DP outlasting RMN, it was inevitable for one to be closed at some point due to declining readership. In 99% of the rest of the country competition had already been eliminated.
Don't kid yourself by assuming burglars go to jail. I've had people caught in felony robbery of my house, later identified and booked by police, admitted to the crime, and didn't serve 1 minute in a cell. Maybe those involved with prior convictions spent a couple weeks in jail, but really, it hardly a disincentive.
You are spot on, yet conveniently overlook the fact that most developers are not the "best" and all these methodologies are there to get the other, say, 90% of the IT workforce productive.
The original poster's complaint is the removal of that top 10% talent from what they do best into an administrative job that can be performed by anyone off the street who can follow a 10-point checklist every day (which is why Scrum is popular yet ironically never implemented correctly). It's a management blunder of the worst kind.
The industry has unfortunately gone away from single-player RPG games to date. Origin's Ultima series is second to none, but another one they put out is fully deserving of a remake: Autoduel. Great concept and execution of the original, but even so, the game has huge potential in a reboot.
Oracle hasn't had much of an issue with fault tolerance since it's OPS (Oracle Parallel Server) days, or its newer RAC technology (Real Application Clusters).
Oracle's current licensing is basically per-processor based, regardless of whether you have one server with 4 processors or 4 servers with 1 processor (other restrictions apply, etc). In the past Oracle has also had no problems implementing licensing like UPU (Universal Power Unit) so licenses were based upon fabricated value representing the "power" of the hardware used... e.g., higher for fault tolerant SMP machines and lesser for x86 machiens.
I think you're trying to be funny, but frankly can't be sure, because what you say is exactly how I think Microsoft rationalizes the multiple concurrent user deficiency in their OS.
I can imagine engineers at Microsoft still believing that each household has one desktop and no expectation of the need to use your computer remotely. No one needs to access their computer on vacation at grandma's house or from an internet cafe, or from their netbook which is a primary driver of multi-desktops per household. This is the problem that Google is solving with their online apps.
The primary driver to computing in this day and age is networking, and it has been for the better part of the past 20 years. I don't understand why does opening a session on a remote desktop have to require the local user to log out? It's a problem that was solved decades ago.
Mod parent up.
Microsoft has been actively stifling competition, and in effect, innovation for at least two decades in the name of profit. It has worked famously for them from a business standpoint, but in its wake has been left many superior OS's and applications for dead. At one point Microsoft was good at copying or acquiring third party innovation for inclusion into Windows, but now you just have to look at the single user desktop model STILL in use by Windows, and their current guerrilla tactics used to ensure large contracts are awarded for Windows desktops over free alternatives. Great business, but innovation has been largely limited to those required for survival tactics.
When you run out of innovation you hire lawyers to enforce your remaining patents. It worked so well for SCO, Microsoft doesn't want to be left out.
Twitter is like blogging in 140 characters or less, eliminating the need for well thought out articles. Like iPhone apps, it can hold someone's interest for a few minutes before going to the next site.