Some managers who make critical business decisions based on "I can get tech support from a Linux newsgroup" should get promoted.
Why? That manager just exposed his company to the possibility of not being able to get help on a Linux newsgroup at a critical time on a critical issue. That's irresponsible.
Do you really think it is hard to find fee-based support for Linux?
Your post suffers from closed-mindedness. You have segmented the world into techies and management and demonized management to belittle their point of view without actually analyzing the management point of view and trying to understand it from a rational perspective.
Any time you bring in something supplied from an external source, that something represents risk since you do not control it. Depending on how critical that external thing is, you need to pay more attention to mitigating that risk.
Newsgroups are not a good tool for mitigating risk. You cannot quantify the response time for a newsgroup on a particular issue nor can you identify reasonable escalation procedures. Being able to do so is critical to protecting your obligations to your customers and business partners. These are valid needs for a business, and dismissing them does not help the Linux cause.
Fortunately for Linux, it has the champion of all champions for businesses to look to: IBM. IBM provides the risk mitigation that business needs. Any manager who would make critical business decisions based on "I can get tech support from a Linux newsgroup" should lose his job.
Actually, they have sold more than a million songs. And many of the early downloads were probably Mac users like myself putting it on a windows laptop just to use Rendezevous. I would not end up buying from that Windows machine, ever.
You cannot make an MP3 CD from AAC music with iTunes. There is no transcoding between formats. If you want an MP3, you have to burn an audio CD and then re-rip as an MP3. You will thus lose some quality.
I am sick of all the non-US people whining about the lack of support for them. The lack of support for them is an artifact of recording industry licenses, which must be negotiated separately in each country.
Letting an employee bring in any random piece of hardware and hook it up to your network is NOT an example of having diverse standards. It is an example of having no standards at all.
No kidding. I am obviously not advocating the random piece of hardware standard. So why are you arguing it?
And so it's not possible to run a company efficiently and productively with one OS? 95% of the time I would say you are sorely mistaken. There are always exceptions to the rule.
A small company, of course, can run just fine on one OS. There is not enough diversity in their workflows to require multiple operating systems. Once the diversity in workflows and working culture becomes sufficiently divergent, you cannot run a business efficiently on a single OS. I have consulted to a lot of Fortune 1000 companies, and I cannot think of one that was even close to 95% one OS.
And no, my statement about Linux and Windows was not a silly statement. Linux is a shitty desktop OS. Unless configuring X support is your idea of good desktop behavior (among a lot of other problems with Linux on the desktop).
As far as Windows doing print serving and file serving... It works great until it gets infected with some virus or another. While you may think diligent system administration fixes this, I think history disagrees.
Incompetent IT staffs use standards as a tool to beat the business side of things into submission. The IT staff exists to service the business, not the other way around. A competent IT staff will have a diverse set of standards capable of meeting needs and working culture of the business. That means a heterogeneous desktop environment.
An incompetent IT staff attempts to standardize on a single platform across all computing environments. That reduces IT costs and makes life easier on IT. It invariable raises overall business costs and reduces the productivity of the business that actually drives the revenue.
Like I said I wouldn't care if I was supporting all Macs or all Windows or all Linux, as long as it was ALL ONE.
Why should making the job of the IT staff easier be the objective of a business? Last I checked, the objective of a business was to make money. If making money means IT's job is a pain in the ass, then so be it.
In most companies, IT is so stuck on its own efficiencies that it fails to realize that an efficient IT shop is generally a sign of an IT shop out of alignment with the core business. You need standards to make IT work, but not monolithic, unbending standards like ALL THE WORLD IS A WINDOWS BOX. In fact, Windows on the server is as silly as Linux on the desktop.
Hey when the us hase 12.7 under the povertyline acording to The CIA world fact book dont com and say "poor to escape poverty much quicker than any other economic system.".
And all of those 12.7% poor are wealthier than most of the rest of the world.
I will tell you the sad fact that 13 years ago before Hungary changed its system thear where no homles no hunger no one going thrue trash! Today 1% of the population is homeless.
That's communist propoaganda. I have spent time in communist countries, and they all had more than their fair share of homeless people.
Your assessment is ignorant. Capitalism is the most efficient economic system for creating new wealth. You should think of capitalism like an accelerating train. As the train accelerates, the front car becomes increasingly distant from the back car. Nevertheless, the entire train manages to move forward.
In other words, under capitalism, the rich get richer faster than the poor get less poor. But it does enable the poor to escape poverty much quicker than any other economic system. Thus, your choices are to:
a) Be really poor just like everyone else
b) Be not so poor bu significantly disadvantaged compared to some others.
As a poor person, I would certainly pick B. As a rich person, of course, I would most definitely pick B.
Bush is a shitty President, and specifically a moron when it comes to understanding supply-side economics.
A tax cut without a corresponding cut in spending does nothing to stimulate spending (and thus the economy). It just shifts capital from the government to savings. For example, the tax cut of 2001 resulted in no increased spending, just increased savings in an amount almost exactly equal to the size of the tax cut. Myself, I was planning on using my $600 check from the government for savings. I did end up giving it to a 9/11 charity instead (which is functionally equivalent to a tax increase).
Instead, the Bush morons have increased spending dramatically. We will have to pay for this spending some day in taxes. There is no escaping it no matter how hard core you are about government taxation. The government has spent the money and it needs to fund that spending. The only question is do you fund it today (no tax cut) or do you fund it tomorrow (big tax increase).
Think of it this way. Imagine you have a credit card with no limit. You spend $2000/month. You can choose a job that pays $2000/month and not put anything on the credit card, or one that pays $1000/month and put the other $1000 on the credit card. Paying the lower-paying job does not change the fact that you need to earn $2000/month to support your expenses. If you choose the lower paying job, you will at some point have to find a job that pays in excess of $2000/month to pay your credit card balance and the interest owed.
The problem with supply-side economics is that a responsible tax cut is accompanied by an equal cut in spending. Those two concepts are economically identical. If you raise spending and pay for it with a tax increase, the money that fails to generate new investment is balanced by the economic value of government investment.
Supply side economics is right, however, on the general principle that the private sector is more efficient in investing money than is the government. Thus, under a well-advised supply-side strategy (something no Republican has ever understood):
Unfortunately, the benefactors of across the board tax cuts are generally the wealthy--the people the least motivated to efficiently invest the tax cut bounty. Tax cuts should include the wealthy, but under supply-side theories they should be unfairly weighted towards the poor and middle-class to enable them to move beyond sustainence spending to wealth creating investment.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see those three things leading to "wealth for the common person."
You misunderstood what Andy was getting at. The article was not about those three ideas, but instead about enabling the small/medium business to benefit from the productivity advantages afforded to larger businesses. By doing so, you empower small/medium-sized business.
The result is twofold: First, small/medium sized business that succeed become larger businesses that employee more people. Second, you make it easier to start new businesses which creates "American Dream" style opportunities.
By contrast, productivity gains in big business just seem to cost jobs. Especially during a recession and the early stages of a recovery.
Oh my god, you must be a retard! I did not say the WWW "based on the P2P model". I said that the fad that is P2P leverages the same architectural model as the WWW. In other words, that the WWW was essentially intended to be P2P even though there was no such term as P2P at the time.
The basic structure that was intended for the WWW was that everyone would have a browser and a server on their computers. The server part would make resources available outside of the local network and the browser would access remote resources.
Why NAT is relevant is because this model falls apart when all machines are not publicly addressable as standalone servers. If NAT were not in place, the WWW model would work just fine as a P2P solution. Modern P2P applications tend to do two things beyond the original WWW model:
They blend the server and client components into a single executable (this has dubious value)
The have complex networking logic designed to get around NAT issues.
The P2P architecture has been around for ages. The original concept of the WWW was based on a P2P model. Of course, that was pre-NAT.
What pundits fail to realize is that P2P is not a class of applications; it is simply a form of distributed computing architecture in which nodes act as both client and server.
The term P2P is, however, a passing fad. It is a label for this architecture whose greatest association is with a class of applications designed to steal intellectual property from others. It is unfortunate that this association has come about. However, the architecture will outlive the fad.
You cannot learn them independently. You need to be surrounded by other business people from a variety of business disciplines to fully appreciate the complexities of running a business.
When I began my MBA program, part of me felt I was just getting a piece of paper that provided me with credibility outside the tech realm. I am now finding that I am learning a lot of stuff I would never have learned from reading a book or from day-to-day work in a business.
I have always felt that the piracy argument is really a red herring for the record companies. What I believe they really fear from online distribution of music is losing control over the marketing of new music. In other words, under the current model in which there are few channels for large-scale exposure to new music, a record company can concentrate their marketing dollars on a few key artists.
Online distribution undermines this model and forces the record companies to spend more marketing dollars as a percentage of revenue. The success of iTunes seems to support this. While it is successful in terms of the # of songs sold, no handful of artists dominates its sales as with traditional channels.
So my question comes in a couple of parts. First, is all of this stuttering towards an online distribution system really more about control? If so, given that the iTunes experiment seems to bear out the thesis that online distribution costs them in control, how will we ever get to online music distribution that is equitable for everyone involved instead of one weighted towards big record companies or towards music pirates?
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Why? That manager just exposed his company to the possibility of not being able to get help on a Linux newsgroup at a critical time on a critical issue. That's irresponsible.
Do you really think it is hard to find fee-based support for Linux?
No. Why do you ask?
Any time you bring in something supplied from an external source, that something represents risk since you do not control it. Depending on how critical that external thing is, you need to pay more attention to mitigating that risk.
Newsgroups are not a good tool for mitigating risk. You cannot quantify the response time for a newsgroup on a particular issue nor can you identify reasonable escalation procedures. Being able to do so is critical to protecting your obligations to your customers and business partners. These are valid needs for a business, and dismissing them does not help the Linux cause.
Fortunately for Linux, it has the champion of all champions for businesses to look to: IBM. IBM provides the risk mitigation that business needs. Any manager who would make critical business decisions based on "I can get tech support from a Linux newsgroup" should lose his job.
Actually, they have sold more than a million songs. And many of the early downloads were probably Mac users like myself putting it on a windows laptop just to use Rendezevous. I would not end up buying from that Windows machine, ever.
You cannot make an MP3 CD from AAC music with iTunes. There is no transcoding between formats. If you want an MP3, you have to burn an audio CD and then re-rip as an MP3. You will thus lose some quality.
If you backup to an audio CD, the backup you make will not be encumbered by any DRM.
I am sick of all the non-US people whining about the lack of support for them. The lack of support for them is an artifact of recording industry licenses, which must be negotiated separately in each country.
People need to be able to take computers home. If your IT department cannot deal with that fact, then the lot of them need to be fired.
No kidding. I am obviously not advocating the random piece of hardware standard. So why are you arguing it?
There is this cool tool called a firewall. Check it out.
A small company, of course, can run just fine on one OS. There is not enough diversity in their workflows to require multiple operating systems. Once the diversity in workflows and working culture becomes sufficiently divergent, you cannot run a business efficiently on a single OS. I have consulted to a lot of Fortune 1000 companies, and I cannot think of one that was even close to 95% one OS.
And no, my statement about Linux and Windows was not a silly statement. Linux is a shitty desktop OS. Unless configuring X support is your idea of good desktop behavior (among a lot of other problems with Linux on the desktop).
As far as Windows doing print serving and file serving... It works great until it gets infected with some virus or another. While you may think diligent system administration fixes this, I think history disagrees.
An incompetent IT staff attempts to standardize on a single platform across all computing environments. That reduces IT costs and makes life easier on IT. It invariable raises overall business costs and reduces the productivity of the business that actually drives the revenue.
Why should making the job of the IT staff easier be the objective of a business? Last I checked, the objective of a business was to make money. If making money means IT's job is a pain in the ass, then so be it.
In most companies, IT is so stuck on its own efficiencies that it fails to realize that an efficient IT shop is generally a sign of an IT shop out of alignment with the core business. You need standards to make IT work, but not monolithic, unbending standards like ALL THE WORLD IS A WINDOWS BOX. In fact, Windows on the server is as silly as Linux on the desktop.
I am leaving AT&T and going to Verizon. Primarily because AT&T wants to charge me for # portability, but also because AT&T service sucks.
It is not /home, it is YOUR home. You the idiot who decided to infect the machine. Everyone else's data is safe.
And all of those 12.7% poor are wealthier than most of the rest of the world.
I will tell you the sad fact that 13 years ago before Hungary changed its system thear where no homles no hunger no one going thrue trash! Today 1% of the population is homeless.
That's communist propoaganda. I have spent time in communist countries, and they all had more than their fair share of homeless people.
That is, indeed, what happens with a train. That's why I chose the analogy.
In other words, under capitalism, the rich get richer faster than the poor get less poor. But it does enable the poor to escape poverty much quicker than any other economic system. Thus, your choices are to: a) Be really poor just like everyone else b) Be not so poor bu significantly disadvantaged compared to some others.
As a poor person, I would certainly pick B. As a rich person, of course, I would most definitely pick B.
A tax cut without a corresponding cut in spending does nothing to stimulate spending (and thus the economy). It just shifts capital from the government to savings. For example, the tax cut of 2001 resulted in no increased spending, just increased savings in an amount almost exactly equal to the size of the tax cut. Myself, I was planning on using my $600 check from the government for savings. I did end up giving it to a 9/11 charity instead (which is functionally equivalent to a tax increase).
Instead, the Bush morons have increased spending dramatically. We will have to pay for this spending some day in taxes. There is no escaping it no matter how hard core you are about government taxation. The government has spent the money and it needs to fund that spending. The only question is do you fund it today (no tax cut) or do you fund it tomorrow (big tax increase).
Think of it this way. Imagine you have a credit card with no limit. You spend $2000/month. You can choose a job that pays $2000/month and not put anything on the credit card, or one that pays $1000/month and put the other $1000 on the credit card. Paying the lower-paying job does not change the fact that you need to earn $2000/month to support your expenses. If you choose the lower paying job, you will at some point have to find a job that pays in excess of $2000/month to pay your credit card balance and the interest owed.
The problem with supply-side economics is that a responsible tax cut is accompanied by an equal cut in spending. Those two concepts are economically identical. If you raise spending and pay for it with a tax increase, the money that fails to generate new investment is balanced by the economic value of government investment.
Supply side economics is right, however, on the general principle that the private sector is more efficient in investing money than is the government. Thus, under a well-advised supply-side strategy (something no Republican has ever understood):
tax cut + decreased spending > tax increase + increased spending
Unfortunately, the benefactors of across the board tax cuts are generally the wealthy--the people the least motivated to efficiently invest the tax cut bounty. Tax cuts should include the wealthy, but under supply-side theories they should be unfairly weighted towards the poor and middle-class to enable them to move beyond sustainence spending to wealth creating investment.
You misunderstood what Andy was getting at. The article was not about those three ideas, but instead about enabling the small/medium business to benefit from the productivity advantages afforded to larger businesses. By doing so, you empower small/medium-sized business.
The result is twofold: First, small/medium sized business that succeed become larger businesses that employee more people. Second, you make it easier to start new businesses which creates "American Dream" style opportunities.
By contrast, productivity gains in big business just seem to cost jobs. Especially during a recession and the early stages of a recovery.
The basic structure that was intended for the WWW was that everyone would have a browser and a server on their computers. The server part would make resources available outside of the local network and the browser would access remote resources.
Why NAT is relevant is because this model falls apart when all machines are not publicly addressable as standalone servers. If NAT were not in place, the WWW model would work just fine as a P2P solution. Modern P2P applications tend to do two things beyond the original WWW model:
- They blend the server and client components into a single executable (this has dubious value)
- The have complex networking logic designed to get around NAT issues.
So go crawl back into your anonymous loser hole.What pundits fail to realize is that P2P is not a class of applications; it is simply a form of distributed computing architecture in which nodes act as both client and server.
The term P2P is, however, a passing fad. It is a label for this architecture whose greatest association is with a class of applications designed to steal intellectual property from others. It is unfortunate that this association has come about. However, the architecture will outlive the fad.
What the fuck is a dissadent in a free society?
This is a BSD/Sys V difference and a pain that everyone who made the transition from Sunos 4.x to Solaris had to deal with.
When I began my MBA program, part of me felt I was just getting a piece of paper that provided me with credibility outside the tech realm. I am now finding that I am learning a lot of stuff I would never have learned from reading a book or from day-to-day work in a business.
Online distribution undermines this model and forces the record companies to spend more marketing dollars as a percentage of revenue. The success of iTunes seems to support this. While it is successful in terms of the # of songs sold, no handful of artists dominates its sales as with traditional channels.
So my question comes in a couple of parts. First, is all of this stuttering towards an online distribution system really more about control? If so, given that the iTunes experiment seems to bear out the thesis that online distribution costs them in control, how will we ever get to online music distribution that is equitable for everyone involved instead of one weighted towards big record companies or towards music pirates?