... Not to mention that when you vote on paper you do not get a receipt of your vote so you can check later if your vote is registered correctly. I'd for one would like to be able to pull up a receipt after voting that tells me who I voted for, so in case of doubt we can pull all receipts together and do a manual recount on paper anyway.
I would welcome the same scrutiny on paper-based voting.
Like I said, I have seen this paper-based voing scrutiny and was not impressed. At most, they were happy that by the end of the day they had still the same amount of ballots as in the beginning, but that was for some people even optional. And if ballots go missing, how sure are you all votes are counted?
Not that electronic voting is not open to manipulation, but you would cancel out the manipulation because of apathy with the process for random people who are called upon to perform the counting, or manipulation done by obviously biased people because of their political links.
I have done counting on paper ballots, and don't assume that this is in any way more correct. In the end you are working with people, and over a day of managing voters and counting votes you develop leaders and followers, and most of the time the leaders are affiliated with candidates anyway.
When it comes to government workers, only this part of your opinion is true, and only because they want to keep receiving the paycheck.
I'm one of a few contractors working in between government workers. My predecessor got kicked out because he adapted to the life the regular employees were living: 7 hour days, long coffee and cigarette breaks, long lunch breaks, lot of bitching and no work done.
The problem is: most of it you can do in Linux without any problem. But the issue is that there is no single point of configuration, and it takes alot of manually setting up.
Linux is free as in beer, but when it comes to setting up an equivalent of a forest and domain, and attaching desktops to it with the features you mention, I cannot see how you would be able to do that in less than a day without preparation. Setting up an AD environment including desktops and laptops with suitable policies would take half a day, with half of that spent on looking at the installation progress bar.
Windows isn't cheap in licensing, but I don't think that Linux is currently cheaper if you need three expensive Linux consultants to do the same one MCSE can do in one day, and continue needing them to do simple tasks as adding a new machine to the domain.
Microsoft's documentation may be bug ridden, but at least it is instantly available, easily searched and covers all their products.
I've had the chance to work with other closed-source and opensource vendors, and none of them come even near the amount of documentation that is readily available on their website. Veritas' documentation just lacks the bugs their software has, and CA never heard about documentation.
I am living proof that it is possible, but that was right in the internet bubble, when I got media attention for designing a website and was hired as a web designer. I learned programming Perl and PHP on the job, together with basic sysadmin and this experience let me apply for a job as servicedesk employee, get more experience doing sysadmin stuff, getting my MCSE and ending up being a consultant, coÃrdinating 5 people in releasing software packages over 4000 machines working in a bank and insurance environment. And this within 10 years.
I suspect however that if you don't have any experience, you'll have a tough time getting a sysadmin position. Try to find a position as service desk calltaker, study hard on various certification exams and then go for junior sysadmin positions.
But remember employers will favour degree+experience over just experience... And in a tough economy with an overflow of available IT people with degrees, you score low.
Even OSX has its shares of holes and bugs, and none of the other will be considered fit for executive usage on their laptops.
Microsoft could have fixed lots of it, and has. The problem is that - i love car analogies - their type of car is by far the most popular, has the most aftermarket gadgets and can run on any surface without much hassle - if you have enough cubic inches. The downside is that too many people do too many stupid things with it, and too many people know too much of the ins and outs of the engine and suspension, to cause trouble.
Currently I don't see much business shifting to Mac, because many of the business' applications don't work out of the box on mac. Even many intranet based applications are foolishly only supported on IE.
66% of all sold computers with a price tag over $1000 last month were macs, but which other (re)seller is selling $1000 pc's by the droves? I mean, in the range of $40000 and more expensive cars, BMW is market leader, but does that mean you see really alot of BMW's?
It is Big Brother, but according to the article it is only limited to students who ended up at Truancy court. To choose between having an option to continue school life under supervision, or spend your days in juvenile detention, I might just take the first one...
I can completely follow this. I myself am also into racing, and thinking about buying and building a race car, but...
I have a few other passions. One of them is being an EMT. I did the necessary training, and now I have been an EMT for 5 years. It gives a nice perspective on what "urgent" in IT means:).
Aside of that, I like electronics. I also like all the electronics and lights that go with an ambulance, police car or fire engine. This interest grew into me in such a way that I am currently also making a little profit out of selling lightbars and installing emergency vehicles.
IT started out as a hobby for me. I am very happy that I could turn my hobby into my job. But one should always have a hobby!
Thinking that outside of IT the world is a better place, is however, completely untrue. The grass might be greener on the other side, but that's because there's more shit over there;)
Going with the race car theme, I would not surprised that with the money I make from being freelance IT consultant, I would be able to develop a succesful racing shop. Actually, I know someone who already did that! He's my supplier of racing parts!:D
I don't understand this logic. We still use XP too and "prohibit" Vista installs too, just as "prohibiting" Linux or Windows 2000 and Windows NT installs. The standard is currently XP and as long as we have not started migrating people to Vista, the default image for any new computer in the organisation will be XP.
If your company is Fortune 10, chances are that they just recently (less than 3y) switched to XP.
Your mileage may vary. I have a P4 2Ghz 1GB RAM machine that runs Vista as fast as it's 2Ghz centrino duo 1GB RAM cousin. Only difference: With Vista I get more eye candy and a shorter startup time.
> Since Microsoft wanted people to upgrade, i decided to given in and upgraded to Linux.
I tried that. I had Vista, and KDE4 came along. I installed it on my laptop (2Ghz, 1GB RAM, Vista speed index of 2) which ran Vista 'okay' with Aero, to be found in KDE4 in which my graphics card had not enough power to offer me all the promised eye candy KDE4 has.
Now running Vista SP1 again; nothing to complain about. But then again, I have been using Vista since beta 2, and still use XP on a daily basis on a ThinkPad T60 with centrino duo. I don't see much speed difference.
Interesting. I tried Kubuntu the other day with KDE4, and noticed that on a machine which runs Vista without much worry (P4, 1GB RAM, speed index of 2), KDE4 could not give me similar graphic results.
True, but in both scenario's, peoples lives are truly at stake: or people don't get the necessary scans they need, or the reactor says boom and people get a hell of a scan they don't need. Yes, the decision of the CNSC might be politically influenced, but it is an official body that is pointing out faults in the system. I'd hate to be on that board and being able to say "told you so!", because indeed there are flaws in the system...
I'm going with the rest of the sensible flow: - How did this reactor end up being responsible for 2/3rds of all medical isotope supplies? Hardly redundant planning! - How sensible is it to ignore an official safeguard body which job is to guard nuclear safety? It's not!
Fact is, the firewire protocol allows faster throughput than an ordinary serial MIDI cable, and that's important when you need to have 24 synthesizers squeak at the exact same time.
You don't hear it on violins and other instruments, but you do hear latency on percussion when using an ordinary MIDI cable and 8 percussion midi channels.
Maybe I've expressed myself with the wrong words. Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker.
Forgot to say: Yamaha's mLAN is also supported by a wide consortium of music equipment manufacturers, ánd mLAN is already in the open since August of this year:)
Although Gibson's ethernet sounds nice, I sincerely hope that the technically - at first sight - better mLAN will prevail. But we all know what happened with Betamax...:)
Yamaha developed a similar technology that could transport audio and midi-signals, going over firewire.
http://www.yamaha.com/proaudio/products/system_m la n.htm
It's an interesting way to hook up sequencers, samplers, synthesizers and sound cards to each other without having to plug in audio and midi wires, and worry about magnetic interference.
mLan can do about 100 separate channels of music (good enough for a Dolby 5.1 system?:) and 16x256 channels of MIDI data. Throughput is up to 200Mbps, so you don't have to worry about MIDI latency again:)
OK, I know that software isn't like a car, but i find it disturbing that companies are trying to make it illegal to reverse-engineer their products, while the first thing competing companies in the car business do when for example Ford releases a new car, is buying like 12 cars of the new model, driving them around, and totally take them apart and re-assemble them again!
Reverse-engineering is something that every company uses, hi-tech or not, so why would it be illegal in the software business?
JPEG is 32bit color (at least, there aren't any boundaries like a maximum of 256 colors) but is lossy. Borders aren't as crisp as on GIF. Therefore, JPEG is a format that's generally used for pictures.
GIF only supports max 256 colors, but the image's more crisp. GIF is therefore more used in logo's, text, and big objects. Generally the stuff you make on your computer and doesn't have much blending between colors.
(taken from http://artpacks.acid.org/pub/png/png intro.html) PNG really has three main advantages over GIF: alpha channels (variable transparency), gamma correction (cross-platform control of image brightness), and two-dimensional interlacing (a method of progressive display). PNG also compresses better than GIF in almost every case, but the difference is generally only around 5% to 25%, not a large enough factor to encourage folks to switch on that basis alone. One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations;
This seems as a heaven's gift to me for all those "security through obscurity doesn't work" advocates. We know they're right, but this event - if it is entirely true, and gets headlined in many media - would certainly help management understand that something might be wrong with their perception of how to handle security.
Surely, this event won't mean that suddenly every company will switch to an open source solution, but i firmly believe that this event is one of the many steps that happen in the evolution of perception of software and its uses.
This won't result in a sudden increase in the usage of Linux, FreeBSD or any other open source solution... It's just all matter of evolution...
... If it is solid... I mean, this sounds too good to be true, not?
Anyway, i'm on my way telling my manager "told you so!":)
The article points out that Linux Sales are in the lift. This means it doesn't include ftp'ed installations, or multiple installations of one bought Linux distribution. One might wonder how many servers are actually running Linux.
On the contrary, IDG might as well define Linux as an server OS, including sales for Linux sets that are used as a desktop system.
Is there a guess about the actual usage of server Operating Systems, used in businesses?
Slashdot Mirror
... Not to mention that when you vote on paper you do not get a receipt of your vote so you can check later if your vote is registered correctly. I'd for one would like to be able to pull up a receipt after voting that tells me who I voted for, so in case of doubt we can pull all receipts together and do a manual recount on paper anyway.
I would welcome the same scrutiny on paper-based voting.
Like I said, I have seen this paper-based voing scrutiny and was not impressed. At most, they were happy that by the end of the day they had still the same amount of ballots as in the beginning, but that was for some people even optional. And if ballots go missing, how sure are you all votes are counted?
Not that electronic voting is not open to manipulation, but you would cancel out the manipulation because of apathy with the process for random people who are called upon to perform the counting, or manipulation done by obviously biased people because of their political links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia
Seems it works out for them. I wouldn't mind.
I have done counting on paper ballots, and don't assume that this is in any way more correct. In the end you are working with people, and over a day of managing voters and counting votes you develop leaders and followers, and most of the time the leaders are affiliated with candidates anyway.
So, personally, I'd prefer Estonian style voting.
Employees are more loyal
When it comes to government workers, only this part of your opinion is true, and only because they want to keep receiving the paycheck.
I'm one of a few contractors working in between government workers. My predecessor got kicked out because he adapted to the life the regular employees were living: 7 hour days, long coffee and cigarette breaks, long lunch breaks, lot of bitching and no work done.
The problem is: most of it you can do in Linux without any problem. But the issue is that there is no single point of configuration, and it takes alot of manually setting up.
Linux is free as in beer, but when it comes to setting up an equivalent of a forest and domain, and attaching desktops to it with the features you mention, I cannot see how you would be able to do that in less than a day without preparation. Setting up an AD environment including desktops and laptops with suitable policies would take half a day, with half of that spent on looking at the installation progress bar.
Windows isn't cheap in licensing, but I don't think that Linux is currently cheaper if you need three expensive Linux consultants to do the same one MCSE can do in one day, and continue needing them to do simple tasks as adding a new machine to the domain.
Microsoft's documentation may be bug ridden, but at least it is instantly available, easily searched and covers all their products.
I've had the chance to work with other closed-source and opensource vendors, and none of them come even near the amount of documentation that is readily available on their website. Veritas' documentation just lacks the bugs their software has, and CA never heard about documentation.
... but I would advise against it.
I am living proof that it is possible, but that was right in the internet bubble, when I got media attention for designing a website and was hired as a web designer. I learned programming Perl and PHP on the job, together with basic sysadmin and this experience let me apply for a job as servicedesk employee, get more experience doing sysadmin stuff, getting my MCSE and ending up being a consultant, coÃrdinating 5 people in releasing software packages over 4000 machines working in a bank and insurance environment. And this within 10 years.
I suspect however that if you don't have any experience, you'll have a tough time getting a sysadmin position. Try to find a position as service desk calltaker, study hard on various certification exams and then go for junior sysadmin positions.
But remember employers will favour degree+experience over just experience... And in a tough economy with an overflow of available IT people with degrees, you score low.
I feel that's an oversimplification...
Even OSX has its shares of holes and bugs, and none of the other will be considered fit for executive usage on their laptops.
Microsoft could have fixed lots of it, and has. The problem is that - i love car analogies - their type of car is by far the most popular, has the most aftermarket gadgets and can run on any surface without much hassle - if you have enough cubic inches. The downside is that too many people do too many stupid things with it, and too many people know too much of the ins and outs of the engine and suspension, to cause trouble.
Currently I don't see much business shifting to Mac, because many of the business' applications don't work out of the box on mac. Even many intranet based applications are foolishly only supported on IE.
66% of all sold computers with a price tag over $1000 last month were macs, but which other (re)seller is selling $1000 pc's by the droves? I mean, in the range of $40000 and more expensive cars, BMW is market leader, but does that mean you see really alot of BMW's?
It is Big Brother, but according to the article it is only limited to students who ended up at Truancy court. To choose between having an option to continue school life under supervision, or spend your days in juvenile detention, I might just take the first one...
I can completely follow this. I myself am also into racing, and thinking about buying and building a race car, but...
:).
;)
:D
I have a few other passions. One of them is being an EMT. I did the necessary training, and now I have been an EMT for 5 years. It gives a nice perspective on what "urgent" in IT means
Aside of that, I like electronics. I also like all the electronics and lights that go with an ambulance, police car or fire engine. This interest grew into me in such a way that I am currently also making a little profit out of selling lightbars and installing emergency vehicles.
IT started out as a hobby for me. I am very happy that I could turn my hobby into my job. But one should always have a hobby!
Thinking that outside of IT the world is a better place, is however, completely untrue. The grass might be greener on the other side, but that's because there's more shit over there
Going with the race car theme, I would not surprised that with the money I make from being freelance IT consultant, I would be able to develop a succesful racing shop. Actually, I know someone who already did that! He's my supplier of racing parts!
I wish my work XP would boot faster than my personal Vista :D
I don't understand this logic. We still use XP too and "prohibit" Vista installs too, just as "prohibiting" Linux or Windows 2000 and Windows NT installs. The standard is currently XP and as long as we have not started migrating people to Vista, the default image for any new computer in the organisation will be XP.
If your company is Fortune 10, chances are that they just recently (less than 3y) switched to XP.
Don't head over to Adobe, then! You might need to install their proprietary extension!
Your mileage may vary. I have a P4 2Ghz 1GB RAM machine that runs Vista as fast as it's 2Ghz centrino duo 1GB RAM cousin. Only difference: With Vista I get more eye candy and a shorter startup time.
:)
No, no fat ladies for me
I didn't make myself clear enough: I installed Kubuntu's Hardy Alpha with KDE4.
> Since Microsoft wanted people to upgrade, i decided to given in and upgraded to Linux.
I tried that. I had Vista, and KDE4 came along. I installed it on my laptop (2Ghz, 1GB RAM, Vista speed index of 2) which ran Vista 'okay' with Aero, to be found in KDE4 in which my graphics card had not enough power to offer me all the promised eye candy KDE4 has.
Now running Vista SP1 again; nothing to complain about. But then again, I have been using Vista since beta 2, and still use XP on a daily basis on a ThinkPad T60 with centrino duo. I don't see much speed difference.
Interesting. I tried Kubuntu the other day with KDE4, and noticed that on a machine which runs Vista without much worry (P4, 1GB RAM, speed index of 2), KDE4 could not give me similar graphic results.
I haven't tried Compiz on this machine...
True, but in both scenario's, peoples lives are truly at stake: or people don't get the necessary scans they need, or the reactor says boom and people get a hell of a scan they don't need. Yes, the decision of the CNSC might be politically influenced, but it is an official body that is pointing out faults in the system. I'd hate to be on that board and being able to say "told you so!", because indeed there are flaws in the system...
I'm going with the rest of the sensible flow:
- How did this reactor end up being responsible for 2/3rds of all medical isotope supplies? Hardly redundant planning!
- How sensible is it to ignore an official safeguard body which job is to guard nuclear safety? It's not!
You've never experienced MIDI lag, eh? ;)
Fact is, the firewire protocol allows faster throughput than an ordinary serial MIDI cable, and that's important when you need to have 24 synthesizers squeak at the exact same time.
You don't hear it on violins and other instruments, but you do hear latency on percussion when using an ordinary MIDI cable and 8 percussion midi channels.
Maybe I've expressed myself with the wrong words. Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker.
Forgot to say: Yamaha's mLAN is also supported by a wide consortium of music equipment manufacturers, ánd mLAN is already in the open since August of this year :)
:)
Although Gibson's ethernet sounds nice, I sincerely hope that the technically - at first sight - better mLAN will prevail. But we all know what happened with Betamax...
Yamaha developed a similar technology that could transport audio and midi-signals, going over firewire.
m la n.htm
:) and 16x256 channels of MIDI data. Throughput is up to 200Mbps, so you don't have to worry about MIDI latency again :)
http://www.yamaha.com/proaudio/products/system_
It's an interesting way to hook up sequencers, samplers, synthesizers and sound cards to each other without having to plug in audio and midi wires, and worry about magnetic interference.
mLan can do about 100 separate channels of music (good enough for a Dolby 5.1 system?
Hi
OK, I know that software isn't like a car, but i find it disturbing that companies are trying to make it illegal to reverse-engineer their products, while the first thing competing companies in the car business do when for example Ford releases a new car, is buying like 12 cars of the new model, driving them around, and totally take them apart and re-assemble them again!
Reverse-engineering is something that every company uses, hi-tech or not, so why would it be illegal in the software business?
JPEG is 32bit color (at least, there aren't any boundaries like a maximum of 256 colors) but is lossy. Borders aren't as crisp as on GIF. Therefore, JPEG is a format that's generally used for pictures.
GIF only supports max 256 colors, but the image's more crisp. GIF is therefore more used in logo's, text, and big objects. Generally the stuff you make on your computer and doesn't have much blending between colors.
(taken from http://artpacks.acid.org/pub/png/png intro.html) PNG really has three main advantages over GIF: alpha channels (variable transparency), gamma correction (cross-platform control of image brightness), and two-dimensional interlacing (a method of progressive display). PNG also compresses better than GIF in almost every case, but the difference is generally only around 5% to 25%, not a large enough factor to encourage folks to switch on that basis alone. One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations;
This seems as a heaven's gift to me for all those "security through obscurity doesn't work" advocates. We know they're right, but this event - if it is entirely true, and gets headlined in many media - would certainly help management understand that something might be wrong with their perception of how to handle security.
Surely, this event won't mean that suddenly every company will switch to an open source solution, but i firmly believe that this event is one of the many steps that happen in the evolution of perception of software and its uses.
This won't result in a sudden increase in the usage of Linux, FreeBSD or any other open source solution... It's just all matter of evolution...
... If it is solid... I mean, this sounds too good to be true, not?
Anyway, i'm on my way telling my manager "told you so!" :)
The article points out that Linux Sales are in the lift. This means it doesn't include ftp'ed installations, or multiple installations of one bought Linux distribution. One might wonder how many servers are actually running Linux.
On the contrary, IDG might as well define Linux as an server OS, including sales for Linux sets that are used as a desktop system.
Is there a guess about the actual usage of server Operating Systems, used in businesses?