|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
| Bulletin | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
Disclamer: This newsletter contains many links to sites on the Internet which are owned and operated by third parties. We are not responsible for the availability of the content located on any such third-party sites.
| !!! | Noteworthy Articles | Interviews | New Producs Info | Skeptical Views | Skeptical Reviews | Interesting Links Collections | Bookshelf | History | Etc |
In this issue:
|
!!! Important Sources of Information about Open Source !!! |
LinuxFocus (some articles are available in Russian translation)
Freshmeat Linux Gazette Linux Journal Linux Weekly News Linuxmall News SlashDot
| Unix/Linux | NT coopetiton | Etc |
For Linux distributors, like Red Hat, the Torvalds' requirement that the operating system stay free is a blessing and a curse. The open source code attracts developers, but makes it difficult to make money from their own development work. Yet, Rich Gray, intellectual property and antitrust attorney with law firm Bergeson, Eliopoulos, Grady & Gray thinks that the Linux model may not last. Linux could be co-opted by an applications maker," he said. "If a company invented a killer app for Linux, and didn't use the code, you could corner the market by controlling access to that application."
Intel has already revealed that the company intends to support a 64-bit version of Linux with their Merced chip and is working on adding its Wired for Management features -- aimed at making Linux easier to install in the corporation -- into Linux.
In addition, Intel has already revealed details of its universal driver initiative, which aims to make developing Linux applications much easier.
Despite Intel's shushing of the deal's impact on their relationship with Microsoft, at least one analyst thought the political implications were unavoidable.
Second Perl conference
With all the hype, it is easy for prospective electronic publishers to overlook the fact that not everyone is online. In fact, only a very small proportion of the US population uses online services of any kind -- some 5 to 14 percent of individuals or households, depending on the study consulted. And, among those that are online, not everyone can access all available services due to financial or technological constraints.
Nikolai Bezroukov. Netscape Communicator versus Microsoft Explorer (v.01)
The size of the program -- more than 30 million lines of code -- makes it not just arguably the biggest OS kernel ever. Future versions of the software -- either NT 5.1 or NT 6.0, or service pack 3 -- would be available within the next year or two and probably will be more stable platforms. Microsoft maintenance releases are always better and cheaper than the initial version.
Panel XML is no panacea -- Conventional wisdom holds that the Web is a chaotic mess and that eXtensible markup language--XML--has come to save the day, but a group discussion at Internet World added a dose of reality about the technology's limits.
Lotus ships SmartSuite upgrade -- XML compliant, Office 97 compatible SmartSuite Millennium Edition is a $149 suit that competes in functionality (and at the same time has much better price) with MS Office
SmartSuite Millennium Edition contains of five important applications: WordPro, 1-2-3, Approach, Organizer and Freelance . Speech recognition technology is supported for 1-2-3 and WordPro. It also includes data sharing capabilities with eSuite Workplace -- Java minisuit from Lotus
The most interesting is FastSite -- a new Web publishing application that allows end-users to take set of files created in Word, spreadsheet, or other desktop applications, convert them all to HTML and download to the WEB page
New capability In 1-2-3 includes the ability to access and present Web data in a spreadsheet. For example, a user can take stock quotes, put them in the spreadsheet and link them to a Yahoo business site.
SmartSuite Millennium Edition is compatible with Microsoft Office 97 applications and is XML, as well as HTML, compliant. It also features connection capabilities for enterprise applications developed by SAP and PeopleSoft.
Upgrades from previous versions, or from competitive products are $149. There are chances that Smartsuite will be available for Linux too.
The answer to the almost limitless problems of DLLs is obvious: Don't use them. Wherever possible, use static linking. Imagine the benefits. Some other developer's boneheaded installation or poorly designed updated DLL will not break your application. Your application won't fail because a component is missing, or because a registry setting has been lost or modified incorrectly. Your application won't behave differently depending on the applications already loaded, as a DLL-based application can if another application has already loaded a different copy of one of its components. Your installation will be exceptionally simple, and an uninstall will be just as easy.
I should warn you of one small hassle if you try DLL-free development. Your users won't believe that there is only one file to install.
Separating concerns of interface aspects and inherited implementation aspects is a good practice. It keeps designs clean and fosters sensible paths of reuse. It's clear that both Java and C++ possess the ability to directly express designs that include this separation of concerns (in Java interfaces, and in C++ purely abstract classes). But compared to Java, C++ additionally affords you the ability to connect components and algorithms (using templates) without the need to impose an interface declaration upon the components. Lastly, it is true of both Java and C++, that adapter classes can be used as proxies for classes that bare a different interface than the one required.
As a final acknowledgment of Java, let me point out that the inclusion of the interface construct in Java is a good thing. Its presence highlights for Java developers the idea that interface compliance is a different concern than that of inheritance. C++ developers should also note this difference and use the mechanisms available to them in C++ to create the cleanest possible separation of concerns.
You can modify the registry to kill Clippy. The key is at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\Assistant\.Look for the key
AsstState. A value of 0 will turn Clippy off, 1 will turn it on.If you're installing Office 97 for the first time you can try unchecking the Office Assistant option during a Custom install. Look for the option under 'Office Tools.' We've tried uninstalling Office Assistant from an existing Office 97 setup, but Clippy stubbornly remains installed.
A less brutal alternative is to get a low impact version of Clippy. After Office 97 came out, Microsoft discovered that their little Office Assistant characters weren't greeted with universal acclaim. So Redmond quietly released the Quiet logo -- it doesn't bark, meow, blink or spin. Registered Office 97 users can download it from: http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloaddetails/tofflogo.htm
|
Bookshelf (see also Softpanorama Bookshelf) |
Thinking in C++ 2nd Edition by Bruce Eckel
See Macmillan Computer Publishing Personal Bookshelf -- the leading Unix/Internet Computer-related public library (free registration required).
Skeptical Reviews |
I beg to differ. I found the USAH book boring and unreadable, suitable only for the complete newbie. I took a look at it again before setting fingertip to keyboard, and, if anything, it seems even more boring and useless than before. ESA is better, but also not great. Maybe system administration is one of those tasks that simply does not lend itself to the linear exposition a book can provide, or maybe it's just the case that no one has managed to write a good book yet. Whatever, my recommendation is to go with ESA - it's cheaper.
The review has a very interesting ending -- the reviewer propose to release the book under GPL :
I strongly believe every administrator should read this book... in order to facilitate that, I wrote an e-mail to Tim O'Reilly (the OR in ORA), asking him to HTMLize it and release it under GPA. I haven't received any response yet, but it has only been a couple of days and I'd expect he has a great many things to do with his time.
At present, I'm hoping he'll agree, but I expect that nothing will come of it. ORA deserves to make money, and ESA is almost certainly bringing in a substantial profit. There's a history of ORA releasing some of their work under GPA though, so you never know... I'll do a followup when I get a definitive answer one way or the other. Please don't start mail-bombing him (or me! ;) about it.
Skeptical Views |
... all is rosy and wonderful and this is basically another feel-good editorial about the magic of free software, right? Wrong, unfortunately...
To illustrate just how serious those problems can get, let's go back about 8 years to a period known as the "GUI wars" - a time of all-out battle between OpenLook, Motif and a host of lesser contenders. For those who were "there", the event probably needs no further description - the very mention of the GUI wars is enough to send cold shivers down the spine of even the most hardened Unix devotee. Not only did these wars cost Unix the desktop, they cost it a significant number of the few remaining ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) that it had....
The GUI wars also only added to an already untenable situation brought on by the SYSV/UCB split (AIX/HP-UX vs Ultrix/SunOS etc), another ugly chapter which I won't go into here, making the typical ISV's life a real porting hell in return for access to a market which was already dwindling in comparison to the booming Windows market. If it were at all possible for the Unix market to sabotage itself more effectively during that period, I'm not sure how it could have been accomplished...
...Well, first there was the matter of Ego (spelled with a capital E). Everyone wanted to be the one to "own" the standard for how the GUI on this nifty new X Window System thing would look, and the dominant corporate players which eventually emerged also decided that they wanted to either sell their technology or keep it proprietary and distribute it only with their own workstations....
The X Window System itself was popular principally because it was a free and open standard with a non-aggressive copyright (you could productize it if you wished without being compelled to give the source away, helping to get it past the usual corporate legal department blockades without a fuss) and it was highly portable - I remember being highly chuffed that I could now use the same window system on the IBM PC/RT, Sun 3/50 and DEC MicroVAX machines in my office, a real luxury at the time. The people who wanted to create follow-on standards which they alone controlled, on the other hand, were simply not positioning themselves to take advantage of the X user community's rapid growth, nor could they leverage the work of all those potential volunteer programmers while the sources were being kept under lock and key, so to speak.
NIH was also a big factor, nobody liking anyone else's standard and deciding that a perfect standard was far preferable to having any standard (de-facto or not) at all. Of course, no such degree of perfection was ever achieved and the greater good was sacrificed in pursuit of short-term gains which never even really materialized - the opportunity for a effective and open standard was not only thrown away, it was thrown away for nothing. Thus ended the first age of Unix, many (including myself) believing that this was quite possibly The End since its community of developers, while highly capable tacticians, had proved to be abominable strategists and seemed to be winning battles in order to lose wars with depressing frequency.
Wind the clock forward to today, almost a decade later, and we find many of those things happening again and for exactly the same reasons. Don't get me wrong - it is a perfectly natural human desire to form clans and proudly wear the clan colors on Robert the Bruce Day, or whatever, diversity and competition being good things which encourage innovation and inspire people to greater heights of productivity. When you add Rampaging Egos to the mix, however, things get messy very quickly as the various clans decide that they want to be *the* clan, the only ones in line when the awards for best clan colors or most unique sporran are being handed out. Before long, rival clans are firing flaming arrows at one another and launching raids into eachother's camps, generally making life difficult all around for a lot of folks who would really rather just get on with the business of living.
So it is somewhat today in the world of free software. Even though any marginally sane person would be appalled at the sight of two organizations like C.A.R.E and the International Red Cross fighting one another for the privilege of feeding starving children in Africa, for some reason the same behavior seems OK if it's just a bunch of people who write free software doing it. I don't mean to equate the process of feeding starving children with that of writing free software, far from it, but they're both "benevolent activities" which one would certainly hope could transcend any rivalries in carrying out their good works.
NIH is also still alive and well, many people choosing to do the same work over (and over) again just because it wasn't someone from *their* clan who wrote it or they have some deep-seated prejudice against anything done by clans who put green before red in their kilts - it's simply ludicrous a lot of the time! More importantly, the larger picture is being lost again, just as the entire Unix world is getting a second chance at life (a privilege which isn't usually afforded to software of this nature - once it dies once, it generally stays dead). The larger picture that people are losing sight of is that we're all truly in this together and, even if we don't explicitly go out of our way to help one another, at the very least we shouldn't be doing our damnedest to kick the crutches out from under one another.
A good example of keeping sight of the larger picture is FreeBSD's attitude towards its Linux emulation. It's not only very important to us that FreeBSD continues to run Linux binaries effectively, it's also what we suggest to those ISVs who are coming back somewhat cautiously to this "new" Unix market and obviously want to maximize their gains while minimizing risk. We tell them to port to Linux and not FreeBSD, even though we'd certainly love to have native binaries for anything and everything, and, by telling them to port to Linux first (or at all), we are giving them the best advice on how to get access to the widest possible segment of the free software market, one which includes but is not limited to us. That is the kind of "what is best for *all* the clans?" thinking I actively try to promote and essentially why I am taking the time out to write this editorial.
After 5 years of intermittent warfare, not just between the Linux/BSD camps but also within the various Linux and *BSD camps themselves (serving only to prove that *any* clan can and will fight another, even when they're all related :-), it's also not going to be one giant hug fest from now on just because people like me stand up and say that everyone really ought to get along - life's not that simple. What we can do, however, is to continue to *strongly* promote any and all ties between the various free software groups and also actively encourage users to familiarize themselves with each and every one of the various types of free software out there, whether they're currently "pledged" to a given cause or not. Not only will this experience help to shatter some of the walls of mistrust and general acrimony between the various clans, but it can also benefit those who are firmly convinced that they wish to stick with a certain one.
- Jordan
(see also Ghome/KDE debate -- Problems with the Qt Free Edition License -- NNB)
Performance Computing - Features - The Elements Of Style UNIX As Literature by Thomas Scoville
To be sure, the UNIX community has its own measure of technical parochialism and nerdy tunnel vision ... ... ...
Some of the prevailing dislike had a distinctly populist flavor--people caught a whiff of snobbery about UNIX and regarded it with the same proletarian resentment usually reserved for highbrow institutions like opera or ballet. They had a point: until recently, UNIX was the lingua franca of computing's upper crust. The more harried, practical, and underprivileged of the computing world seemed to object to this aura of privilege. UNIX adepts historically have been a coddled bunch...
The one ray of light that illuminated my tenure in NT environments was the burgeoning popularity of Perl. Perl seemed to find its way into NT shops as a CI solution for Web development, but people quickly recognized its power and adopted it for uses far outside the scope of Web development: system administration, revision control, remote file distribution, network administration. The irony is that Perl itself is a subset of UNIX features condensed into a quick-and-dirty scripting language.
There was a standard litany of more specific criticisms: UNIX is difficult and time-consuming to learn. There are too many things to remember. It's arcane and needlessly complex.
But the most recurrent complaint was that it was too text-oriented. People really hated the command line, with all the utilities, obscure flags, and arguments they had to memorize. They hated all the typing.
The common thread was wordsmithing; a suspiciously high proportion of my UNIX colleagues had already developed, in some prior career, a comfort and fluency with text and printed words. They were adept readers and writers, and UNIX played handily to those strengths. UNIX was, in some sense, literature to them. Suddenly the overrepresentation of polyglots, liberal-arts types, and voracious readers in the UNIX community didn't seem so mysterious, and pointed the way to a deeper issue: in a world increasingly dominated by image culture (TV, movies, .jpg files), UNIX remains rooted in the culture of the word.
UNIX programmers express themselves in a rich vocabulary of system utilities and command-line arguments, along with a flexible, varied grammar and syntax. For UNIX enthusiasts, the language becomes second nature....
With UNIX, text--on the command line, STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR--is the primary interface mechanism: UNIX system utilities are a sort of Lego construction set for word-smiths. Pipes and filters connect one utility to the next, text flows invisibly between. Working with a shell, awk/lex derivatives, or the utility set is literally a word dance...
You might argue that UNIX is as visually oriented as other OSs. Modern UNIX offerings certainly have their fair share of GUI-based OS interfaces. In practice though, the UNIX core subverts them; they end up serving UNIX's tradition of word culture, not replacing it. Take a look at the console of most UNIX workstations: half the windows you see are terminal emulators with command-line prompts or vi jobs running within...
...NT just didn't offer room to move. The one-size-fits-all, point-and-click, we've-already-anticipated-all-your-needs world of NT had me yearning for those obscure command-line flags and man -k. I wanted to craft my own solutions from my own toolbox, not have my ideas slammed into the visually homogenous, prepackaged, Soviet world of Microsoft Foundation Classes.
NT was definitely much too close to image culture for my comfort: endless point-and-click graphical dialog boxes, hunting around the screen with the mouse, pop-up after pop-up demanding my attention. The experience was almost exclusively reactive. Every task demanded a GUI-based utility front-end loaded with insidious assumptions about how to visualize (and thus conceptualize) the operation. I couldn't think "outside the box" because everything literally was a box. There was no opportunity for ad hoc consideration of how a task might alternately be performed...
...Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear, but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. I'm hoping that as IT folks become more seasoned and less impressed by superficial convenience at the expense of real freedom, they will yearn for the kind of freedom and responsibility UNIX allows...
Interesting observation of overuse of the command line and underutilization of GUI by many advanced Unix users. Although I met some strange Unix enthusiasts and there is definitly kind of brain damaging addiction to the command line among some Unix ballerinas (they just do not understand that MC is a better way ;-). My impression is that the people that I am talking about were somewhat strange before they learn Unix. I do not support the idea that the tech level of Unix people is higher that DOS or NT people -- the number of very talented people in DOS/Windows camp is higher just because the camp is much larger. At the same time for talanted people Unix is a much better playground than Windows, so Unix definitly have a flavor of elitism. That's for sure. The most interesting observation is that command-line culture and GUI culture are to certain extent mutually excusive -- many Unix users are simply unable to productively use GUI -- they just do not know tricks of the trade that make this quite different env. highly productive because they can do everything they want in the command line. It's much like using two languages simaltaniously -- often one people will switch to one and skills inthe second the second will suffer from neglect. I remember one remark that FrontPage is irrelevant because there is Emacs HTML mode ;-). It can be hard for command-line/keyboard veteran Web builders to admit, but there's more to life than hand-coding HTML. Rumor has it that the latest generation of visual HTML editors can easily create Web pages that are good enough for use on serious Web sites.
Also despite popular believes not all popular Unix products share Unix philosophy. I disagree with the author and think that Perl is a kind of anti-Unix product a second attempt of creating a universal language after PL/1. It's more like mainframe (a superset of REXX), or, if you wish, Microsott-style product(Office) -- complex, buggy and very powerful.
Does Linux have chances on a desktop. IMHO with KDE certainly yes. But how many users will convert completly from Win9x to Linux. I doubt that many. My impression is that on desktop Unix will have difficult time with or without command line niceties. It's just too complex and one of the most problematic areasa is that Unix is complex to install, complex to reinstall and slow to boot. For that reason NT will have a difficult time on desktop too -- unless Microsoft will manage to push it thou user throat ;-)
Althouth I like Unix command line env a lot and do think that Unix command line is as powerful as the sum of it's parts squared, in many simple cases I would prefer GUI-based tools for Windows 8x and can do a lot with MKS for Win32 just becase I know dos/win32 env. much better. I get used to MS-DOS/Windows style editors(MultiEdit, Kedit, etc.). and after all Windows 95 costs $50 ( Windows98 -- ~$90). It also installs quicker, boots quicker and is a simpler OS. So it's a formidable compertitor for Linux and competitor you probably need to emulate in order to win. I remember that the chairman of IBM said that there is too late to fight Windows on desktop -- is's history -- despite the fact that OS/2 was technically much better than Windows had an excellent command line env. and was only marginally more difficult to install. As a server it's a different story -- here Linux already is a serious player.
Homesteading the Noosphere -- "Open Source Romantism" in best Eric S. Raymond' style
Homesteading the Noosphere -- a controversial article about social mechanisms of functioning of free software (now open software ;-) movement. It's evident that Eric never studied Marxism so his "socialism" is quite proimitive (probably he never took a sociology course as well ;-). The author clearly is an "open source romantic" and he pictures a rosy picture on the movement. The author claims that open source movement is a kind of primitive society ( "gift" or "vanity fair" economy) within traditional capitalist society that is driven by unwritten norms and taboos. Much like marxists a century before he suggests (from a slightly different angle then in the The Cathedral And The Bazaar -- the latter can be read as a tutorial on Microsoft's methods of writing software ;-) that, "ultimately, the industrial-capitalist mode of software production was doomed to be outcompeted from the moment capitalism began to create enough of a wealth surplus for many programmers to live in a post-scarcity gift culture". An interesting point is that more often than not a free software model lead to "cults of personality". Althouth there are some protection mechnisms, they are generally weak. He also try to document the norms under which this control of an open source project can be acquired or passed. Other interesting points:
- There is strong social pressure against forking projects. It does not happen except under plea of dire necessity, with much public self-justification, and with a renaming.
- Distributing changes to a project without the cooperation of the moderators is frowned upon, except in special cases like essentially trivial porting fixes.
- Removing a person's name from a project history, credits or maintainer list is absolutely not _done without the person's explicit consent.
I believe that the most fruitful analogy of open source movement is an analogy with the academic culture and that open source probably will never become a dominant force outside certain niches.
Fuzzy mirror of East European and LA programmer problems in Fear and Loathing in Caracas
I've talked with hackers in Warsaw. Even there, just recovering from forty years of life in the Soviet bloc, there's some concept that you can choose your place in the system, or choose (with some effort) to stand partway outside it. In the U.S. we have lots of hackers like me because it's relatively easy to cut partway loose from the scarcity-economics game and define your own individual niche based on what you want to do. In Poland this is harder to accomplish, because everyone is poorer and has to spend more time chasing food and rent, but at least they understand the concept. So there is a Polish hacker culture, though not a large one ... ... ...
Of course I'd read all the angry descriptions of South American politics, the immorality tales of smug and corrupt oligarchies lording it over masses of peasants and campesinos. What I met in the Grand Salon was subtler and sadder than that -- people who know they're big frogs in a small pond, looking for a way to a bigger one but blinkered by their own inability to imagine an unstratified society of independent peers.
... ... .. ..
... When I wonder why Elssie can't get a better job, he says ``Things are getting very bad here. We used to have a middle class, but it's been destroyed.'' ``By taxes?'' I ask, thinking of the U.S. ``No,'' he replies, "Corruption."
The picture Leo paints is even bleaker than the professor's. According to him, the Venezuelan upper class has become as closed in on itself as the old Soviet nomenklatura. The most important currency is not money but influence. If you are part of the charmed circle, you can get anything. Outside it, there is nothing. Bright young people like Elssie quickly conclude that their best strategy is to get as well-educated as possible and leave the country -- which of course makes the underlying problem worse
... In the recent article presented on Slashdot, it was mentione d that some large corporations shy away from Linux simply because it does not come from a single commercial vendor, a sole source, if you will; specifically, because there is no one that they can hold accountable if things go wrong. The reaction to this revelation for those who have never worked in such a large environment, was characterized by disbelief that such an attitude could be justified. Most readers, being inexperienced in big business did not understand the context in which such a statement was made. Most people who read the article assumed that such corporations intend to sue Microsoft if anything went wrong with their OS. This is naive and it shows the inexperience of some would-be Linux advocates.
Corporations do not sue Microsoft. Corporations sue the companies that specify Microsoft as their platform of choice. Since Linux is a moving target in terms of its development and its commercial sources, pinning down a company to take responsibility for Linux has been difficult in the extreme. When these corporations go after someone legally, they do not do it for chump change, for a mere $89 upgrade expense at the local CompUSA; corporations, with millions to lose in man-hours lost, go after hundreds of thousands, if not millions in liquidated damages for every day that they cannot perform to their expectations. Performance bonds are pulled, wherein the vendors of enterprise applications ensure that they can deliver a working software solution or have someone else do it at their expense. The stakes are high.
They want an OS that can guarantee (for what that is worth) that their 1200 users are not going to choke when they are tallying their two hundred seventy thousand customers accounts for the current month. In the place where I work, this has been done. We have had to stop payment to vendors because they weren't delivering what they promised- a functional system that is in compliance with the operating system standards. Therein lies the rub. Linux has no current standard. Not yet, but hopefully soon. The sooner the better. For our city, this has amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-payment to certain vendors that have failed us. In some cases, litigation has resulted. Do you now see why corporations insist on being able to sue those that cannot deliver what they promised? It is their safety net. If the price for failing was not high enough, then vendors would not have the incentive that they have to make sure they please their customers.
I strongly recommend to read comments to the article. They are really great and much more important that the atricle itself. The article does raise an important argument against Linux, but I beleave it's not that convincing. The failure rate for corporate projects is extremly high even without Linux. Contarary to the author opinion the ability to sue is not used very often. For example not so many corporations suied SAP or Arthur Andersen for the damage inflicted ;-). As Thornton put it in his comments to the article "you can't sue Microsoft . You can't expect to hold Microsoft accountable. You'll be lucky if you can lay the blame on Microsoft. Microsoft will screw you by changing their release timetiables, while making you stick to your deployment schedules. Microsoft will deny that there are bugs, then claim that they are known "features," then much later post the bugfix without telling you. Microsoft will overpromise and underdeliver every time." Many just write down many millions of losses. Also as Peter Hoffman pionted out "...at all levels (including executives) make decisions based on the answers to the Two Questions (neither one of which mention lawsuits). The First Question is "Could I get fired for this?". The Second Question is "Could I get promoted for this?".
I like other readers of Slashdot.org also disagree that "The desktop is not the prize that must be fought for if Linux is to be taken seriously by corporations. Rather it is the enterprise market that is the true goal. Think NT, think Solaris." NT is installed as a desktop by IS departments of large corporations because of lack of technically savvy people, because of the extreme simplicity of installation (here no verdor can probably beat MS), because of avalability of applications and similarlity with Windows9x desktop that many already use both at home and in business environments and feel comfortable with. NT is in essence a conservative choice. As Bill McCarthy pointed out that "Corporate America is just not innovative. By its very nature it's conservative and slow to adopt anything that even smells of "change". Look at the history of the automobile industry here, surely one of the most visibile corporate entities in the country. So, the fact that a superior product is available but not through "channels" is a fact that CA can safely disregard. The whole thrust of MS has been and will continue to be marketing - that's the way to CA's shiny, somewhat cold and calculating heart."
.
|
This quarter Softpanorama links collection was substantially updated. See Open_Source Software OS_concepts Linux Shells Security GNU Perl Java Editors |
Net Tools
Computer-related Humor |
THE TOP 25 THINGS PROGRAMMERS SAY (forwarded by Vadim.Zaliva) --
Excellent
and cynical !!!
From: Nicolas ROMANETTI <[email protected]>
ERCB The Secret Diary of Bill Gates -- Good parody on Chairman Bill. Here is one except:
Tuesday, December 30. Everyone was in high New Year spirits today. I heard a great joke when I was standing by the photocopier...
Q. What's the difference between Bill Gates and a Rottweiler.
A. A Rottweiler will eventually give up and let go!
Ha-ha-ha! I just love the friendly office banter we have here at Microsoft! (Note: I must remember to ask Melinda what a Rottweiler is tonight.)
Network Week -- The Bastard Operator from Hell
Programmer Jobs
--------------
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: March, 12, 2019
