On 2007-12-18, raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > Who uses Linux here, seriously? For serious work. I'm serious. Not > talking about Apache. But serious business word processing, no > spreadsheets, databases, programming, that sort of stuff. Real work. no yes yes > Not hobbyware. Not casual surfing of the net. Leaving aside Apache.

ray <ray@zianet.com> wrote: > > I use it fairly seriously - I used to use it quite seriously - for digital > signal processing of coherant radar signals to do target motion resolution > for a major DOD test facility. Is that serious enough? Actually, I did the > scientific software support and development for that area of the post > flight data analysis branch. Well, as long as we are talking about specific industries and not just the specific tasks we worked on, I'll mention that I've used Linux to developed software for aerospace instrumentation, medical scanning equipment, embedded automotive computers, medical billing systems, the banking industry, digital cable television equipment, and recently even video game controllers. But really, I did all that on a lark and wouldn't really call it *serious* use of Linux. ;) Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > Who uses Linux here, seriously? For serious work. I'm serious. Not > talking about Apache. But serious business word processing, > spreadsheets, databases, programming, that sort of stuff. Real work. > Not hobbyware. Not casual surfing of the net. Leaving aside Apache. > Yes I know Apache is a great Linux program. But let's leave that > aside, otherwise you're conceeding that the only serious application > in Linux is Apache. If you conceed that, I'll go away and never troll > here again. > > Seriously, who uses Linux for *serious* work? I use Linux for all of my computing needs, both work and personal. I run my business on it, including using OpenOffice to preparing financial spreadsheets, project proposals, and consulting contracts. I periodical submit my resume to potential clients as an OpenOffice doc saved in MS Word compatible format and I've never had a problem with that. I do software development on Linux, everything from kernel level programming, application layer, and website development. I and several employees use Linux to remote manage client networks. I use Linux to do my on-line banking, order inventory, and email customers. My billing and invoices are all prepared on Linux systems. Even my tenant leases were prepared on Linux. Serious enough for you? > The silence is deafening. Perhaps you should wait until after you've submitted the post before you listen for answers. :-/ Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

>Who uses Linux here, seriously? For serious work. I'm serious. Turbulence code development for plasma physics research Writing papers (Tex, emacs) The only thing at the moment from my work that I can only do on the workstation is detailed graphics, for which I need IDL (and the whole license issue for which it is easier to use our site license on our platforms). For bureaucracy I cannot use the workstation and need the laptop, since only there do I have Open Office 2.0 which seems to be the only thing that can read all these Windows filed I get from others. Of course, to _run_ my codes I need large systems. The smallest is an IBM blade cluster running some SUSE Linux, the next is an IBM regatta running something similar to AIX, and the largest so far is an IBM BlueGene running something very similar to Linux (in fact on the front end machine it is, explicitly, Linux). This machine was number 40 on the top super computers list as of last month. Any questions? -- ciao, Bruce drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

>Ah, the boundary layer, it rings a bell (took a course in rocket >science once). For us it is driven by the pressure gradient and therefore exists in the whole plasma (and does all the thermal transport). >OK. Stop. You are on #40 of the top supercomputers in the world. A >roomful of people like you would be a small room. You use Linux. I >presume you want the whole world to adopt Linux. Ergo, Linux has no >future in the real world (seriously). Q.E.F. I am one guy. There are circa 100k like me in the US, not including fields like industrial engineering which are even larger. i do academic scientific research. Without access to large systems I would stick to the problems I was working on until about 18 months ago. That means (relatively small) Linux clusters. In Germany most such small scale research happens on Linux clusters, for cost reasons alone. The only reason anyone has Windows is due to (typically clueless) University bureaucracies. These, in turn, are a lever for large corporations to fleece the taxpayer by convincing governments to give the big contracts to those same corporations. Without that you'd have very little Windows in this sector indeed (it would be hanging off IBM like it used to, not Microsoft). >Yes. If relativity says forces only can be transmitted at the speed >of light, yet Newtonian physics says that forces acting at a distance >act on the center of mass of an object, then if any forces travel >faster than light we should be getting a moment (as defined by >classical mechanics)between the apparent center of mass (as determined >by relativity) and the actual center of mass, no? Same if the object >is destroyed (a star, many light years away) yet the star's forces are >still being observed today, thought the star went extinct. Are people >looking for these forces? If not, why not? See the sci.physics FAQ which covers this. Beyond that, google for Ned Wright's cosmology tutorial (or get the link from my web site, below) >Followup question: if information cannot travel faster than light, >explain the particle-wave duality of an electron as it passes through >a diffraction grating. How can it be in two places at the same time? Also covered by the sci.physics FAQ >More questions than answers, like in Linux. I don't have time to lecture physics on the Internet... -- ciao, Bruce drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Well you're not credible or trying to be funny. What you mention > would fill a career of software development, and since you post like a > 20 year old, I doubt you've done all or any of that (in your dreams > maybe). 20. I wish. You are off by a factor of 2. I'm 40 as of last Halloween. And that list reads like a consultant who typically spends no more than a year at any one contract, which coincidently I happen to be. > But, again like my reply to Ray was, all of these > applications are "specialized". For example, digital cable TV, video > game controllers and medical scanning and possibly aerospace (the > first three I'm sure on) are coded often in "C" language, if not > assembly language. Does this mean "DOS" and other such primitive OSes > are the future? No. It just means that for historic reasons most > such hardware was programmed by assembly or C, since these languages > are extremely platform dependent as well as performance driven, and > many people have stuck to that convention, for better or worse. So > again, your answer is not acceptible. Hey, you were the one that specifically mentioned software development as a legitimate 'serious' use in your original post. Anyway, as I mentioned in another post, I also run my consulting and real estate businesses with Linux. That includes creation of all financial spreadsheets, contracts, resumes, project proposals, property leases, and invoices. All of our time tracking and accounting is done on Linux, as is our daily web surfing and email use. This is a completely Linux shop. The only copy of Windows running only any of our workstations is an old copy of Win2000 running under VMWare that I haven't even booted in months. If the point you are trying to make is that most people still use Windows for those sorts of tasks, all I can say is, 'tell us something we don't know'. If you are trying to claim that Linux cannot be used for 'serious' work like running a consulting business, well my experience says otherwise. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Because the implicit point I'm making is that for business modular and > scalable applications (meaning they are stand alone, not specialized > and everybody can use them), nobody uses LInux. This is because it > pays for everybody to adopt a single standard (.doc for text, .xls for > spreadsheets, .ppt for slides, etc). Now that OpenOffice has come > into being, this battle could have been won by them but they are 10 > years too late. > > So essentially my OP was a flame (as I trust you realized). Trust us, we all knew that from the start, but it is still a good opportunity to catalog the serious use of Linux by the COLA denizens. I trust the various readers of this thread present and future to make up their own mind about the validity of your definition of 'serious'. The more you contort your argument to rationalize away each response, the more your post becomes an effective foil to show just how viable Linux is as a general purpose business tool. Sometimes, an ineffective troll can be the best advocacy. :) Thank you. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:37:54 -0800 (PST), raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > Who uses Linux here, seriously? For serious work. I'm serious. Not > talking about Apache. But serious business word processing, > spreadsheets, databases, programming, that sort of stuff. Real work. > Not hobbyware. Not casual surfing of the net. Leaving aside Apache. > Yes I know Apache is a great Linux program. But let's leave that > aside, otherwise you're conceeding that the only serious application > in Linux is Apache. If you conceed that, I'll go away and never troll > here again. > > Seriously, who uses Linux for *serious* work? > I do, and have, for nearly ten years. I don't have a Mac, or an MS-Windows PC. (I do have an XPpro VM somewhere, haven't fired it up in a few months. Only did then to do the update, I don't even bother with that any more, it's here so if someone asks, I can say yes, I have it...) Apart from the casual websurving and such which you so cavalierly dismiss, I use it for all my computer related work. Email, IMing, gaming, business desktop, all inclusive. But console yourself with this, you may be damn near useless, but you do serve on useful function here, you make people like 7 look good. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHaEBvd90bcYOAWPYRAom/AKDXG0Mp8vOQyjzyQmgnNfAnr9z5ZQCfYR8L fMRd+9hv+Xk5hdDU7togUuU= =TkY5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock "I think quotes are very dangerous things." -- Kate Bush

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Wow! Amazing. mysql is a good SQL language though the last version I > checked, v 4.x, did not support "stored procedures" (then again, > neither does MSFT Access, which I'm working with now). MySQL is now at 6.0 and has had stored procedure support since 5.0 at least. Indeed, MySQL now has pretty much everything you expect in an enterprise DB solution, including some rather interesting clustered storage technology that even some commercial solutions don't offer. It may not be top performer in every benchmark, but it scores really high marks in read heavy environments like the typical web application. In short, it deserves at least a serious look before shelling out for Oracle, DB2, or MS-SQL. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

DFS <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote: > > As of v4.1, MySQL would let you define constraints on a column, but would > not enforce them: I suggest you take a look at a newer version such as 5.1. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

Chris V wrote: >Again I'm amazed that anyone engages this worthless POS troll. You >answer him, and he calls you a liar and claims that what you wrote >doesn't count. There is no more utterly worthless troll in this >group. And that is saying something. You're quite right... as it happens I skipped the earlier thread. -- ciao, Bruce drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

raylopez99 : > On Dec 17, 7:25 pm, ray <r...@zianet.com> wrote: >> >> I use it fairly seriously - I used to use it quite seriously - for digital >> signal processing of coherant radar signals to do target motion resolution >> for a major DOD test facility. Is that serious enough? Actually, I did the >> scientific software support and development for that area of the post >> flight data analysis branch. > > OK, I want to clarify my question because you raise a good point. > When I say "serious work" I'm talking about modular business oriented > applications and not "specialized" scientific or military > applications. Why? Because people still use FORTRAN in scientific > legacy applications and COBOL in business mainframe applications > somewhere that I'm sure has serious implications (probably the Social > Security administration uses COBOL or some variant thereof). > > So your vote doesn't count Ray, unfortunately. > > Anybody else? > > RL I wrote and use a point of sale system for an internet cafe and computer repair shop on Linux. How's that not count? -- Go work on your website. www.websterscafe.com

Handover Phist <jason@jason.websterscafe.com> wrote: > > I wrote and use a point of sale system for an internet cafe and computer > repair shop on Linux. How's that not count? Well, you wrote it on Linux, which is not mainstream, so it can't be serious. And since nothing serious is done on Linux, it can't be mainstream. If it was mainstream, you wind find serious work done on it... excuse me a minute, I think my brain just fell out. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Well I don't believe you, or, in the alternative you are so > exceptional that you're the exception that proves the rule. > > Anybody else more mainstream? Wooot! I'm outside the mainstream! My rebellious individuality has been confirmed. All you lame Windows conformists step aside... I'm too cool to hang with ya. Raylopez99 sez so. ;) Thad Note: Only mainstream people do 'serious' work evidently, so by definition my work is not. My coworkers will confirm this... I'm not a very serious worker. :P -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

raylopez99 <raylopez99@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Yes, but if you could give an answer to the above, which is unsolved, > you would win the Nobel Prize. I personally believe in Tachitrons > (particles that move faster than the speed of light). I think you meant tachyon, and no they don't come into play here. The 'spooky action at a distance' does not defy the speed of light because the 'particles' in question are part of a single hyperstrand that loops through n-planar folds and appears as particles only where it intersects this planum. Distance, like time, is a side effect of the observer's orientation to the n-planar framework, easily manipulated by... oh wait, I'm being told humanity is not cleared for that knowledge yet. Forget what I just said. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

Sinister Midget <fardblossom@gmail.com> wrote: > > Perhaps my guesswork above is wrong. Maybe he's really the young teen > he sounds like he could be. If so he has a sporting chance at becoming > somethng more than his father. Like a janitor. Or a sanitation worker. Very respectable careers in my opinion, but then that is my opinion of most honest labor. I'm very glad of the division of labor in our society that allows me to focus more time on the specific skills that I enjoy and excel at. I always tip the cleaning lady rather well, and I'm still money ahead when you consider the consulting revenue I would have lost if I did the cleaning myself. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

On 2007-12-20, thad05@tux.glaci.delete-this.com <thad05@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> claimed: > Sinister Midget <fardblossom@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Perhaps my guesswork above is wrong. Maybe he's really the young teen >> he sounds like he could be. If so he has a sporting chance at becoming >> somethng more than his father. Like a janitor. Or a sanitation worker. > > Very respectable careers in my opinion, but then that is my > opinion of most honest labor. I'm very glad of the division of > labor in our society that allows me to focus more time on the > specific skills that I enjoy and excel at. I always tip the > cleaning lady rather well, and I'm still money ahead when you > consider the consulting revenue I would have lost if I did > the cleaning myself. I have no problem with those occupations. I've done similar work in my life. But Rhonda has a big preoccupation with letters and titles. So something like "Handor Qook, Director of Toilets" would be a major plus in his book. -- Medical science *still* cannot cure stupidity. Like, say, that of raydopehead.

Gregory Shearman wrote: > Hadron wrote: >> It is the "standard" for many companies though. > > Which one? Office 2007? 2008? 2003? 2000? Besides the fact there's no Office 2008, it generally doesn't matter since in the real world (where cola wacks seem not to fit) the entire company is on the same version of Office, and [haven't you heard?] most other firms worldwide are also on the same version, or the next most recent one. For instance, the database systems I develop import from and export to outside vendors and firms every single day: it comes in via Excel (I never even know what version created it), or .cvs, or .xml or .txt, and it goes out in the same various formats. Not once in 12 years of developing MS Office systems have I been stymied by version compatibility problems (stymied in the sense of having to keep multiple versions of Excel or Access running, or being forced to manually intervene to deal with compatibility issues, or forced to rewrite lots of code to handle other formats).

On 2007-12-20, Gregory Shearman <ZekeGregory@netscape.net> wrote: > The fact that Linux distributions come with a selection of databases. > > On windows you have a choice of databases... if you are willing to pay extra > for them. Uhm...MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, MaxDB, and BerkelyDB are readily availalble for free for Windows. Windows users seem to have plenty of choice in databases, free and non-free.

The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote: > > It's worth noting that MySQL is version 5.0.51 as well. > Granted, this looks like a payware variant -- although > one can download it for a 30-day free trial. One can > also download the source and compile it oneself. Actually, I thought it was at 5.1 with a 6.0 dev branch and a dual licensed enterprise version. I think you only have to pay for it if you are bundling it within your own product (i.e. embedded product or turnkey server) and it is free for the usual in-house use. Just my memory from the last time I looked over the license, and my memory could be wrong or out of date, so please do read the license yourself if you decide to use it. Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.

Kelsey Bjarnason <kbjarnason@gmail.com> wrote: > > Say what? Are you retarded? It's but one of many things. Postfix and > Exim, to name a couple more. Postgres and MySQL. bind and any of a > hatful of other DNS options. dcc. amavis. The list goes on (and on and > on and on) and that's just a tiny fraction, server-side. Similarly, there is a pile of middleware and enterprise business apps that build on the LAMP stack and Java technology etc. I've personally worked on Linux systems that handle billions of dollars in financial transactions and others that manage employee workflow for fortune 100 companies. And that is just the server side. On the client side I've seen Linux used for narrowly tasked workstations in massive call centers, network management stations for enterprise networks, and development stations for almost every conceivable class of software. But none of that is 'serious' use I guess. Yeah, those big corporate customers are into Linux just for the laughs. ;) Thad -- Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had all the ingredients on the label.