Thought for the dayTin men eat their words

Thought for the day
Tin men eat their words





They swore they would never make Linux servers, but the tin makers are changing their tune now that the open-source OS is taking over the top end of the market, says Simon Moores.







Once upon a time I interviewed the managing director of Unisys, Brian Hadfield, and asked him if there might ever come a time when Unisys would consider a Linux alternative to Windows on its flagship ES7000 SMP servers.

His reply still reminds me of Jack Nicholson's snarling put-down, “I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.” I left that meeting with Hadfield realising that Unisys had bet the farm on Windows.

So when I read that Unisys had announced support for Linux, a smile crossed my face. Even three years ago, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun were also dimissing the idea of penguins at the top, but it's now clear that Linux is settling into a comfortable niche at the higher-end of computing.

Sun is rumoured to be on the verge of revealing a Linux port of its Sun Ray Server, and Nasa has announced it will use one of the world’s biggest Linux-based supercomputers, a 1,000Gbyte monster that integrates a score of 512-processor systems, to help revive its shuttle missions after the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Unisys says its decision reflects “customer interest in using the open-source operating system in big datacentres”. The company is working with Linux Novell and Red Hat to put the operating system on its ES7000 platform - often seen as the living, breathing proof that Windows delivers at the top end of the server market.

While Microsoft might not be too pleased at having to share its perfect romance with another partner, Joe McGrath, Unisys president and chief operating officer, says, "Our enterprise customers are demanding industrial-strength Linux solutions and we are responding in a revolutionary way."

I've written a number of ES7000 customer case studies and found that many very large organisations get impressive results from mixing Windows with the Unisys ES7000 but rarely mention cost savings with Linux. The fact that it is the enterprise users of Unisys, rather than IBM, who are apparently demanding Linux solutions, suggests that the evolutionary impact predicted by Linux watchers is finally happening.

Not that a rippling introduction of Linux servers will immediately topple Windows from its position at the top of the ES7000 food-chain. After all, Unisys says Linux's appearance on the Intel-driven ES7000 will compete with proprietary Unix servers. That may come as some comfort to Microsoft, which claims Linux victories come at the expense of other flavours of Unix rather than Windows.

Even so, the writing is clearly on the wall and, thanks to aggressive campaigning by IBM and HP, an increasing number of customers will start making the price/performance comparisons that are pushing Microsoft onto the defensive.

The ES7000 represented the Wintel alliance and its technology at its strongest and purest, but market forces or simple common sense have now gatecrashed the love affair between the companies. While William Shakespeare had nothing to say about Linux or Windows, he did write, “Then must you speak of one who loved not wisely but too well.”

Gartner predicts a virtual revolution

Gartner predicts a virtual revolution: "Gartner predicts a virtual revolution

Virtualisation will become the most disruptive technology to face the PC in a decade, according to research by Gartner.

It reports that PC virtualisation technology will revolutionise the enterprise desktop by decoupling PC hardware and software, allowing multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single desktop.
Gartner says virtualisation will enable IS departments to implement more efficient IT support policies, achieve more cost-effective outsourcing contracts for PC support, and drive total cost of ownership savings in PC deployment.
It also says that virtualisation will dramatically redefine the PC industry, removing product differentiation, and forcing suppliers to compete purely on service and price.
Brian Gammage, vice-president at Gartner, said, �PC virtualisation will achieve a broad appeal over the next five years.
'The technology has been used in niche applications for a number of years, but increased industry support from major players, such as Intel and Microsoft, will rapidly move it to the mainstream.
'This will have significant ramifications for the PC hardware, software and wider ICT services industries.�
Gartner sees PC virtualisation as providing a short cut to deployment best practices for users.
Users would be provided with two different environments: one that is unlocked for users to add devices and to install any software they choose, and a fully locked-down, highly managed, and well-understood environment, to which the IS organisation can securely deploy critical business applications.
The IS department would retain full control over network security, while users can install and run new applications that may enhance their effectiveness, without increasing the burden on already beleaguered support staff.

According to Gartner, IS departments which are successful in the deployment of virtualisation technology are also likely to swiftly review both IT services and outsourcing procedures.

PC virtualisation will reportedly assist in drawing clear lines between what is and is not managed by the IS organisation. Gartner says the potentially huge benefits for users will create equally significant implications for the industry.

“Software suppliers will need to become much more flexible in order to compete in this new landscape. Changes in the way software is licensed are inevitable, as PC virtualisation software will challenge current one-licence-per-user ratio.

"In the short term, some will see this as an opportunity to sell more licences: however, this will be harmful in the long run. Few software suppliers have woken up to this deployment scenario, and there is currently little consensus on how they might respond. This is a wake-up call,” says Gammage.

Gartner adds that hardware suppliers and component manufacturers will also be affected, and predicts that the ultimate new standard for client computing will be a virtual platform based on software, not hardware.

Sleepycat ships Java version of embedded database

Sleepycat ships Java version of embedded database: "Sleepycat ships Java version of embedded database

Sleepycat Software is to ship Berkeley DB Java Edition, a Java version of its embedded database.

Intended for software developers building high-performance applications in which the user does not have to deal with the database, the product is a Java version of the company's C-based Berkeley DB offering.
'Java is more and more important as a big systems language,' said Mike Olson, chief executive officer of Sleepycat. Berkeley
Berkeley DB Java Edition offers Acid (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable) transactions and recovery for high reliability, record-level locking for high concurrency and schema neutrality for data storage in its native format, according to Sleepycat.
Berkeley DB features the same storage services as the Berkeley DB engine, but was redesigned in Java to take advantage of Java's portability and services such as deeply integrated threading and New IO, the company said."

Thought for the day - Follow that herd!

Thought for the day
Follow that herd!: "Thought for the day
Follow that herd!
You may suspect that the unceasing evolution of the Windows operating system has more to do with Microsoft making sure the bucks don't dry up than with giving users what they want, but it's the only way to get where we really want to be, says Colin Beveridge.
'Longhorn' is an interesting choice of name for Microsoft�s forthcoming �release of the decade� - its new Windows operating system expected in 2007.
For me the word conjures up childhood television memories of cowboys driving teeming herds of cattle over hostile territory towards inevitable slaughter. Week after week in the 1950s and 60s we watched the western heroes deliver their steers safely to their destiny, regardless of the obstacles put in their way by man and nature.
So perhaps the name was simply chosen to reflect the hardiness, resilience and persistence of longhorn cattle - an apposite analogy for a world-class operating system.
This seems quite plausible. After all, what self-respecting company would want to give a flagship development project a lightweight name?
Everybody knows the importance of a project name as an important flag to rally the troops and allies to the cause, and it is difficult to be original, given the burgeoning list of names already used up by an industry obsessed with snappy project titles.
So Longhorn is as good a name as any for Windows 2007, especially as it could end up as Windows 2008, or even 2009 by the time it is finally released.
But some may prefer to believe that the Longhorn label reveals, albeit subliminally, the software giant’s proprietary attitude to herding millions of cowed computer users on a never-ending stampede towards perpetual financial servitude.
That, though, is a short-sighted if widely held view. As an IT director I often hear people who challenge the need for a new desktop operating system. Their concerns generally fall into two broad categories, as follows.
First, why do we need yet another new PC operating system? Why can’t we just call it quits with further development and stick with XP, or whatever flavour of Linux suits our needs now?
Second, why should we let suppliers such as Microsoft drive us ever onwards, beyond our feature comfort zone in many cases? Why do we need a feature-intensive thick-client operating system in the brave new browser-driven world of web services?
My answers to these questions are well-rehearsed but not, I trust, glib.
I am certain we could all exist quite comfortably for many years to come without any further development of the current generation of PC hardware and software. We already have amazing computing power on our desktops and laptops, power undreamed of when the PC revolution began in the 1970s.
But you can be certain that we would not have seen desktop hardware technology advance if we had not been driven by the growing complexity and capability of the operating system. And to be honest, for the last 20 years that has been entirely down to the steady progress of Windows. A bitter pill for some to swallow perhaps, but true even so.
Mankind needs progress and strives for improvement. It's why we're not driving around in cars with stone wheels or in horse-drawn chariots. Technology moves on, relentlessly, until we can't develop it further. So we do need to keep the operating systems moving on if we want to reap the broader benefits of ever faster, increasingly cheaper and pervasive personal technology. If the software stagnates, so will our overall progress.
And until our infrastructure develops even further, we will continue to need feature-intensive, thick-client operating systems for those people who use their computers for all the tasks that are not yet embedded into fully automated business process control systems. We're still a long way from a fully thin-client vision where all our computing is web-served and we must wait and see whether Longhorn complicates or simplifies the move to such a world.
In the meantime, a few mavericks will doubtless attempt to break away from the herd. Good luck to them: genuine competition is healthy. I just hope that Longhorn delivers the promise we need to progress and that the much maligned Office Assistant paperclip is not replaced with a lasso…

Pozycja IE w swiecie

Microsoft's Internet Explorer global usage share is 94.8 percent according to OneStat.com



Amsterdam - January 19 2004 - OneStat.com ( www.onestat.com ), the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported

that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a total global usage share of 94.8 percent. Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues to dominate the global browser market.



Microsoft's IE 6 is currently the leading browser on the web. Microsoft's IE 6 global usage has increased with 1.8 percent from 66.3 percent to 68.1 percent since July 2003. Mozilla's global usage share is 1.8 percent and Opera 7 has a global usage of 0.8 percent.



The global usage share of Apple's Safari browser has increased with 0.23 percent from 0.25 to 0.48 percent since July 2003.



The most popular browsers on the web are:



1. Microsoft IE 6.0 68.1%
2. Microsoft IE 5.5 13.8%
3. Microsoft IE 5.0 11.8%
4. Mozilla 1.8%
5. Opera 7.0 0.8%
6. Microsoft IE 4.0 0.7%
7. Safari 0.48%



OneStat.com is the number one provider of real-time web site analytics in the world. Our superior technology powers more than 50,000 websites in 100 countries. With our accurate, detailed & reliable reports we will be able to answer questions about visitor behaviour, site performance and retention.



The OneStat.com solutions provide executives, marketers and webmasters with answers to critical e-business questions such as:



· Who is visiting my website?

· How many pageviews, visits (sessions) and visitors are coming on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis?

· What content, products, and services do my visitors prefer?

· How many visitors return to the website and how often?

· What kind of search engine do they use?

· What kind of technology do your visitors use to view the website?

· What is the return on investment of my advertising campaigns?

· How do I identify significant trends?

· How much time do they spent on the website?



OneStat.com has the intention to become the number one and provider of real-time website analysis software. The web analytics ASP market totalled $49 million in 2000 and could be worth over $700 million in 2004, according to research agencies.



Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent for browser Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com's services by using browser Y. All numbers mentioned in the research are averages of last week and all measurements are normalised to the GMT timezone. Research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day.



Note for editors: for more information, please contact OneStat.com, Belgieplein 84, 1066 SC Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Phone: +31 (0)20 77 92 544 E-mail: press@onestat.com Website : www.onestat.com

Munich Linux switch back on - News - ZDNet

, Germany's mayor has decided to push ahead with the LiMux project--which will see 14,000 desktops migrate from Windows to Linux--after it was suspended last week due to legal fears.

Munich's mayor, Christian Ude, had frozen the planned call for bids for the LiMux project after fears surfaced in the City council that a pending EU directive on software patents would wreak havoc with the rollout.

Now, the call for bids is back on and Munich's officials have decided to suspend their legal worries rather than the project. Analyst house Gartner, however, has questioned Munich's party line, saying that TCO concerns were likely to be as much of an issue as software patents. "Gartner does not believe that the EU directive was Munich's primary motivation," the analyst firm said in a research note.
Legal risks mostly come from U.S. patents, and no vendor with relevant patents seems to have shown any interest in threatening or initiating a lawsuit. Instead, the patenting issue may have suggested to Munich that it underestimated costs and risks when calculating the TCO for LiMux."

Munich has asked the EU to explain exactly how patent wrangles could affect its Linux rollout but in the meantime is going ahead with the project, with the patents problems expected to hold back the rollout only for a short time.

Ude has also urged the EU to junk the patents directive

IKE (Internet Key Exchange)

IKE (Internet Key Exchange): "IKE (Internet Key Exchange)
The protocol used to handle encryption keys in IPSec-based VPNs.
IKE performs several functions including authenticating endpoints of VPN tunnels, deciding which encryption and authentication algorithms would be used in a session, generating encryption keys and managing them.
The Internet Engineering Task Force is currently looking at alternatives to IKE, which has a theoretical risk of being used in denial-of-service attacks."

IPsec (IP Security Protocol)

IPsec (IP Security Protocol): "IPSec defines encryption, authentication and key management routines for ensuring the privacy, integrity and authenticity of data in a VPN as the information traverses public IP networks.
Because IPSec requires each end of the tunnel to have a unique address, special care must be taken when implementing IPSec VPNs in environments using private IP addressing based on network address translation. Fortunately, several vendors offer solutions to this problem. However, they add more management complexity."

Internet Explorer Documentation

Internet Explorer Documentation
There's lots of great documentation on Internet Explorer available on MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie is an excellent place to start. If you have feedback we'd like to hear it. What functionality are you finding difficult to find? What topics would you like covered?

Something worth drawing attention to is the fact that each reference page in the SDK for Internet Explorer has and explicit section for standards. This makes it clear if the attribute, method or element falls within a W3C recommendation or not. I mention this because a couple of times lately I've seen it suggested that Microsoft is deliberately not documenting which parts of Internet Explorer fall within W3C recommendations or not. This is clearly not the case and our reference documentation has contained this information for many years.
For example the AUTOCOMPLETE property is something we support in Internet Explorer. We happen to think that the autocomplete functionality is very useful, however it is not part of a W3C recommendation. So the reference page http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/autocomplete.asp states:

Standards Information
This property is a Microsoft extension to HTMLs .

In contrast the ACCESSKEY property that Internet Explorer supports is part of a W3C recommendation and the reference page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/accesskey.asp states:

Standards Information
This property is defined in HTML 4.0 and is defined in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 .

We think this is useful information so it is included in every reference page. Do let us know if you find any errors in the documentation and if there are things you are looking for that you cannot easily find.

The best place to post feedback is the Internet Explorer Wiki on Channel 9

You are also welcome to place feedback here as well. I do ask that you keep posts polite and respect each others opinion. I have unfortunately already had to remove an abusive and obscene comment.

SDK for IE

Piec panstw otrzyma tani Windows

Windows XP Starter Edition – mocno okrojoną wersję XP otrzyma: Malezja, Tajlandia oraz Indonezja pod koniec listopada. MS jeszcze nie wybrał dwóch kolejnych krajów ale mówi się o Rosji i Brazylii lub Jordanii (w niej wzrost inwestycji informatycznych wyniósł od 20 do 400 mnl dolarów w ostatnim roku). Akcja ta wpisuje się w ramowy program (trwający już 18 mc-y) współpracy z rządami krajów rozwijających się mając na celu przybliżenie nowoczesnej technologii z uwzględnieniem specyfiki kulturowej mieszkańcom tych krajów. W ponad 67 rozwijających się krajach wybrane szkoły mają dostęp do upgrade MS Windows i MS Office za 2,50 dol. W MS pracuje w tym programie ponad 600 osób. Cele MS nie są bynajmniej altruistyczne. Obecnie ok. 670 mln ludzi używa PC (1/9 całej ludzkości), a w 2009 będzie ich 1 miliard! Na dodatek tani Windows zniechęci piratów i odeprze atak Linuksa.
MS rzeczywiście okroił Starter Editio – wyposażył je w wygaszacze uwzględniające dany kraj (krajobrazy, flagi, tradycje), nie ma sieci lokalnej oraz jednocześnie można uruchomić trzy programy. Dodatkowo zlokalizował pakiet MS Works. Nie planuje się okrojonej wersji MS Office. Cena jest skalkulowana indywidualnie wg. zasobności danego kraju.
Program już wystartował w Tajlandii – cena 35 dolarów.
Wg. Gatesa nie planuje się wersji dla Chin z uwagi na niższy standard życia, dochodów oraz rozległość terytorialną.
Powyższe trzy kraje nadają się idealnie do eksperymentów z uwagi na gęstość zaludnienia i łączną ilość mieszkańców.

Co uzytkownicy chca widziec mowego w IE?

What Users Want in IE Upgrade
Glowne postulaty uzytkownikow odnosnie MS IE (oprocz tych udoskonalen w SP2):
wsparcie pelne CSS
wparcie PNG
zakladki (tabbed interface)
lepszy manager pobierania plikow
czytnik formatow RSS

Adam Bosworth's Weblog: KISS and The Mom Factor

Adam Bosworth's Weblog: KISS and The Mom Factor
KISS and The Mom Factor
My new role (I recently moved from BEA to Google) has me working on very different types of software. Rather than worrying about what the IT of large corporations needs to do to support the corporation, I'm worrying about mere mortals. In fact, my Mom. I never find that I can build any software if I don't first get some mental image in my head of the customers. Who are they? How do they look, feel, think? I call this designing by guilt because if you don't do what feels right for these customers, you feel guilty for having let them down. Of course, customers are endlessly disparate, complex, heterogenous, and distinct. But even so, I've always found it necessary to think about a small number of distinct types of customers, and then design for them.

And boy is it satisfying to do this when the people you are designing for are your friends, family, relatives, your smart alec son, and so on and when even your mother can use what you build. I call this the mom factor. It is corny but fun.

It is interesting to me how this focus around simplicity in the services world could carry through even to the plumbing people use. For example take so called web services. The original impetus behind XML, at least as far as I was concerned back in 1996, was a way to exchange data between programs so that a program could become a service for another program. I saw this as a very simple idea. Send me a message of type A and I'll agree to send back messages of types B, C, or D depending on your A. If the message is a simple query, send it as a URL with a query string. In the services world, this has become XML over HTTP much more than so called "web services" with their huge and complex panoply of SOAP specs and standards. Why? Because it is easy and quick. Virtually anyone can build such requests. Heck, you can test them using a browser. That's really the big thing. Anyone can play. You don't have to worry about any of the complexity of WSDL or WS-TX or WS-CO. Since most users of SOAP today don't actually use SOAP standards for reliability (too fragmented) or asynchrony (even more so) or even security (too complex), what are they getting from all this complex overhead. Well, for one, it is a lot slower. The machinery for cracking a query string in a URL is about as fast as one can imagine these days due to the need services have to be quick. The machinery for processing a SOAP request is probably over ten times as slow (that's a guess). Formatting the response, of course, doesn't actually require custom XML machinery. If you can return HTML, you can return XML. It is this sort of thinking that being at a service company engenders. How do you keep it really simple, really lightweight, and really fast. Sure, you can still support the more complex things, but the really useful things may turn out to be simplest ones.

You have to. The scale is orders of magnitudes more than is normally processed by a business process within even the largest corporation. It is hard enough to build these massively scalable services if you keep the moving parts simple, clear, and down to a small number. This is usually called the KISS principle as in keep it simple and stupid or, more rudely, keep it simple, stupid. It reflects the engineering realization that just delivering on the required speed and scale will require a lot of plumbing and monitoring as it is.

So, I'm having a lot of fun learning about a whole new world.
Trudno sie z tym nie zgodzic...

To jest już wojna

Forbes.com: This is WarInside Microsoft Taylor is building a network of information and relationships aimed at overpowering the rival operating system. His attack spans multiple levels of the Redmond, Wash. empire: product development, marketing, sales and even customer demonstrations. In a building where Microsoft hosts trial runs of its software for customers, Taylor now has 50 servers out of 500 devoted to Linux.

IDC offers sunny forecast for servers - News - ZDNet

IDC offers sunny forecast for servers - News - ZDNet
Raport IDG z 16 czerwca przewiduje stały wzrost na rynku serwerów. Na postawie bieżącego trendu przewiduje się znaczny wzrost - rocznie o około 3.8% tak, że w 2008 wartość rynku serwerów dojdzie do kwoty 61 mld dolarów. Szybkiej wzrośnie segment "blade server" - dostarczy w 2008 roku 9 mld dol. co mu da 30% udział na rynku wszystkich serwerów. Szczególnie silny wzrost będzie miał miejsce w segmencie serwerów bazujących na architekturze x86. Podział rynku serwerów według systemów operacyjnych: 30% - Linux-based (10 mld dol.), natomiast 60% wszystkich sprzedanych serwerów będzie należało do Windows-based.

Nowa wersja korporacyjnego Linuxa rozpoczyna testy

Free corporate Linux set for test phase - News - ZDNet: "peeved "
Znany działacz FOSS Peres oznajmił na LinuxWorld Expo, że przygotował nową wersję Linuxa zorientowaną na rynek serwerów korporacyjnych. Nazywa się UserLinux i ma konkurować z dwiema wersjami z tego obszaru zastosowań Linuxa: RedHat (użytkownik płaci od 300 dolarów roczniej za wsparcie) oraz SuSE (cena opieki rocznej - 350 dolarów). Im wydajniejsza platforma sprzętowa tym opieka jest droższa.
UserLinux ma być znacznie tańszy. Powodem zorganizowania nowej dystrybucji Linuxa (opartej na Debianie) jest rozdrażnienie Peresa faktem, że RH sprzedaje oprogramownie systemowe w skład którego wchodzi program napisany przez niego samego (Electric Fence) za pieniądze.
Pakiet UserLinux wejdzie na rynek we wrześniu. Jedynym hamulcem jest proces certyfikacji samego systemu i wchodzących w skład dystrybucji dodatków. Przewiduje się uzyskanie certyfikatów na poziomie zgodności z Linux Standard Base.

Monachium mówi NIE, ale Fraknfurt - TAK

Munich breaks with Windows for Linux - News - ZDNet: "The software giant pointed to a new agreement it had signed with Frankfurt, under which the German city joined a Microsoft program that offered products to German local governments under 'inexpensive and flexible terms.' Frankfurt Mayor Petra Roth said in a statement that the city will save money as a result of the deal"
Okazuje się, że Frankfurt dał się namówić na pozostanie w środowisku Windows w ramach programu MS skierowanego do niemieckich lokalnych administracji.

UNO Open Office

Doh, you made me curious about whether it is possible to connect via COM toUNO with Python, and yes it is!I claim to know that there is no information about how to do that withPython (especially), but it might be useful that you read documentationabout the Automation Bridge:http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/tutorial/office_automation.htmlWhat I did is easily use the lines you write in VB for Python and itabsolutely worked:The following example will open a new writer document of OOo:>>> from win32com.client.dynamic import Dispatch>>> server = Dispatch('com.sun.star.ServiceManager')>>> odesktop = server.CreateInstance('com.sun.star.frame.Desktop')>>> odesktop.loadComponentfromURL('private:factory/swriter', '_blank', 0,[])list is the equivalent to an array type of UNO.Now it should be easy for you to figure out how to export something to pdf,I would just read how you do it with Starbasic (OOo's own scriptinglanguage) and then translate it into Python (as you saw in my example it'sactually a very simple translation of how you would do it with Starbasic,VB).

Getting started with COM in Python

you probably didn't find anything about COM on openoffice.org, because
OpenOffice has it's own component models concept, called UNO. The UNO has an
Automation Bridge that provides the use of WSH, VBScript etc.

OpenOffice also comes along with its own small Python core, small because it
doesn't support a lot of modules and you cannot just install extension
modules, because every module must be known to UNO.

Though you can easily write add-ons with the OOo Python core which would
then be available to others, even if they wouldn't have Python (they would
at least have Python in their OpenOffice).

So you have two options what you could do now:

1. get to know another component model (the one of OOo called UNO, which
is pretty new, so don't expect it to be as good as COM) and write python
code to make use of it:

http://udk.openoffice.org/python/python-bridge.html

2. or delve into COM by using Python code for doing something in MS Word
or Excel."

Perens: Companies finding desktop space for Linux, part 1

Peres mówi, że największym problemem w Windows są sterowniki urzadzeń, które czasami potrafią zzawiesić komputer. Problem w tym, że sterowniki tworzone są przez firmy trzeci i czasmi mogą być nie najlepiej napisane. Z drugiej strony MS nie może zablokować instalację sterowników firm trzecich (tych nie "podpisanych" przez MS) ponieważ ograniczyłoby to możliwości Windwos w obsłudze urządzeń peryferyjnych. Peres przestrzega, że w miare wzrostu popularności Linuxa ten sam problem może spotkać i ten system, chyba, że wymyśli się jakiś sposób na ograniczenie możliwości ingerencji sterowników w jądrze (bezpieczne uruchamianie).
Druga myśl jest taka, że korporacyjni użytkownicy (a więc ci co płacą i są pewnymi klientami MS) są skazani na pakiety biurowe MS są zamknięci w kręgu MS z uwagi na wykorzystanie VB dla aplikacji i samego VB. Odpowiedników takich narzędzi programowania w Linux nie ma. No chyba, że wykorzystamy Python. Ale nie jest łatwo przenieś cały majdan wieloletnich makr i procedur w VB do świata Linux. OOffice coś wspominał o projekcie konwertera aplikacji w VBA na makra Open Office'a.

SCO to claim IBM used unlicensed code in AIX 5L

SCO to claim IBM used unlicensed code in AIX 5L: "SCO to claim IBM used unlicensed code in AIX 5L



SCO may escalate its legal battle against IBM after having discovered documents that it says prove that IBM violated SCO licensing terms when it developed the latest version of its AIX operating system.
IBM is alleged to have used Unix code in AIX 5L that SCO had licensed to IBM for 'Project Monterey,' an effort to build a version of Unix for Intel's Itanium processor.
IBM dropped Project Monterey in 2001 in favour of Linux, but SCO has discovered e-mail that purports to show that IBM used code licensed from SCO for Project Monterey in the development of AIX 5L without a separate licence.
Forbes.com first reported the allegations, attributing them to remarks made by SCO chief executive Darl McBride earlier this week on the sidelines of the company's annual user conference.
A representative of SCO declined to comment, and IBM has yet to respond to invitations to comment."

Mod_Python introduction - The other LAMP

Mod_Python introduction - The other LAMP: "Why Python?

Python is the ideal programming language for new programmers. It is easy and quick to learn, the interpreter makes playing with your code easy and it comes with an extensive library so you can reuse other people's code and develop more quickly. This makes it ideal for developing prototypes and rapid development. Websites such as google, yahoo mail, yahoo groups and others were at some point in their lives mostly python.
The downsides? Because python is dynamically typed for larger applications unit testing is important. Not as many ISPs support mod_python as PHP, mod_perl and ASPs yet.
mod_python is a module that allows python to run embedded directly into the apache server allowing for good performance. The current version includes support for sessions, psp templates, and cgi support.
Scaling

How fast is mod_python? Recent benchmarks that I have made put it (20-50x) faster than cgi or zope and mildly faster than mod_php. If you need to make your application truly scalable you should investigate caching servers such as mod_cache in apache or HTTP server acceleration using squid server. Generate much of your content as possible as static pages and try to minimize the session information held in memory.
If bandwidth is the constraint have a look at mod_gzip or the gzip example in mod_python. You will see 50% to 20% bandwidth savings. Most browsers support this - unfortunately most spiders don't yet support gzip.
How to run code?

The original method of running code on web servers was through the CGI model. In CGI each time the program is run a separate process is spawned and its standard output is redirected to the browser. Because python is interpreted there is significant overhead of launching the interpreter. Every CGI request causes a process to be created and the Py"

Mod_Python introduction - The other LAMP

Mod_Python introduction - The other LAMP: "Why Python?

Python is the ideal programming language for new programmers. It is easy and quick to learn, the interpreter makes playing with your code easy and it comes with an extensive library so you can reuse other people's code and develop more quickly. This makes it ideal for developing prototypes and rapid development. Websites such as google, yahoo mail, yahoo groups and others were at some point in their lives mostly python.
The downsides? Because python is dynamically typed for larger applications unit testing is important. Not as many ISPs support mod_python as PHP, mod_perl and ASPs yet.
mod_python is a module that allows python to run embedded directly into the apache server allowing for good performance. The current version includes support for sessions, psp templates, and cgi support.
Scaling

How fast is mod_python? Recent benchmarks that I have made put it (20-50x) faster than cgi or zope and mildly faster than mod_php. If you need to make your application truly scalable you should investigate caching servers such as mod_cache in apache or HTTP server acceleration using squid server. Generate much of your content as possible as static pages and try to minimize the session information held in memory.
If bandwidth is the constraint have a look at mod_gzip or the gzip example in mod_python. You will see 50% to 20% bandwidth savings. Most browsers support this - unfortunately most spiders don't yet support gzip.

How to run code?

The original method of running code on web servers was through the CGI model. In CGI each time the program is run a separate process is spawned and its standard output is redirected to the browser. Because python is interpreted there is significant overhead of launching the interpreter. Every CGI request causes a process to be created and the Py"

Ciekawe odnosniki na temat Linux/Oracle

Materialy z LinuxExpo
Rywalizacja Oracle - IBM na rynku baz danych na serwerach Linux

IBM wkład do OpenSource

IBM Tosses Embedded Database to Apache LinuxWorld: Big Blue will continue to develop Cloudscape separately but remain true toitsopen source version. http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,11rj,1,m701,ajsr,48gk,84du
Na uwagę zasługuje dodanie do Apache możliwosci przechowywania danych w bazie np. stanu sesji z uzytkownikiem co ma piekielnie wazne znaczenie w przypadku bezstanowego protokolu HTTP. Wazne jest teraz jak mozna to wykozystac w samym serwerze np w postaci modulu mod_cloudscape? Sama mozliwosc jeszcze nic nie daje, trzeba jeszcze to dorobic interfejs bazy z serwerem internetowym. Jest jeszcze jedno pytanie: jaki cel przeswiecal firmie IBM? 1) Utrzec nosa MS SQL Server i MySQL (polowa instalcji baz danych open source to MySQL)? 2) spopularyzowac Jave poza Sun-em? 3) zwiekszenie funkcjonalnosci serwera Apache?

ClearType Step 4: View your ClearType settings

ClearType Step 4: View your ClearType settings

Popraw swoj wzrok

Strona zawiera informacje o technologii Clear Type i jak podstroic swoj monitor:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/cleartypeactivate.htm?fname=%20&fsize==

Klapa z Linuksem w Monachium?

The City of Munich has put its planned migration to Linux of 14,000 desktop PCs on hold due to concerns over software patents, the city's CIO said on Tuesday night. The call for bids in the LiMux Project, as it is known in Germany, was due to begin last week. But on Friday, Green Party Alderman Jens Muehlhaus called for the city to examine the impact patents might have on the decision, in light of software patents legislation currently under consideration in the European Union.

Muehlhaus said a cursory examination of Munich's proposed client software had turned up conflicts with more than 50 European software patents. The fear is that a company holding one or more of these patents could issue a 'cease and desist' order to the Munich government, effectively shutting down the city's computer systems or forcing the payment of licensing fees. In response, the city decided to cancel the planned call for bids until the patent issue has been investigated, according to a statement from Munich CIO Wihelm Hoegner issued to the LiMux Project mailing list late on Tuesday. "
Dopisane później:
Okazało się, że projekt zwany LiMux przewiduje trzy fazy: 1) do końca tego roku omputerach OpenOfficce oraz Mozilli 2) w latach 2005-2006 wymiana systemu operacyjnego Windows NT na Linux-based OS 3) od 2008 roku migrację aplikacji serwerowych i innych specyficznych programów na ich open-source odpowiedniki.
Podobnie ma się sprawa w Wiedniu. Tam też postanowiono wymienić oprogramowanie. Łącznie jest to 16 tys. użytkownicy będą mogli zadecydować o swoim wyborze.
Nasuwa się pytanie dlaczego zarząd obu miast dopuscił do tak karygodnego zaniedbania w swojej strukturze informatycznej. Teraz wobec zakończenia w tym roku wsparcia technicznego przez MS systemu operacyjnego Windows NT nie nalezy się dziwić, ze zarząd miasta MUSI cos zrobic.

Wyjsc poza OS

eADT at LinuxWorld: Beyond the OS
By John K. Waters
The West Coast edition of the bi-annual LinuxWorld conference opens this week in San Francisco. More than 190 exhibitors are showcasing their wares this year -- 55 more than last year, according to Warwick Davies, group VP at show organizer IDG World Expo -- and attendance is expected to match last year's numbers of between 10,000 and 11,000.
"The event has always been a great watering hole for everyone from kernel developers to line-of-birth managers looking at bringing Linux into their companies," Davies said."
The main theme of this year's show, Davies told eADT, is "Linux: Beyond the operating system." Attendees can expect to see "a whole host of applications that allow you to run your business on Linux," he said.
Within the "beyond the OS" theme, this year's show is putting a lot of emphasis on desktop Linux. Nine sessions are dedicated to Linux desktop strategies and technology development. There is a Desktop Linux Pavilion, where new open-source desktop technologies will be on display. And both Dell and HP are expected to unveil new products for deploying Linux as a Windows alternative.
Linux integration is another focus of the show, Davies said, so attendees should expect a range of announcements and exhibits around the issue of working with Linux in mixed environments.
A new security track has also been added to the lineup, which Davies sees as a sign that more enterprises are looking seriously at Linux. "Security is a buy signal," he said. "When people start thinking about security, they're not wondering about whether they want the technology, but how they can make it work in their organization."

Elektryczne bezpieczniki umozliwiajace samoleczenie ukladow scalonych

Według IBM niedługo stanie się możliwe uleczenie układu scalonego w trakcie jego eksploatacji. Pomysł wykorzystuje ideę elektronicznych bezpieczników tj. miejsc w krzemie układu scalonego przez które może przejść prąd (elektrony) w ten sposób wypalając nową ścieżkę w układzie scalonym (np. nowa trasę przepływu elektronów omijającą wadliwy obszar układu scalonego). Wykorzystanie tego efektu zwanego elektromigration oraz sposobu przepuszczania elektronów tak by wypaliły nowe ścieżki tylko w bezpiecznikach jest objęty patentem. Do tej pory taki sposób omijania defektów był możliwy przy pomocy lasera (który wycina na etapie produkcji chipów. Dodatkowo układ laserowy do wypalania ścieżek przy zmianie technologii na mniejsze wielkości np. 90 nano m musi być wymieniony (zastąpiony mniejszym).

Linux bedzie rzadzil w srodowisku DeskTop?

Na tej corocznej konferencji LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco coraz częściej mówi się o wkroczeniu systemu Linux do środowiska komputerów osobistych użytkownika.
Użytkownicy końcowi tak naprawdę do szczęścia potrzebują u siebie dostępu do Internetu, poczty elektronicznej oraz aplikacji internetowych (web-based applications). Wielu mam nadzieję (sądzi), że Linux jest bardziej bezpieczny.
W przypadku twórców oprogramowania też Linux jest atrakcyjny z uwagi na neutralność platformową oprogramowania napisanego w Javie oraz serwisów webowych (Web services). Dodatkowo Linux oferuje wiele narzędzi do tworzenia aplikacji (większość z nich jest bezpłatna).
Generalnie większość użytkowników jest zadowolona z dowolnego systemu operacyjnego zapewniającego powszechne aplikacje jak przeglądarkę webową, maszynę wirtualną Javy oraz klienta poczty elektronicznej. Dlatego Linux nadaje się jako fundament pod stanowiska obsługujące zarówno aplikacje klient/serwer jak i internetowe (web-centric applications).
Jednakże jest klasa użytkowników tzw. knowledge workers którzy są mocno przywiązani do aplikacji wspomagających ich produktywność w środowisku Windows.
IDC przewiduje wzrost udziału Linuxa na rynku stacji końcowych z 2,7% (3,4 mln roku 2002) do 6% (10 mln w roku 2007).
Jak na razie duże firmy wspierające Linux (IBM, HP, Novell and its SuSE Linux division, Red Hat, Intel, Computer Associates International, Dell and Oracle) bardziej skupiają się na niszy serwerowej ale to niedługo po nasyceniu tego rynku może się zmienić w kierunku stanowisk końcowych.

Nowe narzedzie do pracy z XML/XSL

Rozmowa z M. Kay czołowym autorem książek o XML. Ma stronę WWW.saxonica.com i wyraża się pochlebnie o Stylus Studio, kosztuje tylko 50 USD. http://www.stylusstudio.com/home_edition_faq.html

Taktyka strachu stosowana przez Linux

Firma Forbes odniosla sie krytycznie do inicjatywy ubezpieczenia sie przeciw pozwom za uzywanie systemu Linux. Taktyka FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) stosowana nigdys przez IBM w stosunku do innych firm sprzedajacych mainframe'y, a nastepnie przez MS w odniesieniu do inicjatywy FOSS zostala sprytnie wykorzystana przez Open Source Risk Management (12 osobowa firma zalozona przez Daniel Egger, dyrektorem jest sam Bruce Perens ten sam, ktory zostal wyrzucony z HP za instalowanie Linuxa w firmie i czolowy adwokat ruchu Open-Source).
Firma to zapewnia firmom ubezpieczenie przed pozwem do sadu za korzytanie z syst. operacyjnego Linux (za cene 150 tys dolarow rocznie ubezpiecza firme korzystajaca z Linuxa do wysokosci 5 milionow dolarow). Aby wzmocnic swoje argumenty OSRM oglosila, ze znalazla w systemie Linux wykorzystanie 286 patentow (z czego 27 jest autorstwa MS, inne pochodza od "zaprzyjaznionych" firm jak IBM, SUN itd). Firma ostrzega przed atakiem patentowym firmy Microsoft.
Jakie to sa patenty firma nie podaje z uwagi na prawo "willful infingement" w mysl ktorej uswiadomiony w zakresie wykorzystywanych patentow uzytkownik Linuxa narazony jest na potrojna kare.
Dodatkowy "smaczkiem" sa inni pracownicy OSRM. Stanowisko "director of legal research" objela Pamela Jones, a amator-prawnik prowadzaca slynny serwis Groklaw (SCO-bashing Web site)oraz glowny konsultant patentowy ("lead patent counsel") Daniel Ravicher (29-letni prawnik, ktory sie wslawil zalozeniem fundacji twierdzacej, ze polowa patentow w USA jest niezgodna z prawem).

Mozilla wyplaca nagrode za znalezienie bledu

W poniedzialek, 2 sierpnia Mitchell Baker prezydent Mozilla Foundation (MZ jest odpowiedzialna za rozwoj Mozilli oraz FireFoxa i Thunderbirda) oglosil, ze wyplaci 500 dolarow kazdemu kto znajdzie powazniejszy blad w jego produktach. Ostatni raport o bledach w obszarze obslugi cyfrowych certyfikatow http://news.com.com/Mozilla+to+squash+security+bugs/2100-1002_3-5286138.html?tag=nl spowodowal zauwazenie problemu wystepujacych w oprogramowaniu MF bledow.
Nagroda za znalezienie bledu w zabezpieczeniach ma zachecic internautow i zglaszania bledow, zniechecic potencjalnych hakerów do wykorzystania luki w oprogramowaniu oraz jest forma podziekowania za wklad zwiekszajacy bezpieczenstwo przegladarek bazujacych na silniku Mozilli.
Krytycy uwazaja, ze ilosc bledow w Mozilla Web Application (MWA) jest podobna do MS IE ale z uwagi na to, ze 95 % rynku przegladarek nalezy do MS jest mniejsze prawdopodobienstwo znalezienia bledu jak imniej hakerow probujacych sie wlamac poprzez przegladarke MWA do witryn.
Podobnie zostal uruchomiony inny program Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program sponsorowany przez Lindows oraz inwestora internetowego Mark Shuttleworth. Polega on na wniesieniu przez Lindows funduszu poczatkowego w wysokosci 5 tys dolarow. Z kolei Mark Shuttleworth wyplaci na poczatku 5 tys dolarow do funduszu za wplate 5 tys dolarow pochodzaca od innego inwestora. Firma MS nie skomentowala tej inicjatywy, wiadomo jednak, ze i ona oglosila rozpoczecie programu w ramach ktorego wyplaca 250 tys dolarow kazdemu, kto doprowadzi do zlapania autora wirusa.
Obecnie oprogramowania Mozilla Web application--zawierajace browser, e-mail, chat program, and Web page editing program--jest w wersji 1.7. Inne produkty Mozilla Foundation to Firefox stand-alone browser and Thunderbird e-mail client sa prawie na ukonczeniu i sa powszechnie stosowane.

Najlepsze praktyki w zarzadzaiu zmianami

So here's a quick checklist for the "not-very-shortcut" set of
practices that should set you ahead - if you can take the time
to follow them:

* Define your business requirements. Make sure that there are
not multiple views and goals (e.g., 25% cost reduction in WAN
bandwidth by Dec. 27) both within your organization, and between
you and the lines of business you're supporting. All too often
there are different versions of project objectives floating
around. At the same time, make sure you are clear on which
business services are affected by the change, and how.

* Clarify organizational and process needs. For instance, you
can't do data center consolidation right if you don't understand
the relationship between that project and your WAN performance.
Applications and services perform across an ocean of
interdependencies. That also means checking your organizational
processes and tuning them for superior collaboration - so that
in this case the NOC and the data center can work as a
collaborative team, not as finger-pointing adversaries.

* Audit. This is one of the scarier but more profound
requirements for "doing it right." You need to follow up the
implied "IT process audit" above and then document what the
infrastructure is, what your service-level agreements are with
external providers, what your SLAs are with internal and
external customers, and what management tools are in place to
support the project at hand. If you do this right, you'll
discover many surprises in all areas - unless of course you're
one of the very few organizations that took the time to get all
this right before. I'll also bet that you discover tool sets
with conflicting information used by different IT groups to
blame each other for problems.

* Baseline, analyze and plan. We're into more normal territory
here, and while there's a lot to say about this phase, I'll
focus on only two things. A real baseline means understanding
quality of experience, which is complex - including not only
availability and responsiveness, but also flexibility,
cost-effectiveness, appropriateness, and other metrics. Planning
also means understanding usage patterns and trying to get at the
hows and whys of service behavior before embarking on the
if-then tradeoffs for optimizing infrastructure.

* Establish and promote. Once your plan is solid, communicate it
- within your organization and externally to your customers.
Believe it or not, planned change is a good time to build
rapport with your customers and promote your value to the
business.

* Deploy and validate. The key thing here is to proceed in
stages and to validate as you go. It's also important to note
that before embarking on this stage, you should already have
worked out timing for any changes to SLAs and contracts with
external service providers.

* Reassess and begin again. Change is ongoing. If your WAN
rightsizing project has gone well, for instance, something new
is likely to be demanded. Rather than wait to be kicked from
behind, look proactively to, as the expression goes, "make
change your friend" in providing better services for your
clients.

Sterowanie baza MS SQL Server poprzez obiekt DMO

Connect to a server and its databases using SQL-DMO

Microsoft provides an object-oriented library for dealing with SQL objects: SQL-DMO (SQL Distributed Management Objects). By using this library, you can perform a number of cool tasks that are difficult or impossible to do in T-SQL.

As with all object libraries, you have to learn to walk the hierarchy. The highest-level object in the library is the collection of servers. Below that level are the databases, and the tables, views, sprocs, and so on that reside within a given database. This tip will show you the most basic steps on how to connect to a server and its databases using SQL-DMO.

Related resources

* Best practices to enhance your SQL Server applications
* Download: Quick Start: Microsoft SQL Server

The first thing you need to do is obtain the list of servers. The following code will deliver the list of servers to a listbox:

Function listServers(oControl As Object)

Dim oApp As SQLDMO.Application
Dim oNames As SQLDMO.NameList

Set oApp = New SQLDMO.Application
Set oNames = oApp.ListAvailableSQLServers()

For Each oName In oNames
oControl.AddItem oName
Next

End Function

Podobny skrypt w j. Python:

import win32com.client

oApps = win32com.client.Dispatch('SQLDMO.Application')

oNames = oApps.ListAvailableSQLServers()

print "Lista serwerow MS SQL"

for oName in oNames:
print oName

print "Koniec"

The next (lower) element in the hierarchy is the list of databases. This is where you may need to supply a userid and a password (if you aren't using integrated security). Note: Be sure to read the following code before using it, particularly the demarcated lines.

Function listDatabases(vServer As String, oControl As Object)

Dim oSrvr As SQLDMO.SQLServer
Set oSrvr = New SQLDMO.SQLServer

oSrvr.LoginSecure = True
' ----------------------------
' use this line for integrated security
oSrvr.Connect vServer
' or this for sql login
oSrvr.Connect vServer, "sa", "SQLTips" - substitute your sa password
' --------------------------

For Each oDatabase In oSrvr.Databases
oControl.AddItem oDatabase.Name
Next

End Function

I once used such code when I was deploying an application written against MSDE, which doesn't include Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, and all those other nice tools. With SQL-DMO, I was able to write a small application that enables users to create a new database, install the tables we shipped (mostly blank but some of them were pre-populated), and then load and go.

I encourage you to investigate SQL-DMO further. By descending into the hierarchy, you can walk the list of tables, queries, and so on, using very simple code like the examples above. Once you dive in, it turns out to be very easy, and it can save you lots of time.

Arthur Fuller has been developing database applications for more than 20 years. He frequently works with Access ADPs, Microsoft SQL 2000, MySQL, and .NET.

LinuxWorld Expo

LinuxWorld Expo kicks off at the Moscone Convention Center in
San Francisco this week, with a slew of announcement from major
vendors. As usual, the new products focus on the use of Linux in
high-end enterprise server platforms. Linux and open
source-based client products and software development platforms
are also being demonstrated.

Among the products being announced at the show this week are:

* Red Hat is expected to launch its first Java application
server, a product that will compete with platforms from BEA, IBM
and Oracle.

* Novell is expected to unveil SuSE Enterprise Server 9.0, which
runs on the Linux 2.6 kernel, providing better support for
multiprocessor systems. It's been reported that systems running
on pre-released versions of the software can scale to 32 Intel
Itanium II processors and handle as much as 512G bytes - that's
Gigs not Megs - of memory.

* HP is expected to announce a range of Linux products,
including Linux-based midrange and high-end Integrity servers
and a Linux thin client, the HP Compaq t5515. It will also
showcase ProLiant servers with Intel's new 32-/64-bit
technology. HP will announce an expanded Linux services and
support team.

* IBM will announce broader third-party software support for
Linux on its Power processor and will unveil xSeries servers
with Intel's 32-/64-bit technology.

* Veritas is expected to announce that the latest versions of
its storage and clustering software are all certified on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Among the tools certified include Veritas
Storage Foundation, Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC,
Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System and Veritas
Volume Replicator.

* Computer Associates plans to announce that it will open source
its Ingres r3 database, which runs on Linux and will be made
generally available Sept. 30.

Nowa warstwa infrastruktury oprogramowania

Warstwa komputerowa jest poszerzona o kolejna warstwe, warstwe identyfikacji. Do tej pory jest warstawa sprzetu, systemu operacyjnego, aplikacji. Pozniej doszla warstwa posredniczaca miedzy aplikacjami i systemem (middleware) a takze warstwa abstrakcji sprzetowej i sterownikow. Teraz doszla warstwa identyfikacji uzytkownika zasobu. O niej mowilo sie na poczatku lat 90, gdy wprowadzono uslugi LDAP. Uslugi LDAP wraz z uslugami zabezpieczenia (security services) utworzyly obszar (strefe) identyfikacji tzw. identity area. Powszechnie mowi sie o powstaniu nowej warstwy "identity management".
Uslugi katalogowe rozbudowane do warstwy identity magmt staja sie powszechne (commodities) i na nich bazuje kolejna usluga web services

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Corporation

Trendy rozwoju MS

Na spotkaniu z przedstawicielami inwestorow firma MS obiecala, ze dolozy wszelkich staran by firma nadal rozwijala sie dynamicznie. Liczy na to, ze w tym roku okolo 400 mln ludzi na swiecie kupi PC-ty a wraz z nimi rowniez oprogramowanie. Nadal bedzie rozwijac wersje "light" Office'a i Windows XP (zwana starter edition)a takze dzialac na rynku Dalekiego Wschodu. Na przyklad w Chinach oferuje angielskiego asystenta do chinskiej wersji MS Office majacy za zadanie wspomoc w tlumaczeniu korespondencji handlowej. Firma liczy rowniez na rozwoj Tablet PC oraz Media Center, chce zaistniec na rynku serwerow duzej mocy poprzez edycje MS W2k3 zwana HPC (high performance computing).

Inna firma CA oferuje swoj produkt Ingres na zasadach open-source ale zastrzega sobie przeksztalcenie produktu w komercyjny w pozniejszym czasie (czy to nie jest cynizm - wykorzystanie ruchu open source do udoskonalenia swojego produktu).

Na podstawie zrodla pochodzacego z http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid39_gci996151,00.html firma MS niedawno staral sie o uzyskanie patetntu na FAT w US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Poczatkowo urzad nie mial zastrzezen, ale po protescie wystosowanym przez Public Patent Foundation postanowil jeszcze raz rozpatrzyc wniosek MS. Pozytywne rozpatrzenie wniosku MS stwarza grozbe sciagania oplat za korzystanie z FAT. Uwaza sie, ze MS bedzie scigal male/srednie firmy nie majace srodkow na walke z MS w sadzie. Proponuje sie stworzenie dzialu/komitetu do spraw oceny pochodzenia kodu wytwarzanego  w aplikacjach wewnetrznych. Jego zadaniem jest ocena ryzyka stosowanie rozwiazan open-source wykorzystujacych rozne algorytmy i strukturya takze okreslajacy polityke wykorzystania oprogramowania open source oraz ustanawiajacy wewnetrzne narzedzia monitorujace (w orginale "...establishing open source use policies and appropriate internal monitoring processes...").

Pod tym adresem jest How-To o Linuksie: http://www.linux.com/howtos/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.shtml

Pod tym adresem jest "Linux Integration Guide": http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/2247213

Pod tym adresem jest opisany problem instalacji lub upgrade-u Windows XP http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/upwpload.mspx

Pod tym adresem jest dostep do Clinic 2801: https://www.microsoftelearning.com/security/itpro/

Wejscie Pythona do .NET

Na stronie http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/07/28.html#a1050 znajduje sie informacja o ironPython, implementacji jezyka Python w srodowisku .NET.
Autorem jest Jim Huqunin. Testy wydajnosci wykazaly wyjatkowa szybkosc tego jezyka typu skryptowego (zwanego jezykami dynamicznymi). Autor udostepnia oprogramowanie na zasadzie CPL i od niedawna pracuje w MS. Jego obowiazkiem jest poprawic reputacje dynamicznych jezykow w srodowisku CLR. Do tej pory implementacja VB.NET byla krytykowana z uwagi na zmiejszenie elastycznosci konstrukcji jezykowych w porownaniu do VB 6.0. Implementacja Pythona pokaze mozliwosci CLR w zakresie interpretacji jak i dynamicznej syntaktyki jezykow dynamicznych. Z jednej strony CLR z wczesnym zwiazywaniem nazw i kompilacja kodu jest nieco jak sztywny gorset dla programisty. Z drugiej strony takie podporzadkowanie srodowiska pod katem wydajnosci spowodowalo, ze programy napisane Pythonie i uruchamiane w tym srodowisku wykonuja sie szybciej niz implementacja CPython w czystym C.
Serwis weblog.infoworld.com jest znakomity.
Benchmarki: http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/9/

Latka do IE

Hackers have long insisted that steering clear of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is one of the easiest ways to protect computers from many of the security threats that lurk on the Internet.

That suggestion is often greeted with apathy or angry accusations that the geek in question was indulging in Microsoft-bashing -- admittedly a not-uncommon activity in hacker circles.

But last Friday, in response to the latest security exploit involving Microsoft products, the usually staid U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, published a warning strongly suggesting that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer should switch to another Web browser, due to "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies included in IE.

Gary Schare, director of the Windows Client Division at Microsoft, said that CERT's advice had been misrepresented in much of the press coverage.

"Microsoft certainly respects the work CERT does to help protect the Internet and users. Regarding the consideration that users switch browsers, it is unfortunate that the published articles have misrepresented CERT's suggestions, and we are working with CERT to clarify their advice," Schare said.

But many evidently took CERT's warning to heart and downloaded Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox, free, open-source Web browsers developed and distributed by the Mozilla Organization, who resurrected the remnants of Netscape after it was purchased by AOL in 1999.

Downloads of Mozilla and Firefox -- an advanced version of Mozilla -- spiked the day CERT's warning was released, and demand has continued to grow. According to Chris Hofmann, engineering director at the Mozilla Foundation, formed last July to promote the development, distribution and adoption of Mozilla Web applications, downloads of the browsers hit an all-time high on Thursday, from the usual 100,000 or so downloads on a normal day to more than 200,000.

Hofmann said the Mozilla team wasn't surprised when CERT issued its warning.

"Mozilla and Firefox downloads have increased steadily since last fall, with the Firefox user base doubling every few months, as more people seem to have reached their threshold level of frustration dealing with problems with IE and Windows, and have found the Mozilla software a good solution to solving those problems," said Hofmann. "CERT's recommendation is just a reflection of the trend we have seen for quite some time." Security experts said Mozilla's lack of ActiveX support makes the browser more secure than IE. ActiveX was intended to allow websites to add multimedia and interactive features, but has lately been used to slide spyware onto PCs without the user's knowledge or explicit consent.

"ActiveX allows programs to run in the browser," said Patrick Hinojosa, chief technology officer at Panda Software, a security software vendor. "It is a big part of the security equation, as most IE users don't have this locked down by default."

"But there have also been some exploits of the IE browser that had nothing to do with ActiveX," Hinojosa added. "There have been numerous IE patches issued over the last year or so."

Mozilla's Hofmann agreed that ActiveX is only part of the story, pointing also to IE's tight integration into the Window's operating system, and differences in IE and Mozilla's default security settings and architecture as other reasons why Mozilla browsers are more secure.

"Tight integration of the browser with the operating system provides some convenience and power for Windows developers and users, but has also been a continuing source that allows malicious hackers to leverage that same convenience and power for their exploits," said Hofmann.

"Most of this convenience centers on the default protection mechanisms for downloading, installing and running executable programs without the knowledge of the user or any intervention by the user."

Mozilla requires users to acknowledge and grant explicit approval to any situation that involves downloading, installing or running executable code or any other potentially risky operation. A well-patched version of IE usually does the same, but Mozilla can also interrupt automated attacks and keep malicious code from being run, features that have saved Mozilla and Firefox from being vulnerable to many of the problems that have plagued IE users.

But some security experts believe that Mozilla's biggest security benefit is that the browser is not in wide use yet.

"It is not so much a question that one browser is inherently safer than another, but the fact that so many people use Explorer," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos, a security software vendor.

"Microsoft is targeted because they are so successful. And they have a hard job ahead of them. Something like 90 percent of the world's computers run Microsoft operating systems. This homogenous environment is attractive to those cyber criminals looking to make some kind of impact."

Hofmann also credits Mozilla's open-source development model with the browser's security successes.

Every change made to Mozilla applications is first peer reviewed by at least two engineers who are familiar with the code and overall architecture of the system before the new code is allowed into the product. Then the product goes though a series of automated tests and evaluations, after which Mozilla users and the development community are invited to review the impact of each change by downloading the test builds that are produced two or three times a day.

"All kinds of hackers, from junior high school whiz kids to graduate students to seasoned engineers that work for companies that use and deploy Mozilla technologies have the code available to study and improve," said Hofmann.

Microsoft's Schare said that Microsoft also continues to work to improve the security of Internet Explorer, and said focusing on security is a top priority for the company.

Schare said the Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies, expected to be released later this summer, will deliver improved security infrastructure that will help reduce a PC's vulnerability to certain types of attacks. It will also include a new pop-up blocker and download monitoring tool that will help reduce unwanted or potentially malicious content and downloads.

"As for last week's IIS issues, Microsoft is aggressively working to provide a comprehensive fix for all supported versions of IE," Schare said. "This will be released once it has been thoroughly tested and found to be effective across the wide variety of supported versions and configurations of IE. In the meantime, we have provided customers with prescriptive guidance to help mitigate these issues."

Nowa inicjatywa w zakresie bezpieczenstwa MS

W dniu 2 lipca MS opublikowal remedium na ostatni blad wystepujacy w przegladarce MS IE. Jest do sciagniecia z MS Update. Dodatkowo pod adresem bezpieczenstwo jest informacja - miesieczny biuletyn na temat zabezpieczenia sieci. Strona o bezpieczenstwie produktow MS bezpieczenstwo

The Scripting Guys' First Blog

The Scripting Guys' First Blog
Friday, April 30, 2004

HTML DB rozwiniecie PL/SQL WebToolKit

HTML DB - The Web Development Tool For The Rest Of Us?
I went along to an Oracle Partner Workshop on HTML DB yesterday, at Oracle's offices in Reading, UK. Oracle run these occasionally and they're a good opportunity for developers to quickly get to know new Oracle products.

HTML DB is the new 'rapid application development' tool for the Oracle database, delivered as part of Oracle Database 10g or as a separate download for Oracle 9i 9.2.0.3 or higher. HTML DB helps you generate PL/SQL web applications, with the Oracle Portal 'look and feel', using a declarative GUI environment that is aimed at developers and power users with a basic understanding of SQL and PL/SQL.
Applications built using HTML DB are positioned somewhere between Oracle Portal applications (built using the forms and chart wizards within Portal) and full-blown J2EE applications, built using JDeveloper, UIX, BC4J and so on. I was particularly impressed with HTML DB, and here's a few reasons why.

First of all, it's a web applications development environment that's particularly suited to PL/SQL developers. If you've used the PL/SQL Web Toolkit that comes with Oracle 8i and higher, you'll immediately feel comfortable with the mechanisms behind HTML DB - it's all written in PL/SQL and uses the Web Toolkit, and applications built using HTML DB are PL/SQL Web Toolkit applications. Although HTML DB applications have the same look and feel as Oracle Portal applications, and those built using JDeveloper, UIX, ADF and so on, there's no Java, JSPs, servlets and so on behind the technology. Everything is built using the HTML DB graphical user interface, and any coding that needs to be done (which is very little) is done directly in PL/SQL. In addition, all of the functionality of HTML DB is exposed as packages, procedures, bind variables and normal Oracle tables, and it's therefore extremely easy to interface HTML DB with your existing PL/SQL program logic. It's a web development environment 'for the rest of us'.

HTML DB looks very east to use. It's aimed at all the Microsoft Access developers you find within an organization, and consequently the building process is iterative and encourages experimentation and trying things out. Each form and report you build has an 'edit' link at the bottom, allowing administrators to change things around and rerun the form without the need to recompile, relink and rebuild the application. Data from spreadsheets and text files can be easily uploaded to the database, with HTML DB creating tables and auto-incrementing primary key columns behind the scenes. Everything is done graphically, and there's no real requirement for you to design your application in full up front - the tool encourages experimentation and it's easy to add functionality to an application as you go along.

Having said that, it's not a 'dumbed down' application. HTML DB applications can authenticate against Oracle OID and Single Sign-On, other LDAP servers, external authentication methods or use Oracle database security. HTML DB applications can be published to Oracle Portal, and can take advantage of database features such as Fine-Grained Access Control and Label Security.

One of the coolest features in HTML is how it handles sessions and state. Traditionally with PL/SQL Web Toolkit applications , handling session data is a bit of a headache, with custom code having to be written to store session data in cookies; HTML DB automatically handles sessions by assigning a numeric ID to each logged in user, and automatically passes that ID around from page to page. The numeric ID gets stored in the database, with all session variables saved in oracle tables using this ID. This means that the database, rather than an application server, handles sessions and statefullness, which uses up less memory and takes all of the responsibility away from the application developer.

The only part of Oracle's approach towards HTML DB that I'd disagree with, is in that they are pitching it towards what they refer to as 'Power Users' - users within the business who currently build VBA applications, spreadsheets with lots of macros, and so on. In my opinion, it's better suited to PL/SQL developers, ideally with experience with the web toolkit, who want to make themselves more productive and turn out applications of a higher quality and in less time. You don't need to know PL/SQL, but the tool is much more powerful if you do, and applications that HTML DB creates look just like the Java web applications created using JDeveloper.

Being honest, because HTML DB is pure PL/SQL, and runs directly on top of the Oracle database, it's got a smaller footprint and appears to run faster than a java web application, and would be easier for a PL/SQL developer to design and debug than a n-tier java application.

In my opinion, HTML DB is just the tool that PL/SQL developers have been looking for. It's easy to use, but still allows us to use our Oracle development skills to turn out top-notch applications. Give it a look over when you get a chance.

Portal
LDAP
PLSQL Web Tool Kit
HTML DB

Kontynuacja V Inter Dev 6.0 w Visual Studio 2005

The whole rich/dynamic interface pendulum swings widely and often. Rich is where commercial vendors want us to go, because rich front ends require vendor-specific run-time software, dev tools matched to the run time, books and classes, support contracts, consulting, coffee mugs, and so forth. Not to mention the specialized developer skills that might prove useless in their next job.

With rare exceptions, a rich interface is static. We don’t have static work habits, static job descriptions, static database layouts, or static connections between servers and services. If everything we do is dynamic, what room is there for static interfaces or static client-side programming languages?

The swing toward static richness isn’t just a Microsoft thing. Apple’s Xcode, as fine a development environment as it is, also squeezes developers into rich, static interfaces. In a way, Apple’s shortcoming is more egregious because Unix developers take for granted that applications will work remotely with minimal client-side requirements. Xcode can’t (or won’t) manage that, despite the uniformity of the server software that ships with every Mac. At least WebObjects, Apple’s flexible Web application development and deployment suite, provides a true Web app environment, albeit at a cost.

Visual Studio 2005 doesn’t send Web developers to external tools, and Microsoft has taken advantage of its new Web-friendly toolset. Internet Explorer is a prerequisite for many of Microsoft’s recent and upcoming releases. Visual Studio Team System, SQL Server Reporting Services, Windows Server 2003 management tools, and SharePoint use IE as their presentation engine. SharePoint makes heavy use of .Net Web Parts technology. Web Parts are very cool — dockable, resizable windows inside a browser look great. But their use is not mandatory. You still have a browser back there. Microsoft’s use of XML and Web services to feed data to Web Parts takes some of the proprietary sting out of this .Net rich front-end approach.

My greatest source of delight is the restoration of Visual InterDev, Visual Studio 6’s sweet and brutally murdered Web application IDE, to Visual Studio 2005. Of course, the name has changed to save face, and Microsoft didn’t give in to all of the developers’ demands. If Microsoft is holding out on Web dev tools, it should fork them over. IIS has always been a crown jewel of Windows, right up there with SQL Server and Terminal Services. IIS is Microsoft’s app server, and it’s useless without tools that create dynamic, scriptable interfaces.

I wrote a fat, marriage-straining book, Windows 2000 Web Application Development, that clarified my philosophy: Browser technology — DHTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), DOM, and JavaScript — has no equal in the rich world for flexibility, interoperability, and rapid development. The only thing missing, and it irks me to no end, is a fast browser. Mozilla’s got some lightweight browser work under way. Maybe Apple will put the spring back in Safari’s step, which has gotten slower and fatter of late. But I am encouraged and amused to find that Microsoft’s own application developers are refusing to let Internet Explorer and Visual InterDev die.

Tom Yager is technical director of the InfoWorld Test Center.

Nowosci technologiczne w Longhorn

---- Wiadomość Oryginalna ----
Od: Marek W
Do: marekw1958@tlen.pl
Data: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 23:02:41 -0700 (PDT)
Temat: [Dzienniczek] Nowosci technologiczne w Longhorn

Longhorn and Avalon
Nowa jakosc - Podsystem grafiki wektorowej- AVALON

By Bryan Muehlberger

Over the course of the last five weeks, we discussed Microsoft Windows
Storage Server 2003 and the associated benefits and technologies
associated with it. This week, we start a discussion on Microsoft's
next major release of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, which will come
packaged with a number of new technologies that you need to make sure
you know.

One of the new technologies being release with Longhorn is the new
presentation subsystem, called Avalon. Avalon is positioned as a new
graphics subsystem that serves as a foundation for Longhorn's shell.
Avalon will also come with a full set of the user interface components
for Longhorn. By integrating user interface (UI), documents, and media
into the next generation of interactive client applications and
experiences, Longhorn will achieve a more unified approach, as well as a
fully integrated development and user experience.

Avalon will better utilize the power of the PC throughout the graphics
stack, bringing designers directly into application development.

A major capability of Avalon is its support for XAML (Extensible
Application), which provides a one-to-one correspondence with the object
model within the presentation layer of Longhorn, with its key role being
to enable interoperation between UI authoring tools and developer tools.

Avalon will also provide built-in support for recent advancements in the
Windows OS, such as the Tablet PC and the Windows XP Media Center
Edition operating systems.

Join me next week when we talk about how to use the "run as" feature in
Windows Server 2003.

--
Posted by Marek W to Dzienniczek at 6/29/2004 08:00:35 AM

FYI - Article from CIO Magazine

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Ciekwe przemyslenia

CIO Magazine
Jun 15, 2004

Six Tips for Effective Career Development Programs

Executive Council members share their tried-and-true methods for grooming their staff.

By Martha Heller

Executive Council members share their tried-and-true methods for grooming their staff
If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times: Your people are your greatest asset, and you need to develop them with as much care as you would your systems and products. Yet, career development programs are often given short shrift by senior executives with deadlines and budgets on their minds.
Members of the CIO Executive Council, a professional organization of CIOs founded by CIO magazine, told us about their career development programs and what makes them work. Here are some guidelines for getting the most out of your human investments.


1 Walk the halls
Senior management meetings are not the right place to glean the career aspirations of your staff. "My organization is five deep. If I waited for the chain of command, I would never get the information I do by just asking people about their careers," says Samantra Sengupta, CIO of the Scotts Co. "I walk the halls a lot and sit down with people at all levels to understand their needs and desires." Based in part on staff feedback, Sengupta decided to split what was solely a managerial career path into three separate paths: traditional management, heavy technical competency with light management and architecture with no management responsibilities. The paths carry similar compensation plans but allow each person to do what he does best. Before you walk the halls, make sure you clearly understand how much flexibility HR will allow when setting up a new career development program, cautions Sengupta. "If you encourage people on your staff to give you a data dump about their career, they may believe that you will act

2 Create an integrated job model.
When Jim Burdiss became CIO of Smurfit-Stone in January 2002, there were few titles on his staff other than "systems analyst." So he put Keith Fehd, director of applications development and support, in charge of developing a program that would define paths for progression along four distinct disciplines: applications, infrastructure, business operations and management. "The program is successful because it integrates job titles with salaries, skill requirements, merit increases and our annual review process," says Burdiss. "We now have a much clearer view into the skills of our organization, and our people truly understand their growth potential."


3 Launch a publicity campaign.
Just like any major initiative, a new career development program needs a timely and effective communication plan. "It took us 14 months to build our integrated model," says Smurfit-Stone's Fehd. "If we had publicized it early or not well enough, we would have raised expectations or created uncertainty about a pretty sensitive subject."


4 Promote leaders carefully.
Successful project leaders do not necessarily make great managers, says Linda Brigance, CIO of FedEx Asia Pacific. "People tend to look at great projects and want to promote their leaders," she says. "But we need to pay close attention to how their leadership skills translate in tougher situations. Are they as successful at guiding and motivating their teammates when the going gets tough?"


5 Incorporate business training
Burdiss at Smurfit-Stone hired an outside consultant to design a "Business 101" course specifically for the IT team. With sections on the supply chain, supply and demand planning, marketing, budgeting and financials, the business course has gone a long way toward helping the IT people at Smurfit-Stone understand the business they support.


6 Use cross-training.
When Barbara Kunkel, CIO of Nixon Peabody, is out of the office, one of her direct reports is acting CIO. Her managers regularly facilitate department meetings, entry-level technical support specialists team up with seasoned staff, and office services employees intern in the IT department during the summer months. "Cross-training is a great career development tool," says Kunkel. "But it needs to be a planned activity with clearly thought-out goals, and it should provide workers with continued job enrichment opportunities once they return to their routine duties."


The Case
Moving to an open-source environment with Linux
Council Member
Marc West, SVP and CIO, Electronic ArtsThe Challenge »
Electronic Arts' website, EA.com, had grown into the fourth-largest computer games destination on the Web, with 10 million visitors playing a combined 4.5 billion minutes a month. However, as the site grew, technology spending was a disproportionately large hit on the company's bottom line. Each time EA wanted to increase the number of online game players, it had to purchase more Sun Unix servers for its Equinox-hosted data center and license more software.
With the recent launch of EA's new Club Pogo premium games, EA added another 360,000 paying subscribers with plans to double the community in the near future. West was faced with two challenges: Deliver a high-performance, high-availability online experience--and do so at a low initial and ongoing cost.
West believed that switching to a "commodity computing" architecture--using open-source Linux server software on Intel boxes instead of running Unix on Sun machines--could help EA cut its technology costs for online Web games. "Lintel" servers are "cheap, fast and disposable; investment levels are less; and if they burn out or need to be refreshed, you can manage against a shorter and less expensive asset lifecyle," West says. And with the right architecture, they can be scaled up or down in response to business-driven demand. The Execution »
It took four months to develop and pilot a website for game players to beta test. "The amount of time and level of effort was no more but no less complicated than any other technology change that a company might do," West says. "Most people would say, 'It would take me forever; I can never leave my current environment.' While it's a change, it's not that complicated."Lessons Learned »

* Choose a vendor that has experience doing these types of re-architecting efforts. "Each vendor had a cookbook that it wanted us to follow, but none of the cookbooks fit what we were trying to accomplish," West says, adding that a consortium type of approach would have been more helpful. * Allow some time to fully investigate the legal issues surrounding Linux and the SCO lawsuits. Electronic Arts did and was satisfied that it was safe to move ahead with such a large Red Hat deployment, although EA still keeps tabs on legal issues.* Have someone on staff with a deep knowledge of Linux in a distributed-computing environment rather than relying on consultants for this know-how. * Make sure you have won the hearts and minds of your applications and engineering teams. "You do cross a few career paths when you do this," West says. By asking people to switch from the "monolithic computing" world to the distributed commodity computing world, West says, "you're asking people to make a significant change in how th



http://www.cio.com/archive/061504/exchange.html

CIO Magazine
Copyright 2004 CXO Media Inc



----- CIO's Grounding Themselves in the Fundamentals -----

CIOs today tell us they are taking a step back to evaluate three primary areas:
Their role in the organization, how to develop an IT strategy that aligns with business
objectives, and how to measure and communicate the return on IT investments.

Three CIO Focus Guides are helping to ground them in these basics:
Fundamentals of the CIO Role
Strategic Planning:How to Develop and Align IT Strategy; and
IT Value:Measurement Tools and Techniques That Work.

In combination, these Focus Guides provide a blueprint for leadership as
CIOs prepare for the economic recovery.

See all the CIO Focus guides at The CIO Store
http://www.theciostore.com/

Nowosci technologiczne w Longhorn

Longhorn and Avalon
Nowa jakosc - Podsystem grafiki wektorowej- AVALON

By Bryan Muehlberger

Over the course of the last five weeks, we discussed Microsoft Windows
Storage Server 2003 and the associated benefits and technologies
associated with it. This week, we start a discussion on Microsoft's
next major release of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, which will come
packaged with a number of new technologies that you need to make sure
you know.

One of the new technologies being release with Longhorn is the new
presentation subsystem, called Avalon. Avalon is positioned as a new
graphics subsystem that serves as a foundation for Longhorn's shell.
Avalon will also come with a full set of the user interface components
for Longhorn. By integrating user interface (UI), documents, and media
into the next generation of interactive client applications and
experiences, Longhorn will achieve a more unified approach, as well as a
fully integrated development and user experience.

Avalon will better utilize the power of the PC throughout the graphics
stack, bringing designers directly into application development.

A major capability of Avalon is its support for XAML (Extensible
Application), which provides a one-to-one correspondence with the object
model within the presentation layer of Longhorn, with its key role being
to enable interoperation between UI authoring tools and developer tools.

Avalon will also provide built-in support for recent advancements in the
Windows OS, such as the Tablet PC and the Windows XP Media Center
Edition operating systems.

Join me next week when we talk about how to use the "run as" feature in
Windows Server 2003.

Trend w tworzeniu aplikacji

Zauwaza sie trend taki, ze aplikacja nie korzysta z komponentow zainstalowanych na sprzecie na ktorym pracuje np. DLL, COM, ActiveX. Raczej polega na wlasnym srodowisku uruchomieniowym (run-time). Jest to dobre z uwagi na to, ze nie wszystko ponizej warstwy aplikacyjnej (tj. system operacyjny) chodzi "jak w zegarku". Takie uniezaleznienie od warstw posrednich zainstalowanych na sprzeecie pozwala niezawodnie realizowac zamierzone funkcje aplikacji. Trend taki reprezentuja np. wirtualna maszyna Javy nie korzystajaca wcale z bibliotek Widnowsow, MS .NET Framework czy Twisted Pythona.

The New York Times > Technology > Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft

May 19, 2004
Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft
By JOHN MARKOFF

AN FRANCISCO, May 18 - Edging closer to a direct confrontation with Microsoft, Google, the Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers.

Google's software, which is expected to be introduced soon, according to several people with knowledge of the company's plans, is the clearest indication to date that the company, based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes to extend its search business to compete directly with Microsoft's control of desktop computing.

Improved technology for searching information stored on a PC will also be a crucial feature of Microsoft's long-delayed version of its Windows operating system called Longhorn. That version, which is not expected before 2006 at the earliest, will have a redesigned file system, making it possible to track and retrieve information in ways not currently possible with Windows software.

Google's move is in part a defensive one, because the company is concerned about Microsoft's ability to make searching on the Web as well as on a PC a central part of its operating system. By integrating more search functions into Windows, Microsoft could conceivably challenge Google the way it threatened, and destroyed, an earlier rival, Netscape, by incorporating Web browsing into the Windows 98 operating system.

A Google spokesman declined to comment about the new search tool.

Although Google's core business rests on huge farms of server computers that permit fast searching on the Internet, the company has already taken several steps to move beyond that business.

Last year, Google began testing a free program called the Google Deskbar that makes it possible to search the Web by entering words and phrases in a small dialog box placed in the Windows desktop taskbar at the bottom of the computer screen.

Google also sells a computer search system designed to index and retrieve information created and stored by a single organization.

There is a rich history of less-than-successful attempts to create information search tools for personal computers. In the 1980's, for example, Mitchell Kapor's On Technology developed On Location for retrieving information on Macintosh computers and Bill Gross, a prominent software developer, led a group of programmers to create Lotus Magellan for the PC.

Digital Equipment's Alta Vista search engine group also developed a search tool for data stored on desktop PC's. Today there are a number of commercial products for desktop searches like X1 and dtSearch. Moreover, both the Macintosh and Windows operating systems have file and text retrieval capabilities.

The Google software project, which is code-named Puffin and which will be available as a free download from Google's Web site, has been running internally at the company for about a year.

The project was started, in part, to prepare Google for competing with Windows Longhorn, which according to industry analysts will dispense with the need for a stand-alone browser.

The disappearance of the Web browser and the integration of both Web search and PC search into the Windows operating system could potentially marginalize Google's search engine. Google, well aware of this threat, hired a Microsoft product manager last year to oversee the Puffin project as part of its strategy to compete with Microsoft's incursion into its territory.

Microsoft has shown demonstrations of its new search technology, which emphasizes the use of natural language in queries like "Where are my vacation photos?" or "What is a firewall?" Microsoft believes that Longhorn users will no longer think about where information is stored; they will instead see a unified view of documents stored on both the Internet and on the desktop.

The looming confrontation between Microsoft and Google is coming as Microsoft prepares to introduce its own advanced Web search service, possibly later this year. The company is revising its MSN strategy and backing away from its Internet dial-up service, looking instead to get more revenue from the search advertising market that Google dominates.

Web and PC-based searching is a particularly thorny subject for Microsoft because the company's chairman, Bill Gates, first outlined the idea of "information at your fingertips" in a speech given at a computer industry trade show in 1990. Yet the company did little to innovate in the areas of Internet search or text and file searches on the PC until it discovered how profitable search had become for Google.

Google's strategy is to move quickly while Microsoft is still developing its Longhorn version of Windows, adding programs and services like its recently announced Gmail electronic mail program. The intent, say people who are aware of the company's strategy, is to lower its vulnerability to Microsoft by adding businesses that are "sticky" - in other words, businesses that create strong customer loyalty or are hard to switch away from.

Internet searching is widely seen by industry executives as a powerful commercial service, but one that is difficult to defend. It is widely presumed that Internet users who find a search service that is better than Google's will be willing to defect.

Searches for information stored on a PC, however, could offer an advertising arena that is more readily defensible. Indeed, desktop searching might be particularly valuable for Google's commercial advertisers, which may be willing to pay dearly for the ability to place targeted ads in front of personal computer users.

Such services, while they may be lucrative, will also inevitably force Google to deal with new controversies. Some privacy activists have opposed the Gmail service because they are concerned that the company is automatically extracting information from its customers' Gmail accounts.