Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 02:46:36 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Laurence Berland" <stuyman@confusion.net> Cc: "lists" <lists@vivdev.com>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD & GNU Message-ID: <004101c0b518$dd9bed40$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3ABD92F2.2355C13A@confusion.net>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Laurence Berland [mailto:stuyman@confusion.net] >> http://www.apple.com/macosx/ >> >> It is built from a mix of NEXT code and FreeBSD 3.2, see >> >> http://www.apple.com/darwin/ >> > >I think there's also some NetBSD in there at some point, and lest we >forget, via NeXT we get Mach. > That may be but Apple only specifically listed FreeBSD 3.2 and NeXT. NetBSD was not mentioned. I believe this is on the Darwin site (which is down right now so I can't verify it) >> source code. It was turned into a juggernaut because the PC community >> decided >> for a number of reasons (cost, marketing, features, etc.) to >standardize on >> it. >> > >Part of this, of course, has to do with Gates's ruthless (and >unethical/illegal) business practices. > I agree his tactics are illegal, but it takes two to tango. The consumers did make a choice to use Windows. Many other people do illegal and ruthless marketing, and even after years of it they are still getting nowhere. What really separates Microsoft from most companies is that they _didn't_have_ to do all the illegal and ruthless marketing yet still did it anyway. All of the illegal marketing has probably only taken them from 80% market penetration to 90% market penetration, and it has generated a huge list of enemies. In fact, of all the problems of Microsoft, this one thing is their achillies heel. If they had just done what they did and not done any of the illegal marketing tactics, but instead made friends, then all hope would be lost, they would have a monopoly, and nobody would support dislodging them. > >Standardization isn't always bad. FreeBSD would tend not to stagnate I >suspect, because the people writing it are also some of the people using >it. They want new features, they write new features. Open source >publicly developed software is much more resistive to this effect. > >Also note, I think it's sad that people are so shortsighted and selfish >to not spend the ten dollars and save the salmon. > It's even worse that the utilities just don't bundle in the cost of saving the fish to ALL consumers. I live in Oregon and this is a serious issue up here. Due to the drought BPA is going to lower stream flows and kill this years salmon run this summer. It's either that or rolling blackouts. If the utilities here had been working on alternative power over the last 10 years like they should have been doing, we would have the extra generating capacity to bring online and the BPA wouldn't have had to do this. If anyone ever tells you that Oregon is this ecology-friendly state, tell them they are full of bullshit. That's the biggest load of crap there is. When it because obvious that it was either fish or risking blackouts, there wasn't a seconds hesitation, they killed the fish. The rights of businesses here are paramount. There wasn't even a big hue and cry over it. > >At least in the server market. I suspect desktop transitions will be >more gradual. > No, it will be worse because many business still haven't upgraded from Windows 95. In fact, businesses are the ones with the tight license control, and stand to gain the largest dollar amount by not purchasing new licenses. Also, businesses can purchase Microsoft Site licenses in volume which sell the OS at a much cheaper dollar rate and have other benefits to boot. > >Ps: I'm sure you know, but the chapter of the book in DN is still >incomplete. I presume it's your publisher, and not you, who has the >problem. > Unfortunately there's plenty of blame to go around on that one. Yes, the publisher shipped out a corrupted chapter file. Nobody from DN let me know about it, I had to find that out myself. I e-mailed DN about it within 4 hours of the article being posted. I sent complete HTML a week later. Unfortunately, my HTML was horrible, as it came from a HTML converter on my masters and lacked drawings. DN was working on fixing it up. But, I think they have been working on it less and less. I now have the production masters but they are in Quark, and Quark can't save-as-HTML, so converting it that way is just as bad. I'm going to attempt a print-to-EPS-read-with -ghostview-convert-to-html kind of business next and see what I get. Death to Quark! The upshot of all of it is that despite all of the work done with HTML and XML and all of those good things with document preparation, they have all pretty much been lost on the print publishing industry, which is still grappling with this entire business of electronic document handling. Even within publishers, there's not a standard for electronic docs. The production department likes using Quark because their printer can understand it. But, none of the the proofreaders they use has it, and the editorial staff all seems to not have it either. One of my first questions was "what is the preferred document format" well there is no preferred document format because they have solved that problem - they use paper, and are still shipping author's manuscripts around the country _on_paper_. I originally submitted the manuscript via FTP - and this was a big problem. All proofreading and corrections were done _by hand_. FedEX, Willamette Paper, and HP Toner sales all made a lot of money off of us. I just crossed my fingers and hoped that none of the packages got lost, and fortunately none did. At least, though, their production department has gotten smart enough to include all the fonts when they ship out the document and they use honest-to-God Adobe fonts, not that TrueType trash. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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