Thoughts on all of this: 1. John Thompson (former Symantec CEO) as Chairman? Oh no. Symantec produced more steaming piles of crap called "software" than any company really has a right to. This wouldn't bode well.
2. People can say what they want about consumer devices, but enterprise software is worth LOTS of money. Having a guy like Nadella that understands a lot of the enterprise angle running things is a good idea. Yeah, you can sell people a phone (with a final cost of some $500), and a bunch of $1 and $2 applications, and some fraction of a $50 monthly cell bill. OR, you can sell them an OS for each computer in the place at a cost of $30-$50, an indispensable office suite for $150 per seat, client licenses for file servers, active directory, databases, web servers, and the like, PLUS the costly licenses for the server software, PLUS annual maintenance. It's easy to see where the cash is, and it's not in consumer devices.
3. I can see why people might prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8, but most of the time people are speaking from ignorance, never having used Windows 8 (or having used it only with a mouse). It's a different beast entirely with a touch screen. As for usability, Apple is on a downward slide, IMHO. We're getting nothing but gratuitous changes in every release now, and Mavericks positively ruined an otherwise serviceable 5-year-old MacBook by destroying its performance. Windows Phone 8 is really nice, especially in the way it emphasizes the productivity uses of the phone over games and glitz. It's a lot tighter resource-wise than Android for sure.
4. Microsoft spends like four times as much on R&D as Apple does. Apple's a rather minor player in this regard.
I think Microsoft could be positioned for a real resurgence with the right leadership.
At work, I write code that has to run on Windows (multiple versions, multiple bitness), Linux x86-64, and Solaris SPARC 64. Maintaining compatibility across multiple versions of Windows and Visual Studio is trivial compared to Linux. Worse, GUI applications have more complex code execution paths that, under Windows, can be debugged without too much pain. On Linux, I cringe every time I have to fix a broken GUI.
I'm sure there are lots of Linux developers that are smarter than I am, but, really, Microsoft has pushed hard to make the developer tools usable and productive, so much so that they're actually worth the cost. The result is that it's easier to develop more apps faster on their platform.
Assuming global warming is true (a point I will neither defend nor oppose), the money spent on preventing global warming is a waste. The full implementation of the Kyoto treaty will result in a decrease in global warming by 0.07C. That's right, less than a tenth of a degree Celcius, with all the economic and humanitarian harm that Kyoto would impose. And that harm is real: the EU nations are already trying to figure out how to not do Kyoto while still claiming some kind of adherence to the treaty because the economic consequences are disastrous. That, and they're not meeting the requirements.
Our money is far, far better spent learning to cope with a warmer planet, assuming again that things are getting warmer and staying warmer. Frankly, the technological advances on our planet are going to decrease greenhouse gas emissions without any kind of treaty or government mandate. The rising cost of energy (of all kinds) will lead, quite naturally, to processes that consume less energy, thereby reducing the side-effects like CO2 production. And we mustn't forget that it is industrial processes that create products that consume less energy, like the newly popular compact fluorescent bulbs.
I know it's basically advertising, but the piece doesn't take the Age Factor into account. When they say they're looking for programmers/developers, they mean they're looking for "programmers/developers under the age of 32 (or thereabouts)". I know lots of guys nearing the 40 threshold. As they do so, if they're not already in management, they're layoff fodder. This is for guys with solid, up-to-date technical skills. They just get paid more than the entry level worker bees (especially from offshore firms), and have more of that vaunted business knowledge to boot.
I don't believe any of them is any better in the quality department.
I'm with Fred_A above on this one. If you can't tell the difference between (La)TeX output and Word, you're not looking. The output from LaTeX, typesetting wise, is top notch--ligatures are used, interword spacing is precisely controlled, the whole thing is polished. In Word, attempting to do full justification results in huge interword gaps, making the page harder to read and visually distracting. Even with OpenType fonts, Word (at least on my Mac) can't do a ligature. I note that even the $49 Mellel gets ligatures right.
The EU bureaucrats (a highly unelected and unaccountable bunch) don't like strong American companies on their turf. In their eyes it's basically another form of "American hegemony". They're busy doing the same kind of thing as they're doing to Microsoft to American-based credit card companies (see, for example, this article as well as Forbes), accusing them of making too much money, even though, with the exception of Visa, their margins are all running under 8%. Google's, by way of comparison, is like 25%.
So, the EU crowd runs around rattling sabers at American companies, demanding that the companies basically lie down and give away product or service to competitors, "levelling the playing field," or suggesting that there needs to be a properly "European" (an adjective that is a very recent invention in itself) counterpart to every American business. As if having a myriad of credit card companies or document formats or software platforms would really benefit consumers.
Microsoft shouldn't be judged solely because they're trying to be competitive in their markets. (How many Linux distros could be accused of bundling too much software?) Unless you're a communist (like some prominent figures in organizations with recursive acronyms), how can one demand that source code be given to competitors?
I've downloaded dozens of copies of Oracle -- different versions and platforms. All legal, but with no way for Oracle to know that. I've been contacted one time, simply to ensure that I had gotten up and running with the product. Not sure what you've done to get their attention.
$40k per processor is "list price". In reality, there are other options, such as Kunta Kinte points out.
Further, the kinds of companies that have huge investments in data centers (Oracle's primary target) negotiate volume contracts with Oracle. These contracts push that $40k sticker price way way way down. (Previous employer paid under $20k for a typical Oracle server license, unlimited users, no time limits.)
Considering that these companies really need their data, and have hundreds of applications (not all of them even cataloged) already written to use Oracle, this money is just basic business expense.
Give me a break. This guy has reviewed databases on the basis of features, with, as far as I can tell, not a single real performance evaluation in different kinds of applications (OLTP, DSS, data warehouse), data volumes, or query complexity.
It gets better. In discussing Oracle, he explains: That is not to say the other databases serve up incorrect data but with some database engines when the workload is high, uncommitted data can be flushed from buffers to disk potentially creating a dirty read. MVRC also ensures that readers do not block writers and visa versa. HUH? I can't speak for EVERY database out there, but for most of them, you'd have to specifically set a "read uncommitted" isolation level to actually read dirty data. The majority of the databases would simply give a lock-and-block situation while the second reader waits for the writer to complete. Oracle's MVRC (and PostgreSQL's scheme) both prevent this lock-block situation. But, really, to say that this would potentially create a dirty read situation is just silly.
He also didn't speak of Oracle's new Express Edition. Yeah, it's limited to 1 CPU and has a cap on its data volume, but you get all of Oracle's core features (including PL/SQL) for FREE.
Not exactly a screenplay, but rather a liturgical service book. Publisher has no problems with it. Openoffice.org has had no problems with it. NeoOffice/J is too slow for real use, Word doesn't do as well as Openoffice.org does, and Publisher isn't available on the Mac.
Final Draft is worth a look. However, the people I'd like to exchange this document with don't have such a program.
Well, to everyone who says I'm a troll, I have no response but to say my experience is not unique. In trying to find a solution to the problem, I checked out the Apple support forums. A number of people there report the same thing. It's just a dog. My iBook is the 1.1 GHz model from September 2004, with 768 MB of RAM, Finder and Mail being the only other programs running. I have Tiger installed (10.4.3). Pages just doesn't work.
Because I have MUCH better things to do than to figure out how to get a screenplay-type format laid out. I wrote my thesis just six months ago with LaTeX, and even that took hours to get the formatting exactly compliant with the thesis clerk's requirements. It was beautiful, to be sure, but I can't spend that kind of time with the sort of output I have to generate all the time.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Pages, THE BIGGEST FRAUD APPLE HAS YET TO INFLICT UPON ITS USER BASE.
Seriously, Pages looks awesome on paper. Then, I actually tried to create a tri-fold brochure with it. I could type a sentence, then wait 10 seconds for the first keystroke to appear, and another 30 seconds for the entire sentence to be inserted into the text. This occurs when editing Apple's own tri-fold brochure template.
Background: First notebook computer I ever owned was a Powerbook 100, followed by a Powerbook 140, back in the early 90s. I left the Mac world (thanks to my job) in 1994, and I returned in fall 2004 with my purchase of an iBook G4.
I really like this machine. Most of the time, anyway. It's small (I got the 12" model), light (5 pounds), and elegant. It performs well enough for everything I do, which includes some system administration, some development, and a lot of email, web browsing, and writing. I love the integration of PDF with the system, and the fact that so many useful applications come bundled with the machine. OpenType is simply beautiful, at least with a word processor like Mellel that uses it (don't even ask Word to do something like NICE typesetting). TeXShop is a wonderful environment, and it only runs under OS X. I love having a UNIX command prompt for when the going gets tough.
Sadly, I find myself considering running Yellow Dog Linux on the machine lately, if only to get some tools to do larger-scale writing with. I don't really like Word for Mac 2004, but, frankly, what else is there? OpenOffice.org is a superb writing platform, but OpenOffice.org under the Mac's X11 is painful. NeoOffice/J is even more painful, simply because it's so SLOW! Mellel is sleek and inexpensive, but kyrie eleison if you try to do anything other than report-type text (e.g., a brochure, screenplay, etc.) The big DTP packages are here, but do more (at a higher price) than what I need. Scribus isn't quite where it needs to be yet. TeXShop/LaTeX do beautiful work, but, again, for anything more than report-type text, I'll spend hours figuring out the incantations to get it to format the way I want it to.
I really love this machine, but, over the past 6 months, it's just not doing the job I need it to. And that's why I use a computer -- not because it's cool, or cute, or powerful.
Would someone please tell Apple to fund the development of a real competitor to Office? One called OpenOffice.org is a prime candidate, but they need help.
With that rationale, there would be nothing to stop counterfeit FBI and Secret Service badges, not to mention currency, as all the artwork are works of the federal government, no? The law on the matter of the Presidential Seal is clear. The Onion can be as satirical as they want, but I don't see they have a defense against the "no commerical use without permission" rule. It would've been funnier for them to CHANGE the seal to something satirical anyway.
Re:Let the PostgreSql vs MySQL Debate Commence
on
Sun Eyes PostgreSQL
·
· Score: 4, Informative
On top of being closer to the standards Oracle uses, IIRC, PostgreSQL uses a transaction model that is essentially identical to Oracle's, even though it's implemented differently. In spite of the hype around database independence, the reality is that the differences in transactional behavior radically affect the ability to port from one database to another. The fact that PostgreSQL's native stored proc language already looks a lot like Oracle's PL/SQL, with an effort to make PostgreSQL run PL/SQL unmodified in the works elsewhere, is another big plus.
Could be that it's the time of year for lots of people to buy new computers (back to school, lots of deals to be had), none of which SHIP with Firefox. And it may just take a bit of IE use to remind them why they need to get to mozilla.org after all.
PDF != Adobe. The implication in many historical documents concerning OS X is that PDF was chosen as the basis for Quartz precisely because it was an open, royalty-free format, unlike Display PostScript (which powered OS X's predecessor, NextStep - or NeXTStep, or... nevermind).
I do all kinds of PDF work (viewing, generating) and have not a single Adobe application on my system.
The problem with this discussion of "free" WiFi is that it's not really free. At some point, the municipalities will notice that "free" WiFi is actually consuming a lot of budget: equipment, network access, administrative personnel, "policing" personnel (watching
out for abuse, etc.). Then something will have to pay for it: taxes, use fees, you name it.
Probably people that don't use it all will have to pay for it. Not to mention you'll
have some bureaucrat telling you you're using it "too much" or for the wrong thing.
Of course these companies are now upset that they are having to compete
with the state, who, unlike the companies, can "charge" whatever they want
(and whomever they want) without dealing with market realities (at least not for
a while). This IS bad for business. I don't know about the most of you, but I
suspect that having a lot
of telecom companies losing money on network infrastructure will probably do great harm to our
ability to do Wifi (or any other kind of networking).
It's not just the filmmaker who has costs to recoup. Building, maintaining, and staffing a theater costs real money, especially when people prefer theaters with stadium seating, expensive sound and projection systems, good parking, etc. There's a reason pretty much all of the major theater companies are hurting right now: ticket prices don't cover all their costs. Most of them make their money on concession sales.
Then there's the coattails effect, where the ratio of winners to losers tends to be small. It's easy to say to the $100 million bombs that the directors/producers should've made a better movie, but the reality is that the really popular movies subsidize many of the weaker films. There's a similarity to the pharaceutical industry here.
And, finally, if you think $10 is too much to pay for a theater ticket, or $20/month is too much for your NetFlix/Blockbuster/Walmart rental subscription, etc., or buying the DVD is out of your budget, then don't see the movie. What entitles anyone to consuming the stuff for free? How much the director really profits isn't up to you. (I think professional sports salaries are out of control. I refuse to pay $100 per ticket to see pro football. Apparently, there are more than a handful of people who think otherwise. More power to pro sports in that case.)
ll you what. Why don't we get Apple to do a little experiment? Apple can have their iTMS offer every song in either their restrictive DRM encrusted AAC format, or a non-DRM'ed MP3. See what format sells more. That would be the industry "speaking".
This isn't a battle between DRM or no DRM. In reality, digital music (and movies, etc.) is simply going to dry up in the absence of any way to protect content creators from wanton piracy of their work. (Who will make a $100 million film if 1 in 50 people pay to see it -- theater, rental, or purchased 'media' -- while the other 49 get some copy for which no money goes back to the creator?)
Rather, the issue is precisely what kind of DRM should be used, and whether DRM formats should be 'open', i.e., usable by all players of the content.
Realistically, I do think the industry will take care of this without government intervention, although there might be some betamax people out there -- those who buy into the wrong technology early.
I've fount CentOS quite useful for testing, especially with Oracle. The production and final QA machines run RHEL. Unit and integration testing all runs with CentOS. The goal is to duplicate the production system as much as possible early in the cycle. CentOS is great for this.
The money quote: In fact, more than 80 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD Group of New York last fall said they sent in their rebate forms.
Just having consumers hate the rebates isn't enough. Rebates only work for sellers and manufcaturers if a substantial number of people fail to send them in. That is, they bought the product, probably having been persuaded by the rebate, then never sent in the rebate materials. I recall several articles in the past (no links, sorry) that explains how if the number of rebate submissions approaches 100% of purchases, then it's cheaper for manufacturers and sellers to cut the price. The rebate overhead,
of course, is what really makes this happen.
So, an 80% submission rate is probably close enough to 100% that sellers/manufacturers aren't seeing the kind of return they're used to. Who cares whether the buyers like rebates? What matters is whether they file for and receive the rebates. Now that the FTC is cracking down on that second part (i.e., companies not paying off on the advertised rebates), where's the upside for the companies?
Slashdot Mirror
Thoughts on all of this:
1. John Thompson (former Symantec CEO) as Chairman? Oh no. Symantec produced more steaming piles of crap called "software" than any company really has a right to. This wouldn't bode well.
2. People can say what they want about consumer devices, but enterprise software is worth LOTS of money. Having a guy like Nadella that understands a lot of the enterprise angle running things is a good idea. Yeah, you can sell people a phone (with a final cost of some $500), and a bunch of $1 and $2 applications, and some fraction of a $50 monthly cell bill. OR, you can sell them an OS for each computer in the place at a cost of $30-$50, an indispensable office suite for $150 per seat, client licenses for file servers, active directory, databases, web servers, and the like, PLUS the costly licenses for the server software, PLUS annual maintenance. It's easy to see where the cash is, and it's not in consumer devices.
3. I can see why people might prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8, but most of the time people are speaking from ignorance, never having used Windows 8 (or having used it only with a mouse). It's a different beast entirely with a touch screen. As for usability, Apple is on a downward slide, IMHO. We're getting nothing but gratuitous changes in every release now, and Mavericks positively ruined an otherwise serviceable 5-year-old MacBook by destroying its performance. Windows Phone 8 is really nice, especially in the way it emphasizes the productivity uses of the phone over games and glitz. It's a lot tighter resource-wise than Android for sure.
4. Microsoft spends like four times as much on R&D as Apple does. Apple's a rather minor player in this regard.
I think Microsoft could be positioned for a real resurgence with the right leadership.
At work, I write code that has to run on Windows (multiple versions, multiple bitness), Linux x86-64, and Solaris SPARC 64. Maintaining compatibility across multiple versions of Windows and Visual Studio is trivial compared to Linux. Worse, GUI applications have more complex code execution paths that, under Windows, can be debugged without too much pain. On Linux, I cringe every time I have to fix a broken GUI.
I'm sure there are lots of Linux developers that are smarter than I am, but, really, Microsoft has pushed hard to make the developer tools usable and productive, so much so that they're actually worth the cost. The result is that it's easier to develop more apps faster on their platform.
Just one opinion.
Yeah yeah. It's Celsius, not Celcius as I have above. So much for previewing.
Assuming global warming is true (a point I will neither defend nor oppose), the money spent on preventing global warming is a waste. The full implementation of the Kyoto treaty will result in a decrease in global warming by 0.07C. That's right, less than a tenth of a degree Celcius, with all the economic and humanitarian harm that Kyoto would impose. And that harm is real: the EU nations are already trying to figure out how to not do Kyoto while still claiming some kind of adherence to the treaty because the economic consequences are disastrous. That, and they're not meeting the requirements.
Our money is far, far better spent learning to cope with a warmer planet, assuming again that things are getting warmer and staying warmer. Frankly, the technological advances on our planet are going to decrease greenhouse gas emissions without any kind of treaty or government mandate. The rising cost of energy (of all kinds) will lead, quite naturally, to processes that consume less energy, thereby reducing the side-effects like CO2 production. And we mustn't forget that it is industrial processes that create products that consume less energy, like the newly popular compact fluorescent bulbs.
I know it's basically advertising, but the piece doesn't take the Age Factor into account. When they say they're looking for programmers/developers, they mean they're looking for "programmers/developers under the age of 32 (or thereabouts)". I know lots of guys nearing the 40 threshold. As they do so, if they're not already in management, they're layoff fodder. This is for guys with solid, up-to-date technical skills. They just get paid more than the entry level worker bees (especially from offshore firms), and have more of that vaunted business knowledge to boot.
I don't believe any of them is any better in the quality department.
I'm with Fred_A above on this one. If you can't tell the difference between (La)TeX output and Word, you're not looking. The output from LaTeX, typesetting wise, is top notch--ligatures are used, interword spacing is precisely controlled, the whole thing is polished. In Word, attempting to do full justification results in huge interword gaps, making the page harder to read and visually distracting. Even with OpenType fonts, Word (at least on my Mac) can't do a ligature. I note that even the $49 Mellel gets ligatures right.
The EU bureaucrats (a highly unelected and unaccountable bunch) don't like strong American companies on their turf. In their eyes it's basically another form of "American hegemony". They're busy doing the same kind of thing as they're doing to Microsoft to American-based credit card companies (see, for example, this article as well as Forbes), accusing them of making too much money, even though, with the exception of Visa, their margins are all running under 8%. Google's, by way of comparison, is like 25%.
So, the EU crowd runs around rattling sabers at American companies, demanding that the companies basically lie down and give away product or service to competitors, "levelling the playing field," or suggesting that there needs to be a properly "European" (an adjective that is a very recent invention in itself) counterpart to every American business. As if having a myriad of credit card companies or document formats or software platforms would really benefit consumers.
Microsoft shouldn't be judged solely because they're trying to be competitive in their markets. (How many Linux distros could be accused of bundling too much software?) Unless you're a communist (like some prominent figures in organizations with recursive acronyms), how can one demand that source code be given to competitors?
I've downloaded dozens of copies of Oracle -- different versions and platforms. All legal, but with no way for Oracle to know that. I've been contacted one time, simply to ensure that I had gotten up and running with the product. Not sure what you've done to get their attention.
$40k per processor is "list price". In reality, there are other options, such as Kunta Kinte points out.
Further, the kinds of companies that have huge investments in data centers (Oracle's primary target) negotiate volume contracts with Oracle. These contracts push that $40k sticker price way way way down. (Previous employer paid under $20k for a typical Oracle server license, unlimited users, no time limits.)
Considering that these companies really need their data, and have hundreds of applications (not all of them even cataloged) already written to use Oracle, this money is just basic business expense.
Give me a break. This guy has reviewed databases on the basis of features, with, as far as I can tell, not a single real performance evaluation in different kinds of applications (OLTP, DSS, data warehouse), data volumes, or query complexity.
It gets better. In discussing Oracle, he explains: That is not to say the other databases serve up incorrect data but with some database engines when the workload is high, uncommitted data can be flushed from buffers to disk potentially creating a dirty read. MVRC also ensures that readers do not block writers and visa versa. HUH? I can't speak for EVERY database out there, but for most of them, you'd have to specifically set a "read uncommitted" isolation level to actually read dirty data. The majority of the databases would simply give a lock-and-block situation while the second reader waits for the writer to complete. Oracle's MVRC (and PostgreSQL's scheme) both prevent this lock-block situation. But, really, to say that this would potentially create a dirty read situation is just silly.
He also didn't speak of Oracle's new Express Edition. Yeah, it's limited to 1 CPU and has a cap on its data volume, but you get all of Oracle's core features (including PL/SQL) for FREE.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along.
Not exactly a screenplay, but rather a liturgical service book. Publisher has no problems with it. Openoffice.org has had no problems with it. NeoOffice/J is too slow for real use, Word doesn't do as well as Openoffice.org does, and Publisher isn't available on the Mac.
Final Draft is worth a look. However, the people I'd like to exchange this document with don't have such a program.
Well, to everyone who says I'm a troll, I have no response but to say my experience is not unique. In trying to find a solution to the problem, I checked out the Apple support forums. A number of people there report the same thing. It's just a dog. My iBook is the 1.1 GHz model from September 2004, with 768 MB of RAM, Finder and Mail being the only other programs running. I have Tiger installed (10.4.3). Pages just doesn't work.
Because I have MUCH better things to do than to figure out how to get a screenplay-type format laid out. I wrote my thesis just six months ago with LaTeX, and even that took hours to get the formatting exactly compliant with the thesis clerk's requirements. It was beautiful, to be sure, but I can't spend that kind of time with the sort of output I have to generate all the time.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Pages, THE BIGGEST FRAUD APPLE HAS YET TO INFLICT UPON ITS USER BASE.
Seriously, Pages looks awesome on paper. Then, I actually tried to create a tri-fold brochure with it. I could type a sentence, then wait 10 seconds for the first keystroke to appear, and another 30 seconds for the entire sentence to be inserted into the text. This occurs when editing Apple's own tri-fold brochure template.
Pages - Just say no.
Background: First notebook computer I ever owned was a Powerbook 100, followed by a Powerbook 140, back in the early 90s. I left the Mac world (thanks to my job) in 1994, and I returned in fall 2004 with my purchase of an iBook G4.
I really like this machine. Most of the time, anyway. It's small (I got the 12" model), light (5 pounds), and elegant. It performs well enough for everything I do, which includes some system administration, some development, and a lot of email, web browsing, and writing. I love the integration of PDF with the system, and the fact that so many useful applications come bundled with the machine. OpenType is simply beautiful, at least with a word processor like Mellel that uses it (don't even ask Word to do something like NICE typesetting). TeXShop is a wonderful environment, and it only runs under OS X. I love having a UNIX command prompt for when the going gets tough.
Sadly, I find myself considering running Yellow Dog Linux on the machine lately, if only to get some tools to do larger-scale writing with. I don't really like Word for Mac 2004, but, frankly, what else is there? OpenOffice.org is a superb writing platform, but OpenOffice.org under the Mac's X11 is painful. NeoOffice/J is even more painful, simply because it's so SLOW! Mellel is sleek and inexpensive, but kyrie eleison if you try to do anything other than report-type text (e.g., a brochure, screenplay, etc.) The big DTP packages are here, but do more (at a higher price) than what I need. Scribus isn't quite where it needs to be yet. TeXShop/LaTeX do beautiful work, but, again, for anything more than report-type text, I'll spend hours figuring out the incantations to get it to format the way I want it to.
I really love this machine, but, over the past 6 months, it's just not doing the job I need it to. And that's why I use a computer -- not because it's cool, or cute, or powerful.
Would someone please tell Apple to fund the development of a real competitor to Office? One called OpenOffice.org is a prime candidate, but they need help.
With that rationale, there would be nothing to stop counterfeit FBI and Secret Service badges, not to mention currency, as all the artwork are works of the federal government, no? The law on the matter of the Presidential Seal is clear. The Onion can be as satirical as they want, but I don't see they have a defense against the "no commerical use without permission" rule. It would've been funnier for them to CHANGE the seal to something satirical anyway.
On top of being closer to the standards Oracle uses, IIRC, PostgreSQL uses a transaction model that is essentially identical to Oracle's, even though it's implemented differently. In spite of the hype around database independence, the reality is that the differences in transactional behavior radically affect the ability to port from one database to another. The fact that PostgreSQL's native stored proc language already looks a lot like Oracle's PL/SQL, with an effort to make PostgreSQL run PL/SQL unmodified in the works elsewhere, is another big plus.
Could be that it's the time of year for lots of people to buy new computers (back to school, lots of deals to be had), none of which SHIP with Firefox. And it may just take a bit of IE use to remind them why they need to get to mozilla.org after all.
Microsoft is just responding to Steve Gibson, of Gibson Research, who has hounded them for making raw sockets accessible to all programs in the past.
PDF != Adobe. The implication in many historical documents concerning OS X is that PDF was chosen as the basis for Quartz precisely because it was an open, royalty-free format, unlike Display PostScript (which powered OS X's predecessor, NextStep - or NeXTStep, or ... nevermind).
I do all kinds of PDF work (viewing, generating) and have not a single Adobe application on my system.
The problem with this discussion of "free" WiFi is that it's not really free. At some point, the municipalities will notice that "free" WiFi is actually consuming a lot of budget: equipment, network access, administrative personnel, "policing" personnel (watching out for abuse, etc.). Then something will have to pay for it: taxes, use fees, you name it. Probably people that don't use it all will have to pay for it. Not to mention you'll have some bureaucrat telling you you're using it "too much" or for the wrong thing.
Of course these companies are now upset that they are having to compete with the state, who, unlike the companies, can "charge" whatever they want (and whomever they want) without dealing with market realities (at least not for a while). This IS bad for business. I don't know about the most of you, but I suspect that having a lot of telecom companies losing money on network infrastructure will probably do great harm to our ability to do Wifi (or any other kind of networking).
It's not just the filmmaker who has costs to recoup. Building, maintaining, and staffing a theater costs real money, especially when people prefer theaters with stadium seating, expensive sound and projection systems, good parking, etc. There's a reason pretty much all of the major theater companies are hurting right now: ticket prices don't cover all their costs. Most of them make their money on concession sales.
Then there's the coattails effect, where the ratio of winners to losers tends to be small. It's easy to say to the $100 million bombs that the directors/producers should've made a better movie, but the reality is that the really popular movies subsidize many of the weaker films. There's a similarity to the pharaceutical industry here.
And, finally, if you think $10 is too much to pay for a theater ticket, or $20/month is too much for your NetFlix/Blockbuster/Walmart rental subscription, etc., or buying the DVD is out of your budget, then don't see the movie. What entitles anyone to consuming the stuff for free? How much the director really profits isn't up to you. (I think professional sports salaries are out of control. I refuse to pay $100 per ticket to see pro football. Apparently, there are more than a handful of people who think otherwise. More power to pro sports in that case.)
This isn't a battle between DRM or no DRM. In reality, digital music (and movies, etc.) is simply going to dry up in the absence of any way to protect content creators from wanton piracy of their work. (Who will make a $100 million film if 1 in 50 people pay to see it -- theater, rental, or purchased 'media' -- while the other 49 get some copy for which no money goes back to the creator?)
Rather, the issue is precisely what kind of DRM should be used, and whether DRM formats should be 'open', i.e., usable by all players of the content.
Realistically, I do think the industry will take care of this without government intervention, although there might be some betamax people out there -- those who buy into the wrong technology early.
I've fount CentOS quite useful for testing, especially with Oracle. The production and final QA machines run RHEL. Unit and integration testing all runs with CentOS. The goal is to duplicate the production system as much as possible early in the cycle. CentOS is great for this.
The money quote: In fact, more than 80 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD Group of New York last fall said they sent in their rebate forms.
Just having consumers hate the rebates isn't enough. Rebates only work for sellers and manufcaturers if a substantial number of people fail to send them in. That is, they bought the product, probably having been persuaded by the rebate, then never sent in the rebate materials. I recall several articles in the past (no links, sorry) that explains how if the number of rebate submissions approaches 100% of purchases, then it's cheaper for manufacturers and sellers to cut the price. The rebate overhead, of course, is what really makes this happen.
So, an 80% submission rate is probably close enough to 100% that sellers/manufacturers aren't seeing the kind of return they're used to. Who cares whether the buyers like rebates? What matters is whether they file for and receive the rebates. Now that the FTC is cracking down on that second part (i.e., companies not paying off on the advertised rebates), where's the upside for the companies?