No problem, here in Europe we've got the Volks Polo for a start. I'm not sure if you guys in the sates get the same models... Also, checkout the latest Volks, Merc & BMW 'super efficient' models - low rolling resistance, engine cut-off on coast and at red lights...in 'real world' driving, (not EPA bullshit - yup, I'm an avid Car & Driver reader too), they beat the shit out of the Prius.
Urm...like the fuel it burns? Remember, the Prius is not, unless you hack it, a 'plug-in'...it uses fuel like any other car, and more than some. Also, it's hard to recycle (battery pack) and performs poorly in a crash. So, not really a good role model then.
Of course, the electricity to recharge the cells is mostly generated by coal-fired power stations. Damn...
The sad fact is, (and yes, I mean 'sad' - I have kids, so I'm concerned about the future of the planet, which has visibly gone even further to shit in my lifetime), that hydrocarbon fuels are still the cheapest and LEAST polluting of all the options for personal transportation... If you talk to the non-nutjobs, the best plan seems to be hydrogen and electricity produced by nuclear power, but, of course, we can't say that in public...
Yippee, back to the mainframe! I wonder if I still have my old MVS and CICS manuals in the garage...
I think we have the virtualisation technology we need - in fact we've had it for a long time. I just don't see massive adoption happening until there's a fat, cheap and secure pipe everywhere... Until then, I'll stick with my laptop, and home PC, and server, and think my kids will too. OK salesforce.com works, but it's still peanuts compared to the PC users worldwide - and what do people connect to salesforce.com with? Not VT22Os, methinks...
You're right - let's do what we can, with what we've got. But at the same time, the rush to convert to so-called energy-efficient, 'sustainable' and/or renewables has already gotten out of hand.
The crazy pork-loaded policy of subsidising turning feedstuff into ethanol is already distorting world food prices and policies, causing harm to the poor.
The Toyota Prius (pious?) uses more fuel than a good small diesel car, and is less functional. In fact, you'd be doing more good for the planet if you just bought a good, recent used small car. (The pollution the ships cause when transporting the cars to market is massive). But hey, plenty of LA stars have a Prius, (and maybe also a Hummer, and a Ferrari...)
What we need is more information on the end-to-end impact, so we can make informed decisions, not marketing waffle.
You're partly right - as I've noted before, Vista is a bit of a 'gift that keeps on giving' here, for anti-Ms folks. Noticed you got modded up, tho' so things are not quite that bad... Perhaps people, (well, the non-shrill and abusive ones, anyway), are entitled to be a little sour after so much money spent, and so many broken promises.
Don't forget that many of the diehard FOSS, LAMP etc fans here are also forced to use Ms prducts on a daily basis - either for their own work, or for support. They, like me, don't like it when it's broken and you can't just nip into the source to find the problem and perhaps avoid or fix it... Or download an alternative product, or write your own...
Also, please note that there's a big difference between one person having something working OK, compared to many people experiencing a similar problem. I would imagine that if all Vista users were experiencing this kind of issue, then the cause would have been found and fixed by now. Just because everything is working, (or seems to be, or problem is not noticed...), for most people, it does not mean that there is no problem for some people, indeed sometimes a significant number of them...
I've given up trying to install Linux on an old laptop I was going to turn into a media centre. Just keeps crashing and can't get the screen drivers etc. Does this mean that ALL Linux is crap? Of course not... Does the parent post mean that Vista is rubbish? Of course not. But it's another sign that it's as not as robust as it should have been given the resources available to the authors.
Where I live, (France) already happens. Water consumption is metered, and includes a charge for treatment costs as well. Common throughout Europe. So yup, the more you shit, shave and shower, the more you pay...
A young banker is taken down to the marina for lunch on his boss's boat.
His boss shows him around the magnificant vessel, and then waves his hand around the port...
"Over there are my fellow board-members' yachts, on the right there, that's where ours lawyers ones are, and straight ahead you have the ones belongings to the partners from our auditors..."
The young guy asks, "excuse me, but where are our clients' boats?"
Agree with the emotion, but reality is different - for a reason. Has Sarbanes-Oxley 'worked'? The jury is still out... SOX was designed to prevent another Enron-style meltdown, but look what's happening in the subprime mortgage market. Billions wiped out, but 'nobody is to blame'...
As pointed out in other posts, corporate officers can be directly held liable for actions where they knowingly break the law. OK, they often get out of it, but that's more a fault of the legal system than the letter of the law.
Now, regarding the scope of responsibility of corporate officers, there's a big difference between bosses knowingly breaking the rules / law, (aka Enron et al), and simple incompetence. When I was running my own IT company, should I have been personnally liable for every screwup of my team? Especially when said screwups were a result of not following clear policies and procedures?
The bottom line? We lost, (I walked away from), plenty of business where we were 'too expensive'. I know why - those policies and procedures (and internal and external audits) cost money. Someone's gotta pay, and in a commercial environment, that means the client, in higher prices, or the shareholder, in lower returns. Ummm...so that would be higher prices then. Since there's always some dickhead client who wants to 'save' money by buying 'cheap', there will always be incompetents and crooks waiting to sell them something that should cost $100 for $50.
When it all goes to shit, who's to blame? The supplier, or the customer? In my opinion - BOTH!
Mod up - I agree. Assume also we're talking about XP offline files - I've also had *lots* of problems with this. Not always easy to recover from either. I just don't trust it as a backup solution. It's more for nomads who come back into the office and want to sync their docs; not really a reliable backup solution for professional developers.
Incremental backup via secure VPN via internet - IMHO the best option - should be easy to arrange. What do you do for your main off-site backups? Do you have a service provider for this? The same one as for your disaster recovery, perhaps? If the answer to the above is 'no', then you've got bigger potential issues than some field guy getting his laptop stolen. OK, VPN can be a pain to setup, especially from a customer site, but its not impossible.
For the local backups, issue everyone with a USB (or better still, firewire, if laptop supports it - rare), external disk drive and some professional-quality backup software. Agree a backup policy, together with simple clear processes & procedures that the field guys HAVE TO FOLLOW. After all, these are tech-savy people, right? Make sure that it's clear that your responsibility ends with providing the solution - in this case, it is clearly the user that should be responsible for backing up the data, not the sysadmin.
Only issues are security, (passwords stoed in plaintext - as with most other IM apps) and peer to peer file not working yet via MSN, (goes via servers so is slower). Neither are major hinderances.
I've had some experience with this, in both the public & private sector.
First of all plenty of my clients seem to confuse policy, example "we'll standardise on.net", with strategy. Strategy is all about developing plans to achieve the business leaders' objectives. IT strategy, (including hardware and software decisions) should be driven by the business strategy. So, is the FOSS/LAMP vs..net important in that debate? If so, you've got a start...
If not, then it's down to tactical issues, such as cost and risk, development delay and support.
As for FOSS credibility, plenty of Gov. and private-sector papers online discussing the benefits / risks. In the US and Europe, many examples of FOSS being actively promoted as ways to increase reduce cost and promote productivity...
"Part of the problem of continually producing articles as the news develops.."
Yup, especially when the eds (hello Zonk...) don't read (see/. ad nauseam) their own site.//end rant
Of course you're right that, as news comes in, new information germane to the discussion should be added - but why not put in the 'original'/. article? Or at least link to it?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought you were going to say...
Step 4. Scientology, (with oblig. Tom Cruise & Precog ref.)
Step 5. Prophet!
No problem, here in Europe we've got the Volks Polo for a start. I'm not sure if you guys in the sates get the same models...
Also, checkout the latest Volks, Merc & BMW 'super efficient' models - low rolling resistance, engine cut-off on coast and at red lights...in 'real world' driving, (not EPA bullshit - yup, I'm an avid Car & Driver reader too), they beat the shit out of the Prius.
I smiled
"How would Congress know if information was being kept from them.."
Uh, because it's full of corrupt, venal, self-centered fucking idiots?
Urm...like the fuel it burns? Remember, the Prius is not, unless you hack it, a 'plug-in'...it uses fuel like any other car, and more than some. Also, it's hard to recycle (battery pack) and performs poorly in a crash. So, not really a good role model then.
But a Tesla, http://www.teslamotors.com/, hmmmm
Of course, the electricity to recharge the cells is mostly generated by coal-fired power stations. Damn...
The sad fact is, (and yes, I mean 'sad' - I have kids, so I'm concerned about the future of the planet, which has visibly gone even further to shit in my lifetime), that hydrocarbon fuels are still the cheapest and LEAST polluting of all the options for personal transportation... If you talk to the non-nutjobs, the best plan seems to be hydrogen and electricity produced by nuclear power, but, of course, we can't say that in public...
Ye....
TaDa!
Indeed - but do we need any MORE variants of the blasted things?
And how long before somebody designs a bug specifically to resist such antibiotics?
Yippee, back to the mainframe! I wonder if I still have my old MVS and CICS manuals in the garage...
I think we have the virtualisation technology we need - in fact we've had it for a long time. I just don't see massive adoption happening until there's a fat, cheap and secure pipe everywhere... Until then, I'll stick with my laptop, and home PC, and server, and think my kids will too. OK salesforce.com works, but it's still peanuts compared to the PC users worldwide - and what do people connect to salesforce.com with? Not VT22Os, methinks...
You're right - let's do what we can, with what we've got. But at the same time, the rush to convert to so-called energy-efficient, 'sustainable' and/or renewables has already gotten out of hand.
The crazy pork-loaded policy of subsidising turning feedstuff into ethanol is already distorting world food prices and policies, causing harm to the poor.
The Toyota Prius (pious?) uses more fuel than a good small diesel car, and is less functional. In fact, you'd be doing more good for the planet if you just bought a good, recent used small car. (The pollution the ships cause when transporting the cars to market is massive). But hey, plenty of LA stars have a Prius, (and maybe also a Hummer, and a Ferrari...)
What we need is more information on the end-to-end impact, so we can make informed decisions, not marketing waffle.
Yet another reason to avoid shared / offline folders, as pointed out in a recent post. (Sorry, to lazy to get link).
You're partly right - as I've noted before, Vista is a bit of a 'gift that keeps on giving' here, for anti-Ms folks.
Noticed you got modded up, tho' so things are not quite that bad...
Perhaps people, (well, the non-shrill and abusive ones, anyway), are entitled to be a little sour after so much money spent, and so many broken promises.
Don't forget that many of the diehard FOSS, LAMP etc fans here are also forced to use Ms prducts on a daily basis - either for their own work, or for support. They, like me, don't like it when it's broken and you can't just nip into the source to find the problem and perhaps avoid or fix it... Or download an alternative product, or write your own...
Also, please note that there's a big difference between one person having something working OK, compared to many people experiencing a similar problem. I would imagine that if all Vista users were experiencing this kind of issue, then the cause would have been found and fixed by now. Just because everything is working, (or seems to be, or problem is not noticed...), for most people, it does not mean that there is no problem for some people, indeed sometimes a significant number of them...
I've given up trying to install Linux on an old laptop I was going to turn into a media centre. Just keeps crashing and can't get the screen drivers etc. Does this mean that ALL Linux is crap? Of course not... Does the parent post mean that Vista is rubbish? Of course not. But it's another sign that it's as not as robust as it should have been given the resources available to the authors.
Where I live, (France) already happens. Water consumption is metered, and includes a charge for treatment costs as well.
Common throughout Europe. So yup, the more you shit, shave and shower, the more you pay...
Bottle of wine, $25
Lunch for two, $86
Face on microserf's face when you whip out linux card to pay....priceless
Yeah, you know this old joke?
A young banker is taken down to the marina for lunch on his boss's boat.
His boss shows him around the magnificant vessel, and then waves his hand around the port...
"Over there are my fellow board-members' yachts, on the right there, that's where ours lawyers ones are, and straight ahead you have the ones belongings to the partners from our auditors..."
The young guy asks, "excuse me, but where are our clients' boats?"
Agree with the emotion, but reality is different - for a reason. Has Sarbanes-Oxley 'worked'? The jury is still out...
SOX was designed to prevent another Enron-style meltdown, but look what's happening in the subprime mortgage market. Billions wiped out, but 'nobody is to blame'...
As pointed out in other posts, corporate officers can be directly held liable for actions where they knowingly break the law. OK, they often get out of it, but that's more a fault of the legal system than the letter of the law.
Now, regarding the scope of responsibility of corporate officers, there's a big difference between bosses knowingly breaking the rules / law, (aka Enron et al), and simple incompetence. When I was running my own IT company, should I have been personnally liable for every screwup of my team? Especially when said screwups were a result of not following clear policies and procedures?
The bottom line? We lost, (I walked away from), plenty of business where we were 'too expensive'. I know why - those policies and procedures (and internal and external audits) cost money. Someone's gotta pay, and in a commercial environment, that means the client, in higher prices, or the shareholder, in lower returns. Ummm...so that would be higher prices then. Since there's always some dickhead client who wants to 'save' money by buying 'cheap', there will always be incompetents and crooks waiting to sell them something that should cost $100 for $50.
When it all goes to shit, who's to blame? The supplier, or the customer? In my opinion - BOTH!
True, so true...but at least when they don't, it's their ass that gets fired, not yours.
Mod up - I agree. Assume also we're talking about XP offline files - I've also had *lots* of problems with this. Not always easy to recover from either. I just don't trust it as a backup solution. It's more for nomads who come back into the office and want to sync their docs; not really a reliable backup solution for professional developers.
Incremental backup via secure VPN via internet - IMHO the best option - should be easy to arrange. What do you do for your main off-site backups? Do you have a service provider for this? The same one as for your disaster recovery, perhaps? If the answer to the above is 'no', then you've got bigger potential issues than some field guy getting his laptop stolen. OK, VPN can be a pain to setup, especially from a customer site, but its not impossible.
For the local backups, issue everyone with a USB (or better still, firewire, if laptop supports it - rare), external disk drive and some professional-quality backup software. Agree a backup policy, together with simple clear processes & procedures that the field guys HAVE TO FOLLOW. After all, these are tech-savy people, right? Make sure that it's clear that your responsibility ends with providing the solution - in this case, it is clearly the user that should be responsible for backing up the data, not the sysadmin.
"There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista..."
The two best ones being:
1. Stick to XP, or
2. Install Linux
Flamebait? Get a life...
Pidgin
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/
(formerly Gaim), see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)
works fine with MSN.
Only issues are security, (passwords stoed in plaintext - as with most other IM apps) and peer to peer file not working yet via MSN, (goes via servers so is slower). Neither are major hinderances.
I've had some experience with this, in both the public & private sector.
.net", with strategy. Strategy is all about developing plans to achieve the business leaders' objectives. IT strategy, (including hardware and software decisions) should be driven by the business strategy. So, is the FOSS/LAMP vs. .net important in that debate? If so, you've got a start...
First of all plenty of my clients seem to confuse policy, example "we'll standardise on
If not, then it's down to tactical issues, such as cost and risk, development delay and support.
As for FOSS credibility, plenty of Gov. and private-sector papers online discussing the benefits / risks. In the US and Europe, many examples of FOSS being actively promoted as ways to increase reduce cost and promote productivity...
"lively hood" - is that as opposed to a boring neighborhood?
"Part of the problem of continually producing articles as the news develops.."
/. ad nauseam) their own site. //end rant
/. article? Or at least link to it?
Yup, especially when the eds (hello Zonk...) don't read (see
Of course you're right that, as news comes in, new information germane to the discussion should be added - but why not put in the 'original'
Surely related to this article?
3 1205
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/04/14