It is also not the case that the what is good for me is bad for you. There are chess positions where what is good for me is also good for you -- for example, consider the situation where I am in 2nd place in a tournement. The 1st place player's game has finished and he is 1/2 point ahead of me. I need a win, period.
Now, it is concievable that there is a position arises on the board where if I choose move (A) it leads to a state tree where there the win-tie-loose ratios are 25-50-25 but if I choose move (B) it leads to a state tree where the win-tie-loose ratios are 50-0-50. Now, it is good for me to choose plan (B) because that maximizes my chances of choosing moves that lead to a win. However, it also maxmizes your chance of choosing moves that lead to a win for you.
It is important to remember that chess isn't played as a single game, but in a match or tournement where the game results have cummulative effects. Further, that while the value of the plan (A) above is arguably mathematically the same as plan (B) it is difficult to argue to a chess player that a 50% chance of drawing and a 25% chance of winning is just as good as a 50% chance of winning. We VALUE wins higher than draws, for a number of reasons. First, because of the ways rating systems work, the win is often worth more. Second, because of the fact that one's position in a tournement is significantly increased by winning versus drawing -- particularly in Swiss systems -- the win is worth more than 2 draws for most tie-break systems.
It is really dissappointing to see PostgreSQL, MySQL and SleepyCat compared to Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and DB2. The latter are enterprise databases, the former are not. While PostgreSQL adn the others are very good in the space they operate in, they do not do what Oracle and company do. To compare them as if they operated in the same space shows a gross ignorance of enterprise level data computing that is inexcusable for a site that is suppossed to be about "news for nerds." "Nerds" should know that enterprise level databases are more than transactional SQL engines (hell, in the case of MySQL and Sleepycat, not even that!).
CERT has become less and less important as things like Bugtraq have become more prevelant. However, CERT does have the advantage of having their alerts represent an authoritative statement of risk. That is valuable to any number of different companies that want or need to have documentation to back up their policies. CERT carries more weight than Bugtraq does, even if it isn't as timely.
That being the case, I imagine that they will find that their pricing structure is just too damn high, if the article is right about those prices. I can't imagine companies paying $70k a year for the service of validating information that the company already possesses from other sources. Particularly given the rapidity with which many companies are now trying to respond to Bugtraq posted bugs. It used to be Sun, HP, CISCO and the other big players didn't do jack unless CERT published their bugs. But that has changed over the years. Now a Bugtraq posted vulnerability will almost always get a vendor patch fairly quickly. (Often not quick enough for some, but still, faster than they used to be!) So who is going to pay 70k for validation of information that the vendors will likely have already claimed to be valid?! I think a flat price of a few thousand a year for anyone interested would be much more realistic.
Kids who break real, existing laws remain unpunished while those who break no law are made to bear the responsibility for having been victims.
School administrators, it is time for you to WAKE THE FUCK UP! It is illegal in this country to verbally threaten someone with harm. It is illegal in this country to touch someone without their permission. It is illegal in this country to molest other people's belongings without their permission. It is illegal in this country to band together in a group for the purpose of engaging in other illegal activities. All of this, and more, is illegal, everywhere but inside of a school! There we teach the criminals that it is ok to do all these things, for the only people who get punished are those that you do this crap TO! They get tossed out if they show the slightest little bit of interest in defending themselves.
One of these days a really bright kid is going to snap and we will have an event that will make Columbine look like a walk in the park. Some day, and I fear it is not long off, some kid will really want revenge and his home-made bombs will denonate when they are supposed to, and hundreds of kids, and their families, are going to pay for the cowardice of the school administration to enforce existing laws.
What's saddest of all, is that cowardice is fueled by the sick practice of funding schools based on the number of asses in chairs. The schools are loathe to get rid of problem students not because they want to educate those kids, or think that they belong in class, but because the schools get paid to keep them. The school administrations are consciously choosing to allow kids to continue to be abused daily because the school administration gets more money that way.
Umm why does anyone still listen to this idiot?!
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Dvorak has been such a loud-mouthed moron making wildly wrong predictions in the industry for so long you'd think that people would start to realize that he is just a loud-mouthed moron and doesn't understand IT at all.
But they don't.
The sheeple like to have loud, extravagant people leading them. They simply don't care that such people are rarely capable of rubbing neurons together.
PBS falls into a class of things that I consider vital to our nation's citizenry. I'm sorry but WTF?! I guess my dictionary must be out of date, perhaps the definition of "vital" has changed over the years, but PBS isn't "vital" in any reasonable definition of the word I am aware of.
PBS is a nicety that is largely outmoded. When there where only 3 networks, and that was all there was as every station was affiliated with one network or another then PBS played a role in providing some form of alternative programming. However, the situation is vastly different today than it was 20 years ago. Today, there are a half-dozen networks broadcasting from traditional stations in almost every market. Moreover, satellite and cable providers offer literally hundreds of channels to most markets.
PBS is still necessary in those rare areas of the country where the market is not large enough to support traditional broadcast stations, both for radio and television. But supporting PBS stations in major market cities is simply a waste of taxpayer money. The only justification for supporting PBS is to have broadcast capabilities for emergency information in areas where there are no (or very few) other broadcast stations. Those areas are very rare in today's world.
I don't mind people wanting to support something I disagree with, but I do mind every debate being started with hyperbole. By making a claim such as PBS being "vital" to the citizenry, the rhetoric is charged so that any debate can't ever really discuss the merits of continued support. After all, if you are against continued support, for whatever reason, you wish to take away something that is "vital." Hogwash!
I agree that the JSF is moving along. I'm not as optimistic as you about the F-22 (and I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing -- the plane flys fabulously, but it's very limited payload capacity makes it a very short-duration fighter and an ineffecient payload delivery vehicle). But that's not where the needs end.
The B-52 is out-of-date, but the B-1 is nearing the end of its usefullness and we still have tactical uses for that type of delivery. The B-2's are too few to take over the major bombing duties. And too expensive to use as replacement vehicles even if they weren't.
But we have a vast array of other needs as well. Our electronic survallence platforms are getting very out of date as airframes go. We've never really found a good replacement for the F-4s for wild weasel work. Our sub-hunter platforms (admittedly a low priority, but still important, particularly with the soviets selling off their fleet and china developing new subs) are ancient.
Air refuling vehicles are quite old. We still fly a huge number of C-130s and C-141s as our main cargo vehicles.
The list goes on and on.
I agree that it is usually easier to go through X-projects than to go through standard procurrment (one of the reasons that I think the F-22 is dead is that it is now not obtainable by that route but only through procurrement!). But just because it is easier to get something doesn't meant that we should get that something regardless of what it does nad how what it does fits in with our tactical needs and strategic vision.
I am concerned that with shrinking budgets and increasing number of replacement needs, we aren' spending the limited dollars available well. If the existing fighter fleet lasts another 5 years in combat-ready condition it will be a miricle and a testimoney to the ground crews that keep those birds in the air. But it is just not likely to happen. The attrition rate of our current air fleet is very high. The birds need to be replaced today not in 5-10 years. And that means someone needs to pony up to the table and pay for it.
Instead we are spending our money on future projects that offer limited viability in terms of our existing needs and have limited scope in terms of our future strategic concerns.
My concern is not that the military can save money by developing new systems. My concern is that the existing airframs are in dire need of replacement and we aren't spending the money to do that and are instead spending money on systems like this that, while perhaps very cool in and of themselves, don't fit into our existing strategic plan and don't serve an existing need.
It's nice to see that it isn't only business managers that get wooed by new technology and spend money on stuff they don't need. We get it in the military as well.
With the F-16, F-18's and F-14's showing their age, and the F-22 not being produced, we have a real pressing need right now for a new production air-frame. The Russian Mig-33 is capable of outflying anything we have in the sky (including the F-22!) and while it isn't in production, the possibility remains that other nations could fund the production of those planes (china anyone?!).
Outside of the fighter arena, we are flying seriously old craft in other roles as well. Our air combat support aircraft are ancient and (lacking the sex appeal of new fighters) have not been subjects of serious research in decades (the airframes not the electronic add-ons). Our bombers, with the exception of the very expensive and numerically insignicant B-2s, are on air-frames that are years beyond their expiration dates.
The airforce needs to be spending money on airframe research and replacement for those needs NOW. Any futuristic weapons delivery system like the X-33 project should be looked at as a long-term "nice to see but not necessary" expenditure that only gets funded once the immediate needs are met. Sure, it's a lot less sexy and doesn't make the areospace journal newsmen drool, but it is what is needed and what should be expected and demanded from responsible leadership.
First, figure out that technical geeks don't know a damn thing about marketting. So asking what to do here will not get you very much in the way of usefull advice, unless you get really really lucky.
Second, figure out that technical geeks don't know a damn thing about business. So asking what to do here will not get you very much in the way of usefull advice, unless you get really really lucky.
Third, figure out that business types and market-droids are usefull for something -- usually things having to do wtih with business and marketting -- and go ask them. They will probably be able to give you more usefull advice than you'll get here, unless you get really really lucky.
The problem, once again, is that the sheople don't understand what is being legislated, so they by and large don't care what the law says or does. People in the USA, at least, have a horrible "if it doesn't effect me I don't care" attitude when it comes to laws effecting privacy and personal liabilities.
Hopefully AT&T, AOL, and the other big players who would be negatively effected will be able to effectively lobby against this. However, don't count on it. The supporters have just as much cash, and the people aren't going to voice their oppinion one way or another.
An interesting aside - what will we do when McCain/Feingold makes it illegal for AT&T to lobby to stop this kind of abuse?! Are we going to suddenly develop a civilly active, well educated populace that researches pending legislation and calls the appropriate representatives? Somehow I doubt it. I bet we get lots of this crap shoved down our throats once we make it illegal for interested parties to lobby.
Living in a free country was nice. I wonder where I can move to so that I might experience it again?
Already my employeer will allow me to work from out of the office provided the work gets done. The ability to have a legitimate network connection speed on my laptop from the beach will make my life very sweet, if it is affordable.
Right now the web-access charges for cell-devices are so high that they are impractical for any real uses. Even reading/. costs too much!:)
Hopefully along with this impressive technology will come an affordable price-point that will make laptops and other devices truly usable from the road instead of merely portable to the nearest hard-line.
I will be very intersted in seeing how they solve the problem of validating security modules prior to loading them. Clearly this solution will make the kernel more flexible, but it will also add a layer of complexity in the security/trust relationship as now the system will have to protect against rogue security modules.
Equally obvious is that if someone can put a rogue security module on the system they can probably put a rogue kernel on the system, so this is likely not a real issue. However, it is something that should be addressed to make sure tha the system is as tightly integrated and unabusable as possible.
The author shows his ignorance by comparing raw storage cost with a network storage device. While the network storage device certainly is more expensive per gig, it also likely supports every RAID level imaginable, with multiple hardware redundancies. I would imagine that it probably supports fibre either out of the box or with a reasonable add-on. And it likely does a doze other things "correctly" from an enterprise computing point of view.
Yeah, the X-toy beats it in terms of raw storgage costs, but what level of support will Microsoft give you if your X-box goes up in flames? I've used a number of different network storage devices that had support available that rivals Sun -- if you box goes down you can have an engineer on-site fixing it in a matter of a few hours.
While the x-toy might make a fine web-server for a very low end, low volume site, it wouldn't handle anything that really takes a beating. Morevoer, any IS manager who puts anything close to mission critical on such a machine would be fired within minutes of such a decision being discovered. And deservidly so!!
The x-toy is going to be cheap hardware, good for some toy uses, but no company (and certainly no IS manager) who knows computing is going to ever do anything of real significance on this machine. It simply isn't designed to be the kind of durable, dependable, servicable, supportable, supported hardware that companies demand. The days of running your company on your kids Apple IIc (or its modern day equivilant - the X-toy) are over.
What is happening, and what will continue to happen, is that the corporate interests will come together to limit the consumer's IP rights not through legislation (though they are trying that route very successfully as well) but through the coercive force of product lines. By making it very inconvinient for the average consumer (and face it folks,/. readers aren't average consumers of computer gear!) to excercise their rights under current copyright law, the manufacturers can errode those rights.
If you can't make a recording for fair use without hacking hardware and software, then you won't be making that recording, if you are the average consumer. And after a few years of virtually no-one excercising their rights to fair-use, the notion that those rights exist will slowly be eroded and THEN it will be far easier to pass legislation outright stripping those rights from the public.
The problem with this, and similar stories, is that no effective public information campaign will be fought against it. Anyone who stands up and yells "foul" will be shot down as either an evil napster-esque hacker/cracker or an anti-Microsoft bigot. In either case you will be considered safe to ignore by the average consumer - adn the result will be that teh sheople will do what the corporations want them to do.
The only real way to counter this trend is to get congress to pass legislation that mandates that any consumer recording/playback device include the ability for people to excercise their fair use rights on all media forms that are handled in recording/playback -- either in the product or in an optional add-on. This will stop the trend of making products that are "broken" with regards to fair-use by design. Unfortunately, it will have the side-effect of increasing cost of consumer goods, as the corporate entities will use that sort of law as an excuse to raise prices.
Of course, such a law will never happen, congress is far to beholden to the big corporations to ever do anything to actually protect the people from bad corporate policies. So those of us who are clued can watch in frustration as our ability to excercise our first amendment rights are slowly and meticulously stripped from us by the refusal of corporations to provide the consumers the means to excercise those rights. But we'll all be happy 'cuase we'll have such nice cheap products to entertain us!
Please, someone explain this movie to me. I don't get why it is so popular.
The actors are not all that good, with the exception of Fishburne and Pantoliano who where passible. The direction isn't really all that fascinating. And the storyline is fresh out of a bad philosophy 101 class.
Maybe it's becuase I've got some education in philosophy and didn't find the story all that deep. Maybe it's becuase I'm a Hong Kong action film buff and have seen all the special effects before. But I just don't get what the fuss was about. Sure, Carrie-Anne Moss was hot and fun to look at, and the sound-track and sound editing where pretty damn good (particularly during the famous scene of Neo and Trinity battling it out, but sound tracks and hot babes don't make a movie in my book.
So what is it about this movie that makes everyone all excited?
On the flip side, I do think that a book showing how a very visual movie is storyboarded and moves from concept to production is a cool thing. I went and saw the travelling Star Wars museum display that included a lot of the concept art for the first 3 films. That was a very cool experience and I can certainly see why a fan would want that in a quality coffee table book. It is very interesting to see the changes that occure from concept to production, and to learn some of the reasons behind those changes.
I have to duck this one. Security deserves precise and detailed answers and I'm not qualified to give them.
Other than to say the price of security is eternal vigilance.
There are a lot of people in Bob's position whow would have handed that question to an engineer or a technical lead and said "write me up a good sounding answer" and posted that answer as their own. Bob has the integrity to not pretend he is more technical than he is, and the intelligence to realize that good questions require hard knowledge and expertise to answer correctly.
One of the reasons RedHat has done so well so far, in my oppinion, is that Bob clearly is not afraid to admit to not knowing the answer to every question. And in recognizing his own limitations, he is able to know what sort of talent he needs to surround himself with in order to succeed.
There is a solid lesson here for anyone starting a business. Having a dream and a vision only gets you to the starting block. Understanding your limitations, having personal integrity, and surrounding yourself with people who you allow to take credit for their achievements will get you into the race.
I wonder how many of the tech company failures we've seen can be attributed, more or less, to the key people in the company not knowing what they weren't experts in everything?
Again, kudos Bob! That is the most impressive answer of this interview, and it says a great deal about you as a person that you should be proud of!
I realize that the subject line above may strike some people as heresy. Nonetheless is absolutely true. Security, particularly with respect to computers, is not about privacy it is about risk management. What you're interested in having happen is for your communications to occur in precisely the way you are interested in having them occur. This means that you are interested in managing who has access to the computer, network or data. You wish to minimize the possibility of unauthorized access while maximizing the ability to engage in communication. To do this properly you must first accurately assess the value of the communication which you would protect from unauthorized access.
For example, if you are working in the financial industry your data is probably very valuable indeed. Whereas, if you are working in a car wash your data is probably much less valuable. Even so, for most users of cryptography technology today, the concern seems not to be with risk management but with privacy. What seems to be lost is an understanding that privacy issues are relative. Indeed, privacy is really about access to information and falls under the same milieu of risk management as any other business endeavor.
Cryptography is only one piece of the puzzle. In a bank, for example, there will be air walls, intrusion detection teams, and other measures in place to keep unauthorized access to an absolute minimum. These measures, with the cost of course. Therefore, they will only be taken when their cost is justified by the level of risk of loss of control of the data.
Certainly, for the average user, there are things that they can do to minimize risk which cannot cost much money. They can, for example, utilize onetime pass codes, keep their key ring in a hardware device that is not always connected to the computer, perform routine system integrity checks, etc.
of course, all of these can be breached by a determined hacker/cracker. That is not the point. Perfect securities does not exist within network devices. However, perfect risk management does. And therefore, as security is really about risk management, perfect security does exist and is achievable as long as you do away with the notion that security is about limiting access and rather accept that security is about managing risk.
The question being asked seems to be "should I go with this startup job or not?" And you don't give us enough information to go on.
First, what level are you at? If you are going into your third start-up at the manager level or higher, you should seriously think twice. The reason I say that is because you are at the level where you are responsible for the success or failure of the business. Having been up to bat and struck out twice in a row you don't want a hat-trick on your resume! If you are at a managerial level (and 'tech lead' is a managerial level!) you need a long stint of steady work/pay on your resume.
Also you say that this new company is going to be making a physical product. Well, go investigate the market space where that physical product is going to be sold. How big is the market space? Who are the other players? Who will be your REAL competition (hint: it is probably NOT whatever the business plan says!)? Talk to a few potential customers and find out what would make them buy this physical product over someone elses product. Check and make sure that the product offers some competitive advantage to generate customers.
Next, ask to see the written business plan. Go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Pretend you are a banker (not a venture capitalist) and that the company is asking you for a loan. Would you give it? Why or why not? Talk to other VC folks if you can and ask if they've heard of the startup and what they think about its long-term prospects. Get "why" answers to every question.
Finally, look at the work you're going to be doing. If you really like it, and everything else looks good. Jump in. But don't expect to get rich. And if you do, expect to be poor again real soon. Most companies fail in the first 5 years or so. And many of those make paper millionaires in the first year or two (even before the dot-com world). But if the company doesn't have staying power, the money will fade rather quickly. I had options go from $6 a share to $28 a share and back down to $2 a share in a period of 2 years. And that kind of fluctuation isn't uncommon for newer companies.
You will, in all likelyhood, not get rick working for startups. You will work harder, and maybe have more fun, but you won't get rich. Wealth is actually more easily had with large companies that offer solid 401k plans and great benefits. But if you want a startup, do your homework. You should at least try to have a company that will be around for a couple of years. With a little homework that isn't that hard to find.
Katz is, perhaps rightly, pointing a finger of derrission at the populist tripe offered as a "solution" to the "problem" of school shootings. He is correct to point out that the "solution" is being bandied about without regard to any actual data that suggests a positive correlation between what is being tauted as the "cause" and the events that society is attempting to stop.
Problematically, for his argument, is that in the next breath he does the same thing.
There are likely a number of correlate causes that combine to cause kids to choose to solve their problems through violence -- be that violence aimed at themselves or at others. And anyone who has been in a large public school knows that the institutionalization that occurs there is oppressive and disturbing on a number of levels. Clearly there are problems. However, offering "solutions" that have no proven, established relationship to the problem is not likely to do much in terms of stopping the problem.
Further, the "problem" is of a questionable seriousness, depending on what you think the "problem" is. School shootings, for example, are not a big issue in this country. They are a big media attraction, but kids have been shooting other kids since the arrival of arms in this country. Adjusted for population changes, lethal violence in the schools is on the decline, not on the rise. Schools remain one of the safest places for kids to be to not get shot. And that level of safety is actually increasing over time, not decreasing.
Kids have suffered from depression for a long time as well. We may be better equiped to diagnose and treat such things today, and the result may be that we are "seeing" more depressed kids. However, that doesn't say that depression is on the increase. Are schools creating environments where depression flourishes or where depression is simply better diagnosed and recognized? We really don't know.
The one point that Katz makes that we should all be concerned about is the number of communities, small though it is, that are starting to pass "anti-bullying" legislation. Folks, here's a clue, assult, battery, threats of violence, emotional abuse, and the like are already illegal. The laws to stop bullying are already in place. Schools already have the administrative authority to set disciplinary standards that allow them to remove the problem kids from the classroom environment. They already have the legal backing to send the real problem kids to jail. That isn't being done now not because of a lack of anti-bully laws, but because the schools want as many kids as possible.
The schools are given money based on the number of butts in chairs. If you, as an administrator, remove one of those rear-ends, you cut your opperating budget. There is a strong fiscal preassure to keep as many kids in school on a daily basis as possible. This fiscal preassure means that unless you have a high probability of facing legal threats that will cost you more than the amount of money you get per kid, you aren't going to get rid of a kid. This method of financing schools is a real problem, seperate and distinct from the issue of violance and the root causes thereof, in that the administration is forced to choose between appropriate disciplinary policies and funding. Until this fiscal dilemna is removed, no school has any real hope of instituting and maintaining disciplinary codes that strongly discourage bullying in any form.
Folks, higher skilled workers earn more than lower skilled workers in this industry. Even when the lower skilled workers have more seniority. The reason is that we don't have collective barganing and each worker is free to negotiate their own wage.
Moreover, we don't have a couple of hundred dollars a month sucked out of our paychecks to fund the organizer's pockets.
The net result of all this is that those of us who are in the top percentiles skills wise get to make a shitload more money than if we where in a "union" shop.
In the world of unions, every worker gets the same wage, regardless of differences in talent. They get the same raises based on years of experience. They have no power to bargain on their own behalf - no matter how much better they might be than their coworkers.
And folks, there's a hell of a lot of difference between a top-end coder or data analyst and a mediocre one.
Unionization will be a loose-loose proposition. Top talent will loose wages if they stay in union shops and union shops will loose top talent since they won't pay them what they deserve.
One of the interesting "pluses" about Linux and BSD is that it admits the programmers and developers are flawed. It allows for the end-user, if sufficiently skilled and motivated, to fix their own problem. However, this "plus" comes at a cost. It is achieved by allowing nearly anyone to come up with a "solution" to a problem, and those "solutions" are included in the distributions based on the fact that they reliably solve the problem -- and not on any other real criteria. This results in a total system that lacks consistency and eligance. While each component may be exceedingly well crafted (and in my experience this is not the case - there's a ton of cruft and outright crap in most ditriubtions!) the total system is neither. It is a huge conglomeration of kludges, patches and work-arounds. That it can be made to appear "stable" is an amazing testimony to the skill of the administrators who run it, and the programmers and developers who have produced all those necessary "temporary" fixes. It is also a huge indictment of the various platforms that compete for the server and desktop market. However, it is NOT a characteristic of a good design. A computer is a tool. An OS is a central and critical element of that tool. It determines if the tool will be able to be used successfully and by whom it will be used. Imagine if you could buy a hammer but it didn't come with a handle - you had to craft your own! That is the current "state of the art" Linux desktop. Here's all the components you need to make a computer that will be usable - now get busy and build an interface for your users!! Even in "server land" there are "users" to satisfy and most of them are not technical people. IS managers, product managers, etc., all need to be able to look at information about the system, but are precluded from doing so in a conistent, coherent manner. Linux is a great system, from the point of view of it is UNIX taken to its highest level. But sadly, UNIX is not a great system. Lots of great systems ideas are there, but it is not well designed and well integrated. There are shining examples of good total systems out there -- in the mainframe world, MACs, to some extent BeOS . . . and the hacker culture dispises them for all the reasons hackers hate those sorts of things . ..their hard to program, their closed, it's hard to break . . . But guess what folks -- the USERS want a system that is hard to break! Users don't want a system that requires every new product addition has to be carefully considered in case it breaks existing stuff -- they want to run their software, get their information, and get on with their lives. Right now UNIX rules the roost because there isn't a well designed system out there that has tackled the complexity of inter-networked computing and tried to build a solid orthogonal system aimed at that market. Moreover, the cost of doing that task correctly is going to be huge. Until some company or government does that, the network world will be ruled by UNIX because that is the platform that allows the lowest level access to produce kludges to problems that shouldn't exist on a well designed totoal SYSTEM to begin with. That UNIX is great at that tasks is something to cheer about, but we shouldnt' forget that it is a necessary evil. and we shouldn't be confussed into thinking it is a good thing (tm).
What's the point Ummm -- I'm a system admin. My company uses Outlook and Excell (with VB programs) extensively. I must be on windows to do those things, which I need to do multiple times a day. At the same time, i need to have a number of X-clients going monitoring systems, runing programs, playing quake ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h and other wise being productive. If I have to reboot everytime I need to be in Windows I will loose a ton of time. If I have multiple boxes I will waste money and waste a ton of space. If I have VMWare, I am happy, content and busy Quak^h^h^h^hworking.
What's more frightening is their recent attempts to steal the word "open" as it relates to software licensing! Check out this URL, it speaks for itself. http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/licensing/Open .htm
Venture Capitalists are interested in QUICKLY making money. That means, they will take between 40-65% share of your company and then SELL it at the first best opportunity. Unless you have an established customer base and can demonstrate a long-term income stream, the VC's are NOT what you want to deal with if you are interested in your company's future. Investor bankers are more the way to go. They will take a much lower %age of your stock and are interested in developing your business plan with you in order to provide long-term income to the bank. VC's are often "looser" with their money than IB's, but they expect a much higher, quicker return for that risk. If you care about your concept and want a long-term company, IB's are a much better choice.
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It is also not the case that the what is good for me is bad for you. There are chess positions where what is good for me is also good for you -- for example, consider the situation where I am in 2nd place in a tournement. The 1st place player's game has finished and he is 1/2 point ahead of me. I need a win, period. Now, it is concievable that there is a position arises on the board where if I choose move (A) it leads to a state tree where there the win-tie-loose ratios are 25-50-25 but if I choose move (B) it leads to a state tree where the win-tie-loose ratios are 50-0-50. Now, it is good for me to choose plan (B) because that maximizes my chances of choosing moves that lead to a win. However, it also maxmizes your chance of choosing moves that lead to a win for you. It is important to remember that chess isn't played as a single game, but in a match or tournement where the game results have cummulative effects. Further, that while the value of the plan (A) above is arguably mathematically the same as plan (B) it is difficult to argue to a chess player that a 50% chance of drawing and a 25% chance of winning is just as good as a 50% chance of winning. We VALUE wins higher than draws, for a number of reasons. First, because of the ways rating systems work, the win is often worth more. Second, because of the fact that one's position in a tournement is significantly increased by winning versus drawing -- particularly in Swiss systems -- the win is worth more than 2 draws for most tie-break systems.
It is really dissappointing to see PostgreSQL, MySQL and SleepyCat compared to Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and DB2. The latter are enterprise databases, the former are not. While PostgreSQL adn the others are very good in the space they operate in, they do not do what Oracle and company do. To compare them as if they operated in the same space shows a gross ignorance of enterprise level data computing that is inexcusable for a site that is suppossed to be about "news for nerds." "Nerds" should know that enterprise level databases are more than transactional SQL engines (hell, in the case of MySQL and Sleepycat, not even that!).
That being the case, I imagine that they will find that their pricing structure is just too damn high, if the article is right about those prices. I can't imagine companies paying $70k a year for the service of validating information that the company already possesses from other sources. Particularly given the rapidity with which many companies are now trying to respond to Bugtraq posted bugs. It used to be Sun, HP, CISCO and the other big players didn't do jack unless CERT published their bugs. But that has changed over the years. Now a Bugtraq posted vulnerability will almost always get a vendor patch fairly quickly. (Often not quick enough for some, but still, faster than they used to be!) So who is going to pay 70k for validation of information that the vendors will likely have already claimed to be valid?! I think a flat price of a few thousand a year for anyone interested would be much more realistic.
School administrators, it is time for you to WAKE THE FUCK UP! It is illegal in this country to verbally threaten someone with harm. It is illegal in this country to touch someone without their permission. It is illegal in this country to molest other people's belongings without their permission. It is illegal in this country to band together in a group for the purpose of engaging in other illegal activities. All of this, and more, is illegal, everywhere but inside of a school! There we teach the criminals that it is ok to do all these things, for the only people who get punished are those that you do this crap TO! They get tossed out if they show the slightest little bit of interest in defending themselves.
One of these days a really bright kid is going to snap and we will have an event that will make Columbine look like a walk in the park. Some day, and I fear it is not long off, some kid will really want revenge and his home-made bombs will denonate when they are supposed to, and hundreds of kids, and their families, are going to pay for the cowardice of the school administration to enforce existing laws.
What's saddest of all, is that cowardice is fueled by the sick practice of funding schools based on the number of asses in chairs. The schools are loathe to get rid of problem students not because they want to educate those kids, or think that they belong in class, but because the schools get paid to keep them. The school administrations are consciously choosing to allow kids to continue to be abused daily because the school administration gets more money that way.
Dvorak has been such a loud-mouthed moron making wildly wrong predictions in the industry for so long you'd think that people would start to realize that he is just a loud-mouthed moron and doesn't understand IT at all.
But they don't.
The sheeple like to have loud, extravagant people leading them. They simply don't care that such people are rarely capable of rubbing neurons together.
PBS is a nicety that is largely outmoded. When there where only 3 networks, and that was all there was as every station was affiliated with one network or another then PBS played a role in providing some form of alternative programming. However, the situation is vastly different today than it was 20 years ago. Today, there are a half-dozen networks broadcasting from traditional stations in almost every market. Moreover, satellite and cable providers offer literally hundreds of channels to most markets.
PBS is still necessary in those rare areas of the country where the market is not large enough to support traditional broadcast stations, both for radio and television. But supporting PBS stations in major market cities is simply a waste of taxpayer money. The only justification for supporting PBS is to have broadcast capabilities for emergency information in areas where there are no (or very few) other broadcast stations. Those areas are very rare in today's world.
I don't mind people wanting to support something I disagree with, but I do mind every debate being started with hyperbole. By making a claim such as PBS being "vital" to the citizenry, the rhetoric is charged so that any debate can't ever really discuss the merits of continued support. After all, if you are against continued support, for whatever reason, you wish to take away something that is "vital." Hogwash!
I agree that the JSF is moving along. I'm not as optimistic as you about the F-22 (and I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing -- the plane flys fabulously, but it's very limited payload capacity makes it a very short-duration fighter and an ineffecient payload delivery vehicle). But that's not where the needs end.
The B-52 is out-of-date, but the B-1 is nearing the end of its usefullness and we still have tactical uses for that type of delivery. The B-2's are too few to take over the major bombing duties. And too expensive to use as replacement vehicles even if they weren't.
But we have a vast array of other needs as well. Our electronic survallence platforms are getting very out of date as airframes go. We've never really found a good replacement for the F-4s for wild weasel work. Our sub-hunter platforms (admittedly a low priority, but still important, particularly with the soviets selling off their fleet and china developing new subs) are ancient.
Air refuling vehicles are quite old. We still fly a huge number of C-130s and C-141s as our main cargo vehicles.
The list goes on and on.
I agree that it is usually easier to go through X-projects than to go through standard procurrment (one of the reasons that I think the F-22 is dead is that it is now not obtainable by that route but only through procurrement!). But just because it is easier to get something doesn't meant that we should get that something regardless of what it does nad how what it does fits in with our tactical needs and strategic vision.
I am concerned that with shrinking budgets and increasing number of replacement needs, we aren' spending the limited dollars available well. If the existing fighter fleet lasts another 5 years in combat-ready condition it will be a miricle and a testimoney to the ground crews that keep those birds in the air. But it is just not likely to happen. The attrition rate of our current air fleet is very high. The birds need to be replaced today not in 5-10 years. And that means someone needs to pony up to the table and pay for it.
Instead we are spending our money on future projects that offer limited viability in terms of our existing needs and have limited scope in terms of our future strategic concerns.
My concern is not that the military can save money by developing new systems. My concern is that the existing airframs are in dire need of replacement and we aren't spending the money to do that and are instead spending money on systems like this that, while perhaps very cool in and of themselves, don't fit into our existing strategic plan and don't serve an existing need.
It's nice to see that it isn't only business managers that get wooed by new technology and spend money on stuff they don't need. We get it in the military as well.
With the F-16, F-18's and F-14's showing their age, and the F-22 not being produced, we have a real pressing need right now for a new production air-frame. The Russian Mig-33 is capable of outflying anything we have in the sky (including the F-22!) and while it isn't in production, the possibility remains that other nations could fund the production of those planes (china anyone?!).
Outside of the fighter arena, we are flying seriously old craft in other roles as well. Our air combat support aircraft are ancient and (lacking the sex appeal of new fighters) have not been subjects of serious research in decades (the airframes not the electronic add-ons). Our bombers, with the exception of the very expensive and numerically insignicant B-2s, are on air-frames that are years beyond their expiration dates.
The airforce needs to be spending money on airframe research and replacement for those needs NOW. Any futuristic weapons delivery system like the X-33 project should be looked at as a long-term "nice to see but not necessary" expenditure that only gets funded once the immediate needs are met. Sure, it's a lot less sexy and doesn't make the areospace journal newsmen drool, but it is what is needed and what should be expected and demanded from responsible leadership.
First, figure out that technical geeks don't know a damn thing about marketting. So asking what to do here will not get you very much in the way of usefull advice, unless you get really really lucky.
Second, figure out that technical geeks don't know a damn thing about business. So asking what to do here will not get you very much in the way of usefull advice, unless you get really really lucky.
Third, figure out that business types and market-droids are usefull for something -- usually things having to do wtih with business and marketting -- and go ask them. They will probably be able to give you more usefull advice than you'll get here, unless you get really really lucky.
Here's hoping you get lucky!
The problem, once again, is that the sheople don't understand what is being legislated, so they by and large don't care what the law says or does. People in the USA, at least, have a horrible "if it doesn't effect me I don't care" attitude when it comes to laws effecting privacy and personal liabilities.
Hopefully AT&T, AOL, and the other big players who would be negatively effected will be able to effectively lobby against this. However, don't count on it. The supporters have just as much cash, and the people aren't going to voice their oppinion one way or another.
An interesting aside - what will we do when McCain/Feingold makes it illegal for AT&T to lobby to stop this kind of abuse?! Are we going to suddenly develop a civilly active, well educated populace that researches pending legislation and calls the appropriate representatives? Somehow I doubt it. I bet we get lots of this crap shoved down our throats once we make it illegal for interested parties to lobby.
Living in a free country was nice. I wonder where I can move to so that I might experience it again?
Already my employeer will allow me to work from out of the office provided the work gets done. The ability to have a legitimate network connection speed on my laptop from the beach will make my life very sweet, if it is affordable.
Right now the web-access charges for cell-devices are so high that they are impractical for any real uses. Even reading /. costs too much! :)
Hopefully along with this impressive technology will come an affordable price-point that will make laptops and other devices truly usable from the road instead of merely portable to the nearest hard-line.
I will be very intersted in seeing how they solve the problem of validating security modules prior to loading them. Clearly this solution will make the kernel more flexible, but it will also add a layer of complexity in the security/trust relationship as now the system will have to protect against rogue security modules.
Equally obvious is that if someone can put a rogue security module on the system they can probably put a rogue kernel on the system, so this is likely not a real issue. However, it is something that should be addressed to make sure tha the system is as tightly integrated and unabusable as possible.
The author shows his ignorance by comparing raw storage cost with a network storage device. While the network storage device certainly is more expensive per gig, it also likely supports every RAID level imaginable, with multiple hardware redundancies. I would imagine that it probably supports fibre either out of the box or with a reasonable add-on. And it likely does a doze other things "correctly" from an enterprise computing point of view.
Yeah, the X-toy beats it in terms of raw storgage costs, but what level of support will Microsoft give you if your X-box goes up in flames? I've used a number of different network storage devices that had support available that rivals Sun -- if you box goes down you can have an engineer on-site fixing it in a matter of a few hours.
While the x-toy might make a fine web-server for a very low end, low volume site, it wouldn't handle anything that really takes a beating. Morevoer, any IS manager who puts anything close to mission critical on such a machine would be fired within minutes of such a decision being discovered. And deservidly so!!
The x-toy is going to be cheap hardware, good for some toy uses, but no company (and certainly no IS manager) who knows computing is going to ever do anything of real significance on this machine. It simply isn't designed to be the kind of durable, dependable, servicable, supportable, supported hardware that companies demand. The days of running your company on your kids Apple IIc (or its modern day equivilant - the X-toy) are over.
What is happening, and what will continue to happen, is that the corporate interests will come together to limit the consumer's IP rights not through legislation (though they are trying that route very successfully as well) but through the coercive force of product lines. By making it very inconvinient for the average consumer (and face it folks, /. readers aren't average consumers of computer gear!) to excercise their rights under current copyright law, the manufacturers can errode those rights.
If you can't make a recording for fair use without hacking hardware and software, then you won't be making that recording, if you are the average consumer. And after a few years of virtually no-one excercising their rights to fair-use, the notion that those rights exist will slowly be eroded and THEN it will be far easier to pass legislation outright stripping those rights from the public.
The problem with this, and similar stories, is that no effective public information campaign will be fought against it. Anyone who stands up and yells "foul" will be shot down as either an evil napster-esque hacker/cracker or an anti-Microsoft bigot. In either case you will be considered safe to ignore by the average consumer - adn the result will be that teh sheople will do what the corporations want them to do.
The only real way to counter this trend is to get congress to pass legislation that mandates that any consumer recording/playback device include the ability for people to excercise their fair use rights on all media forms that are handled in recording/playback -- either in the product or in an optional add-on. This will stop the trend of making products that are "broken" with regards to fair-use by design. Unfortunately, it will have the side-effect of increasing cost of consumer goods, as the corporate entities will use that sort of law as an excuse to raise prices.
Of course, such a law will never happen, congress is far to beholden to the big corporations to ever do anything to actually protect the people from bad corporate policies. So those of us who are clued can watch in frustration as our ability to excercise our first amendment rights are slowly and meticulously stripped from us by the refusal of corporations to provide the consumers the means to excercise those rights. But we'll all be happy 'cuase we'll have such nice cheap products to entertain us!
Please, someone explain this movie to me. I don't get why it is so popular.
The actors are not all that good, with the exception of Fishburne and Pantoliano who where passible. The direction isn't really all that fascinating. And the storyline is fresh out of a bad philosophy 101 class.
Maybe it's becuase I've got some education in philosophy and didn't find the story all that deep. Maybe it's becuase I'm a Hong Kong action film buff and have seen all the special effects before. But I just don't get what the fuss was about. Sure, Carrie-Anne Moss was hot and fun to look at, and the sound-track and sound editing where pretty damn good (particularly during the famous scene of Neo and Trinity battling it out, but sound tracks and hot babes don't make a movie in my book.
So what is it about this movie that makes everyone all excited?
On the flip side, I do think that a book showing how a very visual movie is storyboarded and moves from concept to production is a cool thing. I went and saw the travelling Star Wars museum display that included a lot of the concept art for the first 3 films. That was a very cool experience and I can certainly see why a fan would want that in a quality coffee table book. It is very interesting to see the changes that occure from concept to production, and to learn some of the reasons behind those changes.
I have to duck this one. Security deserves precise and detailed answers and I'm not qualified to give them.
Other than to say the price of security is eternal vigilance.
There are a lot of people in Bob's position whow would have handed that question to an engineer or a technical lead and said "write me up a good sounding answer" and posted that answer as their own. Bob has the integrity to not pretend he is more technical than he is, and the intelligence to realize that good questions require hard knowledge and expertise to answer correctly.
One of the reasons RedHat has done so well so far, in my oppinion, is that Bob clearly is not afraid to admit to not knowing the answer to every question. And in recognizing his own limitations, he is able to know what sort of talent he needs to surround himself with in order to succeed.
There is a solid lesson here for anyone starting a business. Having a dream and a vision only gets you to the starting block. Understanding your limitations, having personal integrity, and surrounding yourself with people who you allow to take credit for their achievements will get you into the race.
I wonder how many of the tech company failures we've seen can be attributed, more or less, to the key people in the company not knowing what they weren't experts in everything?
Again, kudos Bob! That is the most impressive answer of this interview, and it says a great deal about you as a person that you should be proud of!
I realize that the subject line above may strike some people as heresy. Nonetheless is absolutely true. Security, particularly with respect to computers, is not about privacy it is about risk management. What you're interested in having happen is for your communications to occur in precisely the way you are interested in having them occur. This means that you are interested in managing who has access to the computer, network or data. You wish to minimize the possibility of unauthorized access while maximizing the ability to engage in communication. To do this properly you must first accurately assess the value of the communication which you would protect from unauthorized access.
For example, if you are working in the financial industry your data is probably very valuable indeed. Whereas, if you are working in a car wash your data is probably much less valuable. Even so, for most users of cryptography technology today, the concern seems not to be with risk management but with privacy. What seems to be lost is an understanding that privacy issues are relative. Indeed, privacy is really about access to information and falls under the same milieu of risk management as any other business endeavor.
Cryptography is only one piece of the puzzle. In a bank, for example, there will be air walls, intrusion detection teams, and other measures in place to keep unauthorized access to an absolute minimum. These measures, with the cost of course. Therefore, they will only be taken when their cost is justified by the level of risk of loss of control of the data.
Certainly, for the average user, there are things that they can do to minimize risk which cannot cost much money. They can, for example, utilize onetime pass codes, keep their key ring in a hardware device that is not always connected to the computer, perform routine system integrity checks, etc.
of course, all of these can be breached by a determined hacker/cracker. That is not the point. Perfect securities does not exist within network devices. However, perfect risk management does. And therefore, as security is really about risk management, perfect security does exist and is achievable as long as you do away with the notion that security is about limiting access and rather accept that security is about managing risk.
The question being asked seems to be "should I go with this startup job or not?" And you don't give us enough information to go on.
First, what level are you at? If you are going into your third start-up at the manager level or higher, you should seriously think twice. The reason I say that is because you are at the level where you are responsible for the success or failure of the business. Having been up to bat and struck out twice in a row you don't want a hat-trick on your resume! If you are at a managerial level (and 'tech lead' is a managerial level!) you need a long stint of steady work/pay on your resume.
Also you say that this new company is going to be making a physical product. Well, go investigate the market space where that physical product is going to be sold. How big is the market space? Who are the other players? Who will be your REAL competition (hint: it is probably NOT whatever the business plan says!)? Talk to a few potential customers and find out what would make them buy this physical product over someone elses product. Check and make sure that the product offers some competitive advantage to generate customers.
Next, ask to see the written business plan. Go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Pretend you are a banker (not a venture capitalist) and that the company is asking you for a loan. Would you give it? Why or why not? Talk to other VC folks if you can and ask if they've heard of the startup and what they think about its long-term prospects. Get "why" answers to every question.
Finally, look at the work you're going to be doing. If you really like it, and everything else looks good. Jump in. But don't expect to get rich. And if you do, expect to be poor again real soon. Most companies fail in the first 5 years or so. And many of those make paper millionaires in the first year or two (even before the dot-com world). But if the company doesn't have staying power, the money will fade rather quickly. I had options go from $6 a share to $28 a share and back down to $2 a share in a period of 2 years. And that kind of fluctuation isn't uncommon for newer companies.
You will, in all likelyhood, not get rick working for startups. You will work harder, and maybe have more fun, but you won't get rich. Wealth is actually more easily had with large companies that offer solid 401k plans and great benefits. But if you want a startup, do your homework. You should at least try to have a company that will be around for a couple of years. With a little homework that isn't that hard to find.
Katz is, perhaps rightly, pointing a finger of derrission at the populist tripe offered as a "solution" to the "problem" of school shootings. He is correct to point out that the "solution" is being bandied about without regard to any actual data that suggests a positive correlation between what is being tauted as the "cause" and the events that society is attempting to stop.
Problematically, for his argument, is that in the next breath he does the same thing.
There are likely a number of correlate causes that combine to cause kids to choose to solve their problems through violence -- be that violence aimed at themselves or at others. And anyone who has been in a large public school knows that the institutionalization that occurs there is oppressive and disturbing on a number of levels. Clearly there are problems. However, offering "solutions" that have no proven, established relationship to the problem is not likely to do much in terms of stopping the problem.
Further, the "problem" is of a questionable seriousness, depending on what you think the "problem" is. School shootings, for example, are not a big issue in this country. They are a big media attraction, but kids have been shooting other kids since the arrival of arms in this country. Adjusted for population changes, lethal violence in the schools is on the decline, not on the rise. Schools remain one of the safest places for kids to be to not get shot. And that level of safety is actually increasing over time, not decreasing.
Kids have suffered from depression for a long time as well. We may be better equiped to diagnose and treat such things today, and the result may be that we are "seeing" more depressed kids. However, that doesn't say that depression is on the increase. Are schools creating environments where depression flourishes or where depression is simply better diagnosed and recognized? We really don't know.
The one point that Katz makes that we should all be concerned about is the number of communities, small though it is, that are starting to pass "anti-bullying" legislation. Folks, here's a clue, assult, battery, threats of violence, emotional abuse, and the like are already illegal. The laws to stop bullying are already in place. Schools already have the administrative authority to set disciplinary standards that allow them to remove the problem kids from the classroom environment. They already have the legal backing to send the real problem kids to jail. That isn't being done now not because of a lack of anti-bully laws, but because the schools want as many kids as possible.
The schools are given money based on the number of butts in chairs. If you, as an administrator, remove one of those rear-ends, you cut your opperating budget. There is a strong fiscal preassure to keep as many kids in school on a daily basis as possible. This fiscal preassure means that unless you have a high probability of facing legal threats that will cost you more than the amount of money you get per kid, you aren't going to get rid of a kid. This method of financing schools is a real problem, seperate and distinct from the issue of violance and the root causes thereof, in that the administration is forced to choose between appropriate disciplinary policies and funding. Until this fiscal dilemna is removed, no school has any real hope of instituting and maintaining disciplinary codes that strongly discourage bullying in any form.
Folks, higher skilled workers earn more than lower skilled workers in this industry. Even when the lower skilled workers have more seniority. The reason is that we don't have collective barganing and each worker is free to negotiate their own wage.
Moreover, we don't have a couple of hundred dollars a month sucked out of our paychecks to fund the organizer's pockets.
The net result of all this is that those of us who are in the top percentiles skills wise get to make a shitload more money than if we where in a "union" shop.
In the world of unions, every worker gets the same wage, regardless of differences in talent. They get the same raises based on years of experience. They have no power to bargain on their own behalf - no matter how much better they might be than their coworkers.
And folks, there's a hell of a lot of difference between a top-end coder or data analyst and a mediocre one.
Unionization will be a loose-loose proposition. Top talent will loose wages if they stay in union shops and union shops will loose top talent since they won't pay them what they deserve.
Bad idea, folks. Really.
One of the interesting "pluses" about Linux and BSD is that it admits the programmers and developers are flawed. It allows for the end-user, if sufficiently skilled and motivated, to fix their own problem. However, this "plus" comes at a cost. It is achieved by allowing nearly anyone to come up with a "solution" to a problem, and those "solutions" are included in the distributions based on the fact that they reliably solve the problem -- and not on any other real criteria. This results in a total system that lacks consistency and eligance. While each component may be exceedingly well crafted (and in my experience this is not the case - there's a ton of cruft and outright crap in most ditriubtions!) the total system is neither. It is a huge conglomeration of kludges, patches and work-arounds. That it can be made to appear "stable" is an amazing testimony to the skill of the administrators who run it, and the programmers and developers who have produced all those necessary "temporary" fixes. It is also a huge indictment of the various platforms that compete for the server and desktop market. However, it is NOT a characteristic of a good design. A computer is a tool. An OS is a central and critical element of that tool. It determines if the tool will be able to be used successfully and by whom it will be used. Imagine if you could buy a hammer but it didn't come with a handle - you had to craft your own! That is the current "state of the art" Linux desktop. Here's all the components you need to make a computer that will be usable - now get busy and build an interface for your users!! Even in "server land" there are "users" to satisfy and most of them are not technical people. IS managers, product managers, etc., all need to be able to look at information about the system, but are precluded from doing so in a conistent, coherent manner. Linux is a great system, from the point of view of it is UNIX taken to its highest level. But sadly, UNIX is not a great system. Lots of great systems ideas are there, but it is not well designed and well integrated. There are shining examples of good total systems out there -- in the mainframe world, MACs, to some extent BeOS . . . and the hacker culture dispises them for all the reasons hackers hate those sorts of things . . .their hard to program, their closed, it's hard to break . . . But guess what folks -- the USERS want a system that is hard to break! Users don't want a system that requires every new product addition has to be carefully considered in case it breaks existing stuff -- they want to run their software, get their information, and get on with their lives. Right now UNIX rules the roost because there isn't a well designed system out there that has tackled the complexity of inter-networked computing and tried to build a solid orthogonal system aimed at that market. Moreover, the cost of doing that task correctly is going to be huge. Until some company or government does that, the network world will be ruled by UNIX because that is the platform that allows the lowest level access to produce kludges to problems that shouldn't exist on a well designed totoal SYSTEM to begin with. That UNIX is great at that tasks is something to cheer about, but we shouldnt' forget that it is a necessary evil. and we shouldn't be confussed into thinking it is a good thing (tm).
What's the point Ummm -- I'm a system admin. My company uses Outlook and Excell (with VB programs) extensively. I must be on windows to do those things, which I need to do multiple times a day. At the same time, i need to have a number of X-clients going monitoring systems, runing programs, playing quake ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h and other wise being productive. If I have to reboot everytime I need to be in Windows I will loose a ton of time. If I have multiple boxes I will waste money and waste a ton of space. If I have VMWare, I am happy, content and busy Quak^h^h^h^hworking.
What's more frightening is their recent attempts to steal the word "open" as it relates to software licensing! Check out this URL, it speaks for itself. http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/licensing/Open .htm
Venture Capitalists are interested in QUICKLY making money. That means, they will take between 40-65% share of your company and then SELL it at the first best opportunity. Unless you have an established customer base and can demonstrate a long-term income stream, the VC's are NOT what you want to deal with if you are interested in your company's future. Investor bankers are more the way to go. They will take a much lower %age of your stock and are interested in developing your business plan with you in order to provide long-term income to the bank. VC's are often "looser" with their money than IB's, but they expect a much higher, quicker return for that risk. If you care about your concept and want a long-term company, IB's are a much better choice.