Windows XP SP2 is here... what you need to do

[Asher]

I've no idea, I use Cygwin at home and Hummingbird at work.

[Ted Striker]

I'm surprised your boys haven't made one yet, considering all the pimping they do for Linux, you would think an X server would come in handy. Espcially all of the installers have a cute GUI on them (like for Websphere and DB2).

[Asher]

You'd think so, as it would make sense. A lot of things IBM does confuses the hell out of me.

The whole software organization is a mess. They've bought like 17 software companies in the past year and are trying to merge them all into our existing product lines.

[Ted Striker]

Yeah, like when they release their own Apache.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Asher


The whole software organization is a mess. They've bought like 17 software companies in the past year and are trying to merge them all into our existing product lines.

Whoahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!


Any notable ones worth mentioning?

[Ted Striker]

I just saw they donated Cloudscape to Apache, pretty cool move.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Whoahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Any notable ones worth mentioning?

They've all been public, just a lot of "no name" companies that do a lot for like business modelling software. Most of the companies were smaller ones with < 70 employees that IBM was one of the primary venture capitalists for, and then once they turned out a good product, IBM buys them up.

It was 17 since 2001, btw: http://news.com.com/IBM+buys+into+ap...3-5288470.html

The purchase of Cyanea, which represents the 17th company that IBM's software group has bought since 2001, is consistent with IBM's plan to build out a broad set of tools for building, running and managing business applications, said John Swainson, IBM's vice president of worldwide software sales. Swainson recently took on the head software sales job after leading the WebSphere division.

"We are always making buy vs. build decisions about how we can extend our portfolio," said Swainson.

Swainson noted that application management--a market with several smaller, niche providers--is an area where IBM wants a full set of offerings that span older CICS and IMS mainframe-based transaction systems, along with WebSphere, which runs on Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems.

Earlier this year IBM acquired Candle, an 18-year-old company that also sells application management tools. Chong and the Cyanea team have been given the task of consolidating the Cyanea tools with those from Candle and the Tivoli monitoring tools, Swainson said.

[Natalinasmpf]

99% of the time it's a weird dependency error,

Wait, they use RPM's.

No wonder.

You might try what Linux was built for: compilation by source. Nothing easier than ./configure && make && make install.

Longhorn.

Like "Trustworthy Computing", that Orwellian corporate scheme? I sure want to be up to date with Big Brother computing!

Many recent games run on my Linux box right now. Not an entire majority, but enough.

I can't afford XP, don't want ME, so Linux is my only choice. Not that I'd want XP anyway. I can concede right now, that Linux isn't the best choice right now for a desktop, and won't be for a few more years, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have a future.

[Atahualpa]

Maybe a stupid question, but SP1 is a requirement for the installation of SP2, or does SP2 contain SP1?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Maybe a stupid question, but SP1 is a requirement for the installation of SP2, or does SP2 contain SP1?

SP2 includes SP1.

[Atahualpa]

thx

[Natalinasmpf]

So Asher, when 2008 rolls around, you'd agree to install that Orwellian motherboard that on a hardware level restricts and redirects your information flow, in integration with Longhorn, possibly with wide range for both corporate and government abuse it in conjunction with the Patriot Act right?

[Asher]

I think it's fairly obvious you've no idea what TCPA is.

I'm using a TCPA 2.0 chip already on my ThinkPad, and I have only great things to say about it.

It doesn't redirect my information flow, it helps me protect it.

You've been reading too much Slashdot.

[Natalinasmpf]

Its not slashdot. Seems a rather reputable source to me.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Large space for corporate abuse, locking out small programmers, protecting the large corporate base, restricting innovation from smaller companie, an Orwellian scheme....

Oh sure, it protects data, but only the current data they want to protect, Microsoft's, but smaller companies' software won't be allowed to run, later on, a huge capacity for that.

easy for Microsoft and the music industry to control what players will work at all with new releases, it will be harder for you to escape. Control of media player software is so important that the EU antitrust authorities are proposing to penalise Microsoft for its anticompetitive behaviour by compelling it to unbundle Media Player, or include competing players in Windows. TC will greatly increase the depth and scope of media control.

"We don't like this new competitor. Lets lock him out!"

They don't exactly say that, but mass room for abuse.

[Asher]

It's the Slashdot crowd, and I've read that joke of an article a long time ago.

Believe it if you want to.

The author is a notorious anti-IP nutjob with an obvious bias. The entire article revolves around "what ifs" and "this is now possible".

It doesn't mention that TCPA ships disabled by default, and it's written in the very spec itself that a user needs to be able to disable it in the BIOS.

TCPA exists for corporations who don't want their classified data leaving their network, for people who enjoy having hardware-based security (public-key cryptography with the keys & cryptographic engine on a dedicated TCPA chip), etc. That's the spirit of TCPA.

That's why virtually every tech company is part of it, because it will help users actually make their PCs secure.

This bull**** article is fear mongering. Especially the preposterous idea that MS has to okay all software running on your computer (so they can lock competitors out). Did it ever occur to you that consumers simply would not upgrade to software like that? Did it ever occur to you that even Bush's administration would not allow such blatant anti-trust breaches? Did it ever occur to you that the very notion of MS being able to do that is in violation of the TCPA spec?