Linux-Advocacy Digest #403, Volume #25 Sat, 26 Feb 00 13:13:05 EST
Contents:
Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. ) (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: Binary compatibility: what kind of crack are they smoking? (Cliff Wagner)
Re: Linux and communism revisited. (Pan)
Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. ) (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: Microsoft migrates Hotmail to W2K (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. ) (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: IE on UNIX ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Can I do this with Linux? (Cliff Wagner)
Re: Windows 2000: flat sales ("John Hughes")
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. )
Date: 26 Feb 2000 16:17:55 GMT
On Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:55:40 GMT, Greg Copeland wrote:
>credibility with me. Below is a good example. It really doesn't matter
>that you agree or disagree with his analogy. If the analogy illustrated
>the authors point, it IS a good analogy.
I'm afraid one thing you are not going to get me to change my view on
are analogies.
If something cannot be successfully argued without recourse to an analogy,
then it would seem that the argument hinges on a flaw in the underlying
assumptions of the analogy. An analogy can help explain ones view point,
but it does not add any substance to an argument.
> Often, when people have no
>other basis for counter, the analogy is attacked rather than the issue
>the author was attempting address.
As I said above, analogies are inherently flawed. Any argument based on
the assumption that an operating system is a road can and should be
dismissed immediately on the grounds that a road is certainly not an
operating system.
If the author wishes to address an issue, they could perhaps do it without
offering an analogy ( and in Jedi's case, a lot of supplemental verbal
trickery in an attempt to argue by analogy )
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cliff Wagner)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Binary compatibility: what kind of crack are they smoking?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 16:23:18 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 24 Feb 2000 22:36:46 GMT, Colin Watson typed something like:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>Adam Ierymenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Mario Klebsch wrote:
>>> There is no such thing as a Linux OS! There is RedHat Linux,
>>> SUSE-Linux, debian Linux, and lots of other. Face it, Linux already
>>> has fragmented.
>>>
>>> This will kill Linux, because if you want to support Linux, you have
>>> to support more than a hand foll of operating systems, that only
>>> differ slightly. And although you officially are supporting Linux, you
>>> are not supporting all thos linux systems, that are not just installed
>>> from CD, but self compiled.
>>
>>Actually, if all the distros would just standardize on one
>>package manager format, it would be OK. Right now it's
>>RPM and DPKG... or maybe make DPKG and RPM able to
>>install each others' packages?
>
>alien.
>
>Not that this solves the problem; the different distributions have
>different filesystem layouts. alien does (with the -g option) let you
>perform the unpack and build stages separately, though, which gives you
>the chance to rearrange things yourself.
>
>The libraries problem remains, though, as dependencies can't sensibly be
>translated between distributions (even forgetting about package
>formats). Modulo bugs, open source does generally solve this.
Actually, as far as I've seen, alien does a decent job of checking
for library sanity.
I tried to install a .deb package today, which required older
gnome libs, which I didn't feel like putting on my system.
Out of curiosity, I tried to alien the rpm file, which searched
out the libraries it needed, after which point, it told me it
couldn't convert the rpm file (which is the action I'd want from
it).
In my experience, a debian system using alien can install
almost anything in binary format, with a somewhat sane layout.
(given, not perfect by any means).
-c-
--
Cliff Wagner ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Visit The Edge Zone: http://www.edge-zone.net
"Man will Occasionally stumble over the truth, but most
of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
-- Winston Churchill
------------------------------
From: Pan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux and communism revisited.
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 08:29:17 -0800
emailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and posted to COLA
Truckasaurus wrote:
>
> I don't really believe that my posting will end all 'Linx is communism'
> posting. What do hope is, that everytie somebody brings out this old
> hat, anyone mmediately sees:
> 1) That he doesn't know Linux
> 2) He doesn't now communism
> 3) Hs going for the abovementioned shock value, not the truth.
I realize that you are trying to divorce linux from communism because
for many people educated in the United States during the cold war,
'communism' has a negative connotation.
Nevertheless, I take issue with your statement that anyone who says that
Linux, or more precisely, the open-source movement, borrows a great deal
of its ethos from communist ideology knows nothing about A. linux, or B.
communism.
The fact of the matter is that much of the dialogue used by Linvocates
such as Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly is driven by ideas that were
penned by Marx, and much of the value of OSS (such as the Apache
project) is derived from some of the principles upon which the communist
critique of capitalism is built.
To begin with, communism, rightly understood, is not the political
system of the soviet union or china. Those are best thought of as
totalitarian regimes that have co-opted portions of communist rhetoric
as a means for maintaining a class-based political and economic
structure at the expense of the working class. This is something that
is decidedly anti-communist regardless of how they refer to themselves.
Communism, as Marx envisioned it, is better thought of as a stage in the
evolution of history. According to Marx, Capitalism would create such a
surplus of wealth that the bulk of human labor would no longer be tied
to subsistence modes of production (eg, 16 hours in a coal mine for a
living wage). As this occurs, people spend more and more of their time
engaging in more self-affirming modes of production. The leisure time
that enables these self-affirming modes of production (writing perl
modules as opposed to working in a coal mine, for example), is a
by-product of capitalism, but also leads to an evolutionary shift in
which the deficiencies of class-based capitalism are exposed by the
working class (or consumer class).
How does this relate to OSS and Linux?
Under the traditional, centralized, proprietary model of software
development, a software vendor develops a product, and brings it to
market without making the source code available to its consumers. This
leaves the manufacturer or its development partners in a position of
great strength. The consumer is dependent on the manufacturer for all
bug fixes, upgrades, etc.
For a corporate consumer, this vendor-lock is extremely dangerous
because the cost of software to a company goes beyond the licensing
cost. Other costs include training on the software (both the actual
cost of the education and the hours spent by staff training on the
product as well as any learning curve that might be present).
As IBM, Microsoft, and Sun have proven, this is a great business model
for manufacturers. It isn't so great for consumers who find themselves
stuck with antiquated mainframe-based client-server infrastructures or a
PC client-server model under which a new licensing cost is incurred as
the lifespan of hardware and software continues to dwindle.
But this inequality of benefit favoring the manufacturer is derived from
ineffieciencies that are intrinsic the conventional mode of software
production. For one thing, the centralized proprietary model
arbitrarily limits the number of potential developers to a staff of
in-house programmers. For another, it means that competing products
(e.g., Office, WordPerfect, et al) find themselves needing to re-invent
the wheel everytime they want to add a piece of functionality to their
software.
How does this relate to Communism?
Under the open source model, the means of production are no longer
solely in the hands of a single manufacturer, they are taken under
common control. In the case of the apache project, the means of
production are in the hands of a collaborative network of isp's and
other end-users. That shift from proprietary to common control is at
the root of the communist revolution as marx envisioned it.
If you don't see it, then you don't understand linux, oss, or communism.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. )
Date: 26 Feb 2000 16:32:07 GMT
On Sat, 26 Feb 2000 12:21:29 GMT, Greg Copeland wrote:
>Hehe. This is a wonderful example of what I was commenting on before.
>Maintaining meaningful context goes a long way. You're whole argument
>is based on the completely wrong assumption that I've presented my
>comments as fact.
So it would appear as though I've completely misunderstood your post. It
may help if you quantify opinions with the well known "IMO" or "IMHO"
quantifier, to make it clear that you are offering an opinion.
> To address ALL of your points, one need only ignore
>everything you've said and request that you please learn the difference
>between someone offering fact and someone offering opinion.
Again, this is not always clear. We've seen in this thread people like Jedi
who present their personal opinions ( that physical property is "real" and
intellectual property isn't ) as some sort of universal truth.
>Removing the context and making it look like I was presenting fact and
>not opinion is an incredible poor practice.
If you feel I've misrepresented your position, I'm sorry. This certainly was
not my intention.
> In case it's not already
>obvious, asking someone to present facts on events that have not
>occurred yet, especially on topics whereby, there is little to no trend
>data available is ridicules!
My point is that you cannot cite something as supporting evidence for your
argument if it hasn't occurred yet.
>The original question was asking about a market model that will support
>Linux. I offered one based on events that are shaping the market. If
The point I was making is that there's really no hard data to indicate
that these "Linux companies" will be succesful. You seem to be presenting
reasons why you believe that they may be succesful.
>P.S. There is one exception to my above comments. I did offer that
>Linux is having market growth. This fact is well understood and
>accepted.
Having market growth doesn't help that much unless you're either already making
some kind of operating profit, or you can service a larger market without
a proportional increase in costs. In other words, I acknowledge your fact,
but I have doubts as to how much it helps. Another problem is it's really
hard to accurately measure Linux growth though I'm pretty sure it's growing
( on a side note, we just started up a user group at our strongly
windows-centric school, and I'm seeing Corel box sets in the campus
bookshop ... )
To clarify my position further, I don't really care whether or not Linux
makes money. To me, OpenSource is not just about money ( or even not at
all about money ).
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Microsoft migrates Hotmail to W2K
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:44:38 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Darren Winsper
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on 25 Feb 2000 18:00:45 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>On Thu, 24 Feb 2000 18:37:02 -0700, Clark Pacheco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> So if Linux is so much better then what major sites have opted to use Linux
>> over FreeBSD or Solaris?
>
>I don't exactly know what many sites run (Unless I see .asp, then it's
>likely to be IIS), but I am fairly certain Deja use Linux. I don't
>know what their traffic's like though.
bash$ telnet www.deja.com www
Trying 208.10.192.235...
Connected to www.deja.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:43:32 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3b5 mod_perl/1.08
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Connection closed by foreign host.
bash$
For what it's worth.
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- looks like anything *but* Microsoft... :-)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: The latest from IDC ( Was Re: Linux sales. )
Date: 26 Feb 2000 16:55:04 GMT
On Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:55:40 GMT, Greg Copeland wrote:
>Wow. I've been looking at a number of postings made by you. You
>consistently ignore any opinion and fact that doesn't meet your personal
>view point.
I am not clear what you mean by this. I usually try to avoid gratuitous
snipping, I only snip to remove "excess baggage" from the posts.
i am not clear where I've ignored any "opinions or facts", having just reread
about half of this entire thread.
>intelligent, however, making comments that people don't spell well (yes,
>I don't spell well and tend not to use spell checkers)
OK, that was a cheap shot.
>to make. You also seem to have a habit of taking out any contextual
>comments in your reply that would directly counter points that you
>attempt to be making.
I quite frankly do not see where I have done this. I certainly don't do
so intentionally.
It's ironic that you pulled out a Jedi post, because Jedi does this
kind of thing all the time -- snips out important context, then attempts
to claim "victory" by succesfully beating down one false claim on the part
of the author. In the post below, you see "Jedi" trying to argue using verbal
trickery, which is what we've come to expect from him.
If BTW, you're accusing me of having not much respect for Jedi, then I plead
guilty. He's shown a tendency to be quick to flame, and pull out
"if you don't like (X), then it's because you're lazy/stupid -- it works for
me " type arguments, while demonstrating complete ignorance about the topic
at hand.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: IE on UNIX
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:10:47 -0600
Michael Wand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Then why hasn't Unix progressed beyond what it has?
>
> In what respect do you think Unix has not progressed? Just because an old,
> good concept is still used? (This includes a well-structured filesystem,
> for example).
I'm not the one claiming that Microsoft has held the computing world back by
a decade.
And, if ext2 is so wonderful, why are there 5 projects going for next
generation filesystems?
> > Microsoft has been pushing NT, which has 0% of DOS in it for 7 years.
The
> > consumer populace has not accepted it.
>
> So why? Because
>
> [ ] it is too expensive?
> [ ] it does not support modern DirectX versions? (Why?)
> [ ] .....................?
All of the above. Although the biggest reason would probably be backwards
compatibility. MS would have spent more effort on keeping DirectX up in NT4
if more users were migrating.
It's a chicken and egg scenario. At first they wouldn't move because there
weren't very many 32 bit applications (in 1993-1995), so MS created Windows
95 to get users to move to a 32 bit OS so that developers would start
writing 32 bit apps. Next, the reason was because NT couldn't support Win95
device drivers and hardware. So, MS created Win98 and Windows 2000 which
merged device drivers. With Windows 2000, corporate users (which were the
majority of Win9x's desktop sales) will likely be moving finally. For home
users, Win2k is still much too complex, thus they'd probably stay with
Win98, so MS needs an interim OS until Whistler ships (the so called
consumer NT). That's Windows Millenium Edition.
Microsoft knows that users would rather just stick with the OS they have if
there is a significant reason not to upgrade. Back when MS and IBM were
pushing OS/2, users stuck with Windows because it was more compatible than
OS/2 was at the time, and later when MS and IBM split, users stuck with
windows over OS/2 to MS's benefit.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cliff Wagner)
Subject: Re: Can I do this with Linux?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 17:07:51 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 25 Feb 2000 17:51:06 -0800, david parsons typed something like:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>Ken Kinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>Don't do it. MS SQL Server is a step up from Access, but shouldn't be used in
>>any serious projects.
>
> Oh? I don't have much respect for the company that wrote SQL Server
> (Sybase) but the database itself is a pretty respectable piece of
> software. MS has had their hands on their port for close to a decade
> now, so it's probably diverged a bit, but I'd not be at all surprised
> if 99% of the work they'd done to it was cleaning up the (appalling)
> user interface and making it prettily integrate with the Windows of
> the moment.
I'd qualify this by saying SQL 7 is a respectable piece of
software. 6.5 proved very stable for me in the past, however,
page level locking was always my biggest nightmare (having
to buffer out a row with char(255)s to get a proper lock on it?)
Thank god for row level locking in 7.
> The platform SQL Server lives on has traditionally been the weak
> point for it being used on Really Big databases, and Microsoft may
> have figured out a way to talk to disk in finite time by now.
Probably the most stable NT boxes I've set up have been dedicated
SQL Servers. Configure, optimize, leave it alone indefinitely.
Conversely, my biggest nightmare boxes have been ones that had
both IIS/SQL on them (due to the combination of SQL locking
memory for exclusive use, plus the ever-growing memoriy utilization
of IIS 4.0).
> (When MS got their license and started using SQL server in their
> traditional way -- to bludgen the original authors to death -- they
> were selling it for basically nothing ($400-$500 is what I recall;
> it's Big Money for a college student, but when you had to put down
> about $10k to get Sybase's attention for a Unix version, that's
> pretty much free) and I suspect a lot of dbas figured that losing
> 30% performance was worth saving 95% on the cost of the platform
> and software.
Partly why I use MySQL on my linux box. It's free, and for
lightweight use that doesn't require transactions or locking,
it blazes.
-c-
--
Cliff Wagner ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Visit The Edge Zone: http://www.edge-zone.net
"Man will Occasionally stumble over the truth, but most
of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
-- Winston Churchill
------------------------------
From: "John Hughes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 2000: flat sales
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 17:20:36 -0000
Reply-To: "John Hughes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Iain Robertson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > No, I'm not. I don't use BSD day to day anymore and don't give a shit. I
use
> > W2K because it does every single thing I could expect my computer to do.
>
> OK.... so I take it speed/performance are not of issue to you then...
>
Explain. Try supplying some facts.
------------------------------
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