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Linux Going Mainstream
Gossi writes "The BBC is carrying an excellent overview of the growing use of Linux, by many different fields. The article says it all, really, and is probably something you should show your Boss."
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Open eh? It asks that you either have Quicktime, Realplayer, or Windows media player to watch the commercial. Even though I have mplayer setup for such tasks, it still gives me ther error that the "proper" plugin is not installed.
There is the ASCCI ART(?) version available:
Open on Linux boy, close-up on his face, while you hear Ali's voice. Cut to boy sitting in front of old black and white television with old Mohammed Ali fight footage playing.
Male voice: Never. Never make me no underdog. And never talk about who's gonna stop me. Well, there ain't nobody gonna stop me. I must be the greatest. I shook up the world. (Inaudible background voices) I shook up the world. I shook up the world. I shook up the world.
You hear the television being turned off. Cut to Mohammed Ali sitting across from Linux boy.
Ali: Shake things up.
Cut to Linux boy face. Cut to full screen shot of Ali and boy. Cut to shot behind boy, facing Ali.
Ali: Shake up the world.
Cut to Linux boy, slight smile.
Title: Linux
The Future is Open
IBM
LaTeX was fine - I was a little disappointed that after decades of popularity there was still not even the simplest wysiwyg apps for it.
Yeah - it's amazing that nobody has thought of writing one.
Hmm, well, as per recent /. story, Dell PCs start
at $319, less than half that $799. That gets you
2.4 GHz CPU which is prolly on par with that 1 GHz
G4 in an eMac (yes G4's are faster but not that
much of a difference). You get same 128 Mb RAM,
and 40 Gb HDD in both. There may be a few places
where eMac is clearly better or there may not be
(too lazy to compare thoroughly). Oh, and this
eMac has got a 17" CRT so we add $100 to Dell's
price. In the end the Mac barely gets out of being
twice as expensive as a PC.
Macs are quite competitive in notebooks though.
Most of your problems take just a tiny little bit of effort to overcome.
Excel beats the ever-loving crap out of Kspread.
Have you tried Open Office?
None of the software works well together - Mozilla and Konq have no idea what software to launch when you download a file.
Yeah. If you're that fussed, tell Mozilla what to use by setting the mime type actions under preferences.
And why do I need to be root to burn a disk? Or to install the simplest apps?
That's called security. And if you really want, you can give your user the rights to do those things.
Rather than sitting around going "bitch, bitch, bitch, Linux doesn't work like Windows", why don't you take your questions to google and get the solutions.
If even that is too much effort for you, stay with Windows. Enjoy MyDoom.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
> Corporate middle management is not interested in
> facts. They are not interested in improvement.
> They are not interested in efficiency that is not
> accomplished by either making people shovel shit
> or firing people.
> Middle management seeks to maintain the status
> quo, and to do nothing unless it is absolutely
> necessary. Incompetence, bankruptcy, waste,
> stupidity, anything is better than trying and
> failing.
I'll call bullshit on this.
Corporate middle management (MM) now faces the repercussions of CIOs and senior management telling shareholders "we'll reduce the cost of IT by 20/30/50% in the next 12 months". Middle management then gets told "do this or die"; either they slash their costs by A LOT within 12 months or they're out the door. Whatever was the case in the past, MM is now *all* about efficiency.
A sizeable chunk of MM has worked out "Hmm, if we keep doing what we have been doing, we'll keep getting the same results, so now we have to try something different". In many cases, they don't yet know what "something different" is or should be, but they are on the lookout for something - anything - that means they won't be leading their team into the unemployment office in 12 months' time.
**Now** is the best possible time to go to these MM guys with your ideas.
I'll give you an example: want to put e.g. Postfix/procmail in front of Internet-facing MS Exchange servers and use it to (a) de-evil incoming email with evil HTML content such as @ signs in URLs, and (b) filter out email from known open relays? Collect some figures on how much time/money has been lost in your org fighting spam and the latest HTML-based email virus, drop those figures on your MM's desk along with the costs of implementing your solution. If you do it right, your MM will realise, if it's done right, it'll slash his costs hugely and maybe get him a few percent closer to keeping his (and your) job intact.
The trick is to present data that makes sense to your MM. Don't tell him "we'll block 13432 incoming spam messages per day"; tell him "we'll block 13432 incoming spam messages per day that cost us $2300 per day in storage costs. My solution will cost us $3000 to implement, so it's paid for itself by the 2nd day". He has to talk in terms of financial outcomes, because that's what his boss wants; if you want to get your ideas across, you have to do the same.
Many techos, and I've done this myself in the past, present their ideas in such a way that it comes across as "It'd be really cool if we did X, and there might even be some benefits for the company if we did it. We're not quite sure exactly what X will cost, or how long it's gonna take to do it, but we should do it anyway because my geek buddy did it and he's really smart". It only took about 300 rejections before I worked out that this approach never works unless your boss has a goatee...