Well, it nearly was. Back in the old days, IBM thought that its/360 architecture was getting outdated, and came up with an advanced OS, with potentential for 48-bit addressing (pretty radical in 1978) and integrated relational database. It was, of course, completely incompatible with everything else they had, (remember when IBM stood for 'Incompatible Bits of Machinery?)
They then realised that their customers had shitloads invested in CICS/COBOL apps, and the competencies to maintain them, and were not about to spend millions rewriting them...
Hence the idea of 'replacing' the/360 line was quietly buried, and a machine using the architecture - the System/38 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System/38 - was lauched, to the general confusion and indifference of the marketplace.
I was one of the original S/38 fanboys when it came out - a superb machine and OS that was far more powerful and easy to use than the 360. The/38 was the basis for the AS/400...
So could say that the AS/400 was the 'mainframe than never was'
Urm, think he meant Dell, (which already offers Linux on its machines), not an imagined megacorp buying and impementing a million PCs in one go. Not sure that's ever happened.
Since even IBM, (remember OS/2, anyone?) failed at launching a windows competitor, you'd have to be crazy brave to do it.
Big corps just don't do that - finance and prudence dictates that they switch gradually. That's how Linux in its various mutations is winning ground, upgrade by upgrade, site by site... It's an ongoing skirmish, not a nuclear war or a revolution.
Oh - and web-based services? Not ready for prime-time yet, I'm afraid. I've got lots of corporate clients, (many still running Windows 2000 and old 'Office' versions), and especially after recent scares, (Russia shutting down Estonia's Internet access whilst all NATO did/could do was wring its hands, security breeches in outsourced IT centres in India and elsewhere), they're not really that bullish about that kinda thing anymore... Personally, I don't blame them.
From the UK 'Home Office', "Since 1997, vehicle crime has fallen by 51%. Despite this, according to the British Crime Survey there were 1,731,000 vehicle crimes during 2005-06".
The downside is that if you have a high-value car, criminals now either break into your house to get the keys, or hijack you. My brother-in-law used to drive an Audi RS4, (with the BMW M5, the vehicle of choice for bank and smash and grab crimes). After the SECOND time he and his wife were threatened with knives and beaten, (in the centre of a major city each time), he replaced it with something rather more modest...
Yes, that's true, with "Office" being the outstanding example.
But what happened with Internet Explorer and Vista?
Whilst it's an open 'debate', (well, OK, shitfight), between the respective rabid fanboys and girls about which is 'best', seems to me that neither Vista/XP nor IE has a lot of clear blue water between it and the respective competition.
And Open Office is not bad, either...
IMHO, either XP and MS Office and Linux/BSD/OSX with OO/MSO 'do the job' very well in most cases, with driver support still being the main weak spot for Linux/OSX.
Maybe that's why MS have to resort to FUD - they're looking for an edge that they no longer have in their 'core' business.
You're right - everyone has an important part to play, and managers are reponsable for getting the function / testing / documentation balance right.
Not sure how this applies to independant developers writing for open source projects, though...
The success of Linux is often said to be due to Linus's 'benevolent dictatorship' in deciding what goes in, and not. Deadlines were less important.
And on the other had, the supposed attraction of FOSS is the ability to work from an existing base, but change, or even fork, if you want to. So, perhaps self discipline or imposing the adherence to minimum standards is the key?
The simple truth is that the vast majority of programmers I have known, and managed, much prefer writing new code rather than commenting, debugging and maintaining. Why? Well, its more interesting and immediately rewarding...
In Europe, proof of identity and address is required, even for a prepaid phone. It's so the authorities can track you if your phone is used for 'illegal' purposes, (bomb threat, hate calls...)
I'm sure that they'll both make it as hard as possible to switch. On the other hand, perhaps when the iPhone is rolled out in other markets, some firmware hacks will be available as per other devices.
Would not bet on it, tho'. If I was apple, I'd lock this down as tight as a tick. Plenty of people out there seem happy to buy expensive iPod, although cheaper mp3 players often offer more flexibility and function.
True, up to a limit. As someone, (Churchill?) said, "the price of democracy is eternal vigilence".
I live in France, and have a Blackberry Pearl - I'd trust neither the French nor RIM with anything of value, (yes, I'm English).
If you trust any such entity or platform, (the US or UK Govt., Microsoft...), you're a damn fool.
Getting back to the point, (your point), where would you draw the line? What reasonable privacy can the 'normal', (non tech-savy & paranoid, i.e./. member) user expect? Is it OK to use government funds to perform industrial espionage? Is it OK to use the results of illegal intercepts to blackmail people in order to force them to act as intelligence sources?
I was around at that time, and you're right. Not sure about "losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers)", though. They've never had a monopoly on servers, although Windows server sales overtook those of Unix etc. in 2005 http://tinyurl.com/jqdxm
Well, it's a tough call for IBM. I've been there. On the one hand, you're trying to keep the vastly profitable mainframe client, and on the other you know damn well that other solutions exist that may be different, but just as workable and a whole lot cheaper.
Back in the old days, when IBM did not have a really developed software (apart from OS) and consulting offering, it was more clear-cut. You'd try and keep the customer at (nearly) any cost - but not price. It was a lot easier, since much of the competition had less of a track record, and they had less success stories. Also, in these days of more open decision-making, some of the tactics used in the past are no longer viable.
I'm guessing that IBM's services / consultings guys are really fuming on this one - they probably could have got the migration business, but lost out to the 'big iron' boys who wanted to try & keep the client...still, as a consolaion they got the AIX boxes.
It's not 'rewrite fast, release often, fix the bugs, restart'.
More, you define where you want to be in 10 years time, then focus on delivering something that takes you nearer to that goal every - say - 3 to 9 months.
Yup. What goes around... Mind you, if it's your stick, hopefully you'll ensure it's not compromised...especially if you're booting your entire working environment from it. Hopefully...
"As part of the plan, SanDisk will phase out its U3 technology, which adds some smart features to USB devices."
Translation. 'Our U3 technology was crap, especially when compared to what was already out there' (see the other posts on this topic).
"Independent software developers that have created U3-compatible applications will be offered help migrating their products to the new technology, which has yet to be named..."
Translation. 'We're getting into bed with MS, who have a solid history of fucking-over third-party sw developers, and end-users, (the Zune episode springs to mind). So, eh, kiss your investment goodbye, suckers!
Meanwhile, go download the stand-alone versions of Firefox and Thunderbird if you want portability.
But if you're serious about your data, DO NOT mix the OS & application environment with user data on that key. My main PC has a separate partition for data on the disk. If the OS, (any one of them), gets screwed, no problem - reinstall. Data not affected...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it nearly was. Back in the old days, IBM thought that its /360 architecture was getting outdated, and came up with an advanced OS, with potentential for 48-bit addressing (pretty radical in 1978) and integrated relational database. It was, of course, completely incompatible with everything else they had, (remember when IBM stood for 'Incompatible Bits of Machinery?)
/360 line was quietly buried, and a machine using the architecture - the System/38 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System/38 - was lauched, to the general confusion and indifference of the marketplace.
/38 was the basis for the AS/400...
They then realised that their customers had shitloads invested in CICS/COBOL apps, and the competencies to maintain them, and were not about to spend millions rewriting them...
Hence the idea of 'replacing' the
I was one of the original S/38 fanboys when it came out - a superb machine and OS that was far more powerful and easy to use than the 360. The
So could say that the AS/400 was the 'mainframe than never was'
Urm, think he meant Dell, (which already offers Linux on its machines), not an imagined megacorp buying and impementing a million PCs in one go.
Not sure that's ever happened.
Since even IBM, (remember OS/2, anyone?) failed at launching a windows competitor, you'd have to be crazy brave to do it.
Big corps just don't do that - finance and prudence dictates that they switch gradually. That's how Linux in its various mutations is winning ground, upgrade by upgrade, site by site... It's an ongoing skirmish, not a nuclear war or a revolution.
Oh - and web-based services? Not ready for prime-time yet, I'm afraid. I've got lots of corporate clients, (many still running Windows 2000 and old 'Office' versions), and especially after recent scares, (Russia shutting down Estonia's Internet access whilst all NATO did/could do was wring its hands, security breeches in outsourced IT centres in India and elsewhere), they're not really that bullish about that kinda thing anymore... Personally, I don't blame them.
From the UK 'Home Office', "Since 1997, vehicle crime has fallen by 51%. Despite this, according to the British Crime Survey there were 1,731,000 vehicle crimes during 2005-06".
The downside is that if you have a high-value car, criminals now either break into your house to get the keys, or hijack you. My brother-in-law used to drive an Audi RS4, (with the BMW M5, the vehicle of choice for bank and smash and grab crimes). After the SECOND time he and his wife were threatened with knives and beaten, (in the centre of a major city each time), he replaced it with something rather more modest...
Yes, that's true, with "Office" being the outstanding example.
But what happened with Internet Explorer and Vista?
Whilst it's an open 'debate', (well, OK, shitfight), between the respective rabid fanboys and girls about which is 'best', seems to me that neither Vista/XP nor IE has a lot of clear blue water between it and the respective competition.
And Open Office is not bad, either...
IMHO, either XP and MS Office and Linux/BSD/OSX with OO/MSO 'do the job' very well in most cases, with driver support still being the main weak spot for Linux/OSX.
Maybe that's why MS have to resort to FUD - they're looking for an edge that they no longer have in their 'core' business.
Thanks for the reply. Yup, been there, trying to understand just what the f*** I did several years, (or these days, weeks - getting older), ago...
You're right - everyone has an important part to play, and managers are reponsable for getting the function / testing / documentation balance right.
Not sure how this applies to independant developers writing for open source projects, though...
The success of Linux is often said to be due to Linus's 'benevolent dictatorship' in deciding what goes in, and not. Deadlines were less important.
And on the other had, the supposed attraction of FOSS is the ability to work from an existing base, but change, or even fork, if you want to. So, perhaps self discipline or imposing the adherence to minimum standards is the key?
The simple truth is that the vast majority of programmers I have known, and managed, much prefer writing new code rather than commenting, debugging and maintaining. Why? Well, its more interesting and immediately rewarding...
In Europe, proof of identity and address is required, even for a prepaid phone.
It's so the authorities can track you if your phone is used for 'illegal' purposes, (bomb threat, hate calls...)
Well, that's what they tell us, anyway...
I'm sure that they'll both make it as hard as possible to switch. On the other hand, perhaps when the iPhone is rolled out in other markets, some firmware hacks will be available as per other devices.
Would not bet on it, tho'. If I was apple, I'd lock this down as tight as a tick. Plenty of people out there seem happy to buy expensive iPod, although cheaper mp3 players often offer more flexibility and function.
True, up to a limit. As someone, (Churchill?) said, "the price of democracy is eternal vigilence".
/. member) user expect? Is it OK to use government funds to perform industrial espionage? Is it OK to use the results of illegal intercepts to blackmail people in order to force them to act as intelligence sources?
I live in France, and have a Blackberry Pearl - I'd trust neither the French nor RIM with anything of value, (yes, I'm English).
If you trust any such entity or platform, (the US or UK Govt., Microsoft...), you're a damn fool.
Getting back to the point, (your point), where would you draw the line? What reasonable privacy can the 'normal', (non tech-savy & paranoid, i.e.
The lawyer in question was found to be 'unreachable', although he did leave a forwarding address....in Cuba.
"I passed it on to a friend of mine..."
Some friend.
This is a story with a moral?
Yup, seems the only thing to do is to keep your data on another physical / logical drive and reinstall frequently.
I do it once a month.
Slipstreamed and updated DVDs (keep up to date by using a Linux partition / virtual machine) ease the pain.
Oh, a decent firewall (not M$) helps too... You'll (probably) spot the nasty stuff trying to get out.
Before the 'use a virtual machine to surf' fanboys jump all over me - yeah, I do that too...
$10K on sw?
You must have missed some of the posts from "IT professionals" on this site...
But if there's *nothing* there, how could we live on it in an independant, sustainable way?
Can we really expect to find a place that will enable us to plant crops and raise animals for food, yet has no indigenous life forms?
Nah...
Yeah, but did you try typing 'Lexus' for the dog? -)
You mean Sushi does not come from Africa? Damn, will have to edit my Wikipedia entry then...
No, it's 'Cancel or Allow' these days...
If I may use a car analogy..oh, wait a minute
Thanks for the tip, i'll try it out.
For the lazy, here's a link: www.sandboxie.com
I was around at that time, and you're right. Not sure about "losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers)", though. They've never had a monopoly on servers, although Windows server sales overtook those of Unix etc. in 2005 http://tinyurl.com/jqdxm
Well, it's a tough call for IBM. I've been there. On the one hand, you're trying to keep the vastly profitable mainframe client, and on the other you know damn well that other solutions exist that may be different, but just as workable and a whole lot cheaper.
Back in the old days, when IBM did not have a really developed software (apart from OS) and consulting offering, it was more clear-cut. You'd try and keep the customer at (nearly) any cost - but not price. It was a lot easier, since much of the competition had less of a track record, and they had less success stories. Also, in these days of more open decision-making, some of the tactics used in the past are no longer viable.
I'm guessing that IBM's services / consultings guys are really fuming on this one - they probably could have got the migration business, but lost out to the 'big iron' boys who wanted to try & keep the client...still, as a consolaion they got the AIX boxes.
Yup. MGPP (Multi Generation Project Plan) is useful here.
;-) ]
See http://tinyurl.com/2l2vdn [ isixsigma.com, not goatse
It's not 'rewrite fast, release often, fix the bugs, restart'.
More, you define where you want to be in 10 years time, then focus on delivering something that takes you nearer to that goal every - say - 3 to 9 months.
Think NASA and going to the moon...
Yup. What goes around...
Mind you, if it's your stick, hopefully you'll ensure it's not compromised...especially if you're booting your entire working environment from it.
Hopefully...
"As part of the plan, SanDisk will phase out its U3 technology, which adds some smart features to USB devices."
Translation.
'Our U3 technology was crap, especially when compared to what was already out there' (see the other posts on this topic).
"Independent software developers that have created U3-compatible applications will be offered help migrating their products to the new technology, which has yet to be named..."
Translation.
'We're getting into bed with MS, who have a solid history of fucking-over third-party sw developers, and end-users, (the Zune episode springs to mind). So, eh, kiss your investment goodbye, suckers!
Meanwhile, go download the stand-alone versions of Firefox and Thunderbird if you want portability.
But if you're serious about your data, DO NOT mix the OS & application environment with user data on that key. My main PC has a separate partition for data on the disk. If the OS, (any one of them), gets screwed, no problem - reinstall. Data not affected...
"Our Web-Based Anti-Virus.."
Is this not based more at phising scams, trojans and other exploits, rather than just virii?
What's the main source of virus infections? Anybody got some research?
I'm guesing it's swapping infected files, not visiting pr0n sites...