I'm posting this mostly as a commentary for Bucy on Sun...

] Tell me what you'd like Slashdot readers to know.
]
] "Tell them that we're returning to our roots," Schwartz
] said, referring to the company's renewed focus on the
] Solaris operating environment.
]
] "And we want developers back on our side. If there's more
] for us to do, we'll go do it," McNealy added.

This article makes every effort to debunk Sun, and falls on its face. The author makes numerous bad arguements.

He claims you can deploy production services on Gentoo, which is Geek for "I've never actually run a production service, and I have no fucking idea I'm talking about."

He claims that there is no value in getting patches for free from a vendor if all you're getting is "security patches." Once again, this guy has clearly never run production infrastructure. You don't want ANYTHING other then security patches and critical bug fixes. The point is that you build something that works and is reliable and you want to basically leave it alone unless you have to muck with it.

He is totally confused about indemnity and the Kodak suit. The point is that Debian doesn't indemnify it's users and can't.

What this article did do was confirm a suspicion I had when I read about Solaris 10. When Redhat pulled the Iron Curtain down on it's patch program they created a market vacuum. You could install Redhat, and run it, in production, and play around with it just as you would with any linux system, and then if you got to a point where you needed to scale it and support it there is no need to reinstall, reformat, or re-architech. You just call them. That was awesome.

Today there really isn't a solution that offers that. The fact that support is available for a particular distro doesn't mean that support is really what you're looking for. What you want is a strong relationship with a hardware company and good source\bug managment from your software. THATS what SUN is offering. I can build stuff on Solaris, for free, with whatever hardware I've got lying around, and if I need support for it, and big ass hardware, I can get it.

Is this far and away better then the IBM/SUSE/REDHAT combination? No. In fact, its much easier to move my existing linux stuff into the IBM environment with less culture shock. However, it IS competitive. They are offering three things that IBM isn't:

1. The scaling without speed bumps that I talk about here.
2. One stop shopping.
3. In some cases better technology.

This author seems to be really excited about SUSE. I've never found SUSE to be particularly exciting. Seemed like it was a linux distro that was focused on handling European customers right. Novell now owns it. Novell is a company that had a great product that got obsolete while they weren't looking. They were left with a lot of money and a lot of people and nothing to do. They've been floundering around ever since looking for meaning in life.

Why SUSE vs. Redhat? I mean it. Anyone actually running SUSE? Novell does a good job of explaining what they offer:
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserver/why_novell.html

It seems like they have a cultural hill to climb. Most geeks are still pretty happy with what Redhat was doing in last few years.

NewsForge | Commentary: Linux is not Red Hat, and other Sun-isms debunked

] Microsoft Corp. warned Asian governments on Thursday they
] could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux (news -
] web sites) operating system instead of its Windows
] software.

This is the first time I recall MS threatening to sco linux users directly. I guess the new motto for business is: If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em up.

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Warns Asian Governments of Linux Lawsuits

] Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for
] scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers,
] theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports
] from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to
] find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers,
] professional societies, preprint repositories and
] universities, as well as scholarly articles available
] across the web.

Excellent!

Google Scholar

] Beginning Monday, November 15, 2004 until March 2005,
] C-SPAN will broadcast live a series of discussions hosted
] by the Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center. The
] series will examine how the digital age is changing the
] most basic ways information is organized and classified.
] The goal is to educate the public on the what the digital
] age means to their lives. The events will include a
] featured speaker, followed by a panel discussion, and a
] question and answer session with the audience at the
] venue, and C-SPAN television viewers.

C-SPAN: DIGITAL FUTURE

] Either maximize the cheese (make your application compelling), or minimize
] the shock (make your application easy to use).

A simple truth in software design.

Coding Horror: You'll never have enough cheese

] NSA initiatives in enhancing software security cover both
] proprietary and open source software, and we have
] successfully used both proprietary and open source models
] in our research activities. NSA's work to enhance the
] security of software is motivated by one simple
] consideration: use our resources as efficiently as
] possible to give NSA's customers the best possible
] security options in the most widely employed products.
] The objective of the NSA research program is to develop
] technologic advances that can be shared with the software
] development community through a variety of transfer
] mechanisms. NSA does not favor or promote any specific
] software product or business model. Rather, NSA is
] promoting enhanced security.

NSA's guides to securing machines

NSA - Security Configuration Guides

Camera phone image from Santa Clara...

votesaveerrror.jpg

For all the excitement on opening day, it didn't take New Yorkers long to revert to their jaded selves.

This brief article on the history of subway technology brings David Macaulay to mind. Be sure to check out the illustrations.

Looking Back As The New York Subway Turns 100

] The use of robots around the home to mow lawns, vacuum
] floors and manage other chores is set to surge sevenfold
] by 2007 as more consumers snap up smart machines, the
] United Nations said.

CBS News | U.N. Predicts Boom In Robot Labor | October 20, 2004

Japaneese people rule! Not only are these fun, but one placed on a plate of sushi with a carefully positioned peice of ginger over the interface is a perfect way to covertly exchange files with your sushi chef.

USB Sushi drives